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The pursuit of happiness – politicalbetting.com

SystemSystem Posts: 11,002
edited October 2020 in General
The pursuit of happiness – politicalbetting.com

No sparing the blushes of Matt Hancock this morning. From the rule of six to the rules of sex – what is the government advice around close relationships? RH#KayBurley pic.twitter.com/RLjBa13S0R

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Comments

  • eekeek Posts: 24,797
    first
  • StockyStocky Posts: 9,653
    "Have you noticed that people are still having sex?"!

    You been peering in windows Meeks?
  • StockyStocky Posts: 9,653
    Excellent header. "Heaven forfend that anyone might actually enjoy themselves". Indeed.

    "Highway code for Covid" - I like that.
  • SandpitSandpit Posts: 49,614
    Always wear a condom!
  • eristdooferistdoof Posts: 4,861

    Stocky said:

    MrEd said:

    Alistair said:
    I go back to DavidL's point previously - Trump is a jerk and a bully but, if Biden can't stand up to him, what chance has he got if he becomes President and has to deal with Putin and Xi Jinping?
    He did stand up to him - he told him to shut up and called him the worst president ever - he just didn't do anything that requires more than a few seconds of uninterrupted speaking.
    I`m wondering whether Biden should flatly refuse to do the remaining two debates with the rude, bullying, ignorant oaf.
    There's something to be said for that but I think there's a substantial downside risk (looking like he's running away) that's hard to quantify as nothing like this has happened before, and no upside risk. Taking part in the debates has a similar-sized downside risk (if he screws up) but also has an upside risk if he does well.
    But, as we saw with Boris, running away from media obligations - i.e. the Andrew Neil interview - appeared to have no political downsides whatsoever.


    That was an interview with a journalist. To walk away from a 2 man debate is a lot more dangerous, because it allows Trump 90 minutes to say more or less what he wants.
  • StockyStocky Posts: 9,653
    Sandpit said:

    Always wear a condom!

    Not always, surely? When in Tescos?
  • kle4kle4 Posts: 91,401
    Sorry thread, this is the real debate
    Barnesian said:

    kle4 said:

    dixiedean said:

    MaxPB said:

    Good news from the Imperial study, R down to 1.1 already which is what the daily data was already showing. With more time the rule of 6 will bed in further and bring that down.

    I wouldn't be so sure about the rule of 6 bedding in further. It's just as likely that people get bored with it and stop bothering, especially if they hear that the virus is under control. There's something of a negative feedback effect at work: as infections stabilise, people become complacent; as infections rise, they become more worried and observant.
    Has there been a study as to why large areas of the South of England are not having a second wave at all?
    Do people in the South behave different to people in the Midlands and the North?
    I cannot work it out.
    The tendency to go round all the neighbours houses at the drop of a hat often daily is the only cultural difference I can think of.
    It may prove to be a significant one.
    As someone who has split my time between North and South, here's a cultural difference I'd love to know the geographical boundary of: using the front door as your main entrance, versus using your side/back door.

    Clearly not everyone in the South uses their front door as main entrance and not everyone in the North uses the side/back, but there's definitely a geographical gradient and I don't know where the main area of unfrontdooredness is bounded.
    my northern brother has to use the back door as main entrance as the back faces on to the road while the front faces allotments.
    Surely if the back door faces onto the road it is the front door?
    Not at all. There's a distinctive style to what constitutes the front of a house (its flat for a start, the living room faces onto it, the stairs do, whereas the back goes into a utility room off the kitchen) vs the back, the mail slot and house numbers are on the front and so on, even the terrace name is shown where the path in front of the allotments is rather than the road. Its definitely the back onto the road.

  • Dura_AceDura_Ace Posts: 12,880
    MrEd said:



    What's your view on what he has done with the UAE / Bahrain deals Dura? Interesting to know whether you think it is meaningful or not

    The minute number of people who give a fuck know that it's an MBS/MBZ deal that they have been working on with Israeli fixer Ayoob Kara since 2014. Trump came in at the vinegar strokes as they needed another fat bald crook that Bibi could relate to. Fair fucks to Trump and that ghastly streak of pre-cum Kushner though, one thing they did excel at was taking the credit for it.
  • BarnesianBarnesian Posts: 7,979
    edited October 2020
    kle4 said:

    Sorry thread, this is the real debate

    Barnesian said:

    kle4 said:

    dixiedean said:

    MaxPB said:

    Good news from the Imperial study, R down to 1.1 already which is what the daily data was already showing. With more time the rule of 6 will bed in further and bring that down.

    I wouldn't be so sure about the rule of 6 bedding in further. It's just as likely that people get bored with it and stop bothering, especially if they hear that the virus is under control. There's something of a negative feedback effect at work: as infections stabilise, people become complacent; as infections rise, they become more worried and observant.
    Has there been a study as to why large areas of the South of England are not having a second wave at all?
    Do people in the South behave different to people in the Midlands and the North?
    I cannot work it out.
    The tendency to go round all the neighbours houses at the drop of a hat often daily is the only cultural difference I can think of.
    It may prove to be a significant one.
    As someone who has split my time between North and South, here's a cultural difference I'd love to know the geographical boundary of: using the front door as your main entrance, versus using your side/back door.

    Clearly not everyone in the South uses their front door as main entrance and not everyone in the North uses the side/back, but there's definitely a geographical gradient and I don't know where the main area of unfrontdooredness is bounded.
    my northern brother has to use the back door as main entrance as the back faces on to the road while the front faces allotments.
    Surely if the back door faces onto the road it is the front door?
    Not at all. There's a distinctive style to what constitutes the front of a house (its flat for a start, the living room faces onto it, the stairs do, whereas the back goes into a utility room off the kitchen) vs the back, the mail slot and house numbers are on the front and so on, even the terrace name is shown where the path in front of the allotments is rather than the road. Its definitely the back onto the road.

    In Oldham our front door was right on the street. My mother [mi mam] used to "donkey-stone" the step every day even though we were taught to step over it. The back door was in the back yard - only used for going to the bog.

    EDIT Great thread header Alastair. Sorry to divert
  • dixiedeandixiedean Posts: 27,837
    Stocky said:

    Sandpit said:

    Always wear a condom!

    Not always, surely? When in Tescos?
    Can't be too careful. Belt and braces.
  • SandpitSandpit Posts: 49,614
    Stocky said:

    Sandpit said:

    Always wear a condom!

    Not always, surely? When in Tescos?
    Especially when in Tescos! There’s a nasty virus going around.
  • Stocky said:

    Sandpit said:

    Always wear a condom!

    Not always, surely? When in Tescos?
    Perhaps à la Dave? A sure fire prophylactic against the Covid (& oxygen of course).



    Not that he'd be seen dead in Tescos.
  • Dura_AceDura_Ace Posts: 12,880

    Stocky said:

    Sandpit said:

    Always wear a condom!

    Not always, surely? When in Tescos?
    Perhaps à la Dave? A sure fire prophylactic against the Covid (& oxygen of course).



    Not that he'd be seen dead in Tescos.
    I think he was pretending to shop in a Tescos when he got his embarrassingly shit bike nicked.
  • Comes down to a total failure of effective track and trace. I think people are actually very understanding about being told to isolate for a limited period because, through no fault of their own, they've been exposed. It's the being told to make significant, negative lifestyle changes for an indefinite period... particularly where there's a suspicion the people telling you are applying it pretty flexibly to themselves.

    Enforcement also an issue, as the impression is it's all basically voluntary. No reason at all not to make an example of Stanley Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn - we're not talking about sending them to Belmarsh, for goodness sake, simply a fine that they are well able to pay for breaches that are egregious and not denied. I cannot for the life of me see why this is not done.
  • dixiedeandixiedean Posts: 27,837
    Howlin Wolf was a Northerner.

    https://youtu.be/aVIA1n5ng4Y
  • dr_spyndr_spyn Posts: 11,279
    It will be only a matter of time, before a politician is exposed by one of the tabloids, after a visit to a mistress or boyfriend.
  • TheuniondivvieTheuniondivvie Posts: 39,748
    edited October 2020
    Dura_Ace said:

    Stocky said:

    Sandpit said:

    Always wear a condom!

    Not always, surely? When in Tescos?
    Perhaps à la Dave? A sure fire prophylactic against the Covid (& oxygen of course).



    Not that he'd be seen dead in Tescos.
    I think he was pretending to shop in a Tescos when he got his embarrassingly shit bike nicked.
    Yeah, I should probably have qualified that as wouldn't be seen dead in Tescos now he no longer has to go through the embarrassing charade of pretending that we're all in it together.

    ironically BJ likely doesn't have a problem with Tescos when he has need of a wine box of Chateau Getwrecked and one of those terrible, terrible suits that he barely inhabits.
  • Scott_xP said:
    Well at least this clarifies matters - it was either a bluff or an irrational idiocy. We can finally drop the notion that it was a noble, justifiable and brilliantly constructed assertion of British sovereignty as some on here were claiming.
  • StockyStocky Posts: 9,653
    Dura_Ace said:

    MrEd said:



    What's your view on what he has done with the UAE / Bahrain deals Dura? Interesting to know whether you think it is meaningful or not

    The minute number of people who give a fuck know that it's an MBS/MBZ deal that they have been working on with Israeli fixer Ayoob Kara since 2014. Trump came in at the vinegar strokes as they needed another fat bald crook that Bibi could relate to. Fair fucks to Trump and that ghastly streak of pre-cum Kushner though, one thing they did excel at was taking the credit for it.
    You should be an international diplomat or something.
  • orchestral manoeuvres must take place in the dark is what broke me yesterday.

    Still has.
  • TOPPINGTOPPING Posts: 40,950
    Dura_Ace said:

    Stocky said:

    Sandpit said:

    Always wear a condom!

    Not always, surely? When in Tescos?
    Perhaps à la Dave? A sure fire prophylactic against the Covid (& oxygen of course).



    Not that he'd be seen dead in Tescos.
    I think he was pretending to shop in a Tescos when he got his embarrassingly shit bike nicked.
    You will be pleased to hear that I have added a Specialized Globe (Sport) to my collection of Apollo Highway. Goes like the wind, corners like it's on rails, etc.

    Plus it's got a seat cover which surely adds cool-as-fuck points.
  • AnabobazinaAnabobazina Posts: 19,618
    dr_spyn said:

    It will be only a matter of time, before a politician is exposed by one of the tabloids, after a visit to a mistress or boyfriend.

    Hasn't the Boffin' Boffin already got the t-shirt?
  • Dura_Ace said:

    Stocky said:

    Sandpit said:

    Always wear a condom!

    Not always, surely? When in Tescos?
    Perhaps à la Dave? A sure fire prophylactic against the Covid (& oxygen of course).



    Not that he'd be seen dead in Tescos.
    I think he was pretending to shop in a Tescos when he got his embarrassingly shit bike nicked.
    Dave used to visit Tescos a lot, was one of the issues he learned when raising a severely disabled child, Tescos were one of the few places that sold nappies for kids of a slightly older age group than standard.

    He used to visit Morrisons a fair bit when he went to Devon and Cornwall.
  • SandyRentoolSandyRentool Posts: 20,401
    'The government is to push ahead with a new "three-tier" localised approach to coronavirus restrictions in England, the BBC understands.'

    Splendid. Except that the version of Tier 2 in West Yorkshire is different to that in the North East. Are they at Tier two-and-a-half?
  • MattWMattW Posts: 18,087
    Interesting little conflict of reporting:

    Dildo:
    Guido understands Middlesbrough and Hartlepool are to enter local lockdowns, akin to those seen in the rest of north east, as of midnight on the 5th.

    Middlesbrough is only included because they asked to be included.

    https://order-order.com/2020/09/30/exclusive-new-middlesbrough-and-hartlepool-to-enter-local-lockdown/

    Andy Preston, Mayoral Panjandrum of Middlesbrough:

    https://twitter.com/Tees_Issues/status/1311612081091809280
  • ButtonButton Posts: 2
    Another example of disconnect: the Daily Express assumes its readers think Britain still belongs to the EU. They are running a poll asking "Would you be happy with Britain leaving EU without a trade deal?" 94% say yes.
  • TOPPINGTOPPING Posts: 40,950
    Button said:

    Another example of disconnect: the Daily Express assumes its readers think Britain still belongs to the EU. They are running a poll asking "Would you be happy with Britain leaving EU without a trade deal?" 94% say yes.

    Welcome (I saw your first post on the other thread).

    This could be a good project for PB. Let's think of some other ways of saying: "Another example of disconnect" when a poll which asks if people would be happy to leave the EU gets a 94% yes result.
  • CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 39,149
    An interesting thread header - many thanks.

    I was thinking back to earlier years - the 1980s - through BSE and Mr Gummer trying to feed his daughter burgers in public - to the later years of Mrs T and AIDS/HIV. I seem to remember her doing much better than the current lot on HIV after - I also STR - some false steps/delay because Gays were not approved of by the Tories and nice ladies didn't talk about practices that went on in the communal bathhouses of SF and the like. Perhaps it was her scientific training, but ISTR she got things together still more quickly on the ozone layer when the scientists warned her - for which she perhapos doesn't get enough credit.

    But one difference is that in those days there were only 4 TV channels and people bought and read newspapers as well. Public service messaging was surely simpler then. Though the reputed geniuses in the current lot should have been able to solve that conumdrum, they seem to spend far less emergy in dealing with coronavirus than they did with pushing to win the referendum in 2016. Or am I unfair?
  • TOPPINGTOPPING Posts: 40,950
    Oh and very good thread header.
  • What's that coming over the hill, is it a vaccine, is it a vaccine...well no, not for ages.

    https://www.cbsnews.com/news/moderna-ceo-coronavirus-vaccine-wont-be-ready-until-spring-2021/
  • Scott_xP said:
    So Castle-Gate is still welded to the political consciousness many months on as I said it would be. Sometimes it's not actually that comfortable being right on every single occasion.
  • kle4kle4 Posts: 91,401
    Nigelb said:

    I think you mean that Cox could say exactly the same about Bercow and they would both be correct.
    Cox might, but we only have proof of Bercow being so lacking in self reflection so Cox escapes that charge until that proof emerges.
    Dura_Ace said:

    MrEd said:



    What's your view on what he has done with the UAE / Bahrain deals Dura? Interesting to know whether you think it is meaningful or not

    The minute number of people who give a fuck know that it's an MBS/MBZ deal that they have been working on with Israeli fixer Ayoob Kara since 2014. Trump came in at the vinegar strokes as they needed another fat bald crook that Bibi could relate to. Fair fucks to Trump and that ghastly streak of pre-cum Kushner though, one thing they did excel at was taking the credit for it.
    Hey, NOT cocking it up last minute is something many would have assumed beyond Trump in fairness.
  • rottenboroughrottenborough Posts: 58,043

    What's that coming over the hill, is it a vaccine, is it a vaccine...well no, not for ages.

    https://www.cbsnews.com/news/moderna-ceo-coronavirus-vaccine-wont-be-ready-until-spring-2021/

    What a surprise.

    And what happens when it doesn't come next spring. Another year of this?

    No, we must learn to live with the virus.
  • rottenboroughrottenborough Posts: 58,043

    'The government is to push ahead with a new "three-tier" localised approach to coronavirus restrictions in England, the BBC understands.'

    Splendid. Except that the version of Tier 2 in West Yorkshire is different to that in the North East. Are they at Tier two-and-a-half?

    Who the f**k knows anymore.

    I doubt they know themselves. Johnson clearly doesn't.
  • I think this is a really good, thoughtful header. We have a lot of rules that are petty and unenforceable, variations in rules that are frankly unfollowable, and an evidence base for most of them which is not remotely sound, but often represent a "best guess" for what might work in a time of great unknowns. It's almost certain that rules are disproportionately harsh in some aspects and too lenient in others, and I suspect many of them simply don't make much difference or are targeted with insufficient precision. But then, it's hard to know for sure which ones they are... we would all function better under a system with more clarity, consistency, and certainty, but the latter at least seems likely to elude us for the foreseeable future, precisely because the government's scientific advice is not all-seeing.

    I wonder if the header suffers from being based on a potentially falsely optimistic premise, that we can "learn to live with" this virus by finding socially acceptable ways to live our lives in a not-too-depressingly-drab-or-economically-screwed "new normal" while keeping the virus largely suppressed, with special measures locally to tackle isolated outbreaks.

    Obviously there are loads of nasty bugs we've learned to live with, and ultimately COVID will join them. This living-with is often accompanied by tools to help us, like vaccination, and/or by most of of us surviving any infection, and enough of it circulating around that we either have or are close to herd immunity. Because COVID is a novel disease we don't seem to have built up enough immunity in the population yet, judging from the recent upsurge, which means quite rapid exponential growth can still be expected once control measures are no longer sufficient. It's notable that both the early Imperial reports and NERVTAG minutes suggested we would end up with alternating periods of very strict and less strict measures, lasting for potentially months at a time, and it seems they may turn out right after all (though obviously this may be a self-fulfilling prophecy if this is what strategic thinking has been premised on).

    HIV/AIDS is different in that we have managed to largely control it with a vaccine and despite herd immunity being an irrelevant paradigm, but it's been easier to control in that transmission usually takes place around discrete events and times, rather than an ever-present risk in almost all of daily life, and we have safe practices that almost, albeit not entirely, eliminate the risk during those events. As a clinically vulnerable person, it isn't clear what you can do to protect yourself if you wanted to go shopping, for example.
  • Scott_xPScott_xP Posts: 32,739

    So Castle-Gate is still welded to the political consciousness many months on as I said it would be. Sometimes it's not actually that comfortable being right on every single occasion.

    The whole article is worth reading

    https://twitter.com/georgeeaton/status/1311574127162150914
  • CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 39,149
    IshmaelZ said:

    Carnyx said:

    An interesting thread header - many thanks.

    I was thinking back to earlier years - the 1980s - through BSE and Mr Gummer trying to feed his daughter burgers in public - to the later years of Mrs T and AIDS/HIV. I seem to remember her doing much better than the current lot on HIV after - I also STR - some false steps/delay because Gays were not approved of by the Tories and nice ladies didn't talk about practices that went on in the communal bathhouses of SF and the like. Perhaps it was her scientific training, but ISTR she got things together still more quickly on the ozone layer when the scientists warned her - for which she perhapos doesn't get enough credit.

    But one difference is that in those days there were only 4 TV channels and people bought and read newspapers as well. Public service messaging was surely simpler then. Though the reputed geniuses in the current lot should have been able to solve that conumdrum, they seem to spend far less emergy in dealing with coronavirus than they did with pushing to win the referendum in 2016. Or am I unfair?

    BSE was low risk, AIDS was as risky as you wanted it to be, this thing less so. Pleas for libertarianism are fantastic, but let's not ignore that the enemy of libertarianism here is not Boris Johnson, it is SARS-CoV-2. As with smoking and drinking: your problems are lung cancer and cirrhosis, not spoilsport doctors and nanny state politicians.
    TBF BSE was low risk only in hindsight - especially if, at the time, you had read about CJD, scrapie and kuru, as I had.
  • rottenboroughrottenborough Posts: 58,043
    OMG. Have the Liberals woken up finally and realised there supposed to be the party of liberty and have a bird of freedom as their logo?

    Hurrah!

    https://twitter.com/DPJHodges/status/1311633773214261248
  • CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 39,149
    Scott_xP said:

    So Castle-Gate is still welded to the political consciousness many months on as I said it would be. Sometimes it's not actually that comfortable being right on every single occasion.

    The whole article is worth reading

    https://twitter.com/georgeeaton/status/1311574127162150914
    Ditto - just read it myself.
  • rottenboroughrottenborough Posts: 58,043
    Carnyx said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    Carnyx said:

    An interesting thread header - many thanks.

    I was thinking back to earlier years - the 1980s - through BSE and Mr Gummer trying to feed his daughter burgers in public - to the later years of Mrs T and AIDS/HIV. I seem to remember her doing much better than the current lot on HIV after - I also STR - some false steps/delay because Gays were not approved of by the Tories and nice ladies didn't talk about practices that went on in the communal bathhouses of SF and the like. Perhaps it was her scientific training, but ISTR she got things together still more quickly on the ozone layer when the scientists warned her - for which she perhapos doesn't get enough credit.

    But one difference is that in those days there were only 4 TV channels and people bought and read newspapers as well. Public service messaging was surely simpler then. Though the reputed geniuses in the current lot should have been able to solve that conumdrum, they seem to spend far less emergy in dealing with coronavirus than they did with pushing to win the referendum in 2016. Or am I unfair?

    BSE was low risk, AIDS was as risky as you wanted it to be, this thing less so. Pleas for libertarianism are fantastic, but let's not ignore that the enemy of libertarianism here is not Boris Johnson, it is SARS-CoV-2. As with smoking and drinking: your problems are lung cancer and cirrhosis, not spoilsport doctors and nanny state politicians.
    TBF BSE was low risk only in hindsight - especially if, at the time, you had read about CJD, scrapie and kuru, as I had.

    Rudolf Virchow: “An epidemic is a social phenomenon that has a few medical aspects.”
  • TOPPINGTOPPING Posts: 40,950
    So sad - Archie Lyndhurst, Nicholas Lyndhurst's son has died "after a short illness".
  • StockyStocky Posts: 9,653

    OMG. Have the Liberals woken up finally and realised there supposed to be the party of liberty and have a bird of freedom as their logo?

    Hurrah!

    https://twitter.com/DPJHodges/status/1311633773214261248

    Be still my beating heart.
  • In everyday life, we're used to a sliding scaling of risk, and corresponding sliding scale of precautions to manage those risks (though there's evidence people actually make many mistakes e.g. consistently overrate small risks and expend disproportionate efforts to mitigate them; Spiegelhalter published a lot of interesting stuff on this years ago, for those interested). I think this explains the attractiveness of a "Covid Alert Level" or similar, where in the red-zone we apply one code of social conduct, in the amber-zone a less strenuous one and so on. In principle, we should be able to apply measures proportional to the situation. In practice, because Exponential Growth Is Bad and uncertainty is high, I doubt application will ever be very granular - foot lightly on brake versus slamming the pedal down seem likely to be the two main choices.

    Something Graham Medley has talked about is a kind of "R budgeting", whereby we find a set of restrictions we can live under that keep R at or below 1. Theoretically this sounds like a good way of producing a comprehensible code we can live by, and sounds like it should be sustainable in the long-run. But actually it would mean a bit of juggling in and out, his most famous suggestion being when schools returned after summer, some additional restriction like closing the pubs might be needed to balance things out. Winter means people spend more time indoors, so something else would have to change. Even if we had perfect knowledge of how social risks should balance, we shouldn't expect required regulations or social codes of conduct to be reassuringly stable. The darker cloud hanging over this is can we find a way of life that keeps R around or below 1 that is genuinely liveable, and psychologically and economically sustainable?

    Restrictions may not need to be so onerous with other interventions like better contact-tracing, control of potential super-spreading events, maybe technological improvements like fast tests for contagiousness ... but at present, at least based on the UK and to some extent wider European experience, we should at least admit the possibility that we're not going to be able to stay on top of this thing without a bout or two more of some nasty socio-economic medicine. We can't just copy-and-paste the rules and regs from Sweden, or whoever is poster boy du jour, because of differences in everything from commuting patterns to household sizes to frequency of hugs and kisses, so what's sustainable in one country might not work in another. (Will also be interesting to see what happens in the Swedish winter when people mix indoors more.) I'm not saying we can't learn anything from other countries' experience, but I wonder if we'd ever have enough information to be able to successfully "fine-tune" an R budget - which would likely be an experimental, incremental process with further confusing rule changes and U-turns required - and we certainly can't borrow another country's wholesale.
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 61,575

    What's that coming over the hill, is it a vaccine, is it a vaccine...well no, not for ages.

    https://www.cbsnews.com/news/moderna-ceo-coronavirus-vaccine-wont-be-ready-until-spring-2021/

    Still bloody quick if they're talking about possible EUA application at the end of November, and applying for full authorisation in late January.
    And they will be manufacturing in the meantime.

    I don't think this is a significant change from recent guidance - more a reaction to Trump saying it might be ready next week.
  • turbotubbsturbotubbs Posts: 14,883

    What's that coming over the hill, is it a vaccine, is it a vaccine...well no, not for ages.

    https://www.cbsnews.com/news/moderna-ceo-coronavirus-vaccine-wont-be-ready-until-spring-2021/

    Although the key phrase for me was 'widespread distribution', and I read it that it could be in front-line workers as early as November, which I have long believed was possible.
  • LostPasswordLostPassword Posts: 14,772
    Sad to say, I don't think it is possible to "live with Covid".

    If Covid is present in the community, and if that community socialises indoors, then the virus will spread. In the absence of the vaccine that leaves us with three alternatives.

    Catch It - We could decide that treatment options have improved sufficiently that it's now safe enough to let the virus spread relatively unrestricted.

    Hide From It - We could continue in our current joyless limbo, where we use blunt rules of anti-social distancing to stop the virus from spreading too much. I reckon this is where we'd end up if we tried to go for Catch It, because people would come up with the rules themselves once they saw the hospitals start to get overwhelmed. It would just be with a higher level of virus circulation. Some people find it easier to hide than others, as well.

    Kill It - We follow other island countries, like New Zealand and Taiwan (and effectively South Korea given the status of their land border), and take the short term pain to achieve zero covid, so that we can live with much greater freedom once that's achieved, albeit with a tight quarantine at the coast.

    HIV is not the right model for this, since Covid spreads far too much more easily. There is no single behaviour change that will cut transmission in the same way as condom use does for HIV.
  • Carnyx said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    Carnyx said:

    An interesting thread header - many thanks.

    I was thinking back to earlier years - the 1980s - through BSE and Mr Gummer trying to feed his daughter burgers in public - to the later years of Mrs T and AIDS/HIV. I seem to remember her doing much better than the current lot on HIV after - I also STR - some false steps/delay because Gays were not approved of by the Tories and nice ladies didn't talk about practices that went on in the communal bathhouses of SF and the like. Perhaps it was her scientific training, but ISTR she got things together still more quickly on the ozone layer when the scientists warned her - for which she perhapos doesn't get enough credit.

    But one difference is that in those days there were only 4 TV channels and people bought and read newspapers as well. Public service messaging was surely simpler then. Though the reputed geniuses in the current lot should have been able to solve that conumdrum, they seem to spend far less emergy in dealing with coronavirus than they did with pushing to win the referendum in 2016. Or am I unfair?

    BSE was low risk, AIDS was as risky as you wanted it to be, this thing less so. Pleas for libertarianism are fantastic, but let's not ignore that the enemy of libertarianism here is not Boris Johnson, it is SARS-CoV-2. As with smoking and drinking: your problems are lung cancer and cirrhosis, not spoilsport doctors and nanny state politicians.
    TBF BSE was low risk only in hindsight - especially if, at the time, you had read about CJD, scrapie and kuru, as I had.
    Yes, at the time there was talk of 'a mortuary on every street'.
  • contrariancontrarian Posts: 5,818

    OMG. Have the Liberals woken up finally and realised there supposed to be the party of liberty and have a bird of freedom as their logo?

    Hurrah!

    https://twitter.com/DPJHodges/status/1311633773214261248

    There are a stack of potential tory votes in this and opposing concreting over leafy England.
  • StockyStocky Posts: 9,653

    OMG. Have the Liberals woken up finally and realised there supposed to be the party of liberty and have a bird of freedom as their logo?

    Hurrah!

    https://twitter.com/DPJHodges/status/1311633773214261248

    There are a stack of potential tory votes in this and opposing concreting over leafy England.
    You`re absolutely right.
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 61,575
    (FPT)

    Rather difficult to imagine any contemporary poet writing something like this to commemorate Election Day, November 2020.
    This rather fine poem is by Walt Whitman, on the Cleveland/Blaine contest....

    Well there's McNeice's Autumn Journal bit about the Oxford by-election...
    ...And use your legs and leave a blank for Hogg
    And put a cross for Lindsay.

    There are only too many who say 'What difference does it
    make

    One way or the other?

    To turn the stream of history will take
    More than a by-election.’

    So Thursday came and Oxford went to the polls

    And made its coward vote and the streets resounded
    To the triumphant cheers of the lost souls —

    The profiteers, the dunderheads, the smarties.

    And I drove back to London in the dark of the morning,
    the trees

    Standing out in the headlights cut from cardboard;
    Wondering which disease

    Is worse — the Status Quo or the Mere Utopia.

    For from now on

    Each occasion must be used, however trivial,

    To rally the ranks of those whose chance will soon be
    gone

    For even guerrilla warfare.

    The nicest people in England have always been the least
    Apt to solidarity or alignment
    But all of them must now align against the beast
    That prowls at every door and barks in every headline.
    Dawn and London and daylight and last the sun:

    I stop the car and take the yellow placard
    Off the bonnet; that little job is done
    Though without success or glory...


    But even that is a long way in the past now.
  • IshmaelZIshmaelZ Posts: 21,830

    Carnyx said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    Carnyx said:

    An interesting thread header - many thanks.

    I was thinking back to earlier years - the 1980s - through BSE and Mr Gummer trying to feed his daughter burgers in public - to the later years of Mrs T and AIDS/HIV. I seem to remember her doing much better than the current lot on HIV after - I also STR - some false steps/delay because Gays were not approved of by the Tories and nice ladies didn't talk about practices that went on in the communal bathhouses of SF and the like. Perhaps it was her scientific training, but ISTR she got things together still more quickly on the ozone layer when the scientists warned her - for which she perhapos doesn't get enough credit.

    But one difference is that in those days there were only 4 TV channels and people bought and read newspapers as well. Public service messaging was surely simpler then. Though the reputed geniuses in the current lot should have been able to solve that conumdrum, they seem to spend far less emergy in dealing with coronavirus than they did with pushing to win the referendum in 2016. Or am I unfair?

    BSE was low risk, AIDS was as risky as you wanted it to be, this thing less so. Pleas for libertarianism are fantastic, but let's not ignore that the enemy of libertarianism here is not Boris Johnson, it is SARS-CoV-2. As with smoking and drinking: your problems are lung cancer and cirrhosis, not spoilsport doctors and nanny state politicians.
    TBF BSE was low risk only in hindsight - especially if, at the time, you had read about CJD, scrapie and kuru, as I had.

    Rudolf Virchow: “An epidemic is a social phenomenon that has a few medical aspects.”
    Quite right: and as a corollary, an epidemic is not over when R is under something or antibody positivity is over something else. It is over when people think it is.
  • rural_voterrural_voter Posts: 2,038

    What's that coming over the hill, is it a vaccine, is it a vaccine...well no, not for ages.

    https://www.cbsnews.com/news/moderna-ceo-coronavirus-vaccine-wont-be-ready-until-spring-2021/

    Does 'spring' mean September 2021? I'd bet on more delays before the NHS can offer it to everyone on demand.

    The UK should have gone for risk segmentation as discussed on here a day or so ago. We'd have been over it by about August bank holiday 2020. This is dragging on interminably while the UK government stands there and pisses ~£500,000,000,000 down the toilet. By Christmas I assume it'll be £600,000,000,000.
  • turbotubbsturbotubbs Posts: 14,883

    What's that coming over the hill, is it a vaccine, is it a vaccine...well no, not for ages.

    https://www.cbsnews.com/news/moderna-ceo-coronavirus-vaccine-wont-be-ready-until-spring-2021/

    Does 'spring' mean September 2021? I'd bet on more delays before the NHS can offer it to everyone on demand.

    The UK should have gone for risk segmentation as discussed on here a day or so ago. We'd have been over it by about August bank holiday 2020. This is dragging on interminably while the UK government stands there and pisses ~£500,000,000,000 down the toilet. By Christmas I assume it'll be £600,000,000,000.
    If you read it, there is an expectation of roll out to the front line sooner that next spring. There will be issues with the scale up.
  • In everyday life, we're used to a sliding scaling of risk, and corresponding sliding scale of precautions to manage those risks (though there's evidence people actually make many mistakes e.g. consistently overrate small risks and expend disproportionate efforts to mitigate them; Spiegelhalter published a lot of interesting stuff on this years ago, for those interested). I think this explains the attractiveness of a "Covid Alert Level" or similar, where in the red-zone we apply one code of social conduct, in the amber-zone a less strenuous one and so on. In principle, we should be able to apply measures proportional to the situation. In practice, because Exponential Growth Is Bad and uncertainty is high, I doubt application will ever be very granular - foot lightly on brake versus slamming the pedal down seem likely to be the two main choices.

    Something Graham Medley has talked about is a kind of "R budgeting", whereby we find a set of restrictions we can live under that keep R at or below 1. Theoretically this sounds like a good way of producing a comprehensible code we can live by, and sounds like it should be sustainable in the long-run. But actually it would mean a bit of juggling in and out, his most famous suggestion being when schools returned after summer, some additional restriction like closing the pubs might be needed to balance things out. Winter means people spend more time indoors, so something else would have to change. Even if we had perfect knowledge of how social risks should balance, we shouldn't expect required regulations or social codes of conduct to be reassuringly stable. The darker cloud hanging over this is can we find a way of life that keeps R around or below 1 that is genuinely liveable, and psychologically and economically sustainable?

    Restrictions may not need to be so onerous with other interventions like better contact-tracing, control of potential super-spreading events, maybe technological improvements like fast tests for contagiousness ... but at present, at least based on the UK and to some extent wider European experience, we should at least admit the possibility that we're not going to be able to stay on top of this thing without a bout or two more of some nasty socio-economic medicine. We can't just copy-and-paste the rules and regs from Sweden, or whoever is poster boy du jour, because of differences in everything from commuting patterns to household sizes to frequency of hugs and kisses, so what's sustainable in one country might not work in another. (Will also be interesting to see what happens in the Swedish winter when people mix indoors more.) I'm not saying we can't learn anything from other countries' experience, but I wonder if we'd ever have enough information to be able to successfully "fine-tune" an R budget - which would likely be an experimental, incremental process with further confusing rule changes and U-turns required - and we certainly can't borrow another country's wholesale.

    It's worth noting that the R budget would gradually become more generous as the number of people who have had Covid slowly increased. This would at least give hope that there was light at the end of the tunnel.
  • I don't know if this has been shared here before, but it's glorious: https://monitoring.bbc.co.uk/product/c2021zw9

    Children's show on Belarus state TV 'trolls' Lukashenka

    An evening children's programme on the Belarus 3 state TV channel has broadcast what viewers have interpreted as a very thinly veiled mockery of embattled President Alyaksandr Lukashenka (Alexander Lukashenko).

    The Kalykhanka (Lullaby) evening programme, which has been telling Belarusian children bedtime stories and showing animated cartoons for nearly 40 years, carried an episode featuring the puppet Bear Topa proclaiming himself king over the other residents and eventually falling off his improvised throne.

    At the start of the six-minute skit, the crown-wearing Topa ousted cute little female puppet Yana the Fox from the studio's new chair, which he dubbed the throne, and declared: "Now I will be sitting on the throne and issuing orders."

    “I am the only one who is allowed to sit on it. See my crown?” he added.

    After the lively and cheerful Fairy (human actress) and Yana the Fox played some fun games with a balloon and went off to eat some fruitcake, the arrogant Topa got bored and hungry and demanded to be carried to the feast with his throne.

    The move eventually got him toppled and he went away while Yana the Fox made herself comfortable in the chair and the Fairy put on Topa's crown.

    The programme made no mention of politics or names, but one could easily make the connection to the recent inauguration of Lukashenka, which was conducted in secrecy and which many of his opponents sarcastically labelled "coronation" in the context of a disputed presidential election and continuing protests against vote-rigging.

    Some other hints about the political situation could also be discerned: Fairy and Fox playing with a balloon and "going for a walk" as Belarusian protesters often do. The Belarusian word "hulyats" meaning "play" used on the show can also be understood by bilingual Belarusians as the Russian word "walk" (gulyat).


    You can actually watch the full six minutes at https://charter97.org/en/news/2020/9/25/394481/ ... the "throne movement" starts just after five minutes, and looks very much like the presenter deliberately (or at least accidentally-on-purpose) tipping the king off the throne, in a move which I think is best described as "brave" (possibly in the yes-ministerial sense of the word).
  • williamglennwilliamglenn Posts: 47,789
    Carnyx said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    Carnyx said:

    An interesting thread header - many thanks.

    I was thinking back to earlier years - the 1980s - through BSE and Mr Gummer trying to feed his daughter burgers in public - to the later years of Mrs T and AIDS/HIV. I seem to remember her doing much better than the current lot on HIV after - I also STR - some false steps/delay because Gays were not approved of by the Tories and nice ladies didn't talk about practices that went on in the communal bathhouses of SF and the like. Perhaps it was her scientific training, but ISTR she got things together still more quickly on the ozone layer when the scientists warned her - for which she perhapos doesn't get enough credit.

    But one difference is that in those days there were only 4 TV channels and people bought and read newspapers as well. Public service messaging was surely simpler then. Though the reputed geniuses in the current lot should have been able to solve that conumdrum, they seem to spend far less emergy in dealing with coronavirus than they did with pushing to win the referendum in 2016. Or am I unfair?

    BSE was low risk, AIDS was as risky as you wanted it to be, this thing less so. Pleas for libertarianism are fantastic, but let's not ignore that the enemy of libertarianism here is not Boris Johnson, it is SARS-CoV-2. As with smoking and drinking: your problems are lung cancer and cirrhosis, not spoilsport doctors and nanny state politicians.
    TBF BSE was low risk only in hindsight - especially if, at the time, you had read about CJD, scrapie and kuru, as I had.
    It took a couple of decades for the signs of madness to become apparent.
  • Dura_AceDura_Ace Posts: 12,880
    TOPPING said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    Stocky said:

    Sandpit said:

    Always wear a condom!

    Not always, surely? When in Tescos?
    Perhaps à la Dave? A sure fire prophylactic against the Covid (& oxygen of course).



    Not that he'd be seen dead in Tescos.
    I think he was pretending to shop in a Tescos when he got his embarrassingly shit bike nicked.
    You will be pleased to hear that I have added a Specialized Globe (Sport) to my collection of Apollo Highway. Goes like the wind, corners like it's on rails, etc.

    Plus it's got a seat cover which surely adds cool-as-fuck points.
    A step in the right direction I suppose. Next get an S-Works Tarmac SL7 like Alaphillipe.
  • MrEdMrEd Posts: 5,578

    @MrEd FPT

    Thanks for your comment, Ed, and the nice compliment which I accept immodestly.

    It's people like you that help punters keep straight when overexuberence threatens our objectivity. Those that haven't much experience of the US probably need it more than most. My own experiences include a short spell living there, driving from coast to coast, and some fairly lengthy visits and holidays. Yes, I've been to Pennsylvania and fairly recently Upper New York State too, which has a similar demographic and political climate. (Away from the cities it is distinctly Republican.) For those who haven't visited, the excellent Oscar-winning film Manchester By The Sea captures beautifully the spirit the author of the excellent piece you quoted was trying to convey. I have numerous US friends, some fanatical Trump supporters. I get what they see in him, but since he is widely regarded as something of a figure of fun over here, it's good to be reminded from time to time.

    All the same, I can't help feeling it's close to a wrap now. Sure, you can extrapolate from some half decent polls such as the Nationals from Monmouth and Emerson a few days back, not to mention the positives from scratchier outfits like Rasmussen and Trafalgar. There are anecdotes and suppositions that can be thrown in too. Shy-Trumpers are particularly popular with those padding out an insubstantial case because, like fairies at the bottom of the garden, it is very difficult to prove they really don't exist.

    The overwhelming evidence now points clearly to a Biden win, quite possibly a big one. You'd be a fool to ignore it. Of course the disappointed voters of the neglected parts of PA and elsewhere will ache for a saviour and remain sceptical of Biden and his Party. They won't give up lightly on Trump or the GoP, but they too have disappointed and it appears they cannot call on the same levels of support that got Trump over the line (just) last time around.

    The models are showing the President should be 7/2, at least. They are largely fact-based. Time is running out for the Donald. Biden is a Punter's gift at 4/6. Sometimes things are as they seem to be.

    Please keep posting. Helps keep us all honest.

    Thank you Peter for your very kind words. I'm rushing out now but I will come back to your points later because there are one or two points I wanted to highlight.

    Thanks yesterday evening BTW to @Anabobazina for highlighting 538 as being more reliable than RCP
  • GadflyGadfly Posts: 1,191

    What's that coming over the hill, is it a vaccine, is it a vaccine...well no, not for ages.

    https://www.cbsnews.com/news/moderna-ceo-coronavirus-vaccine-wont-be-ready-until-spring-2021/

    Does 'spring' mean September 2021?
    My builder said he'd be along in spring. My mistake was not to clarify 'which' spring.

  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 61,575

    @MrEd FPT

    Thanks for your comment, Ed, and the nice compliment which I accept immodestly.

    It's people like you that help punters keep straight when overexuberence threatens our objectivity. Those that haven't much experience of the US probably need it more than most. My own experiences include a short spell living there, driving from coast to coast, and some fairly lengthy visits and holidays. Yes, I've been to Pennsylvania and fairly recently Upper New York State too, which has a similar demographic and political climate. (Away from the cities it is distinctly Republican.) For those who haven't visited, the excellent Oscar-winning film Manchester By The Sea captures beautifully the spirit the author of the excellent piece you quoted was trying to convey. I have numerous US friends, some fanatical Trump supporters. I get what they see in him, but since he is widely regarded as something of a figure of fun over here, it's good to be reminded from time to time.

    All the same, I can't help feeling it's close to a wrap now. Sure, you can extrapolate from some half decent polls such as the Nationals from Monmouth and Emerson a few days back, not to mention the positives from scratchier outfits like Rasmussen and Trafalgar. There are anecdotes and suppositions that can be thrown in too. Shy-Trumpers are particularly popular with those padding out an insubstantial case because, like fairies at the bottom of the garden, it is very difficult to prove they really don't exist.

    The overwhelming evidence now points clearly to a Biden win, quite possibly a big one. You'd be a fool to ignore it. Of course the disappointed voters of the neglected parts of PA and elsewhere will ache for a saviour and remain sceptical of Biden and his Party. They won't give up lightly on Trump or the GoP, but they too have disappointed and it appears they cannot call on the same levels of support that got Trump over the line (just) last time around.

    The models are showing the President should be 7/2, at least. They are largely fact-based. Time is running out for the Donald. Biden is a Punter's gift at 4/6. Sometimes things are as they seem to be.

    Please keep posting. Helps keep us all honest.

    Agreed.
    (However much I might argue with him.)
  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 76,274
    edited October 2020
    What's that coming over the hill, is it...another year at least of restrictions.

    Covid: Vaccine will 'not return life to normal in spring'

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-54371559
  • Casino_RoyaleCasino_Royale Posts: 55,019
    One of the best thread headers in a long time.
  • CyclefreeCyclefree Posts: 25,074
    Brilliant header. Made me laugh too.

    An endless death by attrition of our businesses is, to coin a phrase, simply an unviable strategy. Italy has, after an appalling start - and, perhaps, because of it - done well at balancing safety and the economy. Why can’t we learn from them?
  • CyclefreeCyclefree Posts: 25,074

    What's that coming over the hill, is it...another year at least of restrictions.

    Covid: Vaccine will 'not return life to normal in spring'

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-54371559

    Another year of restrictions is simply not viable. We have to learn to live with this just as our grand-parents managed to have a full life without the benefit of vaccines or antibiotics.
  • kle4kle4 Posts: 91,401

    OMG. Have the Liberals woken up finally and realised there supposed to be the party of liberty and have a bird of freedom as their logo?

    Hurrah!

    https://twitter.com/DPJHodges/status/1311633773214261248

    There are a stack of potential tory votes in this and opposing concreting over leafy England.
    The locals could be another bloodbath, even though for once I generally applaud attempting to sort out planning .
  • MaxPBMaxPB Posts: 37,603
    Excellent thread, Alastair. Very much agree that the strategy and communication about the virus has been complete rubbish. Unfortunately it doesn't seem as though that's going to change, Labour wimped out yesterday and abstained on continuing resolution for the virus measures which means parliamentary oversight is still at the gift of the executive which has made so many poor decisions in all of this.
  • kle4kle4 Posts: 91,401

    What's that coming over the hill, is it...another year at least of restrictions.

    Covid: Vaccine will 'not return life to normal in spring'

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-54371559

    A vaccine won't but we all may have to. Life doesn't just stop in pandemic or war, even when it is very disrupted, so its a matter of the level of disruption that is appropriate.
  • turbotubbsturbotubbs Posts: 14,883

    What's that coming over the hill, is it...another year at least of restrictions.

    Covid: Vaccine will 'not return life to normal in spring'

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-54371559

    Absolutely. There is a danger that the most at risk, the elderly, may not get much benefit from the vaccine, in the same way that they are more prey to its depredations. However if a vaccine adds another tool to reduce the R significantly (the old herd immunity), then the prevalence will diminish and we can get back on the Government's sliding scale (which I think they thought would only go one way...).
  • IshmaelZIshmaelZ Posts: 21,830

    What's that coming over the hill, is it...another year at least of restrictions.

    Covid: Vaccine will 'not return life to normal in spring'

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-54371559

    Vaccine will take longer to come than forecast, longer to roll out than forecast, have lower uptake than forecast, have at least one unexpected side effect scare, require annual renewal AND will only make you safer, not safe. It would be regarded as a successful vaccine if it only conferred as much extra safety as masks, or hand washing.

    Apart from all that it's the holy grail.
  • In everyday life, we're used to a sliding scaling of risk, and corresponding sliding scale of precautions to manage those risks (though there's evidence people actually make many mistakes e.g. consistently overrate small risks and expend disproportionate efforts to mitigate them; Spiegelhalter published a lot of interesting stuff on this years ago, for those interested). I think this explains the attractiveness of a "Covid Alert Level" or similar, where in the red-zone we apply one code of social conduct, in the amber-zone a less strenuous one and so on. In principle, we should be able to apply measures proportional to the situation. In practice, because Exponential Growth Is Bad and uncertainty is high, I doubt application will ever be very granular - foot lightly on brake versus slamming the pedal down seem likely to be the two main choices.

    Something Graham Medley has talked about is a kind of "R budgeting", whereby we find a set of restrictions we can live under that keep R at or below 1. Theoretically this sounds like a good way of producing a comprehensible code we can live by, and sounds like it should be sustainable in the long-run. But actually it would mean a bit of juggling in and out, his most famous suggestion being when schools returned after summer, some additional restriction like closing the pubs might be needed to balance things out. Winter means people spend more time indoors, so something else would have to change. Even if we had perfect knowledge of how social risks should balance, we shouldn't expect required regulations or social codes of conduct to be reassuringly stable. The darker cloud hanging over this is can we find a way of life that keeps R around or below 1 that is genuinely liveable, and psychologically and economically sustainable?

    Restrictions may not need to be so onerous with other interventions like better contact-tracing, control of potential super-spreading events, maybe technological improvements like fast tests for contagiousness ... but at present, at least based on the UK and to some extent wider European experience, we should at least admit the possibility that we're not going to be able to stay on top of this thing without a bout or two more of some nasty socio-economic medicine. We can't just copy-and-paste the rules and regs from Sweden, or whoever is poster boy du jour, because of differences in everything from commuting patterns to household sizes to frequency of hugs and kisses, so what's sustainable in one country might not work in another. (Will also be interesting to see what happens in the Swedish winter when people mix indoors more.) I'm not saying we can't learn anything from other countries' experience, but I wonder if we'd ever have enough information to be able to successfully "fine-tune" an R budget - which would likely be an experimental, incremental process with further confusing rule changes and U-turns required - and we certainly can't borrow another country's wholesale.

    It's worth noting that the R budget would gradually become more generous as the number of people who have had Covid slowly increased. This would at least give hope that there was light at the end of the tunnel.
    Actually it's not obvious that that's true, or at least, true enough to be useful. If R-budgeting were implemented successfully for long-term control, then we'd be getting a relative trickle (not negligible, I grant) of new cases. Over a timescale of years (though fingers crossed for vaccinations to be available well before that point) this would make a substantial difference, but over a timescale of months, such an effect might well be "lost in the noise" - the precision within which we are able to manage the R-budget may simply not be capable of fine-tuning for an effect this size.

    You would also need to offset this against any immune-waning among the previously infected (a bit of an unknown at present) and the (very small on short timescales, but relevant over years) process of births and deaths gradually causing "replenishment of susceptibles" (this phenomenon whereby immune individuals die and are replaced by susceptible children drives the long-term periodicity of epidemics for several infectious diseases).

    It's also likely that adherence to rules will decline over time (something the behavioural scientists warned about early on) and if this outpaced the rate it was becoming safe to loosen up, you could even have a situation in which greater immunity means the R-budget could theoretically afford more generosity, but reduced adherence to the rules means that they're getting tightened up.
  • PulpstarPulpstar Posts: 75,842

    What's that coming over the hill, is it a vaccine, is it a vaccine...well no, not for ages.

    https://www.cbsnews.com/news/moderna-ceo-coronavirus-vaccine-wont-be-ready-until-spring-2021/

    Next year isn't 'ages'. All and sundry seem to have had their timescale expectations set way too short. Approval back end of this year, manufacture and roll out next for the first vaccines.
    Failure of a trial would be a disappointment but it's actually all gone a little quicker than I expected.
  • OldKingColeOldKingCole Posts: 31,718
    I was trying to remember what all those young people newly at Uni might be getting up to in lockdown.
  • Beibheirli_CBeibheirli_C Posts: 7,981
    Cyclefree said:

    Brilliant header. Made me laugh too.

    An endless death by attrition of our businesses is, to coin a phrase, simply an unviable strategy. Italy has, after an appalling start - and, perhaps, because of it - done well at balancing safety and the economy. Why can’t we learn from them?

    Because the Italians are not world-beating. The UK is.

    (Cue the National Anthem and pictures of crowds waving Union Flags)

    Or it could be that we just have a bunch of talentless jerks in charge who listen to few and fail to understand those that they do listen to.

    Or maybe they just do not give a f***? With all the unaccountability going on, I wonder how many are feathering their nests and packing their bank accounts?

    Whatever the reason, it is not good for UK plc and the average person in the street.
  • OmniumOmnium Posts: 9,688
    The meek may not inherit the Earth, but the Meeks will wear you down.

    Boris is hardly likely to be outlawing sex.

    Sometimes government is sensible and the people are stupid. When AIDs struck there was a rise in conventional venereal disease incidence in the UK.
  • PulpstarPulpstar Posts: 75,842

    What's that coming over the hill, is it...another year at least of restrictions.

    Covid: Vaccine will 'not return life to normal in spring'

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-54371559

    Absolutely. There is a danger that the most at risk, the elderly, may not get much benefit from the vaccine, in the same way that they are more prey to its depredations. However if a vaccine adds another tool to reduce the R significantly (the old herd immunity), then the prevalence will diminish and we can get back on the Government's sliding scale (which I think they thought would only go one way...).
    Those most out and about will likely get protection from a vaccine, I'm back off out to enjoy live music etc when I've had a shot at any rate.
  • OmniumOmnium Posts: 9,688

    Cyclefree said:

    Brilliant header. Made me laugh too.

    An endless death by attrition of our businesses is, to coin a phrase, simply an unviable strategy. Italy has, after an appalling start - and, perhaps, because of it - done well at balancing safety and the economy. Why can’t we learn from them?

    Because the Italians are not world-beating. The UK is.

    (Cue the National Anthem and pictures of crowds waving Union Flags)

    Or it could be that we just have a bunch of talentless jerks in charge who listen to few and fail to understand those that they do listen to.

    Or maybe they just do not give a f***? With all the unaccountability going on, I wonder how many are feathering their nests and packing their bank accounts?

    Whatever the reason, it is not good for UK plc and the average person in the street.
    You just like their food.
  • IshmaelZIshmaelZ Posts: 21,830
    Pulpstar said:

    What's that coming over the hill, is it a vaccine, is it a vaccine...well no, not for ages.

    https://www.cbsnews.com/news/moderna-ceo-coronavirus-vaccine-wont-be-ready-until-spring-2021/

    Next year isn't 'ages'. All and sundry seem to have had their timescale expectations set way too short. Approval back end of this year, manufacture and roll out next for the first vaccines.
    Failure of a trial would be a disappointment but it's actually all gone a little quicker than I expected.
    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-52329659

    "Scientists at the University of Oxford say they should have at least a million doses of a coronavirus vaccine by September this year."

    Sarah Gilbert/Adrian Hill, 17 April 2020

    So, expectations explicitly set by those best placed to set them. Some sort of vaccine will come along eventually, but we can't go further than that.
  • Cyclefree said:

    What's that coming over the hill, is it...another year at least of restrictions.

    Covid: Vaccine will 'not return life to normal in spring'

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-54371559

    Another year of restrictions is simply not viable. We have to learn to live with this just as our grand-parents managed to have a full life without the benefit of vaccines or antibiotics.
    It's not a binary thing though, is it? At one extreme you have draconian restrictions resulting in loss of liberty and economic hardship but a low death rate (at least from the virus). At the other you have zero restrictions resulting in hospital overload and pensioners dying in droves.

    I'd say the way forward is to implement and properly enforce restrictions that are the least detrimental to our freedom and economy while still keeping the death rate in check. This will obviously cause hardship to some, so the second priority is to determine how best to alleviate this hardship until we eventually reach herd immunity / develop a vaccine.
  • Beibheirli_CBeibheirli_C Posts: 7,981
    Omnium said:

    Cyclefree said:

    Brilliant header. Made me laugh too.

    An endless death by attrition of our businesses is, to coin a phrase, simply an unviable strategy. Italy has, after an appalling start - and, perhaps, because of it - done well at balancing safety and the economy. Why can’t we learn from them?

    Because the Italians are not world-beating. The UK is.

    (Cue the National Anthem and pictures of crowds waving Union Flags)

    Or it could be that we just have a bunch of talentless jerks in charge who listen to few and fail to understand those that they do listen to.

    Or maybe they just do not give a f***? With all the unaccountability going on, I wonder how many are feathering their nests and packing their bank accounts?

    Whatever the reason, it is not good for UK plc and the average person in the street.
    You just like their food.
    Actually, I do not. I loathe cheese and I am fairly ambivalent on pasta.

    Asian food, OTOH ..... :D:D
  • AnabobazinaAnabobazina Posts: 19,618
    Pulpstar said:

    What's that coming over the hill, is it a vaccine, is it a vaccine...well no, not for ages.

    https://www.cbsnews.com/news/moderna-ceo-coronavirus-vaccine-wont-be-ready-until-spring-2021/

    Next year isn't 'ages'. All and sundry seem to have had their timescale expectations set way too short. Approval back end of this year, manufacture and roll out next for the first vaccines.
    Failure of a trial would be a disappointment but it's actually all gone a little quicker than I expected.
    That was my reading too.

    Indeed the article Francis posted talks about emergency approval next month.
  • PulpstarPulpstar Posts: 75,842
    IshmaelZ said:

    Pulpstar said:

    What's that coming over the hill, is it a vaccine, is it a vaccine...well no, not for ages.

    https://www.cbsnews.com/news/moderna-ceo-coronavirus-vaccine-wont-be-ready-until-spring-2021/

    Next year isn't 'ages'. All and sundry seem to have had their timescale expectations set way too short. Approval back end of this year, manufacture and roll out next for the first vaccines.
    Failure of a trial would be a disappointment but it's actually all gone a little quicker than I expected.
    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-52329659

    "Scientists at the University of Oxford say they should have at least a million doses of a coronavirus vaccine by September this year."

    Sarah Gilbert/Adrian Hill, 17 April 2020

    So, expectations explicitly set by those best placed to set them. Some sort of vaccine will come along eventually, but we can't go further than that.
    I wonder how much of the Oxford vaccine has actually been produced. It'd have to be over 60,000 for the 3 (USA paused) trials ongoing.
  • OmniumOmnium Posts: 9,688
    Not so sure the dog would vote Biden.
  • Something relevant both to the critique of inconsistent rules in the header, and my reply to @FeersumEnjineeya ...

    An interesting dynamic with the creation and enforcement of rules, and a source of many of the present inconsistencies, is just how strong a leverage the government has over different parts of society. While there are economic reasons for keeping hospitality venues open, they're also more pliable (easy to inspect for compliance, head hovering vulnerably over the licensing chopping block if they break the rules) compared to people meeting for a drink or meal in each other's homes. "My neighbour and I can be in the same pub but not the same living room, it doesn't make sense" is a fair complaint to some extent, but makes more sense when viewed through the lens of these dynamics.

    If general social compliance falls, the government is likely to start tightening the vice disproportionately on those organisations it has greater leverage over. Similarly, if there's a notable upsurge in cases and the government has been advised it needs to score a "quick hit" against COVID, the most tempting target is whoever's it's got by the balls and can basically "flip a switch" to make them comply. I'm not saying it was a great move (plenty of unintended consequences) but its obvious from how widescale and instant the pub closure time changes took effect, why there was a temptation to target them.

    Ideas like the "rule of six" are closer to the general code for living that the header would like to see, but for many reasons (compliance, confusion, messaging, time to bed in) aren't so amenable to these kind of changes.
  • In everyday life, we're used to a sliding scaling of risk, and corresponding sliding scale of precautions to manage those risks (though there's evidence people actually make many mistakes e.g. consistently overrate small risks and expend disproportionate efforts to mitigate them; Spiegelhalter published a lot of interesting stuff on this years ago, for those interested). I think this explains the attractiveness of a "Covid Alert Level" or similar, where in the red-zone we apply one code of social conduct, in the amber-zone a less strenuous one and so on. In principle, we should be able to apply measures proportional to the situation. In practice, because Exponential Growth Is Bad and uncertainty is high, I doubt application will ever be very granular - foot lightly on brake versus slamming the pedal down seem likely to be the two main choices.

    Something Graham Medley has talked about is a kind of "R budgeting", whereby we find a set of restrictions we can live under that keep R at or below 1. Theoretically this sounds like a good way of producing a comprehensible code we can live by, and sounds like it should be sustainable in the long-run. But actually it would mean a bit of juggling in and out, his most famous suggestion being when schools returned after summer, some additional restriction like closing the pubs might be needed to balance things out. Winter means people spend more time indoors, so something else would have to change. Even if we had perfect knowledge of how social risks should balance, we shouldn't expect required regulations or social codes of conduct to be reassuringly stable. The darker cloud hanging over this is can we find a way of life that keeps R around or below 1 that is genuinely liveable, and psychologically and economically sustainable?

    Restrictions may not need to be so onerous with other interventions like better contact-tracing, control of potential super-spreading events, maybe technological improvements like fast tests for contagiousness ... but at present, at least based on the UK and to some extent wider European experience, we should at least admit the possibility that we're not going to be able to stay on top of this thing without a bout or two more of some nasty socio-economic medicine. We can't just copy-and-paste the rules and regs from Sweden, or whoever is poster boy du jour, because of differences in everything from commuting patterns to household sizes to frequency of hugs and kisses, so what's sustainable in one country might not work in another. (Will also be interesting to see what happens in the Swedish winter when people mix indoors more.) I'm not saying we can't learn anything from other countries' experience, but I wonder if we'd ever have enough information to be able to successfully "fine-tune" an R budget - which would likely be an experimental, incremental process with further confusing rule changes and U-turns required - and we certainly can't borrow another country's wholesale.

    It's worth noting that the R budget would gradually become more generous as the number of people who have had Covid slowly increased. This would at least give hope that there was light at the end of the tunnel.
    Actually it's not obvious that that's true, or at least, true enough to be useful. If R-budgeting were implemented successfully for long-term control, then we'd be getting a relative trickle (not negligible, I grant) of new cases. Over a timescale of years (though fingers crossed for vaccinations to be available well before that point) this would make a substantial difference, but over a timescale of months, such an effect might well be "lost in the noise" - the precision within which we are able to manage the R-budget may simply not be capable of fine-tuning for an effect this size.

    You would also need to offset this against any immune-waning among the previously infected (a bit of an unknown at present) and the (very small on short timescales, but relevant over years) process of births and deaths gradually causing "replenishment of susceptibles" (this phenomenon whereby immune individuals die and are replaced by susceptible children drives the long-term periodicity of epidemics for several infectious diseases).

    It's also likely that adherence to rules will decline over time (something the behavioural scientists warned about early on) and if this outpaced the rate it was becoming safe to loosen up, you could even have a situation in which greater immunity means the R-budget could theoretically afford more generosity, but reduced adherence to the rules means that they're getting tightened up.
    Fair comment.
  • IshmaelZIshmaelZ Posts: 21,830
    Cyclefree said:

    What's that coming over the hill, is it...another year at least of restrictions.

    Covid: Vaccine will 'not return life to normal in spring'

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-54371559

    Another year of restrictions is simply not viable. We have to learn to live with this just as our grand-parents managed to have a full life without the benefit of vaccines or antibiotics.
    Those of our grandparents who dodged polio, diphtheria, TB and blood poisoning long enough to become grandparents, that is.
  • not_on_firenot_on_fire Posts: 4,340
    Biden up to 80% on FiveThirtyEight
  • IshmaelZ said:

    Cyclefree said:

    What's that coming over the hill, is it...another year at least of restrictions.

    Covid: Vaccine will 'not return life to normal in spring'

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-54371559

    Another year of restrictions is simply not viable. We have to learn to live with this just as our grand-parents managed to have a full life without the benefit of vaccines or antibiotics.
    Those of our grandparents who dodged polio, diphtheria, TB and blood poisoning long enough to become grandparents, that is.
    Indeed. Living with it often meant dying of it!
  • OnboardG1OnboardG1 Posts: 1,272
    Cyclefree said:

    What's that coming over the hill, is it...another year at least of restrictions.

    Covid: Vaccine will 'not return life to normal in spring'

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-54371559

    Another year of restrictions is simply not viable. We have to learn to live with this just as our grand-parents managed to have a full life without the benefit of vaccines or antibiotics.
    I get your point, but this situation isn't quite comparable to the 1940s. People didn't live much beyond sixty then. Thanks to medical advances we have a large population of old people over 80 that this virus kills at a rate of one in six. I grumble a lot about the older generation but I have no desire to see that many of them sent prematurely through the pearly gates. This virus is also pretty nasty because unlike flu it's much more systemic and seems to have a 10-20% chance in almost every age group of causing medium to long-term disability, which society ends up paying for anyway.

    That said I think there's a reasonable balance to be reached. In Scotland we were down to single-figure infections a day before the schools went back and long after pubs were open. I don't think schools going back was the direct cause of increases by the way, I think that was because of more people going back into work when they could have been working from home, as well as some laxity in basic measures like masking and hygeine (I went into B&Q today and about 40% of the staff were doing the "nose out" style of mask wearing). Right now we're having a headache because of people mixing too much in people's houses which they weren't doing so much when the weather was warmer. We're also seeing the effect of students going back, which was a silly decision. I think we might need to accept that we aren't going to be having house parties or barbeques for the forseeable future and nightclubs are fucked (and should be given extended furlough and government support). Universities will need to be mostly or entirely online and the students should just be allowed to study from home if they want to. That way you can clear out most residences and only have them at 50% capacity for people who can't study from home for whatever reason. Pubs and particularly restaurants seem to be able to operate safely, provided they follow the hygeine rules (which should be as rigorously enforced as any other hygeine regime). The Italians and Germans seem to have done this more intelligently than we have, which is to have slowly eased restrictions one at a time while beefing up their testing. We did far too much at once frankly and now we're paying for it by having to roll things back. At least we have better data this time for what risk factors are involved in transmission. I was unhappy at the B&Q with the stupid staff, but that setting is unlikely to be conducive to spread because almost everyone apart from the mouthbreathers were masked and people only had fleeting interaction with others.
  • not_on_firenot_on_fire Posts: 4,340
    Cyclefree said:

    What's that coming over the hill, is it...another year at least of restrictions.

    Covid: Vaccine will 'not return life to normal in spring'

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-54371559

    Another year of restrictions is simply not viable. We have to learn to live with this just as our grand-parents managed to have a full life without the benefit of vaccines or antibiotics.
    Umm, selection bias? Those who didn't die of disease had a full life...
  • isamisam Posts: 40,731

    OMG. Have the Liberals woken up finally and realised there supposed to be the party of liberty and have a bird of freedom as their logo?

    Hurrah!

    https://twitter.com/DPJHodges/status/1311633773214261248

    I noticed the Lib Dems have been the only voice of opposition to the govt in Westminster (Saying you'd do the same but better doesn't count) a couple of weeks back. Good on them
  • turbotubbsturbotubbs Posts: 14,883
    IshmaelZ said:

    Pulpstar said:

    What's that coming over the hill, is it a vaccine, is it a vaccine...well no, not for ages.

    https://www.cbsnews.com/news/moderna-ceo-coronavirus-vaccine-wont-be-ready-until-spring-2021/

    Next year isn't 'ages'. All and sundry seem to have had their timescale expectations set way too short. Approval back end of this year, manufacture and roll out next for the first vaccines.
    Failure of a trial would be a disappointment but it's actually all gone a little quicker than I expected.
    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-52329659

    "Scientists at the University of Oxford say they should have at least a million doses of a coronavirus vaccine by September this year."

    Sarah Gilbert/Adrian Hill, 17 April 2020

    So, expectations explicitly set by those best placed to set them. Some sort of vaccine will come along eventually, but we can't go further than that.
    TBF they have administered many many doses of the vaccine in the clinical trials. That quote does not say they will have a million doses for the general public.
  • GrandioseGrandiose Posts: 2,323

    Biden up to 80% on FiveThirtyEight

    Having been too pessimistic for Biden I'd say that was approximately correct.
This discussion has been closed.