In 1968/69 my mum was a first year medical student, and also had a part-time job in a medical laboratory. She can't recall the flu epidemic from that time, despite the fact it killed 80,000 people in the UK and between one and four million globally, and her memory is pretty good generally speaking.
In 1957 I was just starting in pharmacy, as a pre-grad student. I recall the place where I was working as busy, but not really exceptionally so. Don't remember staff shortages, either. Similarly in 1968, by which time I was qualified and working in a very busy place.
Sunak suggests the newly unemployed start their own businesses. Hmmm.
He may be talking sense or nonsense but he is incredibly convincing. Quite the opposite of Johnson.
Lefties seem to find him more convincing than Tories.
That may be true. Like the questioners at the presser I have grave reservations on today's package, but one cannot deny he is supremely confident and had answers for all the questions.
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.
Organised religion.
Massive vector everywhere.
Ban it!
Utter rubbish, my church has compulsory mask wearing, hand sanitiser on arrival and departure and social distancing in pews
But your church isn't every church/mosque/.... and some have had appalling adherence to sensible behaviour. What is more there is no necessity to attend in person. Not being there is better protection than social distancing, masks and sanitizer.
Yours, a completely unbiased atheist.
If you ban in person church, mosque and temple attendance you must also close pubs, restaurants, gyms, indoor cinemas and non essential shops too, as long as they remain open then so should churches. There are just as many pubs breaching guidance as places of worship, probably more.
End of
Does your church contribute to the economy? If not then it’s fair game for shutting down with the current government.
This government won the Anglican, Catholic and Jewish vote at the last election and it is culturally as well as economically more conservative. A lot of Tory members like me and a lot of Tory MPs are also regular church goers. Plus of course a large percentage of land in England is owned by the Church of England, including commercial premises and of course there are cafes and gift shops in our great cathedrals so yes it does contribute to the economy
But that’s not your church, the building etc
Taking communion every week is also a vital spiritual role for Christians.
The Tories won 58% of the Anglican vote at GE17 for example and 63% of the Jewish vote and 40% of the Catholic vote and the Tories also won the Methodist, Baptist and Church of Scotland vote.
The Protestant and Jewish vote is now part of the Tory base and cannot be ignored, only 32% of those with no religious affiliation vote Tory so they are not part of the Tory base and can be ignored on this if they object to places of worship re opening.
Can anyone explain to me the hoo har about Vallance owning GSK stock ?
Bloody hell, I read the headline and thought it was about some sort of startup company. I mean, everybody owns GSK one way or another. And some numpty this morning was celebrating that story, plus Carrie goes on hols, as evidence of the superexcellence of our press.
Yes and no.
I understand it's £600k, which is quite a wedge albeit he's a wealthy man so his £600k is a good deal less relevant to his retirement than mine. If that rises 20% due to orders from the UK and other Governments, that's a non-trivial thing even for him - it's a lot of very nice holidays and a new Jag. It's not totally ridiculous to say it creates some incentive and, where he's involved in decision making, he should be up front on it.
But assuming it was declared, it's a non-story for me. He held a senior position and exercised stock options years ago (indeed he got rid of most of his holding years ago).
I agree the press explain these things poorly. Fair to ask how he ensured this was declared and how he manages his investments to avoid insider trading based on his inside track. But I suspect he has perfectly good answers on these, and they shouldn't imply anything untoward simply because he has some shares.
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.
Organised religion.
Massive vector everywhere.
Ban it!
Utter rubbish, my church has compulsory mask wearing, hand sanitiser on arrival and departure and social distancing in pews
But your church isn't every church/mosque/.... and some have had appalling adherence to sensible behaviour. What is more there is no necessity to attend in person. Not being there is better protection than social distancing, masks and sanitizer.
Yours, a completely unbiased atheist.
If you ban in person church, mosque and temple attendance you must also close pubs, restaurants, gyms, indoor cinemas and non essential shops too, as long as they remain open then so should churches. There are just as many pubs breaching guidance as places of worship, probably more.
End of
Does your church contribute to the economy? If not then it’s fair game for shutting down with the current government.
This government won the Anglican, Catholic and Jewish vote at the last election and it is culturally as well as economically more conservative. A lot of Tory members like me and a lot of Tory MPs are also regular church goers. Plus of course a large percentage of land in England is owned by the Church of England, including commercial premises and of course there are cafes and gift shops in our great cathedrals so yes it does contribute to the economy
But that’s not your church, the building etc
Taking communion every week is also a vital spiritual role for Christians.
The Tories won 58% of the Anglican vote at GE17 for example and 63% of the Jewish vote and 40% of the Catholic vote and the Tories also won the Methodist, Baptist and Church of Scotland vote.
The Christian and Jewish vote is now part of the Tory base and cannot be ignored, only 32% of those with no religious affiliation vote Tory so they are not part of the Tory base and can be ignored on this if they object to places of worship re opening.
So if you don’t vote Tory your view can be ignored! Explains a lot.
Corbyn would of course have ignored the views of Tories had he won so yes the Tories will reward their core vote now they have a majority of 80 and rightly so
On less than50% of the vote representing a minority of electors.
LD and Brexit Party voters preferred Boris to Corbyn in the polling last year so add the 11% the LDs got and the 2% the Brexit Party got to the 44% the Tories got and you get 57% of voters wanted the Tories to remain in government last year over Corbyn Labour
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.
Organised religion.
Massive vector everywhere.
Ban it!
Utter rubbish, my church has compulsory mask wearing, hand sanitiser on arrival and departure and social distancing in pews
But your church isn't every church/mosque/.... and some have had appalling adherence to sensible behaviour. What is more there is no necessity to attend in person. Not being there is better protection than social distancing, masks and sanitizer.
Yours, a completely unbiased atheist.
If you ban in person church, mosque and temple attendance you must also close pubs, restaurants, gyms, indoor cinemas and non essential shops too, as long as they remain open then so should churches. There are just as many pubs breaching guidance as places of worship, probably more.
End of
Does your church contribute to the economy? If not then it’s fair game for shutting down with the current government.
This government won the Anglican, Catholic and Jewish vote at the last election and it is culturally as well as economically more conservative. A lot of Tory members like me and a lot of Tory MPs are also regular church goers. Plus of course a large percentage of land in England is owned by the Church of England, including commercial premises and of course there are cafes and gift shops in our great cathedrals so yes it does contribute to the economy
But that’s not your church, the building etc
Taking communion every week is also a vital spiritual role for Christians.
The Tories won 58% of the Anglican vote at GE17 for example and 63% of the Jewish vote and 40% of the Catholic vote (the Tories even won the Catholic vote in 2019) and the Tories also won the Methodist, Baptist and Church of Scotland vote.
The Protestant and Jewish vote is now part of the Tory base and cannot be ignored, only 32% of those with no religious affiliation vote Tory so they are not part of the Tory base and can be ignored on this if they object to places of worship re opening.
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.
Organised religion.
Massive vector everywhere.
Ban it!
Utter rubbish, my church has compulsory mask wearing, hand sanitiser on arrival and departure and social distancing in pews
But your church isn't every church/mosque/.... and some have had appalling adherence to sensible behaviour. What is more there is no necessity to attend in person. Not being there is better protection than social distancing, masks and sanitizer.
Yours, a completely unbiased atheist.
If you ban in person church, mosque and temple attendance you must also close pubs, restaurants, gyms, indoor cinemas and non essential shops too, as long as they remain open then so should churches. There are just as many pubs breaching guidance as places of worship, probably more.
End of
Does your church contribute to the economy? If not then it’s fair game for shutting down with the current government.
This government won the Anglican, Catholic and Jewish vote at the last election and it is culturally as well as economically more conservative. A lot of Tory members like me and a lot of Tory MPs are also regular church goers. Plus of course a large percentage of land in England is owned by the Church of England, including commercial premises and of course there are cafes and gift shops in our great cathedrals so yes it does contribute to the economy
But that’s not your church, the building etc
Taking communion every week is also a vital spiritual role for Christians.
The Tories won 58% of the Anglican vote at GE17 for example and 63% of the Jewish vote and 40% of the Catholic vote and the Tories also won the Methodist, Baptist and Church of Scotland vote.
The Christian and Jewish vote is now part of the Tory base and cannot be ignored, only 32% of those with no religious affiliation vote Tory so they are not part of the Tory base and can be ignored on this if they object to places of worship re opening.
So if you don’t vote Tory your view can be ignored! Explains a lot.
Corbyn would of course have ignored the views of Tories had he won so yes the Tories will reward their core vote now they have a majority of 80 and rightly so
On less than50% of the vote representing a minority of electors.
LD and Brexit Party voters preferred Boris to Corbyn in the polling last year so add the 11% the LDs got and the 2% the Brexit Party got to the 44% the Tories got and you get 57% of voters wanted the Tories to remain in government last year over Corbyn Labour
This government won the Anglican, Catholic and Jewish vote at the last election and it is culturally as well as economically more conservative. A lot of Tory members like me and a lot of Tory MPs are also regular church goers. Plus of course a large percentage of land in England is owned by the Church of England, including commercial premises and of course there are cafes and gift shops in our great cathedrals so yes it does contribute to the economy
Lots of problems with this.
Firstly, that quite a lot of religious people voted Tory simply shouldn't be a consideration. Once elected, governments are there for the entire population not just to pay back those who supported them.
Secondly, land ownership means 0% of sod all in this context. The land the Church owns and manages is still there whether churches themselves are open over the next few months or not.
Thirdly, honestly how much do Cathedral gift shops and cafes contribute to the economy? I don't want to be harsh, and genuinely feel awful personally for people working there or anywhere that can't operate due to restrictions. But in terms of the national economy as a whole, this is almost invisibly tiny stuff.
Wrong, you win an election on your manifesto and to reward your supporters primarily and to make it more likely you will be re elected.
In cathedral cities cathedrals bring in lots of tourists and worshippers
In other words, Tories rule for the benefit of their party members. Not the country.
They also have Trump ahead in Nevada, well ahead in Iowa, just 2% behind in New Mexico and tied in Arizona so seems a little out of kilter but not impossible, most polls still have Trump ahead in North Carolina though
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.
Organised religion.
Massive vector everywhere.
Ban it!
Utter rubbish, my church has compulsory mask wearing, hand sanitiser on arrival and departure and social distancing in pews
But your church isn't every church/mosque/.... and some have had appalling adherence to sensible behaviour. What is more there is no necessity to attend in person. Not being there is better protection than social distancing, masks and sanitizer.
Yours, a completely unbiased atheist.
If you ban in person church, mosque and temple attendance you must also close pubs, restaurants, gyms, indoor cinemas and non essential shops too, as long as they remain open then so should churches. There are just as many pubs breaching guidance as places of worship, probably more.
End of
Does your church contribute to the economy? If not then it’s fair game for shutting down with the current government.
This government won the Anglican, Catholic and Jewish vote at the last election and it is culturally as well as economically more conservative. A lot of Tory members like me and a lot of Tory MPs are also regular church goers. Plus of course a large percentage of land in England is owned by the Church of England, including commercial premises and of course there are cafes and gift shops in our great cathedrals so yes it does contribute to the economy
But that’s not your church, the building etc
Taking communion every week is also a vital spiritual role for Christians.
The Tories won 58% of the Anglican vote at GE17 for example and 63% of the Jewish vote and 40% of the Catholic vote and the Tories also won the Methodist, Baptist and Church of Scotland vote.
The Christian and Jewish vote is now part of the Tory base and cannot be ignored, only 32% of those with no religious affiliation vote Tory so they are not part of the Tory base and can be ignored on this if they object to places of worship re opening.
HYUFD is being pretty optimistic about the Church of Scotland - the source he adduces shows that the Tories are far less dominant even within that kirk than in the other religions etc, and barely pip "other parties". Perhaps not surprising given the historical tendency of the anglicising upper classes to go for the Episcopal Kirk, the sister kirk of the C of E. More generally comparative theopsephology in 19th and 20th centiry Scotland is fascinating - also social classes tie in as well, e.g. late C19 crofters and small farmers were overwhelmingly Free Kirk of Scotland and voted for Gladstonian Liberalism.
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.
Organised religion.
Massive vector everywhere.
Ban it!
Utter rubbish, my church has compulsory mask wearing, hand sanitiser on arrival and departure and social distancing in pews
But your church isn't every church/mosque/.... and some have had appalling adherence to sensible behaviour. What is more there is no necessity to attend in person. Not being there is better protection than social distancing, masks and sanitizer.
Yours, a completely unbiased atheist.
If you ban in person church, mosque and temple attendance you must also close pubs, restaurants, gyms, indoor cinemas and non essential shops too, as long as they remain open then so should churches. There are just as many pubs breaching guidance as places of worship, probably more.
End of
Does your church contribute to the economy? If not then it’s fair game for shutting down with the current government.
This government won the Anglican, Catholic and Jewish vote at the last election and it is culturally as well as economically more conservative. A lot of Tory members like me and a lot of Tory MPs are also regular church goers. Plus of course a large percentage of land in England is owned by the Church of England, including commercial premises and of course there are cafes and gift shops in our great cathedrals so yes it does contribute to the economy
But that’s not your church, the building etc
Taking communion every week is also a vital spiritual role for Christians.
The Tories won 58% of the Anglican vote at GE17 for example and 63% of the Jewish vote and 40% of the Catholic vote (the Tories even won the Catholic vote in 2019) and the Tories also won the Methodist, Baptist and Church of Scotland vote.
The Protestant and Jewish vote is now part of the Tory base and cannot be ignored, only 32% of those with no religious affiliation vote Tory so they are not part of the Tory base and can be ignored on this if they object to places of worship re opening.
That is a quite remarkable statement, and not in a good way.
No, you are meant to pretend as a matter of decency to govern for all. HYUFD and PT have no basis for claiming to be Conservatives, whether or not they have paid the £5 for their Tufty Club badges.
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.
Organised religion.
Massive vector everywhere.
Ban it!
Utter rubbish, my church has compulsory mask wearing, hand sanitiser on arrival and departure and social distancing in pews
But your church isn't every church/mosque/.... and some have had appalling adherence to sensible behaviour. What is more there is no necessity to attend in person. Not being there is better protection than social distancing, masks and sanitizer.
Yours, a completely unbiased atheist.
If you ban in person church, mosque and temple attendance you must also close pubs, restaurants, gyms, indoor cinemas and non essential shops too, as long as they remain open then so should churches. There are just as many pubs breaching guidance as places of worship, probably more.
End of
Does your church contribute to the economy? If not then it’s fair game for shutting down with the current government.
This government won the Anglican, Catholic and Jewish vote at the last election and it is culturally as well as economically more conservative. A lot of Tory members like me and a lot of Tory MPs are also regular church goers. Plus of course a large percentage of land in England is owned by the Church of England, including commercial premises and of course there are cafes and gift shops in our great cathedrals so yes it does contribute to the economy
But that’s not your church, the building etc
Taking communion every week is also a vital spiritual role for Christians.
The Tories won 58% of the Anglican vote at GE17 for example and 63% of the Jewish vote and 40% of the Catholic vote and the Tories also won the Methodist, Baptist and Church of Scotland vote.
The Christian and Jewish vote is now part of the Tory base and cannot be ignored, only 32% of those with no religious affiliation vote Tory so they are not part of the Tory base and can be ignored on this if they object to places of worship re opening.
So if you don’t vote Tory your view can be ignored! Explains a lot.
Corbyn would of course have ignored the views of Tories had he won so yes the Tories will reward their core vote now they have a majority of 80 and rightly so
On less than50% of the vote representing a minority of electors.
LD and Brexit Party voters preferred Boris to Corbyn in the polling last year so add the 11% the LDs got and the 2% the Brexit Party got to the 44% the Tories got and you get 57% of voters wanted the Tories to remain in government last year over Corbyn Labour
You forgot to add in the Non voters
Irrelevant if they cannot be bothered to vote, they therefore get no say
They also have Trump ahead in Nevada, well ahead in Iowa, just 2% behind in New Mexico and tied in Arizona so seems a little out of kilter but not impossible, most polls still have Trump ahead in North Carolina though
I agree SurveyMonkey are all over the place and not a well rated pollster.
As a point of fact, though, most polls do NOT have Trump ahead in North Carolina.
Your preferred site, RCP, has ten polls in its model for North Carolina. Biden leads in five, Trump in three, and two tied. 538 has (I think) eight - Biden leads in five, Trump in one, tied in two. Neither has SurveyMonkey.
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.
Organised religion.
Massive vector everywhere.
Ban it!
Utter rubbish, my church has compulsory mask wearing, hand sanitiser on arrival and departure and social distancing in pews
But your church isn't every church/mosque/.... and some have had appalling adherence to sensible behaviour. What is more there is no necessity to attend in person. Not being there is better protection than social distancing, masks and sanitizer.
Yours, a completely unbiased atheist.
If you ban in person church, mosque and temple attendance you must also close pubs, restaurants, gyms, indoor cinemas and non essential shops too, as long as they remain open then so should churches. There are just as many pubs breaching guidance as places of worship, probably more.
End of
Does your church contribute to the economy? If not then it’s fair game for shutting down with the current government.
This government won the Anglican, Catholic and Jewish vote at the last election and it is culturally as well as economically more conservative. A lot of Tory members like me and a lot of Tory MPs are also regular church goers. Plus of course a large percentage of land in England is owned by the Church of England, including commercial premises and of course there are cafes and gift shops in our great cathedrals so yes it does contribute to the economy
But that’s not your church, the building etc
Taking communion every week is also a vital spiritual role for Christians.
The Tories won 58% of the Anglican vote at GE17 for example and 63% of the Jewish vote and 40% of the Catholic vote (the Tories even won the Catholic vote in 2019) and the Tories also won the Methodist, Baptist and Church of Scotland vote.
The Protestant and Jewish vote is now part of the Tory base and cannot be ignored, only 32% of those with no religious affiliation vote Tory so they are not part of the Tory base and can be ignored on this if they object to places of worship re opening.
That is a quite remarkable statement, and not in a good way.
No, you are meant to pretend as a matter of decency to govern for all. HYUFD and PT have no basis for claiming to be Conservatives, whether or not they have paid the £5 for their Tufty Club badges.
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.
Organised religion.
Massive vector everywhere.
Ban it!
Utter rubbish, my church has compulsory mask wearing, hand sanitiser on arrival and departure and social distancing in pews
But your church isn't every church/mosque/.... and some have had appalling adherence to sensible behaviour. What is more there is no necessity to attend in person. Not being there is better protection than social distancing, masks and sanitizer.
Yours, a completely unbiased atheist.
If you ban in person church, mosque and temple attendance you must also close pubs, restaurants, gyms, indoor cinemas and non essential shops too, as long as they remain open then so should churches. There are just as many pubs breaching guidance as places of worship, probably more.
End of
Does your church contribute to the economy? If not then it’s fair game for shutting down with the current government.
This government won the Anglican, Catholic and Jewish vote at the last election and it is culturally as well as economically more conservative. A lot of Tory members like me and a lot of Tory MPs are also regular church goers. Plus of course a large percentage of land in England is owned by the Church of England, including commercial premises and of course there are cafes and gift shops in our great cathedrals so yes it does contribute to the economy
But that’s not your church, the building etc
Taking communion every week is also a vital spiritual role for Christians.
The Tories won 58% of the Anglican vote at GE17 for example and 63% of the Jewish vote and 40% of the Catholic vote and the Tories also won the Methodist, Baptist and Church of Scotland vote.
The Christian and Jewish vote is now part of the Tory base and cannot be ignored, only 32% of those with no religious affiliation vote Tory so they are not part of the Tory base and can be ignored on this if they object to places of worship re opening.
So if you don’t vote Tory your view can be ignored! Explains a lot.
Corbyn would of course have ignored the views of Tories had he won so yes the Tories will reward their core vote now they have a majority of 80 and rightly so
On less than50% of the vote representing a minority of electors.
LD and Brexit Party voters preferred Boris to Corbyn in the polling last year so add the 11% the LDs got and the 2% the Brexit Party got to the 44% the Tories got and you get 57% of voters wanted the Tories to remain in government last year over Corbyn Labour
You forgot to add in the Non voters
Irrelevant if they cannot be bothered to vote, they therefore get no say
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.
Organised religion.
Massive vector everywhere.
Ban it!
Utter rubbish, my church has compulsory mask wearing, hand sanitiser on arrival and departure and social distancing in pews
But your church isn't every church/mosque/.... and some have had appalling adherence to sensible behaviour. What is more there is no necessity to attend in person. Not being there is better protection than social distancing, masks and sanitizer.
Yours, a completely unbiased atheist.
If you ban in person church, mosque and temple attendance you must also close pubs, restaurants, gyms, indoor cinemas and non essential shops too, as long as they remain open then so should churches. There are just as many pubs breaching guidance as places of worship, probably more.
End of
Does your church contribute to the economy? If not then it’s fair game for shutting down with the current government.
This government won the Anglican, Catholic and Jewish vote at the last election and it is culturally as well as economically more conservative. A lot of Tory members like me and a lot of Tory MPs are also regular church goers. Plus of course a large percentage of land in England is owned by the Church of England, including commercial premises and of course there are cafes and gift shops in our great cathedrals so yes it does contribute to the economy
But that’s not your church, the building etc
Taking communion every week is also a vital spiritual role for Christians.
The Tories won 58% of the Anglican vote at GE17 for example and 63% of the Jewish vote and 40% of the Catholic vote (the Tories even won the Catholic vote in 2019) and the Tories also won the Methodist, Baptist and Church of Scotland vote.
The Protestant and Jewish vote is now part of the Tory base and cannot be ignored, only 32% of those with no religious affiliation vote Tory so they are not part of the Tory base and can be ignored on this if they object to places of worship re opening.
That is a quite remarkable statement, and not in a good way.
No, you are meant to pretend as a matter of decency to govern for all. HYUFD and PT have no basis for claiming to be Conservatives, whether or not they have paid the £5 for their Tufty Club badges.
No government ever governs for all otherwise elections would be irrelevant.
Governments govern for their core vote and swing voters mainly, hopefully relatively competently but otherwise at a minimum for them. They just believe their policies are for the benefit of all
They also have Trump ahead in Nevada, well ahead in Iowa, just 2% behind in New Mexico and tied in Arizona so seems a little out of kilter but not impossible, most polls still have Trump ahead in North Carolina though
I rate Survey Monkey about as highly as I do Rasmussen and Trafalgar. Where are the crosstabs, the sampling, the methodology? It's also been conducted over a 3-week period.
Seriously?
The YouGov numbers are decent for Biden but shouldn't offer a scintilla of space for complacency and I'm sure it won't. As Labour did here in 1997 after what happened in 1992, the 2016 experience will ensure the Democrats will take nothing for granted and fight for every vote in every state.
Good Wisconsin numbers there for Trump, amongst the closest he has been in that pivotal swing state especially when not a single pollster had Trump ahead in Wisconsin in 2016 and he won it anyway,
Even if Trump loses Michigan and Pennsylvania, if he holds Wisconsin, Florida and Arizona he will be re elected
At least 5 points down a month from the election when 90% of voters say they have made up their minds is not good for Trump
The RCP final poll average in Wisconsin had Trump 6.5% down in 2016 and Trump won the state by 0.7% so if he is only 5% down on the same error Trump will win Wisconsin again in November.
That rather assumes that no pollster has adjusted their methodology from 2016 though. Now it may be that any adjustments will turn out to have made the accuracy worse, but we should assume that they're not going to be as inaccurate as 2016 in Trump's favour. I would feel though that the chances that any inaccuracy towards Trump will not be as high as the cumulative -7.2% you quote. The $64,000 question is whether the pollsters have got it down below -5% or not.
LD and Brexit Party voters preferred Boris to Corbyn in the polling last year so add the 11% the LDs got and the 2% the Brexit Party got to the 44% the Tories got and you get 57% of voters wanted the Tories to remain in government last year over Corbyn Labour
Indeed and you can put me in that category but ask me the question now whether I would prefer a Starmer-led Labour Government to a continuation of Conservative Government under Boris Johnson and you'd get a different answer and I suspect I would not be alone.
That said, as you will no doubt remind me, there isn't an election until 2024 and that's fair enough - plenty of time for the Conservatives to dig themselves an even deeper hole into which they can be placed by the electorate via the ballot box which is as it should be.
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.
Organised religion.
Massive vector everywhere.
Ban it!
Utter rubbish, my church has compulsory mask wearing, hand sanitiser on arrival and departure and social distancing in pews
But your church isn't every church/mosque/.... and some have had appalling adherence to sensible behaviour. What is more there is no necessity to attend in person. Not being there is better protection than social distancing, masks and sanitizer.
Yours, a completely unbiased atheist.
If you ban in person church, mosque and temple attendance you must also close pubs, restaurants, gyms, indoor cinemas and non essential shops too, as long as they remain open then so should churches. There are just as many pubs breaching guidance as places of worship, probably more.
End of
Does your church contribute to the economy? If not then it’s fair game for shutting down with the current government.
This government won the Anglican, Catholic and Jewish vote at the last election and it is culturally as well as economically more conservative. A lot of Tory members like me and a lot of Tory MPs are also regular church goers. Plus of course a large percentage of land in England is owned by the Church of England, including commercial premises and of course there are cafes and gift shops in our great cathedrals so yes it does contribute to the economy
But that’s not your church, the building etc
Taking communion every week is also a vital spiritual role for Christians.
The Tories won 58% of the Anglican vote at GE17 for example and 63% of the Jewish vote and 40% of the Catholic vote and the Tories also won the Methodist, Baptist and Church of Scotland vote.
The Christian and Jewish vote is now part of the Tory base and cannot be ignored, only 32% of those with no religious affiliation vote Tory so they are not part of the Tory base and can be ignored on this if they object to places of worship re opening.
So if you don’t vote Tory your view can be ignored! Explains a lot.
Corbyn would of course have ignored the views of Tories had he won so yes the Tories will reward their core vote now they have a majority of 80 and rightly so
On less than50% of the vote representing a minority of electors.
LD and Brexit Party voters preferred Boris to Corbyn in the polling last year so add the 11% the LDs got and the 2% the Brexit Party got to the 44% the Tories got and you get 57% of voters wanted the Tories to remain in government last year over Corbyn Labour
A new depth of absurdity even by your pitifully low standards of reasoning.
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.
Organised religion.
Massive vector everywhere.
Ban it!
Utter rubbish, my church has compulsory mask wearing, hand sanitiser on arrival and departure and social distancing in pews
But your church isn't every church/mosque/.... and some have had appalling adherence to sensible behaviour. What is more there is no necessity to attend in person. Not being there is better protection than social distancing, masks and sanitizer.
Yours, a completely unbiased atheist.
If you ban in person church, mosque and temple attendance you must also close pubs, restaurants, gyms, indoor cinemas and non essential shops too, as long as they remain open then so should churches. There are just as many pubs breaching guidance as places of worship, probably more.
End of
Does your church contribute to the economy? If not then it’s fair game for shutting down with the current government.
This government won the Anglican, Catholic and Jewish vote at the last election and it is culturally as well as economically more conservative. A lot of Tory members like me and a lot of Tory MPs are also regular church goers. Plus of course a large percentage of land in England is owned by the Church of England, including commercial premises and of course there are cafes and gift shops in our great cathedrals so yes it does contribute to the economy
But that’s not your church, the building etc
Taking communion every week is also a vital spiritual role for Christians.
The Tories won 58% of the Anglican vote at GE17 for example and 63% of the Jewish vote and 40% of the Catholic vote and the Tories also won the Methodist, Baptist and Church of Scotland vote.
The Christian and Jewish vote is now part of the Tory base and cannot be ignored, only 32% of those with no religious affiliation vote Tory so they are not part of the Tory base and can be ignored on this if they object to places of worship re opening.
HYUFD is being pretty optimistic about the Church of Scotland - the source he adduces shows that the Tories are far less dominant even within that kirk than in the other religions etc, and barely pip "other parties". Perhaps not surprising given the historical tendency of the anglicising upper classes to go for the Episcopal Kirk, the sister kirk of the C of E. More generally comparative theopsephology in 19th and 20th centiry Scotland is fascinating - also social classes tie in as well, e.g. late C19 crofters and small farmers were overwhelmingly Free Kirk of Scotland and voted for Gladstonian Liberalism.
The Scottish Conservatives got 40% with Church of Scotland voters on that data, so still well above the 29% they got amongst Scots as a whole even if not as high as they got with Episcopal Church members
They also have Trump ahead in Nevada, well ahead in Iowa, just 2% behind in New Mexico and tied in Arizona so seems a little out of kilter but not impossible, most polls still have Trump ahead in North Carolina though
I rate Survey Monkey about as highly as I do Rasmussen and Trafalgar. Where are the crosstabs, the sampling, the methodology? It's also been conducted over a 3-week period.
Seriously?
The YouGov numbers are decent for Biden but shouldn't offer a scintilla of space for complacency and I'm sure it won't. As Labour did here in 1997 after what happened in 1992, the 2016 experience will ensure the Democrats will take nothing for granted and fight for every vote in every state.
Blair won by 12% in 1997, Biden is nowhere near that lead even on the national poll average
LD and Brexit Party voters preferred Boris to Corbyn in the polling last year so add the 11% the LDs got and the 2% the Brexit Party got to the 44% the Tories got and you get 57% of voters wanted the Tories to remain in government last year over Corbyn Labour
Indeed and you can put me in that category but ask me the question now whether I would prefer a Starmer-led Labour Government to a continuation of Conservative Government under Boris Johnson and you'd get a different answer and I suspect I would not be alone.
That said, as you will no doubt remind me, there isn't an election until 2024 and that's fair enough - plenty of time for the Conservatives to dig themselves an even deeper hole into which they can be placed by the electorate via the ballot box which is as it should be.
Maybe and after 14 years in power the odds are long for any government seeking re election but as you say until 2024 the Tories have a mandate and must deliver it
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.
Organised religion.
Massive vector everywhere.
Ban it!
Utter rubbish, my church has compulsory mask wearing, hand sanitiser on arrival and departure and social distancing in pews
But your church isn't every church/mosque/.... and some have had appalling adherence to sensible behaviour. What is more there is no necessity to attend in person. Not being there is better protection than social distancing, masks and sanitizer.
Yours, a completely unbiased atheist.
If you ban in person church, mosque and temple attendance you must also close pubs, restaurants, gyms, indoor cinemas and non essential shops too, as long as they remain open then so should churches. There are just as many pubs breaching guidance as places of worship, probably more.
End of
Does your church contribute to the economy? If not then it’s fair game for shutting down with the current government.
This government won the Anglican, Catholic and Jewish vote at the last election and it is culturally as well as economically more conservative. A lot of Tory members like me and a lot of Tory MPs are also regular church goers. Plus of course a large percentage of land in England is owned by the Church of England, including commercial premises and of course there are cafes and gift shops in our great cathedrals so yes it does contribute to the economy
But that’s not your church, the building etc
Taking communion every week is also a vital spiritual role for Christians.
The Tories won 58% of the Anglican vote at GE17 for example and 63% of the Jewish vote and 40% of the Catholic vote (the Tories even won the Catholic vote in 2019) and the Tories also won the Methodist, Baptist and Church of Scotland vote.
The Protestant and Jewish vote is now part of the Tory base and cannot be ignored, only 32% of those with no religious affiliation vote Tory so they are not part of the Tory base and can be ignored on this if they object to places of worship re opening.
That is a quite remarkable statement, and not in a good way.
No, you are meant to pretend as a matter of decency to govern for all. HYUFD and PT have no basis for claiming to be Conservatives, whether or not they have paid the £5 for their Tufty Club badges.
No government ever governs for all otherwise elections would be irrelevant.
Governments govern for their core vote and swing voters mainly, hopefully relatively competently but otherwise at a minimum for them. They just believe their policies are for the benefit of all
That may be true of your boys, Johnson and Trump.
I believe other politicians at least have tried to be more sophisticated.
This government won the Anglican, Catholic and Jewish vote at the last election and it is culturally as well as economically more conservative. A lot of Tory members like me and a lot of Tory MPs are also regular church goers. Plus of course a large percentage of land in England is owned by the Church of England, including commercial premises and of course there are cafes and gift shops in our great cathedrals so yes it does contribute to the economy
Lots of problems with this.
Firstly, that quite a lot of religious people voted Tory simply shouldn't be a consideration. Once elected, governments are there for the entire population not just to pay back those who supported them.
Secondly, land ownership means 0% of sod all in this context. The land the Church owns and manages is still there whether churches themselves are open over the next few months or not.
Thirdly, honestly how much do Cathedral gift shops and cafes contribute to the economy? I don't want to be harsh, and genuinely feel awful personally for people working there or anywhere that can't operate due to restrictions. But in terms of the national economy as a whole, this is almost invisibly tiny stuff.
This argument is flawed. You can't measure everything in terms of % of GDP. Air is an obvious example. Agriculture is an insignificant % of GDP but still manages 75-80% of the land while feeding us too. Try doing without it.
Churches/other religions/other institutions which bring people together, provide all sorts of local services (sacred and secular), like say all the local hockey teams and 5 a side football players provide about zero to GDP but massively to the gross human decent experience and community measure. The list is endless. Grandparents' child care is GDP zero, real world massive.
That's fair to some extent and I am not denying churches bring less tangible value to the table.
However, firstly, that they will be there when we come out of this current period whereas a lot of businesses are far close to the edge. Secondly, we do as a country actually have to pay real money to keep the lights on, essentials stocked up, maintenance undertaken over this period and beyond, and it's not a given that will happen. Bringing people together in a community is really great stuff too, but has a lesser priority just now.
So point taken on some of the value created by churches, but I don't accept they are the priority over the next six months or so - sorry.
The YouGov numbers are decent for Biden but shouldn't offer a scintilla of space for complacency and I'm sure it won't. As Labour did here in 1997 after what happened in 1992, the 2016 experience will ensure the Democrats will take nothing for granted and fight for every vote in every state.
I think that's misremembering 1997 a bit. I was involved in campaigning at the time, and Labour did in fact withdraw resources from "marginal" Tory seats where they were just obviously going to romp home and go into longer shot seats later in the campaign. And quite right too. But they didn't, in that sense, fight for every vote in every seat - they targeted resources.
The Presidential election is different as there is no real difference beyond vanity in winning handsomely over narrowly - not like a Parliamentary one where a good majority is better than a slim one. So they won't stop fighting in Michigan even if it's looking really good to try to tip Indiana or whatever as they absolutely cannot afford to miss Michigan but Indiana doesn't matter at all. But, equally, fighting for every vote in every state is just a slogan. Democrats would be bonkers to plough resource into New York (because they'll win easily anyway - and if they don't it's a Trump landslide) or Missouri (which they have a tiny outside chance of winning but won't be pivotal - if they win it's a Biden landslide anyway).
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.
Organised religion.
Massive vector everywhere.
Ban it!
Utter rubbish, my church has compulsory mask wearing, hand sanitiser on arrival and departure and social distancing in pews
But your church isn't every church/mosque/.... and some have had appalling adherence to sensible behaviour. What is more there is no necessity to attend in person. Not being there is better protection than social distancing, masks and sanitizer.
Yours, a completely unbiased atheist.
If you ban in person church, mosque and temple attendance you must also close pubs, restaurants, gyms, indoor cinemas and non essential shops too, as long as they remain open then so should churches. There are just as many pubs breaching guidance as places of worship, probably more.
End of
Does your church contribute to the economy? If not then it’s fair game for shutting down with the current government.
This government won the Anglican, Catholic and Jewish vote at the last election and it is culturally as well as economically more conservative. A lot of Tory members like me and a lot of Tory MPs are also regular church goers. Plus of course a large percentage of land in England is owned by the Church of England, including commercial premises and of course there are cafes and gift shops in our great cathedrals so yes it does contribute to the economy
But that’s not your church, the building etc
Taking communion every week is also a vital spiritual role for Christians.
The Tories won 58% of the Anglican vote at GE17 for example and 63% of the Jewish vote and 40% of the Catholic vote and the Tories also won the Methodist, Baptist and Church of Scotland vote.
The Christian and Jewish vote is now part of the Tory base and cannot be ignored, only 32% of those with no religious affiliation vote Tory so they are not part of the Tory base and can be ignored on this if they object to places of worship re opening.
So if you don’t vote Tory your view can be ignored! Explains a lot.
Corbyn would of course have ignored the views of Tories had he won so yes the Tories will reward their core vote now they have a majority of 80 and rightly so
On less than50% of the vote representing a minority of electors.
LD and Brexit Party voters preferred Boris to Corbyn in the polling last year so add the 11% the LDs got and the 2% the Brexit Party got to the 44% the Tories got and you get 57% of voters wanted the Tories to remain in government last year over Corbyn Labour
Surely you should add in all those who voted Labour but really didn't like Corbyn and so obviously preferred a Boris government so that takes you to an overwhelming 80% of voters who didn't want Corbyn so must have wanted Boris and the 20% who did want Corbyn or whatever can get stuffed.
Have I got this right, both in the substance and the style of your argument?
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.
I'd add Nick Bostrom, Professor in the Faculty of Philosophy at Oxford University.
He argues that it is likely we are living in a computer simulation hosted by a technologically advanced civilization. https://www.simulation-argument.com/simulation.html To me it is as convincing an argument for why we exist as any other and more convincing that most.
I would go further and argue that the simulation we live in is being run by a child who has got bored and switched on disaster mode.
Thought that for while
Simulation Theory is essentially god for tech loving atheists. Nothing wrong with that. But it doesn’t answer the question, who/what created the thing that created us.
With my limited cranial capacity it is much more straightforward just to take it that existence is eternal and our universe is a mere bubble within an infinite plain. There’s no beginning or end because there is no time. Just a plain upon which basic particle building blocks have an explosion of ever increasing complexity, before eventually drifting via entropy into a cool and endless glow.
In short, there’s as much point worrying about what happens to your consciousness after life as there is worrying about what it was up to before you were born. If there is no time, there is no before and after. There’s just little bubbles of complexity sitting on an endless plain variously composed of particle building blocks and cool glows of heat death.
"Simulation Theory is essentially god for tech loving atheists"
The difference is that God is usually considered to be benevolent whereas these simulators ain't. They might be omniscient and omnipotent but not benevolent. That's the difference.
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.
I'd add Nick Bostrom, Professor in the Faculty of Philosophy at Oxford University.
He argues that it is likely we are living in a computer simulation hosted by a technologically advanced civilization. https://www.simulation-argument.com/simulation.html To me it is as convincing an argument for why we exist as any other and more convincing that most.
I would go further and argue that the simulation we live in is being run by a child who has got bored and switched on disaster mode.
Thought that for while
Simulation Theory is essentially god for tech loving atheists. Nothing wrong with that. But it doesn’t answer the question, who/what created the thing that created us.
With my limited cranial capacity it is much more straightforward just to take it that existence is eternal and our universe is a mere bubble within an infinite plain. There’s no beginning or end because there is no time. Just a plain upon which basic particle building blocks have an explosion of ever increasing complexity, before eventually drifting via entropy into a cool and endless glow.
In short, there’s as much point worrying about what happens to your consciousness after life as there is worrying about what it was up to before you were born. If there is no time, there is no before and after. There’s just little bubbles of complexity sitting on an endless plain variously composed of particle building blocks and cool glows of heat death.
"Simulation Theory is essentially god for tech loving atheists"
The difference is that God is usually considered to be benevolent whereas these simulators ain't. They might be omniscient and omnipotent but not benevolent. That's the difference.
Another major difference is that there's no rational reason whatsoever to believe in God. But if you accept the logic of Simulation Theory, then, out of sheer probability alone, that has to be the most likely explanation for our reality.
Are the Scots really telling their citizens that children can't go back home to see their parents?
Edit: or is that how rumours/wars/eternal strife start?
Yes that is exactly what non mixing of households means once you have moved somewhere else, including first year student accommodation. The rules, like the virus, don't recognise feelings and preferences.
IMHO it would be better if undergraduate students were regarded, like HM the Queen, as having more than one residence constituting a household to which you belong while at the same time being invited voluntarily to limit travel between the two. I would rather have less pub trade and student parties and more family mixing, but no doubt others will feel differently about where to draw lines.
There will be further issues coming towards Christmas, as rumour has it that the puritan Scots have started tentative steps towards celebrating it in recent years. And Nichola will have to be brave indeed if she is to legislate against enjoying yourself at New Year.
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.
I'd add Nick Bostrom, Professor in the Faculty of Philosophy at Oxford University.
He argues that it is likely we are living in a computer simulation hosted by a technologically advanced civilization. https://www.simulation-argument.com/simulation.html To me it is as convincing an argument for why we exist as any other and more convincing that most.
I would go further and argue that the simulation we live in is being run by a child who has got bored and switched on disaster mode.
Thought that for while
Simulation Theory is essentially god for tech loving atheists. Nothing wrong with that. But it doesn’t answer the question, who/what created the thing that created us.
With my limited cranial capacity it is much more straightforward just to take it that existence is eternal and our universe is a mere bubble within an infinite plain. There’s no beginning or end because there is no time. Just a plain upon which basic particle building blocks have an explosion of ever increasing complexity, before eventually drifting via entropy into a cool and endless glow.
In short, there’s as much point worrying about what happens to your consciousness after life as there is worrying about what it was up to before you were born. If there is no time, there is no before and after. There’s just little bubbles of complexity sitting on an endless plain variously composed of particle building blocks and cool glows of heat death.
"Simulation Theory is essentially god for tech loving atheists"
The difference is that God is usually considered to be benevolent whereas these simulators ain't. They might be omniscient and omnipotent but not benevolent. That's the difference.
Another major difference is that there's no rational reason whatsoever to believe in God. But if you accept the logic of Simulation Theory, then, out of sheer probability alone, that has to be the most likely explanation for our reality.
The idea that there is no 'rational reasons' (what other sorts of reasons are there?) for belief in God confuses that thought that there are no proofs of God's existence with the thought that there are no grounds for belief in God's existence. There are of course no proofs for the existence of physical objects (see George Berkeley, idealism generally and simulation theory) but that doesn't mean that believers in physical objects don't have reasons.
Comments
Similarly in 1968, by which time I was qualified and working in a very busy place.
https://twitter.com/PpollingNumbers/status/1309139386563473410
The Old North State 'Reverse Rasmussen-Trafalgar'
I understand it's £600k, which is quite a wedge albeit he's a wealthy man so his £600k is a good deal less relevant to his retirement than mine. If that rises 20% due to orders from the UK and other Governments, that's a non-trivial thing even for him - it's a lot of very nice holidays and a new Jag. It's not totally ridiculous to say it creates some incentive and, where he's involved in decision making, he should be up front on it.
But assuming it was declared, it's a non-story for me. He held a senior position and exercised stock options years ago (indeed he got rid of most of his holding years ago).
I agree the press explain these things poorly. Fair to ask how he ensured this was declared and how he manages his investments to avoid insider trading based on his inside track. But I suspect he has perfectly good answers on these, and they shouldn't imply anything untoward simply because he has some shares.
Students being told they can't go back home from Scottish Universities.
https://twitter.com/Politics_Polls/status/1309141051312087042?s=20
How permanent does a trip somewhere have to be to be setting up a new household?
https://twitter.com/Politics_Polls/status/1309142154980229122
I see @HYUFD is still shamelessly absolutely desperate for Trump to win.
As a point of fact, though, most polls do NOT have Trump ahead in North Carolina.
Your preferred site, RCP, has ten polls in its model for North Carolina. Biden leads in five, Trump in three, and two tied. 538 has (I think) eight - Biden leads in five, Trump in one, tied in two. Neither has SurveyMonkey.
So the outliers are Trump ahead in Nevada and almost neck and neck in New Mexico but Biden ahead in Georgia and North Carolina
Governments govern for their core vote and swing voters mainly, hopefully relatively competently but otherwise at a minimum for them. They just believe their policies are for the benefit of all
Seriously?
The YouGov numbers are decent for Biden but shouldn't offer a scintilla of space for complacency and I'm sure it won't. As Labour did here in 1997 after what happened in 1992, the 2016 experience will ensure the Democrats will take nothing for granted and fight for every vote in every state.
That said, as you will no doubt remind me, there isn't an election until 2024 and that's fair enough - plenty of time for the Conservatives to dig themselves an even deeper hole into which they can be placed by the electorate via the ballot box which is as it should be.
I believe other politicians at least have tried to be more sophisticated.
However, firstly, that they will be there when we come out of this current period whereas a lot of businesses are far close to the edge. Secondly, we do as a country actually have to pay real money to keep the lights on, essentials stocked up, maintenance undertaken over this period and beyond, and it's not a given that will happen. Bringing people together in a community is really great stuff too, but has a lesser priority just now.
So point taken on some of the value created by churches, but I don't accept they are the priority over the next six months or so - sorry.
We call this a labe experiment. Indiana's positive test rate is currently around 7%
The Presidential election is different as there is no real difference beyond vanity in winning handsomely over narrowly - not like a Parliamentary one where a good majority is better than a slim one. So they won't stop fighting in Michigan even if it's looking really good to try to tip Indiana or whatever as they absolutely cannot afford to miss Michigan but Indiana doesn't matter at all. But, equally, fighting for every vote in every state is just a slogan. Democrats would be bonkers to plough resource into New York (because they'll win easily anyway - and if they don't it's a Trump landslide) or Missouri (which they have a tiny outside chance of winning but won't be pivotal - if they win it's a Biden landslide anyway).
https://twitter.com/SurveyMonkey/status/1309140120390504448?s=19
https://twitter.com/skywalkm only 202 followers. Tragically overlooked Google Election Sheet of the 2020 election contender.
Edit: or is that how rumours/wars/eternal strife start?
Have I got this right, both in the substance and the style of your argument?
The difference is that God is usually considered to be benevolent whereas these simulators ain't. They might be omniscient and omnipotent but not benevolent. That's the difference.
IMHO it would be better if undergraduate students were regarded, like HM the Queen, as having more than one residence constituting a household to which you belong while at the same time being invited voluntarily to limit travel between the two. I would rather have less pub trade and student parties and more family mixing, but no doubt others will feel differently about where to draw lines.
There will be further issues coming towards Christmas, as rumour has it that the puritan Scots have started tentative steps towards celebrating it in recent years. And Nichola will have to be brave indeed if she is to legislate against enjoying yourself at New Year.