Cats are perfectly able to do the same. They just can't be arsed.
So you agree with me then?
Cats aren't useless.
They are just useless to humans.
This reminds me of a mock question when I was studying philosophy for my degree: What is the point of sparrows?
Underlying the flippantly-worded question is the difference between intrinsic and instrumental value. The latter meaning "providing utility to humans" and the former meaning "having value in itself - i.e. in accord with nature".
Assuming you mean domesticated cats, they, like domesticated dogs, are a human construct. The result of centuries of genetic-engineering-by-humans for human need. Therefore they are, I would argue, part of the human realm rather than the natural realm. Therefore, it follows, they have bags of instrumental value but no intrinsic value.
Tigers, in contrast, have bags of intrinsic value but no, or very little, instrumental value. Therefore they - like so many other species - are fucked. (See Attenborough programme the other night and weep.)
There's a whole tourist industry based around tiger watching - and it's a highly lucrative industry in otherwise poor areas of India. So that's not really true
The point is that their value is (or, rather, should be) bound up in intrinsic value rather than value to humans (regardless of the quantity of value to humans).
This debate reminds me of a famous theological question/answer
Why does it rain?
No scientist can really answer that. They can explain HOW it rains, the mechanism of evaporation, precipitation, and so on, but not the WHY
A believer, on the other hand, can say: it rains to feed the wheat that grows to feed mankind, so that he may sing the praise of God.
Religion often gives you an answer to WHY, which is hugely important to human happiness.
You are Neil Oliver and I claim my five pounds.
Is Neil Oliver noted for his medieval deism?? Genuine question
"For all the bluster on Capitol Hill, Congress is edging towards a bipartisan deal worth $1.5 trillion, with $500bn for state and local governments, and a $450 weekly cheque for those unable to work, and a top-up stimulus payment of $1,200 for all. Donald Trump says he can live with it. Whoever is elected, more is the pipeline later."
10.5 BF for Trump to win Virginia looks a bit generous to me.
Democrat Joe Biden leads Republican Donald Trump by 5 points, 48%-43%, among likely Virginia voters. Among the most enthusiastic likely voters, Biden’s lead grows to 8 points, 51%-43%.
High school or less: 46%
Holy gucking shit balls.
There's correcting and then there's correcting.
Hillary won Virginia in 2016 by 5%, so no change there
My worry in 2020 was that pollsters hadn't adjusted their education sample enough but a poll with 46% respondents HS or less eduaction is utterly farcical.
HS or less is 34% in Virginia The Exit poll from 2016 put them as 14% of the electorate In 2018 they were 15%
So - if this morning’s newspaper reports are true - there will be no help for the one sector which has been specifically targeted by the latest restrictions: the hospitality sector, despite it being apparently a source of only 5% of the increase in infections.
If true, a disgrace.
This sector has lost most of its spring/summer season, will lose the Xmas/NY season, possibly the start of the next spring season and, even while open, is losing a very significant percentage of its normal trading. Early closing will do little to help stop the virus’s spread but will do a great deal of damage to this sector.
I really hope the newspaper reports are wrong.
In other news Trump makes it clear he’s going to steal the election.
Please tell me there’s some good news somewhere.
2.5 hours to go until we find out.
I don't trust media reports. Remember Peston saying he'd been authoritatively told that the Chancellor had no major news to announce . . . about 30 minutes before the Chancellor announced the furlough scheme?
The media have to sell column inches and develop clickbait. Lets find out what the Chancellor actually announces, I'd be shocked if there's no help for hospitality considering his summer job support scheme was almost exclusively targetted at hospitality.
I work in Hospitality so I am hopeful that something can be done. The current restrictions require more staff to earn less money - this is not really sustainable, and hopefully something can be done specifically to address this.
The second point I don’t see on here is with regards to evidence. I obviously have an interest here but the I don’t see the evidence that cases now being detected are actually linked to a rise in hospitalisations and deaths, which sure surely be the key metric as they are what is supposed to differentiate this from other seasonal viruses.
I agree.
Here you go: (Hospitalisations in England by day - bars are raw numbers, line is 7-day average)
(Deaths in England by day - bars are raw numbers, line is 7-day average)
Where did you get this from - I`ve been looking for similar without luck?
Can I confirm - these are hospitalisations due to Covid - rather than total daily hospitalisations?
You can create your own graphs comparing what you like - the data is on the "Data" tab on each area.
Can you revise your doubling period estimate from a few days ago? I recall you had the doubling time listed for a number of days showing how it had changed.
(95% sure it was you...)
Sure.
Current doubling time is 9.7 days. The average doubling time over the past seven days has been 12.2 days, with a maximum doubling time of 15.9 days and a minimum of 7.5 days. (The trajectory isn't constant - sometimes steeper and sometimes slower)
It's better than it was a week ago, when the doubling time was 7.5 days (average over the preceding week had been 8.0 days, with a maximum of 11.3 days and a minimum of 6.3 days).
I think it's improving, but slowly. At least the rate of acceleration has stopped accelerating (if you see what I mean). This improvement, though is slow - it'd take nearly 20 days for it to level off unless that rate of levelling increases. I hope it improves a bit faster. God knows, I don't want more restrictions.
Do you really mean "At least the rate of acceleration has stopped accelerating"? Accelleration is the second derivative and the rate of accelleration is the third derivative. If the third derivative has stopped accellerating then the fifth derivative is 0. (!)
At least if the 5th derivative is zero then the growth cannot be exponentiial :-)
I presume you mean the number of hospitsations have stopped accelerating, meaning the second derivative is zero. All this reminds me of the famous quote by Nixon on inflation.
Yeah. I'm not the most eloquent, sometimes.
The doubling period had been getting shorter and shorter. This - over the past few days - seems to have started to reverse. I bloody well hope it's not just a blip (very short time period to extrapolate out from). If so, we may - just may - have shifted the exponent down sufficiently.
However, I would highlight a warning of motivated reasoning - it's something I very much want to be true. That adds a strong warning to the analysis from me.
I've just seen the following on fivethirtyeight. https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2020-election-forecast/ They are of course results from their simulations, so your opinion on these figures will be coupled with your belief in the competence of Nate Silver's models.
Weird and not-so-weird possibilities
The chances that these situations will crop up Trump wins the popular vote Regardless of whether he wins the Electoral College 11 in 100 Biden wins the popular vote Regardless of whether he wins the Electoral College 89 in 100 Trump wins more than 50% of the popular vote Regardless of whether he wins the Electoral College 8 in 100 Biden wins more than 50% of the popular vote Regardless of whether he wins the Electoral College 84 in 100 Trump wins in a landslide Defined as winning the popular vote by a double-digit margin <1 in 100 Biden wins in a landslide Defined as winning the popular vote by a double-digit margin 30 in 100 Trump wins the popular vote but loses the Electoral College <1 in 100 Biden wins the popular vote but loses the Electoral College 11 in 100 No one wins the Electoral College No candidate gets 270 electoral votes and Congress decides the election <1 in 100 Trump wins at least one state that Clinton won in 2016 36 in 100 Biden wins at least one state that Trump won in 2016 92 in 100 The map stays exactly the same as it was in 2016 Each candidate wins exactly the same states that his party won in 2016 <1 in 100 The election hinges on a recount Candidates are within half a percentage point in one or more decisive states 5 in 100</p>
I'm surprised by this result:
Biden wins the popular vote but loses the Electoral College 11 in 100
Silver's model gives Trump a 22% chance of winning the Electoral College, which implies that in half the scenarios Trump wins, he also wins the popular vote. That looks extremely unlikely from the polls.
10.5 BF for Trump to win Virginia looks a bit generous to me.
Democrat Joe Biden leads Republican Donald Trump by 5 points, 48%-43%, among likely Virginia voters. Among the most enthusiastic likely voters, Biden’s lead grows to 8 points, 51%-43%.
High school or less: 46%
Holy gucking shit balls.
There's correcting and then there's correcting.
Hillary won Virginia in 2016 by 5%, so no change there
£50 even money bet for anyone who wants to take the other side: Biden will win Virginia by more than Hilary did.
Surely it is time to give the man from Demonte Deloitte a call again to bring their team to come and sort the testing system out again.
Anecdotally I think something along those lines happening. A friend of mine has been contacted to take over project management of test and trace in the East of England, she's a highly experienced and effective PM but her rates are not low. They know this and are still willing to pay thousands per day to get her and her team in place. She doesn't want to do it, but that they are looking for new people probably means they know whatever they are doing isn't working.
Part of the brief is understanding in biomedical sciences and the diagnostics industry so I'm guessing they don't currently have that expertise.
Do you use it to "filter out" people who have not had the good fortune of seeing that classic data representation? Or do you test how they respond when told information about it.
For a job interview knowledge is meh, unless it is directly being used as part of the job. Being able to interpret the available data is a much better criterion.
The Minard diagram in question is famous to the point of being ubiquitous in basic courses on presentation of stats. I am (professionally speaking) an amateur - encountered it a zillion times.
- first question - what is this? - second if they don't know - explain what it is, what does it tell you? - second otherwise - what does it tell you? - third question - what potential weaknesses are there in this approach? what can you see from the graph itself?
Just examples....
Hitler should probably have studied this one a bit harder.
Cats are perfectly able to do the same. They just can't be arsed.
So you agree with me then?
Cats aren't useless.
They are just useless to humans.
This reminds me of a mock question when I was studying philosophy for my degree: What is the point of sparrows?
Underlying the flippantly-worded question is the difference between intrinsic and instrumental value. The latter meaning "providing utility to humans" and the former meaning "having value in itself - i.e. in accord with nature".
Assuming you mean domesticated cats, they, like domesticated dogs, are a human construct. The result of centuries of genetic-engineering-by-humans for human need. Therefore they are, I would argue, part of the human realm rather than the natural realm. Therefore, it follows, they have bags of instrumental value but no intrinsic value.
Tigers, in contrast, have bags of intrinsic value but no, or very little, instrumental value. Therefore they - like so many other species - are fucked. (See Attenborough programme the other night and weep.)
There's a whole tourist industry based around tiger watching - and it's a highly lucrative industry in otherwise poor areas of India. So that's not really true
The point is that their value is (or, rather, should be) bound up in intrinsic value rather than value to humans (regardless of the quantity of value to humans).
This debate reminds me of a famous theological question/answer
Why does it rain?
No scientist can really answer that. They can explain HOW it rains, the mechanism of evaporation, precipitation, and so on, but not the WHY
A believer, on the other hand, can say: it rains to feed the wheat that grows to feed mankind, so that he may sing the praise of God.
Religion often gives you an answer to WHY, which is hugely important to human happiness.
The question why does it rain is just a meaningless question. There is a physical mechanism that leads to rainfall, but trying to find some deeper meaning is pointless. Anyway, your answer only invites more questions. Why is there a God and why would she want us to sing to her?
I've just seen the following on fivethirtyeight. https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2020-election-forecast/ They are of course results from their simulations, so your opinion on these figures will be coupled with your belief in the competence of Nate Silver's models.
Weird and not-so-weird possibilities
The chances that these situations will crop up Trump wins the popular vote Regardless of whether he wins the Electoral College 11 in 100 Biden wins the popular vote Regardless of whether he wins the Electoral College 89 in 100 Trump wins more than 50% of the popular vote Regardless of whether he wins the Electoral College 8 in 100 Biden wins more than 50% of the popular vote Regardless of whether he wins the Electoral College 84 in 100 Trump wins in a landslide Defined as winning the popular vote by a double-digit margin <1 in 100 Biden wins in a landslide Defined as winning the popular vote by a double-digit margin 30 in 100 Trump wins the popular vote but loses the Electoral College <1 in 100 Biden wins the popular vote but loses the Electoral College 11 in 100 No one wins the Electoral College No candidate gets 270 electoral votes and Congress decides the election <1 in 100 Trump wins at least one state that Clinton won in 2016 36 in 100 Biden wins at least one state that Trump won in 2016 92 in 100 The map stays exactly the same as it was in 2016 Each candidate wins exactly the same states that his party won in 2016 <1 in 100 The election hinges on a recount Candidates are within half a percentage point in one or more decisive states 5 in 100</p>
I'm surprised by this result:
Biden wins the popular vote but loses the Electoral College 11 in 100
Silver's model gives Trump a 22% chance of winning the Electoral College, which implies that in half the scenarios Trump wins, he also wins the popular vote. That looks extremely unlikely from the polls.
Rasmussen had Trump up by 1% nationally last week, ABC had Trump ahead in Florida and Arizona yesterday, Trafalgar still has Trump ahead in Wisconsin and Michigan but with Biden picking up Pennsylvania.
So it is possible Trump could win the popular vote this time narrowly but with Biden picking up 1 or 2 states to make Trump's EC margin smaller
I've just seen the following on fivethirtyeight. https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2020-election-forecast/ They are of course results from their simulations, so your opinion on these figures will be coupled with your belief in the competence of Nate Silver's models.
Weird and not-so-weird possibilities
The chances that these situations will crop up Trump wins the popular vote Regardless of whether he wins the Electoral College 11 in 100 Biden wins the popular vote Regardless of whether he wins the Electoral College 89 in 100 Trump wins more than 50% of the popular vote Regardless of whether he wins the Electoral College 8 in 100 Biden wins more than 50% of the popular vote Regardless of whether he wins the Electoral College 84 in 100 Trump wins in a landslide Defined as winning the popular vote by a double-digit margin <1 in 100 Biden wins in a landslide Defined as winning the popular vote by a double-digit margin 30 in 100 Trump wins the popular vote but loses the Electoral College <1 in 100 Biden wins the popular vote but loses the Electoral College 11 in 100 No one wins the Electoral College No candidate gets 270 electoral votes and Congress decides the election <1 in 100 Trump wins at least one state that Clinton won in 2016 36 in 100 Biden wins at least one state that Trump won in 2016 92 in 100 The map stays exactly the same as it was in 2016 Each candidate wins exactly the same states that his party won in 2016 <1 in 100 The election hinges on a recount Candidates are within half a percentage point in one or more decisive states 5 in 100</p>
I'm surprised by this result:
Biden wins the popular vote but loses the Electoral College 11 in 100
Silver's model gives Trump a 22% chance of winning the Electoral College, which implies that in half the scenarios Trump wins, he also wins the popular vote. That looks extremely unlikely from the polls.
The very first statistic was: Trump wins the popular vote Regardless of whether he wins the Electoral College 11 in 100
Silver's model doesn't just rely upon how the polls are but how they may change or be wrong too.
Trump wins at least one state that Clinton won in 2016 36 in 100 Biden wins at least one state that Trump won in 2016 92 in 100 Each candidate wins exactly the same states that his party won in 2016 1 in 100
Something's also not right here. The first two lines imply the probability of the map being the same as 2016 being (1-0.64) * (1-0.92) which comes to about 0.05 or 5%, not 1%.
So - if this morning’s newspaper reports are true - there will be no help for the one sector which has been specifically targeted by the latest restrictions: the hospitality sector, despite it being apparently a source of only 5% of the increase in infections.
If true, a disgrace.
This sector has lost most of its spring/summer season, will lose the Xmas/NY season, possibly the start of the next spring season and, even while open, is losing a very significant percentage of its normal trading. Early closing will do little to help stop the virus’s spread but will do a great deal of damage to this sector.
I really hope the newspaper reports are wrong.
In other news Trump makes it clear he’s going to steal the election.
Please tell me there’s some good news somewhere.
2.5 hours to go until we find out.
I don't trust media reports. Remember Peston saying he'd been authoritatively told that the Chancellor had no major news to announce . . . about 30 minutes before the Chancellor announced the furlough scheme?
The media have to sell column inches and develop clickbait. Lets find out what the Chancellor actually announces, I'd be shocked if there's no help for hospitality considering his summer job support scheme was almost exclusively targetted at hospitality.
I work in Hospitality so I am hopeful that something can be done. The current restrictions require more staff to earn less money - this is not really sustainable, and hopefully something can be done specifically to address this.
The second point I don’t see on here is with regards to evidence. I obviously have an interest here but the I don’t see the evidence that cases now being detected are actually linked to a rise in hospitalisations and deaths, which sure surely be the key metric as they are what is supposed to differentiate this from other seasonal viruses.
I agree.
Here you go: (Hospitalisations in England by day - bars are raw numbers, line is 7-day average)
(Deaths in England by day - bars are raw numbers, line is 7-day average)
Where did you get this from - I`ve been looking for similar without luck?
Can I confirm - these are hospitalisations due to Covid - rather than total daily hospitalisations?
You can create your own graphs comparing what you like - the data is on the "Data" tab on each area.
Can you revise your doubling period estimate from a few days ago? I recall you had the doubling time listed for a number of days showing how it had changed.
(95% sure it was you...)
Sure.
Current doubling time is 9.7 days. The average doubling time over the past seven days has been 12.2 days, with a maximum doubling time of 15.9 days and a minimum of 7.5 days. (The trajectory isn't constant - sometimes steeper and sometimes slower)
It's better than it was a week ago, when the doubling time was 7.5 days (average over the preceding week had been 8.0 days, with a maximum of 11.3 days and a minimum of 6.3 days).
I think it's improving, but slowly. At least the rate of acceleration has stopped accelerating (if you see what I mean). This improvement, though is slow - it'd take nearly 20 days for it to level off unless that rate of levelling increases. I hope it improves a bit faster. God knows, I don't want more restrictions.
Do you really mean "At least the rate of acceleration has stopped accelerating"? Accelleration is the second derivative and the rate of accelleration is the third derivative. If the third derivative has stopped accellerating then the fifth derivative is 0. (!)
At least if the 5th derivative is zero then the growth cannot be exponentiial :-)
I presume you mean the number of hospitsations have stopped accelerating, meaning the second derivative is zero. All this reminds me of the famous quote by Nixon on inflation.
Yeah. I'm not the most eloquent, sometimes.
The doubling period had been getting shorter and shorter. This - over the past few days - seems to have started to reverse. I bloody well hope it's not just a blip (very short time period to extrapolate out from). If so, we may - just may - have shifted the exponent down sufficiently.
However, I would highlight a warning of motivated reasoning - it's something I very much want to be true. That adds a strong warning to the analysis from me.
What do you make of Israel? Their situation is now borderline catastrophic. They're going back into Absolute Lockdown, and they had 11,000 new cases yesterday
Some are blaming schools, others are blaming conservative Jews and Muslims, who are still congregating.
To me it is quite ominous, as Israel - with its surveillance systems, and sealed borders, and hi tech society - is a country which SHOULD have controlled this.
So - if this morning’s newspaper reports are true - there will be no help for the one sector which has been specifically targeted by the latest restrictions: the hospitality sector, despite it being apparently a source of only 5% of the increase in infections.
If true, a disgrace.
This sector has lost most of its spring/summer season, will lose the Xmas/NY season, possibly the start of the next spring season and, even while open, is losing a very significant percentage of its normal trading. Early closing will do little to help stop the virus’s spread but will do a great deal of damage to this sector.
I really hope the newspaper reports are wrong.
In other news Trump makes it clear he’s going to steal the election.
Please tell me there’s some good news somewhere.
2.5 hours to go until we find out.
I don't trust media reports. Remember Peston saying he'd been authoritatively told that the Chancellor had no major news to announce . . . about 30 minutes before the Chancellor announced the furlough scheme?
The media have to sell column inches and develop clickbait. Lets find out what the Chancellor actually announces, I'd be shocked if there's no help for hospitality considering his summer job support scheme was almost exclusively targetted at hospitality.
I work in Hospitality so I am hopeful that something can be done. The current restrictions require more staff to earn less money - this is not really sustainable, and hopefully something can be done specifically to address this.
The second point I don’t see on here is with regards to evidence. I obviously have an interest here but the I don’t see the evidence that cases now being detected are actually linked to a rise in hospitalisations and deaths, which sure surely be the key metric as they are what is supposed to differentiate this from other seasonal viruses.
I agree.
Here you go: (Hospitalisations in England by day - bars are raw numbers, line is 7-day average)
(Deaths in England by day - bars are raw numbers, line is 7-day average)
Where did you get this from - I`ve been looking for similar without luck?
Can I confirm - these are hospitalisations due to Covid - rather than total daily hospitalisations?
You can create your own graphs comparing what you like - the data is on the "Data" tab on each area.
Can you revise your doubling period estimate from a few days ago? I recall you had the doubling time listed for a number of days showing how it had changed.
(95% sure it was you...)
Sure.
Current doubling time is 9.7 days. The average doubling time over the past seven days has been 12.2 days, with a maximum doubling time of 15.9 days and a minimum of 7.5 days. (The trajectory isn't constant - sometimes steeper and sometimes slower)
It's better than it was a week ago, when the doubling time was 7.5 days (average over the preceding week had been 8.0 days, with a maximum of 11.3 days and a minimum of 6.3 days).
I think it's improving, but slowly. At least the rate of acceleration has stopped accelerating (if you see what I mean). This improvement, though is slow - it'd take nearly 20 days for it to level off unless that rate of levelling increases. I hope it improves a bit faster. God knows, I don't want more restrictions.
Do you really mean "At least the rate of acceleration has stopped accelerating"? Accelleration is the second derivative and the rate of accelleration is the third derivative. If the third derivative has stopped accellerating then the fifth derivative is 0. (!)
At least if the 5th derivative is zero then the growth cannot be exponentiial :-)
I presume you mean the number of hospitsations have stopped accelerating, meaning the second derivative is zero. All this reminds me of the famous quote by Nixon on inflation.
Yeah. I'm not the most eloquent, sometimes.
The doubling period had been getting shorter and shorter. This - over the past few days - seems to have started to reverse. I bloody well hope it's not just a blip (very short time period to extrapolate out from). If so, we may - just may - have shifted the exponent down sufficiently.
However, I would highlight a warning of motivated reasoning - it's something I very much want to be true. That adds a strong warning to the analysis from me.
What do you make of Israel? Their situation is now borderline catastrophic. They're going back into Absolute Lockdown, and they had 11,000 new cases yesterday
Some are blaming schools, others are blaming conservative Jews and Muslims, who are still congregating.
To me it is quite ominous, as Israel - with its surveillance systems, and sealed borders, and hi tech society - is a country which SHOULD have controlled this.
Weren't the government forced by bad PR to turn off their high tech surveillance, that appeared to be working pretty well early on?
10.5 BF for Trump to win Virginia looks a bit generous to me.
Democrat Joe Biden leads Republican Donald Trump by 5 points, 48%-43%, among likely Virginia voters. Among the most enthusiastic likely voters, Biden’s lead grows to 8 points, 51%-43%.
High school or less: 46%
Holy gucking shit balls.
There's correcting and then there's correcting.
Hillary won Virginia in 2016 by 5%, so no change there
£50 even money bet for anyone who wants to take the other side: Biden will win Virginia by more than Hilary did.
Guaranteed fact.
10.5 on the GOP might not be a bad bet if you're intending to reback the Democrats in play before the likes of Fairfax county have started reporting.
So - if this morning’s newspaper reports are true - there will be no help for the one sector which has been specifically targeted by the latest restrictions: the hospitality sector, despite it being apparently a source of only 5% of the increase in infections.
If true, a disgrace.
This sector has lost most of its spring/summer season, will lose the Xmas/NY season, possibly the start of the next spring season and, even while open, is losing a very significant percentage of its normal trading. Early closing will do little to help stop the virus’s spread but will do a great deal of damage to this sector.
I really hope the newspaper reports are wrong.
In other news Trump makes it clear he’s going to steal the election.
Please tell me there’s some good news somewhere.
2.5 hours to go until we find out.
I don't trust media reports. Remember Peston saying he'd been authoritatively told that the Chancellor had no major news to announce . . . about 30 minutes before the Chancellor announced the furlough scheme?
The media have to sell column inches and develop clickbait. Lets find out what the Chancellor actually announces, I'd be shocked if there's no help for hospitality considering his summer job support scheme was almost exclusively targetted at hospitality.
I work in Hospitality so I am hopeful that something can be done. The current restrictions require more staff to earn less money - this is not really sustainable, and hopefully something can be done specifically to address this.
The second point I don’t see on here is with regards to evidence. I obviously have an interest here but the I don’t see the evidence that cases now being detected are actually linked to a rise in hospitalisations and deaths, which sure surely be the key metric as they are what is supposed to differentiate this from other seasonal viruses.
I agree.
Here you go: (Hospitalisations in England by day - bars are raw numbers, line is 7-day average)
(Deaths in England by day - bars are raw numbers, line is 7-day average)
Where did you get this from - I`ve been looking for similar without luck?
Can I confirm - these are hospitalisations due to Covid - rather than total daily hospitalisations?
You can create your own graphs comparing what you like - the data is on the "Data" tab on each area.
Can you revise your doubling period estimate from a few days ago? I recall you had the doubling time listed for a number of days showing how it had changed.
(95% sure it was you...)
Sure.
Current doubling time is 9.7 days. The average doubling time over the past seven days has been 12.2 days, with a maximum doubling time of 15.9 days and a minimum of 7.5 days. (The trajectory isn't constant - sometimes steeper and sometimes slower)
It's better than it was a week ago, when the doubling time was 7.5 days (average over the preceding week had been 8.0 days, with a maximum of 11.3 days and a minimum of 6.3 days).
I think it's improving, but slowly. At least the rate of acceleration has stopped accelerating (if you see what I mean). This improvement, though is slow - it'd take nearly 20 days for it to level off unless that rate of levelling increases. I hope it improves a bit faster. God knows, I don't want more restrictions.
Do you really mean "At least the rate of acceleration has stopped accelerating"? Accelleration is the second derivative and the rate of accelleration is the third derivative. If the third derivative has stopped accellerating then the fifth derivative is 0. (!)
At least if the 5th derivative is zero then the growth cannot be exponentiial :-)
I presume you mean the number of hospitsations have stopped accelerating, meaning the second derivative is zero. All this reminds me of the famous quote by Nixon on inflation.
Yeah. I'm not the most eloquent, sometimes.
The doubling period had been getting shorter and shorter. This - over the past few days - seems to have started to reverse. I bloody well hope it's not just a blip (very short time period to extrapolate out from). If so, we may - just may - have shifted the exponent down sufficiently.
However, I would highlight a warning of motivated reasoning - it's something I very much want to be true. That adds a strong warning to the analysis from me.
It is too premature for any change to be due to restrictions or news from this week.
But there are reasons to be hopeful that R was already coming down a bit after bouncing back up (remember it's been 1 or below for months until recently) and that this week's news could be enough to push it back to 1 or below.
We don't need a massive reduction in R. Just enough to cope.
So - if this morning’s newspaper reports are true - there will be no help for the one sector which has been specifically targeted by the latest restrictions: the hospitality sector, despite it being apparently a source of only 5% of the increase in infections.
If true, a disgrace.
This sector has lost most of its spring/summer season, will lose the Xmas/NY season, possibly the start of the next spring season and, even while open, is losing a very significant percentage of its normal trading. Early closing will do little to help stop the virus’s spread but will do a great deal of damage to this sector.
I really hope the newspaper reports are wrong.
In other news Trump makes it clear he’s going to steal the election.
Please tell me there’s some good news somewhere.
2.5 hours to go until we find out.
I don't trust media reports. Remember Peston saying he'd been authoritatively told that the Chancellor had no major news to announce . . . about 30 minutes before the Chancellor announced the furlough scheme?
The media have to sell column inches and develop clickbait. Lets find out what the Chancellor actually announces, I'd be shocked if there's no help for hospitality considering his summer job support scheme was almost exclusively targetted at hospitality.
I work in Hospitality so I am hopeful that something can be done. The current restrictions require more staff to earn less money - this is not really sustainable, and hopefully something can be done specifically to address this.
The second point I don’t see on here is with regards to evidence. I obviously have an interest here but the I don’t see the evidence that cases now being detected are actually linked to a rise in hospitalisations and deaths, which sure surely be the key metric as they are what is supposed to differentiate this from other seasonal viruses.
I agree.
Here you go: (Hospitalisations in England by day - bars are raw numbers, line is 7-day average)
(Deaths in England by day - bars are raw numbers, line is 7-day average)
Where did you get this from - I`ve been looking for similar without luck?
Can I confirm - these are hospitalisations due to Covid - rather than total daily hospitalisations?
You can create your own graphs comparing what you like - the data is on the "Data" tab on each area.
Can you revise your doubling period estimate from a few days ago? I recall you had the doubling time listed for a number of days showing how it had changed.
(95% sure it was you...)
Sure.
Current doubling time is 9.7 days. The average doubling time over the past seven days has been 12.2 days, with a maximum doubling time of 15.9 days and a minimum of 7.5 days. (The trajectory isn't constant - sometimes steeper and sometimes slower)
It's better than it was a week ago, when the doubling time was 7.5 days (average over the preceding week had been 8.0 days, with a maximum of 11.3 days and a minimum of 6.3 days).
I think it's improving, but slowly. At least the rate of acceleration has stopped accelerating (if you see what I mean). This improvement, though is slow - it'd take nearly 20 days for it to level off unless that rate of levelling increases. I hope it improves a bit faster. God knows, I don't want more restrictions.
Do you really mean "At least the rate of acceleration has stopped accelerating"? Accelleration is the second derivative and the rate of accelleration is the third derivative. If the third derivative has stopped accellerating then the fifth derivative is 0. (!)
At least if the 5th derivative is zero then the growth cannot be exponentiial :-)
I presume you mean the number of hospitsations have stopped accelerating, meaning the second derivative is zero. All this reminds me of the famous quote by Nixon on inflation.
Yeah. I'm not the most eloquent, sometimes.
The doubling period had been getting shorter and shorter. This - over the past few days - seems to have started to reverse. I bloody well hope it's not just a blip (very short time period to extrapolate out from). If so, we may - just may - have shifted the exponent down sufficiently.
However, I would highlight a warning of motivated reasoning - it's something I very much want to be true. That adds a strong warning to the analysis from me.
What do you make of Israel? Their situation is now borderline catastrophic. They're going back into Absolute Lockdown, and they had 11,000 new cases yesterday
Some are blaming schools, others are blaming conservative Jews and Muslims, who are still congregating.
To me it is quite ominous, as Israel - with its surveillance systems, and sealed borders, and hi tech society - is a country which SHOULD have controlled this.
They also opened up very aggressively. The extent to which countries did so seems to be a significant factor.
It is clearly some operational issue going on behind the scenes. They aren't doing orders of magnitudes of actual tests, so why has it slowed to a crawl to turn around the ones they are doing. I believe in the US, the turn around time has gone out to a week and it is being put down to a shortage of reagents.
If it is something like a shortage of reagents, it would also make sense why they have been restricting availability of test slots.
One of the stories my father's former colleagues have heard is that one of the companies carrying out the tests has screwed up by not doing the swabbing probably, so what's been sent to be tested isn't very useful.
Something to do with people having a strong gag reflex and the person in the field not going all the way. (Stop sniggering, this is a serious matter.)
Cats are perfectly able to do the same. They just can't be arsed.
So you agree with me then?
Cats aren't useless.
They are just useless to humans.
This reminds me of a mock question when I was studying philosophy for my degree: What is the point of sparrows?
Underlying the flippantly-worded question is the difference between intrinsic and instrumental value. The latter meaning "providing utility to humans" and the former meaning "having value in itself - i.e. in accord with nature".
Assuming you mean domesticated cats, they, like domesticated dogs, are a human construct. The result of centuries of genetic-engineering-by-humans for human need. Therefore they are, I would argue, part of the human realm rather than the natural realm. Therefore, it follows, they have bags of instrumental value but no intrinsic value.
Tigers, in contrast, have bags of intrinsic value but no, or very little, instrumental value. Therefore they - like so many other species - are fucked. (See Attenborough programme the other night and weep.)
There's a whole tourist industry based around tiger watching - and it's a highly lucrative industry in otherwise poor areas of India. So that's not really true
The point is that their value is (or, rather, should be) bound up in intrinsic value rather than value to humans (regardless of the quantity of value to humans).
This debate reminds me of a famous theological question/answer
Why does it rain?
No scientist can really answer that. They can explain HOW it rains, the mechanism of evaporation, precipitation, and so on, but not the WHY
A believer, on the other hand, can say: it rains to feed the wheat that grows to feed mankind, so that he may sing the praise of God.
Religion often gives you an answer to WHY, which is hugely important to human happiness.
The question why does it rain is just a meaningless question. There is a physical mechanism that leads to rainfall, but trying to find some deeper meaning is pointless. Anyway, your answer only invites more questions. Why is there a God and why would she want us to sing to her?
You may find this pointless, but the question was sufficient to make Ludwig Wittgenstein something of a believer.
That is to say: "Why is there anything at all?" - or, as he put it:
"Not how the world is, is the mystical, but that it is." Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus 6.44
Surely it is time to give the man from Demonte Deloitte a call again to bring their team to come and sort the testing system out again.
Anecdotally I think something along those lines happening. A friend of mine has been contacted to take over project management of test and trace in the East of England, she's a highly experienced and effective PM but her rates are not low. They know this and are still willing to pay thousands per day to get her and her team in place. She doesn't want to do it, but that they are looking for new people probably means they know whatever they are doing isn't working.
Part of the brief is understanding in biomedical sciences and the diagnostics industry so I'm guessing they don't currently have that expertise.
Interesting, thanks. Does raise the question of what they've been doing all summer.
Devil in the details. New scheme caps salary at £700 per month.
I think it has to be caps government input to £700 per month, at £700 max pay it would be basically worthless to most people (you might as well just go on benefits) and for example the BBC have given this example.
"So for someone on £2,000 a month working half their hours, they’d get £1,000 normal pay plus £333 extra from their employer and £333 from the government."
So - if this morning’s newspaper reports are true - there will be no help for the one sector which has been specifically targeted by the latest restrictions: the hospitality sector, despite it being apparently a source of only 5% of the increase in infections.
If true, a disgrace.
This sector has lost most of its spring/summer season, will lose the Xmas/NY season, possibly the start of the next spring season and, even while open, is losing a very significant percentage of its normal trading. Early closing will do little to help stop the virus’s spread but will do a great deal of damage to this sector.
I really hope the newspaper reports are wrong.
In other news Trump makes it clear he’s going to steal the election.
Please tell me there’s some good news somewhere.
2.5 hours to go until we find out.
I don't trust media reports. Remember Peston saying he'd been authoritatively told that the Chancellor had no major news to announce . . . about 30 minutes before the Chancellor announced the furlough scheme?
The media have to sell column inches and develop clickbait. Lets find out what the Chancellor actually announces, I'd be shocked if there's no help for hospitality considering his summer job support scheme was almost exclusively targetted at hospitality.
I work in Hospitality so I am hopeful that something can be done. The current restrictions require more staff to earn less money - this is not really sustainable, and hopefully something can be done specifically to address this.
The second point I don’t see on here is with regards to evidence. I obviously have an interest here but the I don’t see the evidence that cases now being detected are actually linked to a rise in hospitalisations and deaths, which sure surely be the key metric as they are what is supposed to differentiate this from other seasonal viruses.
I agree.
Here you go: (Hospitalisations in England by day - bars are raw numbers, line is 7-day average)
(Deaths in England by day - bars are raw numbers, line is 7-day average)
Where did you get this from - I`ve been looking for similar without luck?
Can I confirm - these are hospitalisations due to Covid - rather than total daily hospitalisations?
You can create your own graphs comparing what you like - the data is on the "Data" tab on each area.
Can you revise your doubling period estimate from a few days ago? I recall you had the doubling time listed for a number of days showing how it had changed.
(95% sure it was you...)
Sure.
Current doubling time is 9.7 days. The average doubling time over the past seven days has been 12.2 days, with a maximum doubling time of 15.9 days and a minimum of 7.5 days. (The trajectory isn't constant - sometimes steeper and sometimes slower)
It's better than it was a week ago, when the doubling time was 7.5 days (average over the preceding week had been 8.0 days, with a maximum of 11.3 days and a minimum of 6.3 days).
I think it's improving, but slowly. At least the rate of acceleration has stopped accelerating (if you see what I mean). This improvement, though is slow - it'd take nearly 20 days for it to level off unless that rate of levelling increases. I hope it improves a bit faster. God knows, I don't want more restrictions.
That's good news to me.
Considering it will take 2-3 weeks for it to be clear what impact this weeks new measures will have, if its already slowly levelling off that is because of actions people had voluntarily taken before these measures kicked in.
We don't need an R of 0, we just need to get R back to or below 1 again. If these limited measures are sufficient to do that then there's no need for anything more draconian.
Numbers of infections will increase dramatically over the next two weeks as the university effect kicks in, if there is cross community infections hospital admissions will go up. Unless the icu wards get overwhelmed then deaths will stay low in comparison to March April.
I've had multiple reports of Covid cases in schools, from different parts of the country.
I am much afeared that we are headed for a Total Lockdown (schools included) which will be significantly worse than the first, because it coincides with normal flu season (plus less chance to go outdoors).
Remember the Covid Rule: imagine the reasonable worst case scenario, because that is what will happen
The other thing about schools, which possibly makes me more nervous, is the impact of lots of little flareups. Even if they don't connect and cause a conflagration that can only be stopped by a Total Lockdown (and if the choice is the genuine misery and ruination of Lockdown 2 or mass graves, then no government will be able to choose mass graves), the local controls are still going to be tough.
If schools are going to have short-notice closures and staff absences because of mini-outbreaks, that is going to significantly mess up education, childcare and hence parental jobs. Especially since it's all unplanned.
And worst of all? Grown-ups were saying "schools will be fine for a bit, but they probably can't run normally in September. There will be too many germ-carrying little people moving around in a confined space." all last spring and summer. And it got turned into a "tell them schools are safe Keir, why won't you tell them schools are safe?" sneerfest.
So - if this morning’s newspaper reports are true - there will be no help for the one sector which has been specifically targeted by the latest restrictions: the hospitality sector, despite it being apparently a source of only 5% of the increase in infections.
If true, a disgrace.
This sector has lost most of its spring/summer season, will lose the Xmas/NY season, possibly the start of the next spring season and, even while open, is losing a very significant percentage of its normal trading. Early closing will do little to help stop the virus’s spread but will do a great deal of damage to this sector.
I really hope the newspaper reports are wrong.
In other news Trump makes it clear he’s going to steal the election.
Please tell me there’s some good news somewhere.
2.5 hours to go until we find out.
I don't trust media reports. Remember Peston saying he'd been authoritatively told that the Chancellor had no major news to announce . . . about 30 minutes before the Chancellor announced the furlough scheme?
The media have to sell column inches and develop clickbait. Lets find out what the Chancellor actually announces, I'd be shocked if there's no help for hospitality considering his summer job support scheme was almost exclusively targetted at hospitality.
I work in Hospitality so I am hopeful that something can be done. The current restrictions require more staff to earn less money - this is not really sustainable, and hopefully something can be done specifically to address this.
The second point I don’t see on here is with regards to evidence. I obviously have an interest here but the I don’t see the evidence that cases now being detected are actually linked to a rise in hospitalisations and deaths, which sure surely be the key metric as they are what is supposed to differentiate this from other seasonal viruses.
I agree.
Here you go: (Hospitalisations in England by day - bars are raw numbers, line is 7-day average)
(Deaths in England by day - bars are raw numbers, line is 7-day average)
Where did you get this from - I`ve been looking for similar without luck?
Can I confirm - these are hospitalisations due to Covid - rather than total daily hospitalisations?
You can create your own graphs comparing what you like - the data is on the "Data" tab on each area.
Can you revise your doubling period estimate from a few days ago? I recall you had the doubling time listed for a number of days showing how it had changed.
(95% sure it was you...)
Sure.
Current doubling time is 9.7 days. The average doubling time over the past seven days has been 12.2 days, with a maximum doubling time of 15.9 days and a minimum of 7.5 days. (The trajectory isn't constant - sometimes steeper and sometimes slower)
It's better than it was a week ago, when the doubling time was 7.5 days (average over the preceding week had been 8.0 days, with a maximum of 11.3 days and a minimum of 6.3 days).
I think it's improving, but slowly. At least the rate of acceleration has stopped accelerating (if you see what I mean). This improvement, though is slow - it'd take nearly 20 days for it to level off unless that rate of levelling increases. I hope it improves a bit faster. God knows, I don't want more restrictions.
Do you really mean "At least the rate of acceleration has stopped accelerating"? Accelleration is the second derivative and the rate of accelleration is the third derivative. If the third derivative has stopped accellerating then the fifth derivative is 0. (!)
At least if the 5th derivative is zero then the growth cannot be exponentiial :-)
I presume you mean the number of hospitsations have stopped accelerating, meaning the second derivative is zero. All this reminds me of the famous quote by Nixon on inflation.
Yeah. I'm not the most eloquent, sometimes.
The doubling period had been getting shorter and shorter. This - over the past few days - seems to have started to reverse. I bloody well hope it's not just a blip (very short time period to extrapolate out from). If so, we may - just may - have shifted the exponent down sufficiently.
However, I would highlight a warning of motivated reasoning - it's something I very much want to be true. That adds a strong warning to the analysis from me.
It is too premature for any change to be due to restrictions or news from this week.
But there are reasons to be hopeful that R was already coming down a bit after bouncing back up (remember it's been 1 or below for months until recently) and that this week's news could be enough to push it back to 1 or below.
We don't need a massive reduction in R. Just enough to cope.
I would say that there are currently no indications that the epidemic is going ballistic again - it is rising quite quickly, though
The ONS infection survey tomorrow will be of interest....
So - if this morning’s newspaper reports are true - there will be no help for the one sector which has been specifically targeted by the latest restrictions: the hospitality sector, despite it being apparently a source of only 5% of the increase in infections.
If true, a disgrace.
This sector has lost most of its spring/summer season, will lose the Xmas/NY season, possibly the start of the next spring season and, even while open, is losing a very significant percentage of its normal trading. Early closing will do little to help stop the virus’s spread but will do a great deal of damage to this sector.
I really hope the newspaper reports are wrong.
In other news Trump makes it clear he’s going to steal the election.
Please tell me there’s some good news somewhere.
2.5 hours to go until we find out.
I don't trust media reports. Remember Peston saying he'd been authoritatively told that the Chancellor had no major news to announce . . . about 30 minutes before the Chancellor announced the furlough scheme?
The media have to sell column inches and develop clickbait. Lets find out what the Chancellor actually announces, I'd be shocked if there's no help for hospitality considering his summer job support scheme was almost exclusively targetted at hospitality.
I work in Hospitality so I am hopeful that something can be done. The current restrictions require more staff to earn less money - this is not really sustainable, and hopefully something can be done specifically to address this.
The second point I don’t see on here is with regards to evidence. I obviously have an interest here but the I don’t see the evidence that cases now being detected are actually linked to a rise in hospitalisations and deaths, which sure surely be the key metric as they are what is supposed to differentiate this from other seasonal viruses.
I agree.
Here you go: (Hospitalisations in England by day - bars are raw numbers, line is 7-day average)
(Deaths in England by day - bars are raw numbers, line is 7-day average)
Where did you get this from - I`ve been looking for similar without luck?
Can I confirm - these are hospitalisations due to Covid - rather than total daily hospitalisations?
You can create your own graphs comparing what you like - the data is on the "Data" tab on each area.
Can you revise your doubling period estimate from a few days ago? I recall you had the doubling time listed for a number of days showing how it had changed.
(95% sure it was you...)
Sure.
Current doubling time is 9.7 days. The average doubling time over the past seven days has been 12.2 days, with a maximum doubling time of 15.9 days and a minimum of 7.5 days. (The trajectory isn't constant - sometimes steeper and sometimes slower)
It's better than it was a week ago, when the doubling time was 7.5 days (average over the preceding week had been 8.0 days, with a maximum of 11.3 days and a minimum of 6.3 days).
I think it's improving, but slowly. At least the rate of acceleration has stopped accelerating (if you see what I mean). This improvement, though is slow - it'd take nearly 20 days for it to level off unless that rate of levelling increases. I hope it improves a bit faster. God knows, I don't want more restrictions.
Do you really mean "At least the rate of acceleration has stopped accelerating"? Accelleration is the second derivative and the rate of accelleration is the third derivative. If the third derivative has stopped accellerating then the fifth derivative is 0. (!)
At least if the 5th derivative is zero then the growth cannot be exponentiial :-)
I presume you mean the number of hospitsations have stopped accelerating, meaning the second derivative is zero. All this reminds me of the famous quote by Nixon on inflation.
Yeah. I'm not the most eloquent, sometimes.
The doubling period had been getting shorter and shorter. This - over the past few days - seems to have started to reverse. I bloody well hope it's not just a blip (very short time period to extrapolate out from). If so, we may - just may - have shifted the exponent down sufficiently.
However, I would highlight a warning of motivated reasoning - it's something I very much want to be true. That adds a strong warning to the analysis from me.
What do you make of Israel? Their situation is now borderline catastrophic. They're going back into Absolute Lockdown, and they had 11,000 new cases yesterday
Some are blaming schools, others are blaming conservative Jews and Muslims, who are still congregating.
To me it is quite ominous, as Israel - with its surveillance systems, and sealed borders, and hi tech society - is a country which SHOULD have controlled this.
Every country is different.
For me, a lot of it is: "Do people take it seriously"? If not, you'd need colossal levels of enforcement and supervision, no matter what the restrictions chosen. That's where a total lockdown has an advantage. It works.
Viruses will spread exponentially. If the exponent is 1, that's at a level rate; if it's under 1, it's decaying, if it's greater than 1, it shoots up. We don't think exponentially, and we don't want this to be a thing, so there's two hits against people taking it seriously until they actually hear sirens. By which time, it's already skyrocketed and bringing it back down is so hard.
People have been complaining about "scare tactics" by Whitty and Vallance. The thing is - if people get scared, these restrictions will work. If they don't, these restrictions won't work.
As I thought, it is the government input that is capped, not the total salary....
This is from Sky’s Tom Boadle, quoting from the Treasury briefing on the new job support scheme. The grant per worker will be capped at £697.92 per month, it says.
Cats are perfectly able to do the same. They just can't be arsed.
So you agree with me then?
Cats aren't useless.
They are just useless to humans.
This reminds me of a mock question when I was studying philosophy for my degree: What is the point of sparrows?
Underlying the flippantly-worded question is the difference between intrinsic and instrumental value. The latter meaning "providing utility to humans" and the former meaning "having value in itself - i.e. in accord with nature".
Assuming you mean domesticated cats, they, like domesticated dogs, are a human construct. The result of centuries of genetic-engineering-by-humans for human need. Therefore they are, I would argue, part of the human realm rather than the natural realm. Therefore, it follows, they have bags of instrumental value but no intrinsic value.
Tigers, in contrast, have bags of intrinsic value but no, or very little, instrumental value. Therefore they - like so many other species - are fucked. (See Attenborough programme the other night and weep.)
There's a whole tourist industry based around tiger watching - and it's a highly lucrative industry in otherwise poor areas of India. So that's not really true
The point is that their value is (or, rather, should be) bound up in intrinsic value rather than value to humans (regardless of the quantity of value to humans).
This debate reminds me of a famous theological question/answer
Why does it rain?
No scientist can really answer that. They can explain HOW it rains, the mechanism of evaporation, precipitation, and so on, but not the WHY
A believer, on the other hand, can say: it rains to feed the wheat that grows to feed mankind, so that he may sing the praise of God.
Religion often gives you an answer to WHY, which is hugely important to human happiness.
The question why does it rain is just a meaningless question. There is a physical mechanism that leads to rainfall, but trying to find some deeper meaning is pointless. Anyway, your answer only invites more questions. Why is there a God and why would she want us to sing to her?
You may find this pointless, but the question was sufficient to make Ludwig Wittgenstein something of a believer.
That is to say: "Why is there anything at all?" - or, as he put it:
"Not how the world is, is the mystical, but that it is." Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus 6.44
It depends if you want to know the real reason why (science) or some narcissistic "reason" that makes the reason about you.
So - if this morning’s newspaper reports are true - there will be no help for the one sector which has been specifically targeted by the latest restrictions: the hospitality sector, despite it being apparently a source of only 5% of the increase in infections.
If true, a disgrace.
This sector has lost most of its spring/summer season, will lose the Xmas/NY season, possibly the start of the next spring season and, even while open, is losing a very significant percentage of its normal trading. Early closing will do little to help stop the virus’s spread but will do a great deal of damage to this sector.
I really hope the newspaper reports are wrong.
In other news Trump makes it clear he’s going to steal the election.
Please tell me there’s some good news somewhere.
2.5 hours to go until we find out.
I don't trust media reports. Remember Peston saying he'd been authoritatively told that the Chancellor had no major news to announce . . . about 30 minutes before the Chancellor announced the furlough scheme?
The media have to sell column inches and develop clickbait. Lets find out what the Chancellor actually announces, I'd be shocked if there's no help for hospitality considering his summer job support scheme was almost exclusively targetted at hospitality.
I work in Hospitality so I am hopeful that something can be done. The current restrictions require more staff to earn less money - this is not really sustainable, and hopefully something can be done specifically to address this.
The second point I don’t see on here is with regards to evidence. I obviously have an interest here but the I don’t see the evidence that cases now being detected are actually linked to a rise in hospitalisations and deaths, which sure surely be the key metric as they are what is supposed to differentiate this from other seasonal viruses.
I agree.
Here you go: (Hospitalisations in England by day - bars are raw numbers, line is 7-day average)
(Deaths in England by day - bars are raw numbers, line is 7-day average)
Where did you get this from - I`ve been looking for similar without luck?
Can I confirm - these are hospitalisations due to Covid - rather than total daily hospitalisations?
You can create your own graphs comparing what you like - the data is on the "Data" tab on each area.
Can you revise your doubling period estimate from a few days ago? I recall you had the doubling time listed for a number of days showing how it had changed.
(95% sure it was you...)
Sure.
Current doubling time is 9.7 days. The average doubling time over the past seven days has been 12.2 days, with a maximum doubling time of 15.9 days and a minimum of 7.5 days. (The trajectory isn't constant - sometimes steeper and sometimes slower)
It's better than it was a week ago, when the doubling time was 7.5 days (average over the preceding week had been 8.0 days, with a maximum of 11.3 days and a minimum of 6.3 days).
I think it's improving, but slowly. At least the rate of acceleration has stopped accelerating (if you see what I mean). This improvement, though is slow - it'd take nearly 20 days for it to level off unless that rate of levelling increases. I hope it improves a bit faster. God knows, I don't want more restrictions.
That's good news to me.
Considering it will take 2-3 weeks for it to be clear what impact this weeks new measures will have, if its already slowly levelling off that is because of actions people had voluntarily taken before these measures kicked in.
We don't need an R of 0, we just need to get R back to or below 1 again. If these limited measures are sufficient to do that then there's no need for anything more draconian.
Numbers of infections will increase dramatically over the next two weeks as the university effect kicks in, if there is cross community infections hospital admissions will go up. Unless the icu wards get overwhelmed then deaths will stay low in comparison to March April.
I've had multiple reports of Covid cases in schools, from different parts of the country.
I am much afeared that we are headed for a Total Lockdown (schools included) which will be significantly worse than the first, because it coincides with normal flu season (plus less chance to go outdoors).
Remember the Covid Rule: imagine the reasonable worst case scenario, because that is what will happen
The other thing about schools, which possibly makes me more nervous, is the impact of lots of little flareups. Even if they don't connect and cause a conflagration that can only be stopped by a Total Lockdown (and if the choice is the genuine misery and ruination of Lockdown 2 or mass graves, then no government will be able to choose mass graves), the local controls are still going to be tough.
If schools are going to have short-notice closures and staff absences because of mini-outbreaks, that is going to significantly mess up education, childcare and hence parental jobs. Especially since it's all unplanned.
And worst of all? Grown-ups were saying "schools will be fine for a bit, but they probably can't run normally in September. There will be too many germ-carrying little people moving around in a confined space." all last spring and summer. And it got turned into a "tell them schools are safe Keir, why won't you tell them schools are safe?" sneerfest.
Yes, precisely. It doesn't need huge explosions in cases in school to really mess up the system. Just a lot of small sporadic flare-ups and classes get sent home, then whole years, then whole schools close, and millions of parents have to go back home to look after them and.... yikes
So - if this morning’s newspaper reports are true - there will be no help for the one sector which has been specifically targeted by the latest restrictions: the hospitality sector, despite it being apparently a source of only 5% of the increase in infections.
If true, a disgrace.
This sector has lost most of its spring/summer season, will lose the Xmas/NY season, possibly the start of the next spring season and, even while open, is losing a very significant percentage of its normal trading. Early closing will do little to help stop the virus’s spread but will do a great deal of damage to this sector.
I really hope the newspaper reports are wrong.
In other news Trump makes it clear he’s going to steal the election.
Please tell me there’s some good news somewhere.
2.5 hours to go until we find out.
I don't trust media reports. Remember Peston saying he'd been authoritatively told that the Chancellor had no major news to announce . . . about 30 minutes before the Chancellor announced the furlough scheme?
The media have to sell column inches and develop clickbait. Lets find out what the Chancellor actually announces, I'd be shocked if there's no help for hospitality considering his summer job support scheme was almost exclusively targetted at hospitality.
I work in Hospitality so I am hopeful that something can be done. The current restrictions require more staff to earn less money - this is not really sustainable, and hopefully something can be done specifically to address this.
The second point I don’t see on here is with regards to evidence. I obviously have an interest here but the I don’t see the evidence that cases now being detected are actually linked to a rise in hospitalisations and deaths, which sure surely be the key metric as they are what is supposed to differentiate this from other seasonal viruses.
I agree.
Here you go: (Hospitalisations in England by day - bars are raw numbers, line is 7-day average)
(Deaths in England by day - bars are raw numbers, line is 7-day average)
Where did you get this from - I`ve been looking for similar without luck?
Can I confirm - these are hospitalisations due to Covid - rather than total daily hospitalisations?
You can create your own graphs comparing what you like - the data is on the "Data" tab on each area.
Can you revise your doubling period estimate from a few days ago? I recall you had the doubling time listed for a number of days showing how it had changed.
(95% sure it was you...)
Sure.
Current doubling time is 9.7 days. The average doubling time over the past seven days has been 12.2 days, with a maximum doubling time of 15.9 days and a minimum of 7.5 days. (The trajectory isn't constant - sometimes steeper and sometimes slower)
It's better than it was a week ago, when the doubling time was 7.5 days (average over the preceding week had been 8.0 days, with a maximum of 11.3 days and a minimum of 6.3 days).
I think it's improving, but slowly. At least the rate of acceleration has stopped accelerating (if you see what I mean). This improvement, though is slow - it'd take nearly 20 days for it to level off unless that rate of levelling increases. I hope it improves a bit faster. God knows, I don't want more restrictions.
Supplemental to this: the rate of improvement (the bending down of the line of acceleration) has been reasonably constant over the past few days. This isn't far off sheer covid-data-wrangling, but IF (and it's a massive If) that rate of improvement in bending the line down were to be sustained, we'd be looking at this coming up as a projection:
If we meet that going forwards, I'll be relieved.
However, statistically it's dodgy as hell: a seven-day average, with the day-to-day rate of increase looked at and the difference from one day to the other compared and further averaged and using this to project forwards. I, however, am not immune from looking for straws to grasp.
A minor point, I know, but I do wish people would plot these 7-day moving average curves with an offset of -3 days, so that each point represents the average of the surrounding, rather than the preceding, 7 days. Then the curves and the bars would match!
Just saw this elsewhere, got all fingers and toes crossed this feeds through into the figures. Hopefully we'll see a drop off in the next few days and the new measures including the rule of 6 bed in and further reduce new cases.
An early blizzard of polls this morning (US time).
Noting the excellent early post from @SirNorfolkPassmore, I've moved New Hampshire into the TCTC column.
Leads of 4-6 points for Biden in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin and (slightly surprising) Virginia. Another tie (45) in Georgia. Of more interest, a Texas poll has Trump ahead 46-43 and an Iowa poll has Biden up 45-42.
Crosstabs for the New York Times/Siena polls in Iowa, Texas and Georgia:
It's the first Iowa poll I've seen with Biden leading but it remains a TCTC state as far as I'm concerned along with both Texas and Georgia though I think all three will be held by Trump.
The Texas numbers are fascinating - 32% of TX Hispanics backing Trump but a noticeable rural/urban split with cities like Houston, San Antonio, Dallas and Fort Worth backing Biden with Trump much stronger in smaller towns and rural communities and among older white people. In time, I suspect, the demographics will move Texas away from the Republicans but possibly not this time.
Do you use it to "filter out" people who have not had the good fortune of seeing that classic data representation? Or do you test how they respond when told information about it.
For a job interview knowledge is meh, unless it is directly being used as part of the job. Being able to interpret the available data is a much better criterion.
The Minard diagram in question is famous to the point of being ubiquitous in basic courses on presentation of stats. I am (professionally speaking) an amateur - encountered it a zillion times.
- first question - what is this? - second if they don't know - explain what it is, what does it tell you? - second otherwise - what does it tell you? - third question - what potential weaknesses are there in this approach? what can you see from the graph itself?
Just examples....
Hitler should probably have studied this one a bit harder.
If only he had switched from art to architecture - where he did have a minor talent* - back in Vienna. Then we'd just have a few okish buildings to deal with....
*It is interesting to examine his designs for buildings, before and after Speer redid them for him. Which kind of indicates that Speer was the lunatic when it came to architecture.
10.5 BF for Trump to win Virginia looks a bit generous to me.
Democrat Joe Biden leads Republican Donald Trump by 5 points, 48%-43%, among likely Virginia voters. Among the most enthusiastic likely voters, Biden’s lead grows to 8 points, 51%-43%.
High school or less: 46%
Holy gucking shit balls.
There's correcting and then there's correcting.
Hillary won Virginia in 2016 by 5%, so no change there
£50 even money bet for anyone who wants to take the other side: Biden will win Virginia by more than Hilary did.
So - if this morning’s newspaper reports are true - there will be no help for the one sector which has been specifically targeted by the latest restrictions: the hospitality sector, despite it being apparently a source of only 5% of the increase in infections.
If true, a disgrace.
This sector has lost most of its spring/summer season, will lose the Xmas/NY season, possibly the start of the next spring season and, even while open, is losing a very significant percentage of its normal trading. Early closing will do little to help stop the virus’s spread but will do a great deal of damage to this sector.
I really hope the newspaper reports are wrong.
In other news Trump makes it clear he’s going to steal the election.
Please tell me there’s some good news somewhere.
2.5 hours to go until we find out.
I don't trust media reports. Remember Peston saying he'd been authoritatively told that the Chancellor had no major news to announce . . . about 30 minutes before the Chancellor announced the furlough scheme?
The media have to sell column inches and develop clickbait. Lets find out what the Chancellor actually announces, I'd be shocked if there's no help for hospitality considering his summer job support scheme was almost exclusively targetted at hospitality.
I work in Hospitality so I am hopeful that something can be done. The current restrictions require more staff to earn less money - this is not really sustainable, and hopefully something can be done specifically to address this.
The second point I don’t see on here is with regards to evidence. I obviously have an interest here but the I don’t see the evidence that cases now being detected are actually linked to a rise in hospitalisations and deaths, which sure surely be the key metric as they are what is supposed to differentiate this from other seasonal viruses.
I agree.
Here you go: (Hospitalisations in England by day - bars are raw numbers, line is 7-day average)
(Deaths in England by day - bars are raw numbers, line is 7-day average)
Where did you get this from - I`ve been looking for similar without luck?
Can I confirm - these are hospitalisations due to Covid - rather than total daily hospitalisations?
You can create your own graphs comparing what you like - the data is on the "Data" tab on each area.
Can you revise your doubling period estimate from a few days ago? I recall you had the doubling time listed for a number of days showing how it had changed.
(95% sure it was you...)
Sure.
Current doubling time is 9.7 days. The average doubling time over the past seven days has been 12.2 days, with a maximum doubling time of 15.9 days and a minimum of 7.5 days. (The trajectory isn't constant - sometimes steeper and sometimes slower)
It's better than it was a week ago, when the doubling time was 7.5 days (average over the preceding week had been 8.0 days, with a maximum of 11.3 days and a minimum of 6.3 days).
I think it's improving, but slowly. At least the rate of acceleration has stopped accelerating (if you see what I mean). This improvement, though is slow - it'd take nearly 20 days for it to level off unless that rate of levelling increases. I hope it improves a bit faster. God knows, I don't want more restrictions.
Do you really mean "At least the rate of acceleration has stopped accelerating"? Accelleration is the second derivative and the rate of accelleration is the third derivative. If the third derivative has stopped accellerating then the fifth derivative is 0. (!)
At least if the 5th derivative is zero then the growth cannot be exponentiial :-)
I presume you mean the number of hospitsations have stopped accelerating, meaning the second derivative is zero. All this reminds me of the famous quote by Nixon on inflation.
Yeah. I'm not the most eloquent, sometimes.
The doubling period had been getting shorter and shorter. This - over the past few days - seems to have started to reverse. I bloody well hope it's not just a blip (very short time period to extrapolate out from). If so, we may - just may - have shifted the exponent down sufficiently.
However, I would highlight a warning of motivated reasoning - it's something I very much want to be true. That adds a strong warning to the analysis from me.
What do you make of Israel? Their situation is now borderline catastrophic. They're going back into Absolute Lockdown, and they had 11,000 new cases yesterday
Some are blaming schools, others are blaming conservative Jews and Muslims, who are still congregating.
To me it is quite ominous, as Israel - with its surveillance systems, and sealed borders, and hi tech society - is a country which SHOULD have controlled this.
Every country is different.
For me, a lot of it is: "Do people take it seriously"? If not, you'd need colossal levels of enforcement and supervision, no matter what the restrictions chosen. That's where a total lockdown has an advantage. It works.
Viruses will spread exponentially. If the exponent is 1, that's at a level rate; if it's under 1, it's decaying, if it's greater than 1, it shoots up. We don't think exponentially, and we don't want this to be a thing, so there's two hits against people taking it seriously until they actually hear sirens. By which time, it's already skyrocketed and bringing it back down is so hard.
People have been complaining about "scare tactics" by Whitty and Vallance. The thing is - if people get scared, these restrictions will work. If they don't, these restrictions won't work.
Nah,I think he chose them just because they are the only two senior people in the British Establishment who don't make him look like the 4 foot pixie that he is.
An early blizzard of polls this morning (US time).
Noting the excellent early post from @SirNorfolkPassmore, I've moved New Hampshire into the TCTC column.
Leads of 4-6 points for Biden in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin and (slightly surprising) Virginia. Another tie (45) in Georgia. Of more interest, a Texas poll has Trump ahead 46-43 and an Iowa poll has Biden up 45-42.
Crosstabs for the New York Times/Siena polls in Iowa, Texas and Georgia:
It's the first Iowa poll I've seen with Biden leading but it remains a TCTC state as far as I'm concerned along with both Texas and Georgia though I think all three will be held by Trump.
The Texas numbers are fascinating - 32% of TX Hispanics backing Trump but a noticeable rural/urban split with cities like Houston, San Antonio, Dallas and Fort Worth backing Biden with Trump much stronger in smaller towns and rural communities and among older white people. In time, I suspect, the demographics will move Texas away from the Republicans but possibly not this time.
Yes, I expect Texas to go GOP again this time.
If Trump is re elected though and a Democrat wins in 2024 then would be the time it might go blue
Well my thoughts on the further measures are that there will be very significant job losses and business failure in hospitality.
What @Philip_Thompson didn’t recognise earlier was that the 10pm curfew probably takes a 10 - 20% hit on income as you lose some of the fullest and therefore most profitable hours, and for the remainder you have increased staff costs as you now need to offer table service.
Keeping VAT where it is will help but pubs are facing the dual pressures of restricted capacity and hours, and increased costs.
Next nighttime economy businesses so those that focus on live music and night clubs. These are pretty much closed until further notice. A band won’t play for nothing and without sufficient bar sales venues won’t book them.
Job support scheme - this will help minimally unless employers work unworked hours under the radar. If you work 50 % of the time then the government will pick up 17% , and employee will lose 17% but only be working half time, and an employer will be paying 67% plus on costs for half capacity. Not many jobs are so profitable to an employer that that is feasible.
So - if this morning’s newspaper reports are true - there will be no help for the one sector which has been specifically targeted by the latest restrictions: the hospitality sector, despite it being apparently a source of only 5% of the increase in infections.
If true, a disgrace.
This sector has lost most of its spring/summer season, will lose the Xmas/NY season, possibly the start of the next spring season and, even while open, is losing a very significant percentage of its normal trading. Early closing will do little to help stop the virus’s spread but will do a great deal of damage to this sector.
I really hope the newspaper reports are wrong.
In other news Trump makes it clear he’s going to steal the election.
Please tell me there’s some good news somewhere.
2.5 hours to go until we find out.
I don't trust media reports. Remember Peston saying he'd been authoritatively told that the Chancellor had no major news to announce . . . about 30 minutes before the Chancellor announced the furlough scheme?
The media have to sell column inches and develop clickbait. Lets find out what the Chancellor actually announces, I'd be shocked if there's no help for hospitality considering his summer job support scheme was almost exclusively targetted at hospitality.
I work in Hospitality so I am hopeful that something can be done. The current restrictions require more staff to earn less money - this is not really sustainable, and hopefully something can be done specifically to address this.
The second point I don’t see on here is with regards to evidence. I obviously have an interest here but the I don’t see the evidence that cases now being detected are actually linked to a rise in hospitalisations and deaths, which sure surely be the key metric as they are what is supposed to differentiate this from other seasonal viruses.
I agree.
Here you go: (Hospitalisations in England by day - bars are raw numbers, line is 7-day average)
(Deaths in England by day - bars are raw numbers, line is 7-day average)
Where did you get this from - I`ve been looking for similar without luck?
Can I confirm - these are hospitalisations due to Covid - rather than total daily hospitalisations?
You can create your own graphs comparing what you like - the data is on the "Data" tab on each area.
Can you revise your doubling period estimate from a few days ago? I recall you had the doubling time listed for a number of days showing how it had changed.
(95% sure it was you...)
Sure.
Current doubling time is 9.7 days. The average doubling time over the past seven days has been 12.2 days, with a maximum doubling time of 15.9 days and a minimum of 7.5 days. (The trajectory isn't constant - sometimes steeper and sometimes slower)
It's better than it was a week ago, when the doubling time was 7.5 days (average over the preceding week had been 8.0 days, with a maximum of 11.3 days and a minimum of 6.3 days).
I think it's improving, but slowly. At least the rate of acceleration has stopped accelerating (if you see what I mean). This improvement, though is slow - it'd take nearly 20 days for it to level off unless that rate of levelling increases. I hope it improves a bit faster. God knows, I don't want more restrictions.
Do you really mean "At least the rate of acceleration has stopped accelerating"? Accelleration is the second derivative and the rate of accelleration is the third derivative. If the third derivative has stopped accellerating then the fifth derivative is 0. (!)
At least if the 5th derivative is zero then the growth cannot be exponentiial :-)
I presume you mean the number of hospitsations have stopped accelerating, meaning the second derivative is zero. All this reminds me of the famous quote by Nixon on inflation.
Yeah. I'm not the most eloquent, sometimes.
The doubling period had been getting shorter and shorter. This - over the past few days - seems to have started to reverse. I bloody well hope it's not just a blip (very short time period to extrapolate out from). If so, we may - just may - have shifted the exponent down sufficiently.
However, I would highlight a warning of motivated reasoning - it's something I very much want to be true. That adds a strong warning to the analysis from me.
What do you make of Israel? Their situation is now borderline catastrophic. They're going back into Absolute Lockdown, and they had 11,000 new cases yesterday
Some are blaming schools, others are blaming conservative Jews and Muslims, who are still congregating.
To me it is quite ominous, as Israel - with its surveillance systems, and sealed borders, and hi tech society - is a country which SHOULD have controlled this.
Every country is different.
For me, a lot of it is: "Do people take it seriously"? If not, you'd need colossal levels of enforcement and supervision, no matter what the restrictions chosen. That's where a total lockdown has an advantage. It works.
Viruses will spread exponentially. If the exponent is 1, that's at a level rate; if it's under 1, it's decaying, if it's greater than 1, it shoots up. We don't think exponentially, and we don't want this to be a thing, so there's two hits against people taking it seriously until they actually hear sirens. By which time, it's already skyrocketed and bringing it back down is so hard.
People have been complaining about "scare tactics" by Whitty and Vallance. The thing is - if people get scared, these restrictions will work. If they don't, these restrictions won't work.
Scaring people is not the right approach IMO.
The trouble with scaring people over and above what the data say is that getting the economy back is made a more difficult task.
Surely it is time to give the man from Demonte Deloitte a call again to bring their team to come and sort the testing system out again.
Anecdotally I think something along those lines happening. A friend of mine has been contacted to take over project management of test and trace in the East of England, she's a highly experienced and effective PM but her rates are not low. They know this and are still willing to pay thousands per day to get her and her team in place. She doesn't want to do it, but that they are looking for new people probably means they know whatever they are doing isn't working.
Part of the brief is understanding in biomedical sciences and the diagnostics industry so I'm guessing they don't currently have that expertise.
Interesting, thanks. Does raise the question of what they've been doing all summer.
Yes it does make one wonder what the current strategy has been and what action was taken over the summer other than firing all of the private contractors and now having to rehire them at much higher rates judging by what my friend charges.
So - if this morning’s newspaper reports are true - there will be no help for the one sector which has been specifically targeted by the latest restrictions: the hospitality sector, despite it being apparently a source of only 5% of the increase in infections.
If true, a disgrace.
This sector has lost most of its spring/summer season, will lose the Xmas/NY season, possibly the start of the next spring season and, even while open, is losing a very significant percentage of its normal trading. Early closing will do little to help stop the virus’s spread but will do a great deal of damage to this sector.
I really hope the newspaper reports are wrong.
In other news Trump makes it clear he’s going to steal the election.
Please tell me there’s some good news somewhere.
2.5 hours to go until we find out.
I don't trust media reports. Remember Peston saying he'd been authoritatively told that the Chancellor had no major news to announce . . . about 30 minutes before the Chancellor announced the furlough scheme?
The media have to sell column inches and develop clickbait. Lets find out what the Chancellor actually announces, I'd be shocked if there's no help for hospitality considering his summer job support scheme was almost exclusively targetted at hospitality.
I work in Hospitality so I am hopeful that something can be done. The current restrictions require more staff to earn less money - this is not really sustainable, and hopefully something can be done specifically to address this.
The second point I don’t see on here is with regards to evidence. I obviously have an interest here but the I don’t see the evidence that cases now being detected are actually linked to a rise in hospitalisations and deaths, which sure surely be the key metric as they are what is supposed to differentiate this from other seasonal viruses.
I agree.
Here you go: (Hospitalisations in England by day - bars are raw numbers, line is 7-day average)
(Deaths in England by day - bars are raw numbers, line is 7-day average)
Where did you get this from - I`ve been looking for similar without luck?
Can I confirm - these are hospitalisations due to Covid - rather than total daily hospitalisations?
You can create your own graphs comparing what you like - the data is on the "Data" tab on each area.
Can you revise your doubling period estimate from a few days ago? I recall you had the doubling time listed for a number of days showing how it had changed.
(95% sure it was you...)
Sure.
Current doubling time is 9.7 days. The average doubling time over the past seven days has been 12.2 days, with a maximum doubling time of 15.9 days and a minimum of 7.5 days. (The trajectory isn't constant - sometimes steeper and sometimes slower)
It's better than it was a week ago, when the doubling time was 7.5 days (average over the preceding week had been 8.0 days, with a maximum of 11.3 days and a minimum of 6.3 days).
I think it's improving, but slowly. At least the rate of acceleration has stopped accelerating (if you see what I mean). This improvement, though is slow - it'd take nearly 20 days for it to level off unless that rate of levelling increases. I hope it improves a bit faster. God knows, I don't want more restrictions.
Do you really mean "At least the rate of acceleration has stopped accelerating"? Accelleration is the second derivative and the rate of accelleration is the third derivative. If the third derivative has stopped accellerating then the fifth derivative is 0. (!)
At least if the 5th derivative is zero then the growth cannot be exponentiial :-)
I presume you mean the number of hospitsations have stopped accelerating, meaning the second derivative is zero. All this reminds me of the famous quote by Nixon on inflation.
Yeah. I'm not the most eloquent, sometimes.
The doubling period had been getting shorter and shorter. This - over the past few days - seems to have started to reverse. I bloody well hope it's not just a blip (very short time period to extrapolate out from). If so, we may - just may - have shifted the exponent down sufficiently.
However, I would highlight a warning of motivated reasoning - it's something I very much want to be true. That adds a strong warning to the analysis from me.
What do you make of Israel? Their situation is now borderline catastrophic. They're going back into Absolute Lockdown, and they had 11,000 new cases yesterday
Some are blaming schools, others are blaming conservative Jews and Muslims, who are still congregating.
To me it is quite ominous, as Israel - with its surveillance systems, and sealed borders, and hi tech society - is a country which SHOULD have controlled this.
Every country is different.
For me, a lot of it is: "Do people take it seriously"? If not, you'd need colossal levels of enforcement and supervision, no matter what the restrictions chosen. That's where a total lockdown has an advantage. It works.
Viruses will spread exponentially. If the exponent is 1, that's at a level rate; if it's under 1, it's decaying, if it's greater than 1, it shoots up. We don't think exponentially, and we don't want this to be a thing, so there's two hits against people taking it seriously until they actually hear sirens. By which time, it's already skyrocketed and bringing it back down is so hard.
People have been complaining about "scare tactics" by Whitty and Vallance. The thing is - if people get scared, these restrictions will work. If they don't, these restrictions won't work.
Scaring people is not the right approach IMO.
Okay. Then it's lockdown. I'd really, really rather not have that happen, but if people continue to be blase about it, it's going to keep exponentially growing. Scaring people is better than hospitalising them, or throwing them out of work.
Cats are perfectly able to do the same. They just can't be arsed.
So you agree with me then?
Cats aren't useless.
They are just useless to humans.
This reminds me of a mock question when I was studying philosophy for my degree: What is the point of sparrows?
Underlying the flippantly-worded question is the difference between intrinsic and instrumental value. The latter meaning "providing utility to humans" and the former meaning "having value in itself - i.e. in accord with nature".
Assuming you mean domesticated cats, they, like domesticated dogs, are a human construct. The result of centuries of genetic-engineering-by-humans for human need. Therefore they are, I would argue, part of the human realm rather than the natural realm. Therefore, it follows, they have bags of instrumental value but no intrinsic value.
Tigers, in contrast, have bags of intrinsic value but no, or very little, instrumental value. Therefore they - like so many other species - are fucked. (See Attenborough programme the other night and weep.)
There's a whole tourist industry based around tiger watching - and it's a highly lucrative industry in otherwise poor areas of India. So that's not really true
The point is that their value is (or, rather, should be) bound up in intrinsic value rather than value to humans (regardless of the quantity of value to humans).
This debate reminds me of a famous theological question/answer
Why does it rain?
No scientist can really answer that. They can explain HOW it rains, the mechanism of evaporation, precipitation, and so on, but not the WHY
A believer, on the other hand, can say: it rains to feed the wheat that grows to feed mankind, so that he may sing the praise of God.
Religion often gives you an answer to WHY, which is hugely important to human happiness.
The question why does it rain is just a meaningless question. There is a physical mechanism that leads to rainfall, but trying to find some deeper meaning is pointless. Anyway, your answer only invites more questions. Why is there a God and why would she want us to sing to her?
You may find this pointless, but the question was sufficient to make Ludwig Wittgenstein something of a believer.
That is to say: "Why is there anything at all?" - or, as he put it:
"Not how the world is, is the mystical, but that it is." Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus 6.44
It depends if you want to know the real reason why (science) or some narcissistic "reason" that makes the reason about you.
Ludwig Wittgenstein was eccentric and wilful - and possibly the least narcissistic man in the history of philosophy. Also one of the cleverest men of the 20th century.
Just so I understand the Sunak scheme - IF I am contracted to work 30 hours a week for my employer, yet my employer is only able to employ me for 10 hours per week (for which I will be paid the usual rate), the Government will pay the 20 hours I would have worked to a limit of £700 in any calendar month.
Does the business apply for the money and pass it to the employee or does the employee have to apply to the Government presumably providing evidence of contracted hours and actual hours worked.?
It all sounds fine but as we saw with both furlough and the Eat Out to Help Out Schemes there can be a propensity for fraudulent claims. The scheme has to be fraud-resistant as possible.
An early blizzard of polls this morning (US time).
Noting the excellent early post from @SirNorfolkPassmore, I've moved New Hampshire into the TCTC column.
Leads of 4-6 points for Biden in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin and (slightly surprising) Virginia. Another tie (45) in Georgia. Of more interest, a Texas poll has Trump ahead 46-43 and an Iowa poll has Biden up 45-42.
Crosstabs for the New York Times/Siena polls in Iowa, Texas and Georgia:
It's the first Iowa poll I've seen with Biden leading but it remains a TCTC state as far as I'm concerned along with both Texas and Georgia though I think all three will be held by Trump.
The Texas numbers are fascinating - 32% of TX Hispanics backing Trump but a noticeable rural/urban split with cities like Houston, San Antonio, Dallas and Fort Worth backing Biden with Trump much stronger in smaller towns and rural communities and among older white people. In time, I suspect, the demographics will move Texas away from the Republicans but possibly not this time.
The Virginia poll is based on a sample 46% HS education or less.
Cats are perfectly able to do the same. They just can't be arsed.
So you agree with me then?
Cats aren't useless.
They are just useless to humans.
This reminds me of a mock question when I was studying philosophy for my degree: What is the point of sparrows?
Underlying the flippantly-worded question is the difference between intrinsic and instrumental value. The latter meaning "providing utility to humans" and the former meaning "having value in itself - i.e. in accord with nature".
Assuming you mean domesticated cats, they, like domesticated dogs, are a human construct. The result of centuries of genetic-engineering-by-humans for human need. Therefore they are, I would argue, part of the human realm rather than the natural realm. Therefore, it follows, they have bags of instrumental value but no intrinsic value.
Tigers, in contrast, have bags of intrinsic value but no, or very little, instrumental value. Therefore they - like so many other species - are fucked. (See Attenborough programme the other night and weep.)
There's a whole tourist industry based around tiger watching - and it's a highly lucrative industry in otherwise poor areas of India. So that's not really true
The point is that their value is (or, rather, should be) bound up in intrinsic value rather than value to humans (regardless of the quantity of value to humans).
This debate reminds me of a famous theological question/answer
Why does it rain?
No scientist can really answer that. They can explain HOW it rains, the mechanism of evaporation, precipitation, and so on, but not the WHY
A believer, on the other hand, can say: it rains to feed the wheat that grows to feed mankind, so that he may sing the praise of God.
Religion often gives you an answer to WHY, which is hugely important to human happiness.
The question why does it rain is just a meaningless question. There is a physical mechanism that leads to rainfall, but trying to find some deeper meaning is pointless. Anyway, your answer only invites more questions. Why is there a God and why would she want us to sing to her?
You may find this pointless, but the question was sufficient to make Ludwig Wittgenstein something of a believer.
That is to say: "Why is there anything at all?" - or, as he put it:
"Not how the world is, is the mystical, but that it is." Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus 6.44
To ask why is to presuppose that it was a conscious choice, which basically invites the answer "because God". It just is, try to enjoy it and don't ruin it for everyone else.
Well my thoughts on the further measures are that there will be very significant job losses and business failure in hospitality.
What @Philip_Thompson didn’t recognise earlier was that the 10pm curfew probably takes a 10 - 20% hit on income as you lose some of the fullest and therefore most profitable hours, and for the remainder you have increased staff costs as you now need to offer table service.
Keeping VAT where it is will help but pubs are facing the dual pressures of restricted capacity and hours, and increased costs.
Next nighttime economy businesses so those that focus on live music and night clubs. These are pretty much closed until further notice. A band won’t play for nothing and without sufficient bar sales venues won’t book them.
Job support scheme - this will help minimally unless employers work unworked hours under the radar. If you work 50 % of the time then the government will pick up 17% , and employee will lose 17% but only be working half time, and an employer will be paying 67% plus on costs for half capacity. Not many jobs are so profitable to an employer that that is feasible.
You're wrong. I did recognise that, I understand that full well. But the decision was made already that the 10pm curfew will be happening, arguing about that doesn't change anything.
In the context of understanding that the 10pm curfew is happening for businesses that can get trade in the day time then the VAT reduction means they can make a bigger margin on smaller volumes and with smaller costs to hopefully help offset the losses of the evening. Plus the Treasury announced a number of other schemes too for which the details will no doubt be considerably significant.
The whole package needs to be taken in the round. For hospitality businesses that can eg sell a lot of meals in the daytime, soft drinks and alcohol in the daytime then there is a lot of support available. Plus many costs like Business Rates have been abolished this year too.
For live music venues they need to be seriously considering transforming into something else if they want to be trading through the winter and reverting to being a live music venue again next year. A great many businesses are adapting this year to see what they can do to survive - not every business will though.
The Virginia poll is based on a sample 46% HS education or less.
That is straight in the bin level of nonsense.
Have to say that caught my eye and I hadn't gone into the crosstabs so well spotted and many thanks, my friend. I note the Senate polling gives Warner a 13-point lead over the Republican and that's nearer my thinking as to the Presidential outcome.
So - if this morning’s newspaper reports are true - there will be no help for the one sector which has been specifically targeted by the latest restrictions: the hospitality sector, despite it being apparently a source of only 5% of the increase in infections.
If true, a disgrace.
This sector has lost most of its spring/summer season, will lose the Xmas/NY season, possibly the start of the next spring season and, even while open, is losing a very significant percentage of its normal trading. Early closing will do little to help stop the virus’s spread but will do a great deal of damage to this sector.
I really hope the newspaper reports are wrong.
In other news Trump makes it clear he’s going to steal the election.
Please tell me there’s some good news somewhere.
2.5 hours to go until we find out.
I don't trust media reports. Remember Peston saying he'd been authoritatively told that the Chancellor had no major news to announce . . . about 30 minutes before the Chancellor announced the furlough scheme?
The media have to sell column inches and develop clickbait. Lets find out what the Chancellor actually announces, I'd be shocked if there's no help for hospitality considering his summer job support scheme was almost exclusively targetted at hospitality.
I work in Hospitality so I am hopeful that something can be done. The current restrictions require more staff to earn less money - this is not really sustainable, and hopefully something can be done specifically to address this.
The second point I don’t see on here is with regards to evidence. I obviously have an interest here but the I don’t see the evidence that cases now being detected are actually linked to a rise in hospitalisations and deaths, which sure surely be the key metric as they are what is supposed to differentiate this from other seasonal viruses.
I agree.
Here you go: (Hospitalisations in England by day - bars are raw numbers, line is 7-day average)
(Deaths in England by day - bars are raw numbers, line is 7-day average)
Where did you get this from - I`ve been looking for similar without luck?
Can I confirm - these are hospitalisations due to Covid - rather than total daily hospitalisations?
You can create your own graphs comparing what you like - the data is on the "Data" tab on each area.
Can you revise your doubling period estimate from a few days ago? I recall you had the doubling time listed for a number of days showing how it had changed.
(95% sure it was you...)
Sure.
Current doubling time is 9.7 days. The average doubling time over the past seven days has been 12.2 days, with a maximum doubling time of 15.9 days and a minimum of 7.5 days. (The trajectory isn't constant - sometimes steeper and sometimes slower)
It's better than it was a week ago, when the doubling time was 7.5 days (average over the preceding week had been 8.0 days, with a maximum of 11.3 days and a minimum of 6.3 days).
I think it's improving, but slowly. At least the rate of acceleration has stopped accelerating (if you see what I mean). This improvement, though is slow - it'd take nearly 20 days for it to level off unless that rate of levelling increases. I hope it improves a bit faster. God knows, I don't want more restrictions.
Do you really mean "At least the rate of acceleration has stopped accelerating"? Accelleration is the second derivative and the rate of accelleration is the third derivative. If the third derivative has stopped accellerating then the fifth derivative is 0. (!)
At least if the 5th derivative is zero then the growth cannot be exponentiial :-)
I presume you mean the number of hospitsations have stopped accelerating, meaning the second derivative is zero. All this reminds me of the famous quote by Nixon on inflation.
Yeah. I'm not the most eloquent, sometimes.
The doubling period had been getting shorter and shorter. This - over the past few days - seems to have started to reverse. I bloody well hope it's not just a blip (very short time period to extrapolate out from). If so, we may - just may - have shifted the exponent down sufficiently.
However, I would highlight a warning of motivated reasoning - it's something I very much want to be true. That adds a strong warning to the analysis from me.
What do you make of Israel? Their situation is now borderline catastrophic. They're going back into Absolute Lockdown, and they had 11,000 new cases yesterday
Some are blaming schools, others are blaming conservative Jews and Muslims, who are still congregating.
To me it is quite ominous, as Israel - with its surveillance systems, and sealed borders, and hi tech society - is a country which SHOULD have controlled this.
Every country is different.
For me, a lot of it is: "Do people take it seriously"? If not, you'd need colossal levels of enforcement and supervision, no matter what the restrictions chosen. That's where a total lockdown has an advantage. It works.
Viruses will spread exponentially. If the exponent is 1, that's at a level rate; if it's under 1, it's decaying, if it's greater than 1, it shoots up. We don't think exponentially, and we don't want this to be a thing, so there's two hits against people taking it seriously until they actually hear sirens. By which time, it's already skyrocketed and bringing it back down is so hard.
People have been complaining about "scare tactics" by Whitty and Vallance. The thing is - if people get scared, these restrictions will work. If they don't, these restrictions won't work.
Scaring people is not the right approach IMO.
Okay. Then it's lockdown. I'd really, really rather not have that happen, but if people continue to be blase about it, it's going to keep exponentially growing. Scaring people is better than hospitalising them, or throwing them out of work.
Anecdotally, I sense Brits are now properly scared. Masks are universal on London transport (if you can spot any passengers). Maskless people in supermarkets are a rarity, and get hard stares. Pubs and restaurants are strictly obeying the new rules already.
It may be different elsewhere in the country but in London nearly everyone is now wary.
Nah,I think he chose them just because they are the only two senior people in the British Establishment who don't make him look like the 4 foot pixie that he is.
I read that and thought it must be Dura_Ace
Anyway, he must be shit at politics. I'd have offered them both bribes in the next budget, in exchange for wearing flat shoes.
An early blizzard of polls this morning (US time).
Noting the excellent early post from @SirNorfolkPassmore, I've moved New Hampshire into the TCTC column.
Leads of 4-6 points for Biden in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin and (slightly surprising) Virginia. Another tie (45) in Georgia. Of more interest, a Texas poll has Trump ahead 46-43 and an Iowa poll has Biden up 45-42.
Crosstabs for the New York Times/Siena polls in Iowa, Texas and Georgia:
It's the first Iowa poll I've seen with Biden leading but it remains a TCTC state as far as I'm concerned along with both Texas and Georgia though I think all three will be held by Trump.
The Texas numbers are fascinating - 32% of TX Hispanics backing Trump but a noticeable rural/urban split with cities like Houston, San Antonio, Dallas and Fort Worth backing Biden with Trump much stronger in smaller towns and rural communities and among older white people. In time, I suspect, the demographics will move Texas away from the Republicans but possibly not this time.
The Virginia poll is based on a sample 46% HS education or less.
That is straight in the bin level of nonsense.
Only 36% of Virginians have college degrees so it is not implausible
So - if this morning’s newspaper reports are true - there will be no help for the one sector which has been specifically targeted by the latest restrictions: the hospitality sector, despite it being apparently a source of only 5% of the increase in infections.
If true, a disgrace.
This sector has lost most of its spring/summer season, will lose the Xmas/NY season, possibly the start of the next spring season and, even while open, is losing a very significant percentage of its normal trading. Early closing will do little to help stop the virus’s spread but will do a great deal of damage to this sector.
I really hope the newspaper reports are wrong.
In other news Trump makes it clear he’s going to steal the election.
Please tell me there’s some good news somewhere.
2.5 hours to go until we find out.
I don't trust media reports. Remember Peston saying he'd been authoritatively told that the Chancellor had no major news to announce . . . about 30 minutes before the Chancellor announced the furlough scheme?
The media have to sell column inches and develop clickbait. Lets find out what the Chancellor actually announces, I'd be shocked if there's no help for hospitality considering his summer job support scheme was almost exclusively targetted at hospitality.
I work in Hospitality so I am hopeful that something can be done. The current restrictions require more staff to earn less money - this is not really sustainable, and hopefully something can be done specifically to address this.
The second point I don’t see on here is with regards to evidence. I obviously have an interest here but the I don’t see the evidence that cases now being detected are actually linked to a rise in hospitalisations and deaths, which sure surely be the key metric as they are what is supposed to differentiate this from other seasonal viruses.
I agree.
Here you go: (Hospitalisations in England by day - bars are raw numbers, line is 7-day average)
(Deaths in England by day - bars are raw numbers, line is 7-day average)
Where did you get this from - I`ve been looking for similar without luck?
Can I confirm - these are hospitalisations due to Covid - rather than total daily hospitalisations?
You can create your own graphs comparing what you like - the data is on the "Data" tab on each area.
Can you revise your doubling period estimate from a few days ago? I recall you had the doubling time listed for a number of days showing how it had changed.
(95% sure it was you...)
Sure.
Current doubling time is 9.7 days. The average doubling time over the past seven days has been 12.2 days, with a maximum doubling time of 15.9 days and a minimum of 7.5 days. (The trajectory isn't constant - sometimes steeper and sometimes slower)
It's better than it was a week ago, when the doubling time was 7.5 days (average over the preceding week had been 8.0 days, with a maximum of 11.3 days and a minimum of 6.3 days).
I think it's improving, but slowly. At least the rate of acceleration has stopped accelerating (if you see what I mean). This improvement, though is slow - it'd take nearly 20 days for it to level off unless that rate of levelling increases. I hope it improves a bit faster. God knows, I don't want more restrictions.
Do you really mean "At least the rate of acceleration has stopped accelerating"? Accelleration is the second derivative and the rate of accelleration is the third derivative. If the third derivative has stopped accellerating then the fifth derivative is 0. (!)
At least if the 5th derivative is zero then the growth cannot be exponentiial :-)
I presume you mean the number of hospitsations have stopped accelerating, meaning the second derivative is zero. All this reminds me of the famous quote by Nixon on inflation.
Yeah. I'm not the most eloquent, sometimes.
The doubling period had been getting shorter and shorter. This - over the past few days - seems to have started to reverse. I bloody well hope it's not just a blip (very short time period to extrapolate out from). If so, we may - just may - have shifted the exponent down sufficiently.
However, I would highlight a warning of motivated reasoning - it's something I very much want to be true. That adds a strong warning to the analysis from me.
What do you make of Israel? Their situation is now borderline catastrophic. They're going back into Absolute Lockdown, and they had 11,000 new cases yesterday
Some are blaming schools, others are blaming conservative Jews and Muslims, who are still congregating.
To me it is quite ominous, as Israel - with its surveillance systems, and sealed borders, and hi tech society - is a country which SHOULD have controlled this.
Every country is different.
For me, a lot of it is: "Do people take it seriously"? If not, you'd need colossal levels of enforcement and supervision, no matter what the restrictions chosen. That's where a total lockdown has an advantage. It works.
Viruses will spread exponentially. If the exponent is 1, that's at a level rate; if it's under 1, it's decaying, if it's greater than 1, it shoots up. We don't think exponentially, and we don't want this to be a thing, so there's two hits against people taking it seriously until they actually hear sirens. By which time, it's already skyrocketed and bringing it back down is so hard.
People have been complaining about "scare tactics" by Whitty and Vallance. The thing is - if people get scared, these restrictions will work. If they don't, these restrictions won't work.
Scaring people is not the right approach IMO.
Okay. Then it's lockdown. I'd really, really rather not have that happen, but if people continue to be blase about it, it's going to keep exponentially growing. Scaring people is better than hospitalising them, or throwing them out of work.
In the second wave, have cases in Spain and France grown exponentially? Or anywhere, for more than a couple of weeks?
So - if this morning’s newspaper reports are true - there will be no help for the one sector which has been specifically targeted by the latest restrictions: the hospitality sector, despite it being apparently a source of only 5% of the increase in infections.
If true, a disgrace.
This sector has lost most of its spring/summer season, will lose the Xmas/NY season, possibly the start of the next spring season and, even while open, is losing a very significant percentage of its normal trading. Early closing will do little to help stop the virus’s spread but will do a great deal of damage to this sector.
I really hope the newspaper reports are wrong.
In other news Trump makes it clear he’s going to steal the election.
Please tell me there’s some good news somewhere.
2.5 hours to go until we find out.
I don't trust media reports. Remember Peston saying he'd been authoritatively told that the Chancellor had no major news to announce . . . about 30 minutes before the Chancellor announced the furlough scheme?
The media have to sell column inches and develop clickbait. Lets find out what the Chancellor actually announces, I'd be shocked if there's no help for hospitality considering his summer job support scheme was almost exclusively targetted at hospitality.
I work in Hospitality so I am hopeful that something can be done. The current restrictions require more staff to earn less money - this is not really sustainable, and hopefully something can be done specifically to address this.
The second point I don’t see on here is with regards to evidence. I obviously have an interest here but the I don’t see the evidence that cases now being detected are actually linked to a rise in hospitalisations and deaths, which sure surely be the key metric as they are what is supposed to differentiate this from other seasonal viruses.
I agree.
Here you go: (Hospitalisations in England by day - bars are raw numbers, line is 7-day average)
(Deaths in England by day - bars are raw numbers, line is 7-day average)
Where did you get this from - I`ve been looking for similar without luck?
Can I confirm - these are hospitalisations due to Covid - rather than total daily hospitalisations?
You can create your own graphs comparing what you like - the data is on the "Data" tab on each area.
Can you revise your doubling period estimate from a few days ago? I recall you had the doubling time listed for a number of days showing how it had changed.
(95% sure it was you...)
Sure.
Current doubling time is 9.7 days. The average doubling time over the past seven days has been 12.2 days, with a maximum doubling time of 15.9 days and a minimum of 7.5 days. (The trajectory isn't constant - sometimes steeper and sometimes slower)
It's better than it was a week ago, when the doubling time was 7.5 days (average over the preceding week had been 8.0 days, with a maximum of 11.3 days and a minimum of 6.3 days).
I think it's improving, but slowly. At least the rate of acceleration has stopped accelerating (if you see what I mean). This improvement, though is slow - it'd take nearly 20 days for it to level off unless that rate of levelling increases. I hope it improves a bit faster. God knows, I don't want more restrictions.
Do you really mean "At least the rate of acceleration has stopped accelerating"? Accelleration is the second derivative and the rate of accelleration is the third derivative. If the third derivative has stopped accellerating then the fifth derivative is 0. (!)
At least if the 5th derivative is zero then the growth cannot be exponentiial :-)
I presume you mean the number of hospitsations have stopped accelerating, meaning the second derivative is zero. All this reminds me of the famous quote by Nixon on inflation.
Yeah. I'm not the most eloquent, sometimes.
The doubling period had been getting shorter and shorter. This - over the past few days - seems to have started to reverse. I bloody well hope it's not just a blip (very short time period to extrapolate out from). If so, we may - just may - have shifted the exponent down sufficiently.
However, I would highlight a warning of motivated reasoning - it's something I very much want to be true. That adds a strong warning to the analysis from me.
What do you make of Israel? Their situation is now borderline catastrophic. They're going back into Absolute Lockdown, and they had 11,000 new cases yesterday
Some are blaming schools, others are blaming conservative Jews and Muslims, who are still congregating.
To me it is quite ominous, as Israel - with its surveillance systems, and sealed borders, and hi tech society - is a country which SHOULD have controlled this.
Every country is different.
For me, a lot of it is: "Do people take it seriously"? If not, you'd need colossal levels of enforcement and supervision, no matter what the restrictions chosen. That's where a total lockdown has an advantage. It works.
Viruses will spread exponentially. If the exponent is 1, that's at a level rate; if it's under 1, it's decaying, if it's greater than 1, it shoots up. We don't think exponentially, and we don't want this to be a thing, so there's two hits against people taking it seriously until they actually hear sirens. By which time, it's already skyrocketed and bringing it back down is so hard.
People have been complaining about "scare tactics" by Whitty and Vallance. The thing is - if people get scared, these restrictions will work. If they don't, these restrictions won't work.
Scaring people is not the right approach IMO.
Okay. Then it's lockdown. I'd really, really rather not have that happen, but if people continue to be blase about it, it's going to keep exponentially growing. Scaring people is better than hospitalising them, or throwing them out of work.
Anecdotally, I sense Brits are now properly scared. Masks are universal on London transport (if you can spot any passengers). Maskless people in supermarkets are a rarity, and get hard stares. Pubs and restaurants are strictly obeying the new rules already.
It may be different elsewhere in the country but in London nearly everyone is now wary.
I bloody hope so. Lockdown was hell. My severely autistic son hated every second. Hoping to God we don’t end up needing it again.
Just so I understand the Sunak scheme - IF I am contracted to work 30 hours a week for my employer, yet my employer is only able to employ me for 10 hours per week (for which I will be paid the usual rate), the Government will pay the 20 hours I would have worked to a limit of £700 in any calendar month.
Does the business apply for the money and pass it to the employee or does the employee have to apply to the Government presumably providing evidence of contracted hours and actual hours worked.?
It all sounds fine but as we saw with both furlough and the Eat Out to Help Out Schemes there can be a propensity for fraudulent claims. The scheme has to be fraud-resistant as possible.
No you are paid for 23 hours and 20 minutes, with your employer paying you for 16 hours and 40 minutes (for ten hours work) and the government paying for 6 hours and 40 minutes. It would all come through payroll as normal with your employer claiming from the government, I think.
I have an Alexa Show on my desk in my study. It plays a constant stream of photos from my life over the past fifteen years or so (since camera phones became a thing).
It shows lots of happy events all over the world, parties and pubs and cocktails under the palms, family gatherings, Christmas sing-songs, weddings, concerts, feasts and festivals.
It so utterly fucking depressing I might have to throw it out the window.
You're wrong. I did recognise that, I understand that full well. But the decision was made already that the 10pm curfew will be happening, arguing about that doesn't change anything.
In the context of understanding that the 10pm curfew is happening for businesses that can get trade in the day time then the VAT reduction means they can make a bigger margin on smaller volumes and with smaller costs to hopefully help offset the losses of the evening. Plus the Treasury announced a number of other schemes too for which the details will no doubt be considerably significant.
The whole package needs to be taken in the round. For hospitality businesses that can eg sell a lot of meals in the daytime, soft drinks and alcohol in the daytime then there is a lot of support available. Plus many costs like Business Rates have been abolished this year too.
For live music venues they need to be seriously considering transforming into something else if they want to be trading through the winter and reverting to being a live music venue again next year. A great many businesses are adapting this year to see what they can do to survive - not every business will though.
My interest in all this isn't pubs, bars and clubs but racecourses which function as all three to some extent.
The likelihood of no paying spectators this side of Christmas (and the loss of alternative income streams such as Christmas parties) has led to the first real howls of pain from tracks like Newbury, Wetherby and York.
The question I have - and forgive my ignorance, I've never owned or run a business - is why would a business operate if it is losing money so doing? If it is costing a racecourse to stage a day's racing behind closed doors, why does it do it? Wouldn't it be easier to reduce costs by mothballing and re-opening when restrictions are relaxed? The independent racecourses have an issue, I understand that, though again nobody forces them to race.
As for Jockey Club Racecourses and ARC, they could mothball some tracks and operate a revised winter programme round a smaller core of venues but that doesn't seem to be the willingness in racing or other sporting sectors to adapt to survive. The Show Must Go On as it was planned to, where it was planned to, when it was planned to, seems to be the mantra.
So - if this morning’s newspaper reports are true - there will be no help for the one sector which has been specifically targeted by the latest restrictions: the hospitality sector, despite it being apparently a source of only 5% of the increase in infections.
If true, a disgrace.
This sector has lost most of its spring/summer season, will lose the Xmas/NY season, possibly the start of the next spring season and, even while open, is losing a very significant percentage of its normal trading. Early closing will do little to help stop the virus’s spread but will do a great deal of damage to this sector.
I really hope the newspaper reports are wrong.
In other news Trump makes it clear he’s going to steal the election.
Please tell me there’s some good news somewhere.
2.5 hours to go until we find out.
I don't trust media reports. Remember Peston saying he'd been authoritatively told that the Chancellor had no major news to announce . . . about 30 minutes before the Chancellor announced the furlough scheme?
The media have to sell column inches and develop clickbait. Lets find out what the Chancellor actually announces, I'd be shocked if there's no help for hospitality considering his summer job support scheme was almost exclusively targetted at hospitality.
I work in Hospitality so I am hopeful that something can be done. The current restrictions require more staff to earn less money - this is not really sustainable, and hopefully something can be done specifically to address this.
The second point I don’t see on here is with regards to evidence. I obviously have an interest here but the I don’t see the evidence that cases now being detected are actually linked to a rise in hospitalisations and deaths, which sure surely be the key metric as they are what is supposed to differentiate this from other seasonal viruses.
I agree.
Here you go: (Hospitalisations in England by day - bars are raw numbers, line is 7-day average)
(Deaths in England by day - bars are raw numbers, line is 7-day average)
Where did you get this from - I`ve been looking for similar without luck?
Can I confirm - these are hospitalisations due to Covid - rather than total daily hospitalisations?
You can create your own graphs comparing what you like - the data is on the "Data" tab on each area.
Can you revise your doubling period estimate from a few days ago? I recall you had the doubling time listed for a number of days showing how it had changed.
(95% sure it was you...)
Sure.
Current doubling time is 9.7 days. The average doubling time over the past seven days has been 12.2 days, with a maximum doubling time of 15.9 days and a minimum of 7.5 days. (The trajectory isn't constant - sometimes steeper and sometimes slower)
It's better than it was a week ago, when the doubling time was 7.5 days (average over the preceding week had been 8.0 days, with a maximum of 11.3 days and a minimum of 6.3 days).
I think it's improving, but slowly. At least the rate of acceleration has stopped accelerating (if you see what I mean). This improvement, though is slow - it'd take nearly 20 days for it to level off unless that rate of levelling increases. I hope it improves a bit faster. God knows, I don't want more restrictions.
Do you really mean "At least the rate of acceleration has stopped accelerating"? Accelleration is the second derivative and the rate of accelleration is the third derivative. If the third derivative has stopped accellerating then the fifth derivative is 0. (!)
At least if the 5th derivative is zero then the growth cannot be exponentiial :-)
I presume you mean the number of hospitsations have stopped accelerating, meaning the second derivative is zero. All this reminds me of the famous quote by Nixon on inflation.
Yeah. I'm not the most eloquent, sometimes.
The doubling period had been getting shorter and shorter. This - over the past few days - seems to have started to reverse. I bloody well hope it's not just a blip (very short time period to extrapolate out from). If so, we may - just may - have shifted the exponent down sufficiently.
However, I would highlight a warning of motivated reasoning - it's something I very much want to be true. That adds a strong warning to the analysis from me.
What do you make of Israel? Their situation is now borderline catastrophic. They're going back into Absolute Lockdown, and they had 11,000 new cases yesterday
Some are blaming schools, others are blaming conservative Jews and Muslims, who are still congregating.
To me it is quite ominous, as Israel - with its surveillance systems, and sealed borders, and hi tech society - is a country which SHOULD have controlled this.
Every country is different.
For me, a lot of it is: "Do people take it seriously"? If not, you'd need colossal levels of enforcement and supervision, no matter what the restrictions chosen. That's where a total lockdown has an advantage. It works.
Viruses will spread exponentially. If the exponent is 1, that's at a level rate; if it's under 1, it's decaying, if it's greater than 1, it shoots up. We don't think exponentially, and we don't want this to be a thing, so there's two hits against people taking it seriously until they actually hear sirens. By which time, it's already skyrocketed and bringing it back down is so hard.
People have been complaining about "scare tactics" by Whitty and Vallance. The thing is - if people get scared, these restrictions will work. If they don't, these restrictions won't work.
Scaring people is not the right approach IMO.
Okay. Then it's lockdown. I'd really, really rather not have that happen, but if people continue to be blase about it, it's going to keep exponentially growing. Scaring people is better than hospitalising them, or throwing them out of work.
Anecdotally, I sense Brits are now properly scared. Masks are universal on London transport (if you can spot any passengers). Maskless people in supermarkets are a rarity, and get hard stares. Pubs and restaurants are strictly obeying the new rules already.
It may be different elsewhere in the country but in London nearly everyone is now wary.
I bloody hope so. Lockdown was hell. My severely autistic son hated every second. Hoping to God we don’t end up needing it again.
I've had a similar experience with family members. So you have my sympathy, and understanding, I am dreading a second lockdown. I also think the damage it will do to the economy is practically incalculable. It could permanently knock away 20% of GDP or something mad like that. We need divine intervention, or a nice quick vaccine at least.
An early blizzard of polls this morning (US time).
Noting the excellent early post from @SirNorfolkPassmore, I've moved New Hampshire into the TCTC column.
Leads of 4-6 points for Biden in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin and (slightly surprising) Virginia. Another tie (45) in Georgia. Of more interest, a Texas poll has Trump ahead 46-43 and an Iowa poll has Biden up 45-42.
Crosstabs for the New York Times/Siena polls in Iowa, Texas and Georgia:
It's the first Iowa poll I've seen with Biden leading but it remains a TCTC state as far as I'm concerned along with both Texas and Georgia though I think all three will be held by Trump.
The Texas numbers are fascinating - 32% of TX Hispanics backing Trump but a noticeable rural/urban split with cities like Houston, San Antonio, Dallas and Fort Worth backing Biden with Trump much stronger in smaller towns and rural communities and among older white people. In time, I suspect, the demographics will move Texas away from the Republicans but possibly not this time.
The Virginia poll is based on a sample 46% HS education or less.
That is straight in the bin level of nonsense.
Only 36% of Virginians have college degrees so it is not implausible
So - if this morning’s newspaper reports are true - there will be no help for the one sector which has been specifically targeted by the latest restrictions: the hospitality sector, despite it being apparently a source of only 5% of the increase in infections.
If true, a disgrace.
This sector has lost most of its spring/summer season, will lose the Xmas/NY season, possibly the start of the next spring season and, even while open, is losing a very significant percentage of its normal trading. Early closing will do little to help stop the virus’s spread but will do a great deal of damage to this sector.
I really hope the newspaper reports are wrong.
In other news Trump makes it clear he’s going to steal the election.
Please tell me there’s some good news somewhere.
2.5 hours to go until we find out.
I don't trust media reports. Remember Peston saying he'd been authoritatively told that the Chancellor had no major news to announce . . . about 30 minutes before the Chancellor announced the furlough scheme?
The media have to sell column inches and develop clickbait. Lets find out what the Chancellor actually announces, I'd be shocked if there's no help for hospitality considering his summer job support scheme was almost exclusively targetted at hospitality.
I work in Hospitality so I am hopeful that something can be done. The current restrictions require more staff to earn less money - this is not really sustainable, and hopefully something can be done specifically to address this.
The second point I don’t see on here is with regards to evidence. I obviously have an interest here but the I don’t see the evidence that cases now being detected are actually linked to a rise in hospitalisations and deaths, which sure surely be the key metric as they are what is supposed to differentiate this from other seasonal viruses.
I agree.
Here you go: (Hospitalisations in England by day - bars are raw numbers, line is 7-day average)
(Deaths in England by day - bars are raw numbers, line is 7-day average)
Where did you get this from - I`ve been looking for similar without luck?
Can I confirm - these are hospitalisations due to Covid - rather than total daily hospitalisations?
You can create your own graphs comparing what you like - the data is on the "Data" tab on each area.
Can you revise your doubling period estimate from a few days ago? I recall you had the doubling time listed for a number of days showing how it had changed.
(95% sure it was you...)
Sure.
Current doubling time is 9.7 days. The average doubling time over the past seven days has been 12.2 days, with a maximum doubling time of 15.9 days and a minimum of 7.5 days. (The trajectory isn't constant - sometimes steeper and sometimes slower)
It's better than it was a week ago, when the doubling time was 7.5 days (average over the preceding week had been 8.0 days, with a maximum of 11.3 days and a minimum of 6.3 days).
I think it's improving, but slowly. At least the rate of acceleration has stopped accelerating (if you see what I mean). This improvement, though is slow - it'd take nearly 20 days for it to level off unless that rate of levelling increases. I hope it improves a bit faster. God knows, I don't want more restrictions.
Do you really mean "At least the rate of acceleration has stopped accelerating"? Accelleration is the second derivative and the rate of accelleration is the third derivative. If the third derivative has stopped accellerating then the fifth derivative is 0. (!)
At least if the 5th derivative is zero then the growth cannot be exponentiial :-)
I presume you mean the number of hospitsations have stopped accelerating, meaning the second derivative is zero. All this reminds me of the famous quote by Nixon on inflation.
Yeah. I'm not the most eloquent, sometimes.
The doubling period had been getting shorter and shorter. This - over the past few days - seems to have started to reverse. I bloody well hope it's not just a blip (very short time period to extrapolate out from). If so, we may - just may - have shifted the exponent down sufficiently.
However, I would highlight a warning of motivated reasoning - it's something I very much want to be true. That adds a strong warning to the analysis from me.
What do you make of Israel? Their situation is now borderline catastrophic. They're going back into Absolute Lockdown, and they had 11,000 new cases yesterday
Some are blaming schools, others are blaming conservative Jews and Muslims, who are still congregating.
To me it is quite ominous, as Israel - with its surveillance systems, and sealed borders, and hi tech society - is a country which SHOULD have controlled this.
Every country is different.
For me, a lot of it is: "Do people take it seriously"? If not, you'd need colossal levels of enforcement and supervision, no matter what the restrictions chosen. That's where a total lockdown has an advantage. It works.
Viruses will spread exponentially. If the exponent is 1, that's at a level rate; if it's under 1, it's decaying, if it's greater than 1, it shoots up. We don't think exponentially, and we don't want this to be a thing, so there's two hits against people taking it seriously until they actually hear sirens. By which time, it's already skyrocketed and bringing it back down is so hard.
People have been complaining about "scare tactics" by Whitty and Vallance. The thing is - if people get scared, these restrictions will work. If they don't, these restrictions won't work.
Scaring people is not the right approach IMO.
Okay. Then it's lockdown. I'd really, really rather not have that happen, but if people continue to be blase about it, it's going to keep exponentially growing. Scaring people is better than hospitalising them, or throwing them out of work.
In the second wave, have cases in Spain and France grown exponentially? Or anywhere, for more than a couple of weeks?
I dunno about cases, but in France they are taking very restrictive measures - restrictive enough to cause political fury:
Cats are perfectly able to do the same. They just can't be arsed.
So you agree with me then?
Cats aren't useless.
They are just useless to humans.
This reminds me of a mock question when I was studying philosophy for my degree: What is the point of sparrows?
Underlying the flippantly-worded question is the difference between intrinsic and instrumental value. The latter meaning "providing utility to humans" and the former meaning "having value in itself - i.e. in accord with nature".
Assuming you mean domesticated cats, they, like domesticated dogs, are a human construct. The result of centuries of genetic-engineering-by-humans for human need. Therefore they are, I would argue, part of the human realm rather than the natural realm. Therefore, it follows, they have bags of instrumental value but no intrinsic value.
Tigers, in contrast, have bags of intrinsic value but no, or very little, instrumental value. Therefore they - like so many other species - are fucked. (See Attenborough programme the other night and weep.)
There's a whole tourist industry based around tiger watching - and it's a highly lucrative industry in otherwise poor areas of India. So that's not really true
The point is that their value is (or, rather, should be) bound up in intrinsic value rather than value to humans (regardless of the quantity of value to humans).
This debate reminds me of a famous theological question/answer
Why does it rain?
No scientist can really answer that. They can explain HOW it rains, the mechanism of evaporation, precipitation, and so on, but not the WHY
A believer, on the other hand, can say: it rains to feed the wheat that grows to feed mankind, so that he may sing the praise of God.
Religion often gives you an answer to WHY, which is hugely important to human happiness.
The question why does it rain is just a meaningless question. There is a physical mechanism that leads to rainfall, but trying to find some deeper meaning is pointless. Anyway, your answer only invites more questions. Why is there a God and why would she want us to sing to her?
You may find this pointless, but the question was sufficient to make Ludwig Wittgenstein something of a believer.
That is to say: "Why is there anything at all?" - or, as he put it:
"Not how the world is, is the mystical, but that it is." Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus 6.44
To ask why is to presuppose that it was a conscious choice, which basically invites the answer "because God". It just is, try to enjoy it and don't ruin it for everyone else.
I disagree. Because why does anything exist at all? is a good question. If the underlying principle of everything was, say, "simplicity", then nothing would exist at all, as that would be much simpler than all this stuff. Maybe the only alternative underlying principle of everything is "confusion", which would explain a lot. And it makes all the shit easier to take, if the only alternative is nothing existing at all.
Anecdotally, I sense Brits are now properly scared. Masks are universal on London transport (if you can spot any passengers). Maskless people in supermarkets are a rarity, and get hard stares. Pubs and restaurants are strictly obeying the new rules already.
It may be different elsewhere in the country but in London nearly everyone is now wary.
I don't know what part of London you travel in but in East London the notion of universal mask wearing on the tubes is risible.
My estimation from the last two days of travelling from east London into the centre has been 80% compliance with full face covering, 15% with the mask pulled down over the mouth or chin and 5% not wearing them at all. 0% enforcement and 0% attempting to stop or remind any passenger entering a station without a mask.
I'd also wonder about the correlation about non-mask compliance and fare evasion.
I do accept there are many areas where the acceptance of and abidance with the rules is strong but in my part of the world, even in shops and supermarkets, it isn't and I have to yet to see a single store employee challenge an individual not wearing a mask - I suspect they are terrified of the viral YouTube video from the anti-mask brigade.
Virginia voted Republican in both 1992 and 1996 when Bill Clinton was winning landslides nationally. Now it's practically a safe state for the Democrats.
I am struggling to see this new scheme getting much use. As I understand it, if a firm keeps three workers and has them each work 1/3 of the time, it has to pay 56% of the normal wage of each worker, so 167% of one worker's normal wage overall. By contrast if they fire two of the workers and has one worker work full time, they pay 100% of one worker's wage. Who is going to go for the first option, especially in a sector like hospitality where hiring and firing costs are low?
You are making the wrong assumption that the workers are interchangeable. If you employ a chef, a waiter and a washer-up you can't just fire the chef and the waiter and make do with the washer-up to provide a reduced service.
Anecdotally, I sense Brits are now properly scared. Masks are universal on London transport (if you can spot any passengers). Maskless people in supermarkets are a rarity, and get hard stares. Pubs and restaurants are strictly obeying the new rules already.
It may be different elsewhere in the country but in London nearly everyone is now wary.
I don't know what part of London you travel in but in East London the notion of universal mask wearing on the tubes is risible.
My estimation from the last two days of travelling from east London into the centre has been 80% compliance with full face covering, 15% with the mask pulled down over the mouth or chin and 5% not wearing them at all. 0% enforcement and 0% attempting to stop or remind any passenger entering a station without a mask.
I'd also wonder about the correlation about non-mask compliance and fare evasion.
I do accept there are many areas where the acceptance of and abidance with the rules is strong but in my part of the world, even in shops and supermarkets, it isn't and I have to yet to see a single store employee challenge an individual not wearing a mask - I suspect they are terrified of the viral YouTube video from the anti-mask brigade.
Fair enough, I am talking about several parts of north London, and sometimes west London (where I have friends). And I am talking more about buses - into which I can see, rather than Tubes (which I take rarely).
I do see quite a few people wearing masks wrongly. But at least they are making an effort. Back in early lockdown masks were barely used by anyone. So there has been a change.
The Virginia poll is based on a sample 46% HS education or less.
That is straight in the bin level of nonsense.
Have to say that caught my eye and I hadn't gone into the crosstabs so well spotted and many thanks, my friend. I note the Senate polling gives Warner a 13-point lead over the Republican and that's nearer my thinking as to the Presidential outcome.
Hmmm, looking at the question they asked it is ambigous whether what other pollsters would classify as "Some College" would actually be in the HS or less bucket as they ask about completion.
However, I can't make their figures add up. Their Trump score broken down by education should be 41% and for Biden 50% but instead they have 43 and 48
The way we dealt with the 1968/69 flu epidemic was arguably better, for the simple reason that most people from the time can't even remember it.
In some ways 1968 was a lot worse that this time.
Its brutal to say it but many of the people classed as 'vulnerable' today would have been classed as 'already dead' in 1968, because medicine was streets behind what they can do now. These people would simply have already passed. Their co-morbidities would have got there before corona got a chance.
the 1968 epidemic would have cut into what we regard as 'healthy' much more.
Modern medicine has grown a crop of humans like we have never seen before, and it would be just like nature to come up with something to harvest that crop. Which is essentially what has happened
The Virginia poll is based on a sample 46% HS education or less.
That is straight in the bin level of nonsense.
Have to say that caught my eye and I hadn't gone into the crosstabs so well spotted and many thanks, my friend. I note the Senate polling gives Warner a 13-point lead over the Republican and that's nearer my thinking as to the Presidential outcome.
Hmmm, looking at the question they asked it is ambigous whether what other pollsters would classify as "Some College" would actually be in the HS or less bucket as they ask about completion.
However, I can't make their figures add up. Their Trump score broken down by education should be 41% and for Biden 50% but instead they have 43 and 48
Have they applied secret weightings to this?
Maybe they've asked what education their neighbour has and weighted by that ?
The Virginia poll is based on a sample 46% HS education or less.
That is straight in the bin level of nonsense.
Have to say that caught my eye and I hadn't gone into the crosstabs so well spotted and many thanks, my friend. I note the Senate polling gives Warner a 13-point lead over the Republican and that's nearer my thinking as to the Presidential outcome.
Hmmm, looking at the question they asked it is ambigous whether what other pollsters would classify as "Some College" would actually be in the HS or less bucket as they ask about completion.
However, I can't make their figures add up. Their Trump score broken down by education should be 41% and for Biden 50% but instead they have 43 and 48
Have they applied secret weightings to this?
Maybe they've asked what education their neighbour has and weighted by that ?
Cats are perfectly able to do the same. They just can't be arsed.
So you agree with me then?
Cats aren't useless.
They are just useless to humans.
This reminds me of a mock question when I was studying philosophy for my degree: What is the point of sparrows?
Underlying the flippantly-worded question is the difference between intrinsic and instrumental value. The latter meaning "providing utility to humans" and the former meaning "having value in itself - i.e. in accord with nature".
Assuming you mean domesticated cats, they, like domesticated dogs, are a human construct. The result of centuries of genetic-engineering-by-humans for human need. Therefore they are, I would argue, part of the human realm rather than the natural realm. Therefore, it follows, they have bags of instrumental value but no intrinsic value.
Tigers, in contrast, have bags of intrinsic value but no, or very little, instrumental value. Therefore they - like so many other species - are fucked. (See Attenborough programme the other night and weep.)
There's a whole tourist industry based around tiger watching - and it's a highly lucrative industry in otherwise poor areas of India. So that's not really true
The point is that their value is (or, rather, should be) bound up in intrinsic value rather than value to humans (regardless of the quantity of value to humans).
This debate reminds me of a famous theological question/answer
Why does it rain?
No scientist can really answer that. They can explain HOW it rains, the mechanism of evaporation, precipitation, and so on, but not the WHY
A believer, on the other hand, can say: it rains to feed the wheat that grows to feed mankind, so that he may sing the praise of God.
Religion often gives you an answer to WHY, which is hugely important to human happiness.
The question why does it rain is just a meaningless question. There is a physical mechanism that leads to rainfall, but trying to find some deeper meaning is pointless. Anyway, your answer only invites more questions. Why is there a God and why would she want us to sing to her?
You may find this pointless, but the question was sufficient to make Ludwig Wittgenstein something of a believer.
That is to say: "Why is there anything at all?" - or, as he put it:
"Not how the world is, is the mystical, but that it is." Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus 6.44
To ask why is to presuppose that it was a conscious choice, which basically invites the answer "because God". It just is, try to enjoy it and don't ruin it for everyone else.
I disagree. Because why does anything exist at all? is a good question. If the underlying principle of everything was, say, "simplicity", then nothing would exist at all, as that would be much simpler than all this stuff. Maybe the only alternative underlying principle of everything is "confusion", which would explain a lot. And it makes all the shit easier to take, if the only alternative is nothing existing at all.
It is also one of the great questions of philosophy. It has been directly addressed, over the centuries, by Aristotle, Aquinas, Liebniz, Hume, Bertrand Russell, Wittgenstein and Stephen Hawking, amongst many others. Martin Heidegger called it the "fundamental question of metaphysics", so dismissing it as a triviality is somewhat jejune.
Virginia voted Republican in both 1992 and 1996 when Bill Clinton was winning landslides nationally. Now it's practically a safe state for the Democrats.
I have an Alexa Show on my desk in my study. It plays a constant stream of photos from my life over the past fifteen years or so (since camera phones became a thing).
It shows lots of happy events all over the world, parties and pubs and cocktails under the palms, family gatherings, Christmas sing-songs, weddings, concerts, feasts and festivals.
It so utterly fucking depressing I might have to throw it out the window.
Whoever invented it must not have been a fan of Dante:
E quella a me: «Nessun maggior dolore che ricordarsi del tempo felice nella miseria...
The way we dealt with the 1968/69 flu epidemic was arguably better, for the simple reason that most people from the time can't even remember it.
In some ways 1968 was a lot worse that this time.
Its brutal to say it but many of the people classed as 'vulnerable' today would have been classed as 'already dead' in 1968, because medicine was streets behind what they can do now. These people would simply have already passed. Their co-morbidities would have got there before corona got a chance.
the 1968 epidemic would have cut into what we regard as 'healthy' much more.
Modern medicine has grown a crop of humans like we have never seen before, and it would be just like nature to come up with something to harvest that crop. Which is essentially what has happened
I had Covid-complient drinks with a very smart friend in a Highgate pub last night (patio heaters, temperature checks, track and trace, booked table for two hours, the works).
He's been dealing with China for a couple of decades, in his business; he knows the country very well, before the Plague he visited it half a dozen times a year (including Wuhan).
He's extremely level headed, a calmly successful businessman. To my astonishment he thinks it quite possible the Chinese deliberately manufactured the virus so as to damage the West, and increase Chinese power.
It is an impossible situation, as we really have no idea when "post-restriction" will be. It could be 3 months, it could be 6 months, it could be several years. If we knew it was only going to be 3 months, I think it would be fair to say how can we save these jobs, but in reality at best it is probably going to be 6 months and may well be much longer....and despite in theory many being viable, we may also see a long term shift of working, so all those hospitality businesses in the centre of cities won't be needed to the same extent.
Cats are perfectly able to do the same. They just can't be arsed.
So you agree with me then?
Cats aren't useless.
They are just useless to humans.
This reminds me of a mock question when I was studying philosophy for my degree: What is the point of sparrows?
Underlying the flippantly-worded question is the difference between intrinsic and instrumental value. The latter meaning "providing utility to humans" and the former meaning "having value in itself - i.e. in accord with nature".
Assuming you mean domesticated cats, they, like domesticated dogs, are a human construct. The result of centuries of genetic-engineering-by-humans for human need. Therefore they are, I would argue, part of the human realm rather than the natural realm. Therefore, it follows, they have bags of instrumental value but no intrinsic value.
Tigers, in contrast, have bags of intrinsic value but no, or very little, instrumental value. Therefore they - like so many other species - are fucked. (See Attenborough programme the other night and weep.)
There's a whole tourist industry based around tiger watching - and it's a highly lucrative industry in otherwise poor areas of India. So that's not really true
The point is that their value is (or, rather, should be) bound up in intrinsic value rather than value to humans (regardless of the quantity of value to humans).
This debate reminds me of a famous theological question/answer
Why does it rain?
No scientist can really answer that. They can explain HOW it rains, the mechanism of evaporation, precipitation, and so on, but not the WHY
A believer, on the other hand, can say: it rains to feed the wheat that grows to feed mankind, so that he may sing the praise of God.
Religion often gives you an answer to WHY, which is hugely important to human happiness.
The question why does it rain is just a meaningless question. There is a physical mechanism that leads to rainfall, but trying to find some deeper meaning is pointless. Anyway, your answer only invites more questions. Why is there a God and why would she want us to sing to her?
You may find this pointless, but the question was sufficient to make Ludwig Wittgenstein something of a believer.
That is to say: "Why is there anything at all?" - or, as he put it:
"Not how the world is, is the mystical, but that it is." Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus 6.44
To ask why is to presuppose that it was a conscious choice, which basically invites the answer "because God". It just is, try to enjoy it and don't ruin it for everyone else.
I disagree. Because why does anything exist at all? is a good question. If the underlying principle of everything was, say, "simplicity", then nothing would exist at all, as that would be much simpler than all this stuff. Maybe the only alternative underlying principle of everything is "confusion", which would explain a lot. And it makes all the shit easier to take, if the only alternative is nothing existing at all.
It is also one of the great questions of philosophy. It has been directly addressed, over the centuries, by Aristotle, Aquinas, Liebniz, Hume, Bertrand Russell, Wittgenstein and Stephen Hawking, amongst many others. Martin Heidegger called it the "fundamental question of metaphysics", so dismissing it as a triviality is somewhat jejune.
Heidegger was a Nazi. Also he begets Derrida and I can't be fucked with Derrida.
I am struggling to see this new scheme getting much use. As I understand it, if a firm keeps three workers and has them each work 1/3 of the time, it has to pay 56% of the normal wage of each worker, so 167% of one worker's normal wage overall. By contrast if they fire two of the workers and has one worker work full time, they pay 100% of one worker's wage. Who is going to go for the first option, especially in a sector like hospitality where hiring and firing costs are low?
You are making the wrong assumption that the workers are interchangeable. If you employ a chef, a waiter and a washer-up you can't just fire the chef and the waiter and make do with the washer-up to provide a reduced service.
When I worked in a restaurant they didn't have just three staff. If the choice were to reduce the waiting staff to reflect the volume of business or pay people for hours they don't work I am pretty sure what the decision would have been. I am guessing this scheme will be more useful in a sector like manufacturing, but won't do much to stem the job losses in hospitality.
Cats are perfectly able to do the same. They just can't be arsed.
So you agree with me then?
Cats aren't useless.
They are just useless to humans.
This reminds me of a mock question when I was studying philosophy for my degree: What is the point of sparrows?
Underlying the flippantly-worded question is the difference between intrinsic and instrumental value. The latter meaning "providing utility to humans" and the former meaning "having value in itself - i.e. in accord with nature".
Assuming you mean domesticated cats, they, like domesticated dogs, are a human construct. The result of centuries of genetic-engineering-by-humans for human need. Therefore they are, I would argue, part of the human realm rather than the natural realm. Therefore, it follows, they have bags of instrumental value but no intrinsic value.
Tigers, in contrast, have bags of intrinsic value but no, or very little, instrumental value. Therefore they - like so many other species - are fucked. (See Attenborough programme the other night and weep.)
There's a whole tourist industry based around tiger watching - and it's a highly lucrative industry in otherwise poor areas of India. So that's not really true
The point is that their value is (or, rather, should be) bound up in intrinsic value rather than value to humans (regardless of the quantity of value to humans).
This debate reminds me of a famous theological question/answer
Why does it rain?
No scientist can really answer that. They can explain HOW it rains, the mechanism of evaporation, precipitation, and so on, but not the WHY
A believer, on the other hand, can say: it rains to feed the wheat that grows to feed mankind, so that he may sing the praise of God.
Religion often gives you an answer to WHY, which is hugely important to human happiness.
The question why does it rain is just a meaningless question. There is a physical mechanism that leads to rainfall, but trying to find some deeper meaning is pointless. Anyway, your answer only invites more questions. Why is there a God and why would she want us to sing to her?
You may find this pointless, but the question was sufficient to make Ludwig Wittgenstein something of a believer.
That is to say: "Why is there anything at all?" - or, as he put it:
"Not how the world is, is the mystical, but that it is." Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus 6.44
To ask why is to presuppose that it was a conscious choice, which basically invites the answer "because God". It just is, try to enjoy it and don't ruin it for everyone else.
I disagree. Because why does anything exist at all? is a good question. If the underlying principle of everything was, say, "simplicity", then nothing would exist at all, as that would be much simpler than all this stuff. Maybe the only alternative underlying principle of everything is "confusion", which would explain a lot. And it makes all the shit easier to take, if the only alternative is nothing existing at all.
It is also one of the great questions of philosophy. It has been directly addressed, over the centuries, by Aristotle, Aquinas, Liebniz, Hume, Bertrand Russell, Wittgenstein and Stephen Hawking, amongst many others. Martin Heidegger called it the "fundamental question of metaphysics", so dismissing it as a triviality is somewhat jejune.
Heidegger was a Nazi. Also he begets Derrida and I can't be fucked with Derrida.
A surprising number of great European intellectuals at least flirted with Nazism. Le Corbusier is another.
It is an impossible situation, as we really have no idea when "post-restriction" will be. It could be 3 month, it could be 6 months, it could be several years.
Well it's definitely not this winter. We await various vaccine trial results... one thing, when we get the vaccine I genuinely hope we try and vaccinate everyone (Except those who can't be). The strongest immune reactions are likely to be in the fittest and youngest adults (Who are probably likely to head out more) so that'll have the greatest impact on knocking the reproductive rate on the head very quickly.
Virginia voted Republican in both 1992 and 1996 when Bill Clinton was winning landslides nationally. Now it's practically a safe state for the Democrats.
It's pretty much entirely down to the growth of the DC suburbs. Apart from these suburbs, Richmond, Norfolk and Charlottesville, most of the rest of the state voted solidly for Trump, increasingly so in the western half.
Not even Gordon Brown pitched so openly and so obvously for Blair's job as Sunak is pitching now for Johnson's. I also wonder whether Sunak is even more unsackable than Brown was. The Chancellor knows he cannot be touched. That said, come wintertime, today's package is not going to seem that great. Sunak may need things to move quicker than they are likely to.
Comments
Best get used to it.
"For all the bluster on Capitol Hill, Congress is edging towards a bipartisan deal worth $1.5 trillion, with $500bn for state and local governments, and a $450 weekly cheque for those unable to work, and a top-up stimulus payment of $1,200 for all. Donald Trump says he can live with it. Whoever is elected, more is the pipeline later."
Telegraph
I knew he had been fired for being a massive racist about 15 years ago, didn't realise he was back at it.
My worry in 2020 was that pollsters hadn't adjusted their education sample enough but a poll with 46% respondents HS or less eduaction is utterly farcical.
HS or less is 34% in Virginia
The Exit poll from 2016 put them as 14% of the electorate
In 2018 they were 15%
46% in a survey is utterly fucking mental.
The doubling period had been getting shorter and shorter. This - over the past few days - seems to have started to reverse. I bloody well hope it's not just a blip (very short time period to extrapolate out from). If so, we may - just may - have shifted the exponent down sufficiently.
However, I would highlight a warning of motivated reasoning - it's something I very much want to be true. That adds a strong warning to the analysis from me.
Biden wins the popular vote but loses the Electoral College 11 in 100
Silver's model gives Trump a 22% chance of winning the Electoral College, which implies that in half the scenarios Trump wins, he also wins the popular vote. That looks extremely unlikely from the polls.
Guaranteed fact.
Part of the brief is understanding in biomedical sciences and the diagnostics industry so I'm guessing they don't currently have that expertise.
So it is possible Trump could win the popular vote this time narrowly but with Biden picking up 1 or 2 states to make Trump's EC margin smaller
Silver's model doesn't just rely upon how the polls are but how they may change or be wrong too.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-54278293
Some are blaming schools, others are blaming conservative Jews and Muslims, who are still congregating.
To me it is quite ominous, as Israel - with its surveillance systems, and sealed borders, and hi tech society - is a country which SHOULD have controlled this.
New scheme caps salary at £700 per month.
But there are reasons to be hopeful that R was already coming down a bit after bouncing back up (remember it's been 1 or below for months until recently) and that this week's news could be enough to push it back to 1 or below.
We don't need a massive reduction in R. Just enough to cope.
The extent to which countries did so seems to be a significant factor.
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/921134/NHS_T_T_Statistics_28May_16Sept_DataTables.ods
We could see
If it's the states element then considering the employer would be paying most of the wages the salary would be much higher than £700
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tLpsDamWdIM
That is to say: "Why is there anything at all?" - or, as he put it:
"Not how the world is, is the mystical, but that it is." Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus 6.44
Does raise the question of what they've been doing all summer.
"So for someone on £2,000 a month working half their hours, they’d get £1,000 normal pay plus £333 extra from their employer and £333 from the government."
If schools are going to have short-notice closures and staff absences because of mini-outbreaks, that is going to significantly mess up education, childcare and hence parental jobs. Especially since it's all unplanned.
And worst of all? Grown-ups were saying "schools will be fine for a bit, but they probably can't run normally in September. There will be too many germ-carrying little people moving around in a confined space." all last spring and summer. And it got turned into a "tell them schools are safe Keir, why won't you tell them schools are safe?" sneerfest.
The ONS infection survey tomorrow will be of interest....
For me, a lot of it is: "Do people take it seriously"? If not, you'd need colossal levels of enforcement and supervision, no matter what the restrictions chosen. That's where a total lockdown has an advantage. It works.
Viruses will spread exponentially. If the exponent is 1, that's at a level rate; if it's under 1, it's decaying, if it's greater than 1, it shoots up. We don't think exponentially, and we don't want this to be a thing, so there's two hits against people taking it seriously until they actually hear sirens. By which time, it's already skyrocketed and bringing it back down is so hard.
People have been complaining about "scare tactics" by Whitty and Vallance. The thing is - if people get scared, these restrictions will work. If they don't, these restrictions won't work.
This is from Sky’s Tom Boadle, quoting from the Treasury briefing on the new job support scheme. The grant per worker will be capped at £697.92 per month, it says.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/live/2020/sep/24/uk-coronavirus-live-news-covid-19-latest-updates-rishi-sunak-furlough
Noting the excellent early post from @SirNorfolkPassmore, I've moved New Hampshire into the TCTC column.
Leads of 4-6 points for Biden in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin and (slightly surprising) Virginia. Another tie (45) in Georgia. Of more interest, a Texas poll has Trump ahead 46-43 and an Iowa poll has Biden up 45-42.
Crosstabs for the New York Times/Siena polls in Iowa, Texas and Georgia:
https://int.nyt.com/data/documenttools/ga-ia-tx-crosstabs/ca61e64eaef883ac/full.pdf
It's the first Iowa poll I've seen with Biden leading but it remains a TCTC state as far as I'm concerned along with both Texas and Georgia though I think all three will be held by Trump.
The Texas numbers are fascinating - 32% of TX Hispanics backing Trump but a noticeable rural/urban split with cities like Houston, San Antonio, Dallas and Fort Worth backing Biden with Trump much stronger in smaller towns and rural communities and among older white people. In time, I suspect, the demographics will move Texas away from the Republicans but possibly not this time.
*It is interesting to examine his designs for buildings, before and after Speer redid them for him. Which kind of indicates that Speer was the lunatic when it came to architecture.
If Trump is re elected though and a Democrat wins in 2024 then would be the time it might go blue
NBC's demographics swingometer
What @Philip_Thompson didn’t recognise earlier was that the 10pm curfew probably takes a 10 - 20% hit on income as you lose some of the fullest and therefore most profitable hours, and for the remainder you have increased staff costs as you now need to offer table service.
Keeping VAT where it is will help but pubs are facing the dual pressures of restricted capacity and hours, and increased costs.
Next nighttime economy businesses so those that focus on live music and night clubs. These are pretty much closed until further notice. A band won’t play for nothing and without sufficient bar sales venues won’t book them.
Job support scheme - this will help minimally unless employers work unworked hours under the radar. If you work 50 % of the time then the government will pick up 17% , and employee will lose 17% but only be working half time, and an employer will be paying 67% plus on costs for half capacity. Not many jobs are so profitable to an employer that that is feasible.
I'd really, really rather not have that happen, but if people continue to be blase about it, it's going to keep exponentially growing.
Scaring people is better than hospitalising them, or throwing them out of work.
I highly recommend this brilliant biography:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Ludwig-Wittgenstein-Genius-Ray-Monk/dp/0099883708/ref=sr_1_8?dchild=1&keywords=wittgenstein&qid=1600951386&sr=8-8
Just so I understand the Sunak scheme - IF I am contracted to work 30 hours a week for my employer, yet my employer is only able to employ me for 10 hours per week (for which I will be paid the usual rate), the Government will pay the 20 hours I would have worked to a limit of £700 in any calendar month.
Does the business apply for the money and pass it to the employee or does the employee have to apply to the Government presumably providing evidence of contracted hours and actual hours worked.?
It all sounds fine but as we saw with both furlough and the Eat Out to Help Out Schemes there can be a propensity for fraudulent claims. The scheme has to be fraud-resistant as possible.
That is straight in the bin level of nonsense.
I thought @SirNorfolkPassmore's post earlier was excellent - do you think Trump might win New Hampshire?
Miles above what the rest of the media are doing right now.
In the context of understanding that the 10pm curfew is happening for businesses that can get trade in the day time then the VAT reduction means they can make a bigger margin on smaller volumes and with smaller costs to hopefully help offset the losses of the evening. Plus the Treasury announced a number of other schemes too for which the details will no doubt be considerably significant.
The whole package needs to be taken in the round. For hospitality businesses that can eg sell a lot of meals in the daytime, soft drinks and alcohol in the daytime then there is a lot of support available. Plus many costs like Business Rates have been abolished this year too.
For live music venues they need to be seriously considering transforming into something else if they want to be trading through the winter and reverting to being a live music venue again next year. A great many businesses are adapting this year to see what they can do to survive - not every business will though.
It may be different elsewhere in the country but in London nearly everyone is now wary.
Anyway, he must be shit at politics. I'd have offered them both bribes in the next budget, in exchange for wearing flat shoes.
https://vaperforms.virginia.gov/Education_edAttainment.cfm
Lockdown was hell. My severely autistic son hated every second. Hoping to God we don’t end up needing it again.
It shows lots of happy events all over the world, parties and pubs and cocktails under the palms, family gatherings, Christmas sing-songs, weddings, concerts, feasts and festivals.
It so utterly fucking depressing I might have to throw it out the window.
The likelihood of no paying spectators this side of Christmas (and the loss of alternative income streams such as Christmas parties) has led to the first real howls of pain from tracks like Newbury, Wetherby and York.
The question I have - and forgive my ignorance, I've never owned or run a business - is why would a business operate if it is losing money so doing? If it is costing a racecourse to stage a day's racing behind closed doors, why does it do it? Wouldn't it be easier to reduce costs by mothballing and re-opening when restrictions are relaxed? The independent racecourses have an issue, I understand that, though again nobody forces them to race.
As for Jockey Club Racecourses and ARC, they could mothball some tracks and operate a revised winter programme round a smaller core of venues but that doesn't seem to be the willingness in racing or other sporting sectors to adapt to survive. The Show Must Go On as it was planned to, where it was planned to, when it was planned to, seems to be the mantra.
A survey with 46% HS or less is away with the fairies.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/sep/24/marseille-fury-at-paris-decree-to-shut-its-bars-as-coronavirus-soars
My estimation from the last two days of travelling from east London into the centre has been 80% compliance with full face covering, 15% with the mask pulled down over the mouth or chin and 5% not wearing them at all. 0% enforcement and 0% attempting to stop or remind any passenger entering a station without a mask.
I'd also wonder about the correlation about non-mask compliance and fare evasion.
I do accept there are many areas where the acceptance of and abidance with the rules is strong but in my part of the world, even in shops and supermarkets, it isn't and I have to yet to see a single store employee challenge an individual not wearing a mask - I suspect they are terrified of the viral YouTube video from the anti-mask brigade.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1992_United_States_presidential_election_in_Virginia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1996_United_States_presidential_election_in_Virginia
I do see quite a few people wearing masks wrongly. But at least they are making an effort. Back in early lockdown masks were barely used by anyone. So there has been a change.
However, I can't make their figures add up. Their Trump score broken down by education should be 41% and for Biden 50% but instead they have 43 and 48
Have they applied secret weightings to this?
Its brutal to say it but many of the people classed as 'vulnerable' today would have been classed as 'already dead' in 1968, because medicine was streets behind what they can do now. These people would simply have already passed. Their co-morbidities would have got there before corona got a chance.
the 1968 epidemic would have cut into what we regard as 'healthy' much more.
Modern medicine has grown a crop of humans like we have never seen before, and it would be just like nature to come up with something to harvest that crop. Which is essentially what has happened
I felt sad that I laughed but I laughed.
https://twitter.com/pmdfoster/status/1309098748174270464?s=20
https://twitter.com/pmdfoster/status/1309099265021575178?s=20
https://twitter.com/PpollingNumbers/status/1309113911522754564
https://twitter.com/PpollingNumbers/status/1309114593927725056
E quella a me: «Nessun maggior dolore
che ricordarsi del tempo felice
nella miseria...
He's been dealing with China for a couple of decades, in his business; he knows the country very well, before the Plague he visited it half a dozen times a year (including Wuhan).
He's extremely level headed, a calmly successful businessman. To my astonishment he thinks it quite possible the Chinese deliberately manufactured the virus so as to damage the West, and increase Chinese power.
I was a bit gobsmacked.
First complacent, now incoherent, the Tories failed to notice Labour coming for the Red Wall
BY MAURICE GLASMAN"
https://unherd.com/2020/09/keir-starmer-a-true-conservative/