Mr. Owls, sorry for the slow response, was elsewhere.
Some good news was provided right beforehand: the system working swiftly and efficiently. Such news is a footnote if it's reported at all, whereas any bad news dominates.
It's similar to the way there'll never be a headline "Caring social worker does really great job." Except when it comes to the pandemic journalists reporting in partial ways that give a misleading picture can actively increase the difficulty the public faces (the most obvious potential example being increasing worry leading to unnecessary panic buying that then causes a genuine shortfall in supermarket shelves).
Anyway, I am off. Hope you all have a good weekend.
Employees who work for UK firms forced to shut by law because of coronavirus restrictions will get two-thirds of their wages paid for by the government.
The magic money forest is getting another seeing to.
Plus upto £3,000 per month grant to businesses asked to close
There is no way this is going to be a fortnights closure.
Five million unemployed by Christmas. Minimum.
I doubt it. Furloughed but not unemployed.
LOL. If you think all these businesses can keep limping along indefinitely on Government life support then I have a garden bridge to sell you.
These lockdowns tend to follow a pattern. Outbreak occurs, testing squads descend, more disease found, restrictions applied, more testing, more disease, restrictions tightened again, etc., etc. To borrow a term I read elsewhere, it becomes Hotel California lockdown - you get into it, you never leave.
If - when - the hospitality trade in the whole of Northern England finds it has no date for reopening but it's unlikely to be before May 2021, then it just rolls over and dies. End of story.
Likewise Scotland, Wales, Ulster, central London. Fucked. The entire tourist industry: shagged.
There is a danger that we will tip into an economic death spiral, as bankruptcy causes defaults which causes more bankruptcy which.....
The Extreme Worst Case Scenario.
And even as I write this, cold, torrential, apocalyptic rain has just started falling on north London
Lovely sunny autumn day here in SE Scotland. You were saying about the superiority of the London climate? (Much overrated IMO - hot, sweaty, and going to get much worse in future summers, with near-perennial drought added.)
lol. Right now in Glasgow it is 9 degrees - 9 - and raining. With a realfeel of..... 3
If Trump is doing so much worse with women, seniors and independents as multiple sources of data seem to indicate, then this is not going to be close at all. Watch out for MO and Alaska at this rate.
I have a highly speculative, just for fun bet on Alaska.
Of course if it come of I will loudly trumpet my genius and if it fails I have already established it doesn't count.
Employees who work for UK firms forced to shut by law because of coronavirus restrictions will get two-thirds of their wages paid for by the government.
Will the last person with a job not paid for by the state please remember to turn the lights off....and we used to laugh that if Corbyn got in he would nationalize everything.
I am semi seriously considering this. Just get out of Britain. Fly to Cuba. Stay there six months. The food is shite but the ladies are lithe. If we're all going to hell, why not do it somewhere nice and sunny and warm.
A relative is considering Belorussia in the spring.
They may have the last European dictator, but there are no covid restrictions. So.....who is the freer, really?
Employees who work for UK firms forced to shut by law because of coronavirus restrictions will get two-thirds of their wages paid for by the government.
The magic money forest is getting another seeing to.
Plus upto £3,000 per month grant to businesses asked to close
There is no way this is going to be a fortnights closure.
Five million unemployed by Christmas. Minimum.
I doubt it. Furloughed but not unemployed.
LOL. If you think all these businesses can keep limping along indefinitely on Government life support then I have a garden bridge to sell you.
These lockdowns tend to follow a pattern. Outbreak occurs, testing squads descend, more disease found, restrictions applied, more testing, more disease, restrictions tightened again, etc., etc. To borrow a term I read elsewhere, it becomes Hotel California lockdown - you get into it, you never leave.
If - when - the hospitality trade in the whole of Northern England finds it has no date for reopening but it's unlikely to be before May 2021, then it just rolls over and dies. End of story.
Likewise Scotland, Wales, Ulster, central London. Fucked. The entire tourist industry: shagged.
There is a danger that we will tip into an economic death spiral, as bankruptcy causes defaults which causes more bankruptcy which.....
The Extreme Worst Case Scenario.
And even as I write this, cold, torrential, apocalyptic rain has just started falling on north London
Lovely sunny autumn day here in SE Scotland. You were saying about the superiority of the London climate? (Much overrated IMO - hot, sweaty, and going to get much worse in future summers, with near-perennial drought added.)
lol. Right now in Glasgow it is 9 degrees - 9 - and raining. With a realfeel of..... 3
Away from the UK, Sweden's minister for higher education has told students to "get a grip" after a series of outbreaks linked to universities.
"To the student parties - unfortunately there are far too many of you who are not taking responsibility and you have to get a grip now. We can't have universities becoming corona transmission clusters," Matilda Ernkrans told a news conference, according to The Local.
"If you go to a party and get infected, you put those close to you [at risk]. Your friends, your professor, the staff at your local supermarket, the person next to you in the library," she added.
"It is not acceptable that adults act in any other way than by taking responsibility."
Public Health Agency general-director Johan Carlson said that eight regions had been hit by outbreaks linked to universities since students returned to campus.
Employees who work for UK firms forced to shut by law because of coronavirus restrictions will get two-thirds of their wages paid for by the government.
The magic money forest is getting another seeing to.
Plus upto £3,000 per month grant to businesses asked to close
There is no way this is going to be a fortnights closure.
The fact it runs from 1st November for six months says it all really
That is the thing
Boris or Hancock will say 'two weeks' on Monday. It will be until April.
If you are a take away in a city centre that is deserted due to the lock down, but not forced to close, can they get the money ?
Absolutely no idea - but I suspect they won't get any help as they are not being 'told' to close.
Let's keep the pubs and restaurants open and get rid of the 10pm curfew at the same time -seems a better approach, helps the takeaways too.
Not sure Hancock will understand this obvious sensible move.
I was happy to keep using a town centre pizza place during lockdown. Driving in on a Saturday night was like entering the village of the damned. They did fine with takeaway business, co-operating with next door's taxi firm to use its drivers for additional delivery duties.
TBH now that pubs have reopened town still isn't remotely busy on a weekened night.
Will the last person with a job not paid for by the state please remember to turn the lights off....and we used to laugh that if Corbyn got in he would nationalize everything.
Johnson has gone further than Corbyn, in many respects.
The next move is repression of freedom of speech.
The government won;t want all those jobless people complaining about Great Declarations while they suffer.
Its extraordinary it really is. And supported all the way by the philip Thompsons of this world
Or 'useful idiots' as Matt Hancock likes to call them.
I am semi seriously considering this. Just get out of Britain. Fly to Cuba. Stay there six months. The food is shite but the ladies are lithe. If we're all going to hell, why not do it somewhere nice and sunny and warm.
A relative is considering Belorussia in the spring.
They may have the last European dictator, but there are no covid restrictions. So.....who is the freer, really?
Will the last person with a job not paid for by the state please remember to turn the lights off....and we used to laugh that if Corbyn got in he would nationalize everything.
I am surrounded in this small town/rural patch by: Hundreds of factory workers keeping busy supplying materials for food industries, farmers and loads of people in ancillary agricultural activities, white van men in droves, construction workers by the score, small law firms and accountants, retail....I could go on. It's not over yet.
Ferfuxsake, homeopaths, I knew the Great Barrington declaration was a load of bollocks.
A widely-circulated open letter calling on governments to pursue herd immunity is counting homeopaths, therapists and fake names among its "medical" signatories, leading to accusations that it falsely represents scientific support for the controversial position.
The Great Barrington Declaration, a letter organised by prominent advocates of herd immunity, claims to have been signed by more than 15,000 scientists and medical practitioners, as well as more than 150,000 members of the general public.
Yet Sky News found dozens of fake names on the list of medical signatories, which anyone can add to if they tick a box and enter a name. These included Dr. I.P. Freely, Dr. Person Fakename and Dr. Johnny Bananas, who listed himself as a "Dr of Hard Sums".
One medical professional on the list gives his name as Dr Harold Shipman, a general practitioner in the United Kingdom.
Other famous names included Dominic Cummings, who is described as "PhD Durham Univercity".
Sky News also found 18 self-declared homeopaths listed on the open letter as medical practitioners, despite the fact that homeopathy has no scientific underpinning or clinical evidence to support its use.
In addition, the letter has been signed by well over 100 therapists, including massage therapists, hypnotherapists, psychotherapists and one Mongolian Khöömii Singer who describes himself as a "therapeutic sound practitioner".
Public health experts accused the letter, which has been used as evidence for the idea of a rift in the scientific community, of misrepresenting the level of support for the controversial concept of herd immunity.
Professor Martin McKee, Professor of European Public Health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, said it reminded him of "the messaging used to undermine public health policies on harmful substances, such as tobacco".
It couldn't work, anyway. And even if it did, it wouldn't work.
Let's step through it:
In order to get any process from As-Is to To-Be, we need to understand what's involved at each step.
Step 1 - Unscrae looking to go up an entire league or three. But only for these particular people, and usually those promoting this coincidentally fall outside the category that would be locked up.
(How will they go to hospital if needed? Will we have separate "covid-dirty" and "covid-clean" hospitals, with the latter staffed by volunteers who will be also separated from all of society and their families?)
So - we're isolating somewhere between 16% and 22% of the population. For however long it takes.
Okay - let's not get too hung up on the plausibility of this. Say, for the sake of argument, that we've somehow pulled it off. We've achieved segregation. What then?
(1/3)
Step 2 - Build up herd immunity by infecting the less vulnerable. We have three routes here: "Let it rip", "De facto restrictions, "Legal restrictions." To be honest, we may well not have much choice between Route 1 and Route 2; the people themselves would make that choice. Let's explore all three.
"Let it rip".
Remove all restrictions and let it rip through the younger and less vulnerable. Say we're starting with about 16,000 infections per day. Realistically, people aren't going to go straight back to normal instantly - people tend to be cautious. Let's say we go back to an R-rate of about 2. Leading to a 5-day doubling time.
At D+5 we've got 32,000 infections per day. Even at lower vulnerability, we'll have about 800 hospitalisations per day and 100+ deaths per day associated (a week and 2-3 weeks lagged respectively). Some areas of the country will be overloading their hospital beds already. At D+10 it's 64,000 infections per day. 1600 hospitalisations per day and 200+ deaths per day. Some NHS hospitals are now turning away covid patients. At this point, I would expect the "de facto restrictions" to be kicking in. Let's assume they don't. At D+15, it's 128,000 infections per day. The fatality rate is jumping up, as many who need hospital help can now not get it. We'll be anywhere between 500 and 1000 deaths per day. At D+20, it's quarter of a million infections per day. 1000-2000 deaths per day. And by now, the plausibility of people NOT doing effective de facto restrictions has gone. We're less than a month in and starting to dig mass graves.
Okay, Route 2 - "De facto restrictions." This segues into Route 3, "legal restrictions," but with less control. We're going to assume we level out at a constant rate of infections. We need to keep it under NHS saturation (so the death rate doesn't spike) while being as fast as possible (so we get through it as soon as possible). Maybe 100,000 infections per day should be sustainable with extra funding to the NHS (so it ceases crowding out other treatments and operations). Maybe 2000-3000 hospitalisations per day MAY be sustainable; that'd be about the level when focused on the less vulnerable.
Forty million people divided by 100,000 per day gives us 400 days. One year and one month and a couple of days. That's a hell of a long time to lock those 11-14 million up under house arrest, and to sustain those thousands of hospitalisations per day.
("But they're less vulnerable!" Yes, "less vulnerable" does not equal "invulnerable." We've also got 7.5 million or so "moderately vulnerable" people exposed. We're past 20 million shielded if we shield those and the over 65s, and getting towards the point where 100% exposure of the rest still wouldn't hit herd immunity - and WAY beyond the point of utter implausibility on the level of people segregated and shielded)
(2/3)
And the pu (3/3)
Great posts. Really.
But what about trusting people? Trusting students and inveterate boozers not to go to hug their grannies after a night on the lash or even two weeks on the lash; trusting carers to comply with sensible precautions if they look after someone else's granny; trusting the NHS worker to ensure their children sanitise and are sensible outside their school/uni bubbles; trusting people to self-regulate if they believe they are vulnerable but to make informed choices if they want to hug their grandchildren; realising that some edge cases will not be solved.
And that there will be an ongoing Covid death rate.
And the golden thread through all of this or we are all just flying blind: test, test, test.
As that fringe organisation said in March.
Thank you; it's appreciated.
I'd love to think we could just have people carry out behavioural change off their own bat to minimise risks to others. But isn't that exactly what we've been trialling since the end of July? The ONS numbers and the hospitalisation numbers aren't helpful to that.
And it still doesn't do anything about the fact that we're almost at saturation with hospital beds in some areas of the country already, and a big increase in cases - even amongst the younger and less vulnerable (they're currently concentrated in the 16-24 age band according to the ONS survey) - will see a big increase in hospitalisations.
We're already crowding out non-covid cases in hospitals; the current level isn't really sustainable (at c. 20,000 infections per day). We need to sustain well over 100,000 per day to get herd immunity within a year from now. That's melt-down levels for the NHS for any more than brief surges.
Not to mention the lingering effects for way too many, and the expiration of immunity over time.
I think there would be routes to living with the virus, but that would involve rapid, easy, and ubiquitous testing - the route of surrendering to it and letting it in as widely as possible just doesn't add up.
Good posts Andy C. Don't agree with your entire analysis but it is better and more detailed than 90% of the stuff on, say, the BBC website, or in the broadsheets
One tale re testing. It is now pretty good in places. A close family member of mine needed a test last weekend. It was booked on Saturday evening, the test was done 10am next morning at a walk in centre, there was zero waiting time, the test took 15 minutes, the results were emailed within less than 24 hours: negative
It was really rather efficient.
Thanks, LadyG. Testing is the route to living with it, if we need to for a prolonged period. I think that results need to be available within an hour if possible (because that allows a lot more things to be possible) and even more widely available.
But from everything I've read on the vaccine effort, we WILL get a working and workable vaccine. By the end of next summer, we'll probably be able to pick and choose vaccines for ease of administration, availability, efficacy, and minimalisation of side effects.
Yes, absent good, globally available vaccines, the magic bullet is probably universal testing, with results returned in minutes. Basically: instant
Then you can be given your daily I AM CLEAN visa, and you are allowed to work, go to the pub, attend school or uni, keep the economy going,
It will be a bit shit for those who test positive, but then it is shit for everyone already
In which case the test needs to be a lick and stick. No way that the deep throat and nostril jobby is going to become a daily routine. I'd rather stay housebound than be doing that.
I'm meeting a man today who runs a medical testing company here in California. They are bringing a three minute antigen test to market.
Away from the UK, Sweden's minister for higher education has told students to "get a grip" after a series of outbreaks linked to universities.
"To the student parties - unfortunately there are far too many of you who are not taking responsibility and you have to get a grip now. We can't have universities becoming corona transmission clusters," Matilda Ernkrans told a news conference, according to The Local.
"If you go to a party and get infected, you put those close to you [at risk]. Your friends, your professor, the staff at your local supermarket, the person next to you in the library," she added.
"It is not acceptable that adults act in any other way than by taking responsibility."
Public Health Agency general-director Johan Carlson said that eight regions had been hit by outbreaks linked to universities since students returned to campus.
If Trump is doing so much worse with women, seniors and independents as multiple sources of data seem to indicate, then this is not going to be close at all. Watch out for MO and Alaska at this rate.
I have a highly speculative, just for fun bet on Alaska.
Of course if it come of I will loudly trumpet my genius and if it fails I have already established it doesn't count.
I'm on Alaska too. It's underpolled, and quirky.
Trump winning by 15 with the "Independent" beating the Republican by 5 would not make me blink.
I am semi seriously considering this. Just get out of Britain. Fly to Cuba. Stay there six months. The food is shite but the ladies are lithe. If we're all going to hell, why not do it somewhere nice and sunny and warm.
A relative is considering Belorussia in the spring.
They may have the last European dictator, but there are no covid restrictions. So.....who is the freer, really?
If Trump is doing so much worse with women, seniors and independents as multiple sources of data seem to indicate, then this is not going to be close at all. Watch out for MO and Alaska at this rate.
I have a highly speculative, just for fun bet on Alaska.
Of course if it come of I will loudly trumpet my genius and if it fails I have already established it doesn't count.
I'm on Alaska too. It's underpolled, and quirky.
Trump winning by 15 with the "Independent" beating the Republican by 5 would not make me blink.
Away from the UK, Sweden's minister for higher education has told students to "get a grip" after a series of outbreaks linked to universities.
"To the student parties - unfortunately there are far too many of you who are not taking responsibility and you have to get a grip now. We can't have universities becoming corona transmission clusters," Matilda Ernkrans told a news conference, according to The Local.
"If you go to a party and get infected, you put those close to you [at risk]. Your friends, your professor, the staff at your local supermarket, the person next to you in the library," she added.
"It is not acceptable that adults act in any other way than by taking responsibility."
Public Health Agency general-director Johan Carlson said that eight regions had been hit by outbreaks linked to universities since students returned to campus.
I am semi seriously considering this. Just get out of Britain. Fly to Cuba. Stay there six months. The food is shite but the ladies are lithe. If we're all going to hell, why not do it somewhere nice and sunny and warm.
A relative is considering Belorussia in the spring.
They may have the last European dictator, but there are no covid restrictions. So.....who is the freer, really?
We are.
Because we can vote to get rid of Johnson.
Looking forward to that day.
By the time you think you want to do something, you might find its already too late.
Employees who work for UK firms forced to shut by law because of coronavirus restrictions will get two-thirds of their wages paid for by the government.
The magic money forest is getting another seeing to.
Plus upto £3,000 per month grant to businesses asked to close
There is no way this is going to be a fortnights closure.
Five million unemployed by Christmas. Minimum.
I doubt it. Furloughed but not unemployed.
LOL. If you think all these businesses can keep limping along indefinitely on Government life support then I have a garden bridge to sell you.
These lockdowns tend to follow a pattern. Outbreak occurs, testing squads descend, more disease found, restrictions applied, more testing, more disease, restrictions tightened again, etc., etc. To borrow a term I read elsewhere, it becomes Hotel California lockdown - you get into it, you never leave.
If - when - the hospitality trade in the whole of Northern England finds it has no date for reopening but it's unlikely to be before May 2021, then it just rolls over and dies. End of story.
Actually I think for a lot of hospitality then so long as bills are paid with the support then being furloughed until next Spring (if that is when we can get back to a real normal) would be better than trying to stay afloat under the restricted "new normal" of the moment.
One problem little discussed with hospitality is how seasonal much of it is. For a lot of businesses the real money-making months are May to August, with Spring and Autumn OK and Winter is s**t except for Christmas. If we're not having Christmas Parties this year then Winter could be absolutely vile trading conditions this year.
If we're under restrictions then who on earth wants to sit outside in the north in January or February for a pint? Might be better not to trade than to do that.
With the right support then a sort of hibernation for hospitality over the winter coming out of it next Spring could see many entirely viable businesses and jobs saved.
The ambition must be to be back at a real normal, not some new normal, by the Spring.
Given that literally everyone I know with children at university has a tale of their children, their childrens' flatmates/housemates, or bubble mates testing positive I am not at all surprised at the stats.
But again, of all those dozens and dozens of people (because I'm hearing of bubbles, flats, housemates, yeargroups), none has been hospitalised although I appreciate it is more nuanced than that.
The great fear, of course, is that it starts to spread more rapidly from the student incubators into the general population and the death rate starts to rocket. All efforts need to be devoted into stopping this from happening.
This the only reason I think a circuit break might actually do anything productive.
A circuit break is in itself probably absolutely bloody useless. The only thing I can think of though is so long as the students remain where they are that this circuit break might potentially allow time for the virus to burn out amongst students without transferring from students to the wider community as much.
I doubt it though. I'm not optimistic that a circuit break will do anything other than put in restrictions that will end up being extended before the end of the fortnight.
We are still almost ten per cent short of where the economy was in February,
Now Sunak wants to put the patient back into a coma with borrowed money.
FFS wake up. We are oing to end up with an economy permanently 10/15 per cent smaller than it was, with far, far larger debt mountain to try to sustain.
It is not going to effing work. We are looking at a bloody catastrophe the like of which we have never seen. For a disease that prays on 82 year olds.
It's a relief to hear that only 82 year-olds are affected. I didn't know this. Open up everything now in that case.
Just come back from a walk to find this. On behalf of my fellow 82 year olds I think that everything possible should be done to prevent the spread of this disease. At least until next May, when I shall be 83, and safe!
That 82 year old stat is brilliant, because what it actually says is
Analysis by the Oxford experts at the CEBM was compiled from data provided by the Office for Nation Statistics (ONS).
It shows that the average age of people dying in England and Wales from Covid-19 is 82.4.
This is slightly higher than deaths caused by other illnesses, which has a median age of 81.5
I.e. that covid is unexceptional. So if you make it to 83 you aren’t just covid safe, you are immortal.
Not that I understand the stats. Most deaths are caused by illnesses, so this seems to imply that 50% of people live to be 82. Is that right?
If Trump is doing so much worse with women, seniors and independents as multiple sources of data seem to indicate, then this is not going to be close at all. Watch out for MO and Alaska at this rate.
I have a highly speculative, just for fun bet on Alaska.
Of course if it come of I will loudly trumpet my genius and if it fails I have already established it doesn't count.
I'm on Alaska too. It's underpolled, and quirky.
Me too!
I've seen Northern Exposure. They'll not have any more truck with Trump's malarky up there.
Employees who work for UK firms forced to shut by law because of coronavirus restrictions will get two-thirds of their wages paid for by the government.
The magic money forest is getting another seeing to.
Plus upto £3,000 per month grant to businesses asked to close
There is no way this is going to be a fortnights closure.
Five million unemployed by Christmas. Minimum.
I doubt it. Furloughed but not unemployed.
LOL. If you think all these businesses can keep limping along indefinitely on Government life support then I have a garden bridge to sell you.
These lockdowns tend to follow a pattern. Outbreak occurs, testing squads descend, more disease found, restrictions applied, more testing, more disease, restrictions tightened again, etc., etc. To borrow a term I read elsewhere, it becomes Hotel California lockdown - you get into it, you never leave.
If - when - the hospitality trade in the whole of Northern England finds it has no date for reopening but it's unlikely to be before May 2021, then it just rolls over and dies. End of story.
Yet there are miles more people in hospital that is not explained by more testing.
There's certainly a problem - my point is that the testing-lockdown doom loop means that, regardless of the scale of the medical emergency, the restrictions are going to carry on, and keep getting worse, indefinitely.
In point of fact, if you go back to what happened during the first peak in the Spring, I do wonder if what we're now seeing is simply that resuming with the cold, crap weather rather than any kind of second wave at all? Briefly: disease arrives in country, largely by means of Hooray Henry ski holidays, and batters the crap out of London after being seeded through it by commuters. It spreads everywhere else, but total lockdown is imposed before it can infiltrate thoroughly, and so the North and Scotland in particular get off relatively lightly. We then go into Summer, where the illness finds it difficult to spread, things open up and everyone can breathe. Come September, the schools come back and the weather goes to shit. The disease spreads out of control, but - crucially - is much, much worse in the places that didn't get hit hard the first time around.
One possible conclusion that can be drawn from all of this is that, in the snotty coldy part of the year, the disease is so infectious that we only have two options: lock the entire population up until Spring, or attempt risk segmentation and otherwise let things take their course, as Professor Gupta has suggested. The disease is going to take who it's going to take, and the only means we have to try to reduce that without bringing the entire nation to destitution is to lock up the vulnerable and let the disease pass through everybody else.
This, of course, has one other horrifying implication. Not only might the restrictions already imposed or being considered now be of little or no use, but the first lockdown itself may merely have delayed the inevitable for some parts of the country and that, therefore, the whole thing was the most colossal, catastrophic waste of money in British history.
Oh well, whatever. The argument about this will doubtless continue until the point at which the country can no longer afford the fuel to keep the power supply going and society collapses, at which point we'll all be too busy hunting each other for food to worry very much about whether SAGE ever had a bloody clue what it was going on about.
@malcolmg was right, I would be back but I think it's an important one
@kinabalu on the Trump odds, I think he will get more of a pounding in the polls in the next week or so, so I am looking for 5/2 or even 3/1 but I will take 2/1
I mentioned a few days back that one big thing to look out for was the audience numbers for the VP debate and whether they followed the same trends as the Presidential debate, which was down 13% from 2016. My point was that, if the VP trends did significantly better, it would suggests that the public was taking a lot more interest in the VP candidates as potential Presidents and therefore this was not just a Trump vs Biden race but would broaden to a greater focus on Pence and Harris as possible Presidents.
Well, the audience numbers have come in and the uplift from 2016 has been huge - so far, 59m have been counted as watching the VP debate, making it the 2nd most watched VP debate since 1976 and over 50% higher than the 2016 VP debate. It is even more remarkable when you consider that TV audiences have been declining across the board over the past several years and that the Presidential debate this time only generated a 70m audience.
My read on this is that punters are now only going to have to think about what voters are thinking about Trump and Biden, but put an important weighting to voters' views on Pence and Harris. My personal view - which many will disagree with - is that Pence is somewhat of a known entity, the interesting one will be how many undecideds will be comfortable with the prospect of a President Harris.
I agree that more people are paying attention to the VPs this time given the age/health of the 2 main players and that was reflected in higher viewing figures.
Where I disagree is that you seem to be assuming that this all works to the GOP's advantage whereas the only two national polls I've seen on the VP debate both had Harris ahead by some way, hugely so amongst women. Your evidence to the contrary seems to rest on a focus group run by Frank Luntz, a well known professional Republican strategist.
Do you have anything other than "gut feelings" to substantiate the idea that those watching preferred Pence?
There was one poll recently for a theoretical Pence-Harris matchup. It put them level in Florida and Harris up 6 nationwide.
On the face of it that's a lot better than the Trump-Biden polls.
However, at the moment (fingers crossed) Biden doesn't have the virus. Trump does. So the matchup that might count is Pence-Biden. But we don't know if Biden's vote is more an anti-Trump vote than Trump's is a personal pro-Trump vote.
Agreed. I was really talking about the 2 national polls on who won the VP debate. Mr Ed keeps asserting that Pence won it seemingly based on a focus group run by a Republican strategist
Now the government has half the economy on life support, the pressure on what's left of the tax base will increase exponentially.
And so of course, its going to start to fail.
The last great wealth store is the UK housing stock. We can expect those huge wealth taxes any day now.
To 'save the NHS' of course.
But Sunak would have to get that past an already-mutinous Tory party. It won't work.
Something has to give - I agree - but I am not sure it will be that.
Maybe they will just print money.
Indeed. The west is getting by because, in effect, we are all doing it. But that won't last forever. Some countries will make the decision to get on with their lives and their economies.
And sterling will collapse against those currencies.
Those countries could include America, if Trump wins.
Certainly if Trump were to win Arizona and Florida as new polls out today show he would then he would only need to win 1 of Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan on UNS to win the EC again and be re elected
Employees who work for UK firms forced to shut by law because of coronavirus restrictions will get two-thirds of their wages paid for by the government.
The magic money forest is getting another seeing to.
Plus upto £3,000 per month grant to businesses asked to close
There is no way this is going to be a fortnights closure.
Five million unemployed by Christmas. Minimum.
I doubt it. Furloughed but not unemployed.
LOL. If you think all these businesses can keep limping along indefinitely on Government life support then I have a garden bridge to sell you.
These lockdowns tend to follow a pattern. Outbreak occurs, testing squads descend, more disease found, restrictions applied, more testing, more disease, restrictions tightened again, etc., etc. To borrow a term I read elsewhere, it becomes Hotel California lockdown - you get into it, you never leave.
If - when - the hospitality trade in the whole of Northern England finds it has no date for reopening but it's unlikely to be before May 2021, then it just rolls over and dies. End of story.
Actually I think for a lot of hospitality then so long as bills are paid with the support then being furloughed until next Spring (if that is when we can get back to a real normal) would be better than trying to stay afloat under the restricted "new normal" of the moment.
One problem little discussed with hospitality is how seasonal much of it is. For a lot of businesses the real money-making months are May to August, with Spring and Autumn OK and Winter is s**t except for Christmas. If we're not having Christmas Parties this year then Winter could be absolutely vile trading conditions this year.
If we're under restrictions then who on earth wants to sit outside in the north in January or February for a pint? Might be better not to trade than to do that.
With the right support then a sort of hibernation for hospitality over the winter coming out of it next Spring could see many entirely viable businesses and jobs saved.
The ambition must be to be back at a real normal, not some new normal, by the Spring.
I tend to agree. The only thing is that I think Sunak is going to end up being forced to expand the scheme again because a couple of trends are going to happen:
1) People are going to reduce their social contact voluntarily as the cases rise. This is something that we've seen in most countries that have had a second wave so far. That means that hospitality will start hurting more over the next month. 2) As a result of local lockdowns, and the almost certain closing of hospitality in the north, there is going to be a group of hospitality venues that survive because of public support and a group that get nothing in lower lockdown areas and probably keel over.
The question you end up with is: "Why should a pub in london get no support when its customer base has collapsed because of COVID and a similar bar in Manchester gets seen through to March because it was in a local lockdown?". To me that screams "U Turn in November" and either all hospitality gets closed or the scheme gets extended out again.
NIESR also as pessimistic as my morning update, they also think we've hit the wall of easily recoverable GDP.
This is going to get very bad, the government isn't fit for purpose if they can't run the economy.
Ironically I think the disappointing figures make it easier to extend the furlough scheme.
That's not a good thing though. We should be in a position that furlough isn't necessary outside of a few industries that rely on close social contact like nightclubs and gigs or large events like conferences and exhibitions.
Certainly if Trump were to win Arizona and Florida as new polls out today show he would then he would only need to win 1 of Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan on UNS to win the EC again and be re elected
That would be the Trafalgar Group that forecast Trump would win Nevada by 5% last time.
He lost it by 2%.
They were right in Michigan and Pennsylvania though and this is Arizona not Nevada which Trump did win in 2016, Hillary won Nevada
Once again you're simply posting facts without any discussion on why they are relevent.
Trafalgar might have been right in Michigan and Penn, but they were wrong in Nevada which means they are not all-knowing and are clearly cannot be counted upon to be 100% accurate.
They may be right, but they may be wrong. 2016 does not give us a steer on that either way.
Its 'out of control' everywhere bar the Far East on that definition but as most of the West is out of full lockdown now the only way to get it fully 'back into control' is for lockdown 2 which would devastate our economies, so we just have to persist with track and trace, the full of 6 and facemasks and ensure they are properly enforced
NIESR also as pessimistic as my morning update, they also think we've hit the wall of easily recoverable GDP.
This is going to get very bad, the government isn't fit for purpose if they can't run the economy.
I tried to tell you that a V-shaped recovery was VERY unlikely, because a "2nd wave" was coming
It should have been, the government's absolutely rubbish policies are why we are where we are. Italy just posted industrial production of just -0.3% YoY while we're at -7% for the same measure. The difference is that Italy has had a coherent national economic policy and strategy coming out of an outbreak as bad as ours. It should be a wake up call to everyone involved when Italy is an example of good governance and the UK isn't.
NIESR also as pessimistic as my morning update, they also think we've hit the wall of easily recoverable GDP.
This is going to get very bad, the government isn't fit for purpose if they can't run the economy.
Ironically I think the disappointing figures make it easier to extend the furlough scheme.
That's not a good thing though. We should be in a position that furlough isn't necessary outside of a few industries that rely on close social contact like nightclubs and gigs or large events like conferences and exhibitions.
We are in that position. Its just our government is in complete thrall to a bunch of completely unelected doctors whose theories are being seriously challenged by some very eminent minds.
They are making decisions that will be with us for decades based on the say-so of these people. Like communists following Marx. It HAS to be right, it just HAS to.
NIESR also as pessimistic as my morning update, they also think we've hit the wall of easily recoverable GDP.
This is going to get very bad, the government isn't fit for purpose if they can't run the economy.
Ironically I think the disappointing figures make it easier to extend the furlough scheme.
That's not a good thing though. We should be in a position that furlough isn't necessary outside of a few industries that rely on close social contact like nightclubs and gigs or large events like conferences and exhibitions.
We should, but this morning's data probably shows we're not and we weren't even before cases started to rise.
Its worth remembering that a major chunk of the hospitality industries customers are the "vulnerable". It isn't as if pubs and restaurants are only frequented by the very young: student bars may be fine but many companies will be seeing their customers stay away because they're afraid and being told to shield.
Assuming we put aside Trafalgar's slightly... iffy reputation for polling (as ever, don't discount them, put them in the averages) it's more likely to be mean reversion. The polling has been very stable between 7-9 points for Biden this cycle. It wouldn't surprise me if that reverted back from the 10-11 points we're seeing at the moment.
Employees who work for UK firms forced to shut by law because of coronavirus restrictions will get two-thirds of their wages paid for by the government.
The magic money forest is getting another seeing to.
Plus upto £3,000 per month grant to businesses asked to close
There is no way this is going to be a fortnights closure.
Five million unemployed by Christmas. Minimum.
I doubt it. Furloughed but not unemployed.
LOL. If you think all these businesses can keep limping along indefinitely on Government life support then I have a garden bridge to sell you.
These lockdowns tend to follow a pattern. Outbreak occurs, testing squads descend, more disease found, restrictions applied, more testing, more disease, restrictions tightened again, etc., etc. To borrow a term I read elsewhere, it becomes Hotel California lockdown - you get into it, you never leave.
If - when - the hospitality trade in the whole of Northern England finds it has no date for reopening but it's unlikely to be before May 2021, then it just rolls over and dies. End of story.
Likewise Scotland, Wales, Ulster, central London. Fucked. The entire tourist industry: shagged.
There is a danger that we will tip into an economic death spiral, as bankruptcy causes defaults which causes more bankruptcy which.....
The Extreme Worst Case Scenario.
And even as I write this, cold, torrential, apocalyptic rain has just started falling on north London
Lovely sunny autumn day here in SE Scotland. You were saying about the superiority of the London climate? (Much overrated IMO - hot, sweaty, and going to get much worse in future summers, with near-perennial drought added.)
lol. Right now in Glasgow it is 9 degrees - 9 - and raining. With a realfeel of..... 3
I wish she would STFU. Maybe I'm too far away from the action, but I don't see how this helps Biden.
Anyone over state side who can enlighten us?
Not Stateside but I think I see the logic, although my initial reaction was the same as yours.
Under the pretext of prudent administration in the light of Covid19 they are flagging the possibility that the President may be doolally, which is smart politics.
Whether it works or not is another matter, but I think that's the play.
Perhaps. Then again, I'm looking at this as having one of two likely outcomes: the entire country goes to Hell in a handcart, with lockdown until Spring by which time we will all be destitute; or London - which got battered catastrophically by the first wave - and the rest of the South - which benefits from a predominance of decent housing stock and lower population densities - manages to muddle through without being shuttered, whereas the North is basically destroyed.
In that case we're back to the levels of resentment seen in bombed out pit communities after the Miners' Strike being extended right across that part of the country. Come the next election there may be no Tory MPs left anywhere North of Derby.
Assuming we put aside Trafalgar's slightly... iffy reputation for polling (as ever, don't discount them, put them in the averages) it's more likely to be mean reversion. The polling has been very stable between 7-9 points for Biden this cycle. It wouldn't surprise me if that reverted back from the 10-11 points we're seeing at the moment.
I hope you are right.
I am staying up on Election night but doubt if I could stay awake till January for the SCOTUS to do its thing for Trump
NIESR also as pessimistic as my morning update, they also think we've hit the wall of easily recoverable GDP.
This is going to get very bad, the government isn't fit for purpose if they can't run the economy.
I tried to tell you that a V-shaped recovery was VERY unlikely, because a "2nd wave" was coming
It should have been, the government's absolutely rubbish policies are why we are where we are. Italy just posted industrial production of just -0.3% YoY while we're at -7% for the same measure. The difference is that Italy has had a coherent national economic policy and strategy coming out of an outbreak as bad as ours. It should be a wake up call to everyone involved when Italy is an example of good governance and the UK isn't.
The government isn't fit for purpose.
I'm not particularly defending this government, they've made some terrible decisions, but the same can be said for quite a few western governments. As for GDP falls, I reckon they will end up much the same in most of western Europe - i.e. the UK, Spain, Italy, France will also suffer horrifically. We might end up marginally worse, or marginally better. Dunno.
Germany and Sweden will almost definitely do better than the rest.
Perhaps. Then again, I'm looking at this as having one of two likely outcomes: the entire country goes to Hell in a handcart, with lockdown until Spring by which time we will all be destitute; or London - which got battered catastrophically by the first wave - and the rest of the South - which benefits from a predominance of decent housing stock and lower population densities - manages to muddle through without being shuttered, whereas the North is basically destroyed.
In that case we're back to the levels of resentment seen in bombed out pit communities after the Miners' Strike being extended right across that part of the country. Come the next election there may be no Tory MPs left anywhere North of Derby.
It depends upon the generosity of the support available. If businesses are able to survive and people can stay in their jobs until Spring and then we get back to normal - and boy will we all be eager for many pints by next Spring if we can - then people could be relieved to have got through that.
The Bank of England will just need to keep the printing presses on for now.
What I'd do (obviously HMG version would need a bit more legalese):
Universities - put all onsite students, staff and contractors of named universities and student residrnces in sub-Greencore style external lockdown. You can still go on campus for both learning and on-campus gyms/sports (unless actually quarantined), but SU bar is closed. You cannot go to public bars or restaurants (except for takeaway), gyms, sports, cinemas etc. and cannot continue any indoors employment off campus. Go home for exceptional reasons only (such reasons are pretty much laid out already in local lockdowns), but isolate once away from university even if negative.
Applies to all uni-level institutions in NW ex-Cumbria & Cheshire, Yorks ex-Humber & Kirklees, NE, WMids Metro ex Wolves, Nottingham, Exeter. This would be a running list.
But to look at the distribution, university otherwise only cover 10-15% of all cases. Isolating them from wider communities is necessary but not sufficient. So:
Further lockdowns: Pub and restaurant regs as per Scotland (i.e. outside only, further reduced hours, safe standing around a table OK, and encourage appropriate outdoor spaces to be made available for licensees) for Liverpool, Kniowsley, St Helens, Burnley, Pendle, Bolton, Salford, Manchester, Bradford (city wards only), Leeds (city wards only), Sheffield, Nottingham, Newcastle, Gateshead, Middleborough, Durham City, Birmingham, Exeter - no forced closures yet. (NB, prep for a bracing outdoors winter of socialising is why I'm advocating staying on BST or maybe even Double Summer Time).
Probably a few spots to add to standard lockdown as well.
Good call from Starmer. It's important during this national crisis that Starmer doesn't create additional noise around the government's already confused messaging. But he'd be failing in his duty to hold them to account if he didn't point out their serial incompetence and try to help them correct their errors. The only real question is whether Labour would even want to inherit the smoking ruins of the economy in 2024.
Being in power is always better than not being in power. People said the same about winning in 2010, that maybe leaving Labour to clear up their mess was better than winning. It wasn't true then and it won't be in 2024.
And yet people still haven't forgiven the LDs for going into power when they had the chance.
Not quite. People haven't forgiven the LDs for picking a side, then going back on that, so nobody trusts them.
If you're in opposition you can get away with spendng decades saying to soft lefties "vote for us, we're not the Tories" and saying soft righties "vote for us, we're not Labour".
But in office they said to soft lefties "vote for us and we may align with the Tories" - and then by turning their back on what they'd done in office they said to soft righties "vote for us and we may align with Labour".
Ambiguity was a strength for them, now it is a weakness.
As I said, people haven't forgiven them for choosing to be in power. Nor have people understood the compromises required of a junior member of a coalition government.
I don't think it has much to do with 2010-2015. The LibDems were polling in the 20s less than 18 months ago. Instead, we are back to 2017: there are two entrenched blocks of voters in England and Wales right now, and they feed off each other. If you want to stop the Tories you choose Labour; and if you want to stop Labour you choose the Tories. I suspect that is the way it will remain for quite a while. And that spells big trouble for the LibDems.
I think it's difficult to set out your stall clearly on where you stand governing the country-wise if you are going through an 18-month leadership selection process. We have yet to hear how Sir Ed will position the LDs but I can forgive the electorate for thinking that the LDs haven't really cared about the world beyond the LDs for the past seeming age.
For understandable reasons, it's incredibly tough for anyone outside the government to get a hearing right now, Even Labour is struggling for regualr coverage beyond Starmer at PMQs. At some point that will change, so it could be that the LDs picked a good time to look internally. However, those two blocks look very entrenched to me. I think they will have to pick a side. They won't be able to play off both.
Starmer has had plenty of opportunity to get Labour's plan out there. Where is the Labour plan on rapid testing, the plan on increasing self isolation rates from 1 in 5 to something close to total, the plan on anything at all?
Blindly following government policy that has been proved to be a load of crap isn't good policy and Labour are still behind in the polls because of that. Starmer has a completely clear way to lay out what Labour would be doing differently and had a captive audience of the vast majority of people who think the country is heading in the wrong direction.
I disagree. Given where Labour were when he took over I think he has played it pretty well. I also think that Labour would have been getting a lot more airtime if we had not had the pandemic. By its nature it has been all consuming and because of that the government and its response is getting almost blanket coverage.
Not really, labour were 11 points behind at the election, now they are 3 points behind. That's against the most abject government we've had for many years. Labour have developed no alternative vision and keep sticking to siding with the government even though only 18% of people think the country is going in the right direction. The government is taking the nation down the wrong path and Labour are saying nothing about it.
Labour were as much as 26 points behind at the start of April. Again, I disagree that Labour is providing the government with unconditional support. But the fact that you have not noticed what it's been saying about issues like the furlough, cover for those not helped by the furlough, localised decision making on lockdowns, track and trace, etc - let alone issues beyond covid, such as selling UK farmers down the river, etc - makes my point for me.
No, the issue is that Labour have been saying nothing. The comparison to the 26 point lead is complete rubbish, it was never a real benchmark, just a rally round the flag effect of heading into a crisis. You're a Labour member, please outline Labour's alternative policy base vs what the government have been offering.
Labour are in opposition, they are not in government (except in Wales) they do not need an alternative Covid strategy.
I eagerly await Paul Davies' alternative strategy for Wales.
Starmer needs to because he needs to have a stock of ideas he can point to and say "I was right, Boris was wrong, vote for me". At the moment he just carps from the sidelines with the benefit of hindsight.
It is absolutely farcical because his stock of ideas don't even need to work, since they won't be tested unless they're adopted by the Government. He has a blank cheque to write whatever alternative proposals he wants to make, what has he got to lose? If the Government adopts the ideas he can say that he was leading the way first. If the Government adopts them and they fail he can blame Government implementation. If the Government doesn't adopt them he has an alternative to point to saying "you should be doing this".
Madness. All I can think is that Starmer is is afraid of putting anything out.
He seems terribly afraid to say anything which might allow him to be associated with any policy choice - as evidenced by the abstentions in Parliament. He doesn’t want to vote for anything that might turn out to be bad, and doesn’t want to vote against anything that might turn out to be good.
Yes. Starmer is beginning to look utterly pointless. Being less crazy than Crazy-F*ck Jezbollah Corbyn can only get you so far. And it has got Starmer this far. But as every passes and he seems entirely clueless as to what to do about the pandemiic, other than say Oh I wouldn't do it like that- strongly resembling the asinine Harry Enfield character - Starmer's "popularity" will fall away.
He looks bland, sounds blander, and has nothing to say.
People might take that as welcome relief, after suffering Bozo the clown for a good dose of time?
Well they might. There's not much recent form to support a dull LotO becoming PM though
Starmer: Not new leadership but NO leadership.
One of the reasons why LAB is only level not 60% clear of this useless government which is where they should be!
He has plenty of time, and thus an abundance of caution in his approach has little downside.
NIESR also as pessimistic as my morning update, they also think we've hit the wall of easily recoverable GDP.
This is going to get very bad, the government isn't fit for purpose if they can't run the economy.
I tried to tell you that a V-shaped recovery was VERY unlikely, because a "2nd wave" was coming
As with the Battle of Britain, the Spring Lockdown stopped a quick, ignominious defeat. Had the UK government not locked down when it did, I shudder to think of the consequences for society. That success came at considerable expense and as a dammed close-run thing. It bought time to get real weapons (i.e. proper test'n'trace) in place.
Unfortunately, Boris likes to party, and Rishi doesn't like the cost of the extended fight. So we did the equivalent of celebrating VE Day in 1940. As we're now seeing, that's not the best idea.
I wish she would STFU. Maybe I'm too far away from the action, but I don't see how this helps Biden.
Anyone over state side who can enlighten us?
Not good at all for him. Replaces the Vote Biden, quick clean heart attack, get Harris narrative with a more realistic vote Biden, vote for months or years of gradual deterioration and medical tribunals outlook. Doesn't apply to a second term Trump, because he'll be over covid if he isn't dead and Biden has an old and frail vibe which Trump doesn't.
That would be the Trafalgar Group that forecast Trump would win Nevada by 5% last time.
He lost it by 2%.
They were right in Michigan and Pennsylvania though and this is Arizona not Nevada which Trump did win in 2016, Hillary won Nevada
You're right this is Arizona, not Nevada, nor Michigan, nor Pennsylvania.
Arizona does border Nevada though, not Michigan or Pennsylvania.
And I recall RCS mentioning only last week about his family's drive through rural Arizona where it was wall to wall Trump-Pence posters until you got to New Mexico where there were more Biden-Harris posters
What I'd do (obviously HMG version would need a bit more legalese):
Universities - put all onsite students, staff and contractors of named universities and student residrnces in sub-Greencore style external lockdown. You can still go on campus for both learning and on-campus gyms/sports (unless actually quarantined), but SU bar is closed. You cannot go to public bars or restaurants (except for takeaway), gyms, sports, cinemas etc. and cannot continue any indoors employment off campus. Go home for exceptional reasons only (such reasons are pretty much laid out already in local lockdowns), but isolate once away from university even if negative.
Applies to all uni-level institutions in NW ex-Cumbria & Cheshire, Yorks ex-Humber & Kirklees, NE, WMids Metro ex Wolves, Nottingham, Exeter. This would be a running list.
But to look at the distribution, university otherwise only cover 10-15% of all cases. Isolating them from wider communities is necessary but not sufficient. So:
Further lockdowns: Pub and restaurant regs as per Scotland (i.e. outside only, further reduced hours, safe standing around a table OK, and encourage appropriate outdoor spaces to be made available for licensees) for Liverpool, Kniowsley, St Helens, Burnley, Pendle, Bolton, Salford, Manchester, Bradford (city wards only), Leeds (city wards only), Sheffield, Nottingham, Newcastle, Gateshead, Middleborough, Durham City, Birmingham, Exeter - no forced closures yet. (NB, prep for a bracing outdoors winter of socialising is why I'm advocating staying on BST or maybe even Double Summer Time).
Probably a few spots to add to standard lockdown as well.
So I, a mature student who owns his own home on the edges of the city, would not allowed to go to a pub or a restaurant, even on my own or with my girlfriend (who I am in a bubble with)?
Also impossible to police, so doomed to fail from day 1.
If it was up to me I would enable any pub, restaurant, theatre, cinema etc to go into voluntary furlough until the next Spring, paid for by printing money. Whether locked down or not.
Boy did I never ever think I would write that prior to this plague. It goes against everything I normally stand for.
NIESR also as pessimistic as my morning update, they also think we've hit the wall of easily recoverable GDP.
This is going to get very bad, the government isn't fit for purpose if they can't run the economy.
I tried to tell you that a V-shaped recovery was VERY unlikely, because a "2nd wave" was coming
It should have been, the government's absolutely rubbish policies are why we are where we are. Italy just posted industrial production of just -0.3% YoY while we're at -7% for the same measure. The difference is that Italy has had a coherent national economic policy and strategy coming out of an outbreak as bad as ours. It should be a wake up call to everyone involved when Italy is an example of good governance and the UK isn't.
The government isn't fit for purpose.
I'm not particularly defending this government, they've made some terrible decisions, but the same can be said for quite a few western governments. As for GDP falls, I reckon they will end up much the same in most of western Europe - i.e. the UK, Spain, Italy, France will also suffer horrifically. We might end up marginally worse, or marginally better. Dunno.
Germany and Sweden will almost definitely do better than the rest.
I think all governments started with a blank slate after May when the infection rate was negligible. We wasted that time and didn't have any kind of strategy to avoid or mitigate a second wave. I'll do a proper lengthy post on it at some point, but it will be an amalgamation of what many of us (including you as well, Sean) have been saying on here for months.
Thanks, LadyG. Testing is the route to living with it, if we need to for a prolonged period. I think that results need to be available within an hour if possible (because that allows a lot more things to be possible) and even more widely available.
But from everything I've read on the vaccine effort, we WILL get a working and workable vaccine. By the end of next summer, we'll probably be able to pick and choose vaccines for ease of administration, availability, efficacy, and minimalisation of side effects.
I missed this review article which suggests that the percentage of those remaining asymptomatic throughout infection (as opposed to the first few days of infection) might actually be quite low. Which would make control efforts slightly less difficult than otherwise.
There is disagreement about the level of asymptomatic severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection. We conducted a living systematic review and meta-analysis to address three questions: (1) Amongst people who become infected with SARS-CoV-2, what proportion does not experience symptoms at all during their infection? (2) Amongst people with SARS-CoV-2 infection who are asymptomatic when diagnosed, what proportion will develop symptoms later? (3) What proportion of SARS-CoV-2 transmission is accounted for by people who are either asymptomatic throughout infection or presymptomatic?
Methods and findings
We searched PubMed, Embase, bioRxiv, and medRxiv using a database of SARS-CoV-2 literature that is updated daily, on 25 March 2020, 20 April 2020, and 10 June 2020. Studies of people with SARS-CoV-2 diagnosed by reverse transcriptase PCR (RT-PCR) that documented follow-up and symptom status at the beginning and end of follow-up or modelling studies were included. One reviewer extracted data and a second verified the extraction, with disagreement resolved by discussion or a third reviewer. Risk of bias in empirical studies was assessed with an adapted checklist for case series, and the relevance and credibility of modelling studies were assessed using a published checklist. We included a total of 94 studies. The overall estimate of the proportion of people who become infected with SARS-CoV-2 and remain asymptomatic throughout infection was 20% (95% confidence interval [CI] 17–25) with a prediction interval of 3%–67% in 79 studies that addressed this review question. There was some evidence that biases in the selection of participants influence the estimate. In seven studies of defined populations screened for SARS-CoV-2 and then followed, 31% (95% CI 26%–37%, prediction interval 24%–38%) remained asymptomatic. The proportion of people that is presymptomatic could not be summarised, owing to heterogeneity....
That would be the Trafalgar Group that forecast Trump would win Nevada by 5% last time.
He lost it by 2%.
They were right in Michigan and Pennsylvania though and this is Arizona not Nevada which Trump did win in 2016, Hillary won Nevada
You're right this is Arizona, not Nevada, nor Michigan, nor Pennsylvania.
Arizona does border Nevada though, not Michigan or Pennsylvania.
And I recall RCS mentioning only last week about his family's drive through rural Arizona where it was wall to wall Trump-Pence posters until you got to New Mexico where there were more Biden-Harris posters
Rural Arizona is irrelevant if Phoenix votes for Biden in large enough numbers.
5,300 cases today, twice as many as Germany. Belgium has a total population of 11m.
Also today, Peru hits 1,000 per m dead on worldometer - first proper country to get there.
Grim.
Remember all the claims of 0.1% fatality rates by sceptics?
Are you confusing cases with populations?
No. At 1000 per million dead that couldn't be a 0.1% fatality rate (which was patently bollocks all along) unless 100% of the population was infected already.
Why are we acting like economic disaster is a surprise? We knew we were in one and going to suffer, it's just the degree that is uncertain, not the inevitability of disaster at this point.
5,300 cases today, twice as many as Germany. Belgium has a total population of 11m.
Also today, Peru hits 1,000 per m dead on worldometer - first proper country to get there.
My brother lives in Pisac, Peru. He has been keeping me updated on the situation there from the get-go. Peru has had draconian lockdowns, curfews, masks, no bars or cafes, the works. And it has been rigorously enforced.
It has arguably failed. They are past the 2nd wave but with hints of a 3rd?
My brother is one of the smartest people I know (a true autodidact). He is ferociously anti-lockdown and predicted it wouldn't work from the start. He feels vindicated, but bitter
I'm not claiming to agree with him. But I offer that nugget for the attention of PBers.
Assuming we put aside Trafalgar's slightly... iffy reputation for polling (as ever, don't discount them, put them in the averages) it's more likely to be mean reversion. The polling has been very stable between 7-9 points for Biden this cycle. It wouldn't surprise me if that reverted back from the 10-11 points we're seeing at the moment.
I would think it not impossible now we could see a popular vote result something like Biden 51% Trump 47% and yet Trump still narrowly wins the EC in the House after a 269-269 result because Biden only picks up Pennsylvania and Michigan and NE02 while Trump holds all his other 2016 states. The election is now effectively all down to Wisconsin at the moment the polls show Biden still ahead there but then again the Wisconsin polls were all wrong in 2016
If it was up to me I would enable any pub, restaurant, theatre, cinema etc to go into voluntary furlough until the next Spring, paid for by printing money. Whether locked down or not.
Boy did I never ever think I would write that prior to this plague. It goes against everything I normally stand for.
Anybody else think Andy Burnham is having a good crisis? Sane and calm labour head.....
The mood music from family and friends in GM suggests so. He's a decent bloke who is similar IRL as the public image he projects. (He was my MP once).
Burnham seems to at least have worked out that you can't tell whole industries to shut down without supporting them. And if you cant afford to support them you cant tell them to shut down.
Until recently they were headquartered in my home town of Langholm. Their almost entirely reliant on tourist money.
What price indy now? Scotland's economy is going to be completely down the shitter in six months time (as will the rest of the UK). And I mean: totally decimated. Raging unemployment, huge deficit, terrible debt, dragons burning down Bute House.
Good luck selling the massive risk of a Yes to Indy vote in that situation. I suppose there will be some voters who might think Well we're doomed anyway so we might as well be doomed waving a Saltire, and sod the UK Treasury's bail-out money, but I have my doubts they will be a majority.
If people decide the Westminster government was responsible for making Covid worse than it could have been, they may decide to be rid of Westminster.
I'm old enough to remember the halcyon days when PB Nats were praising Sturgeon for "basically ridding Scotland of the disease", akin to New Zealand, and advising her to close the borders with England. It was about three months ago.
I know Nats are capable of amazing double think but ordinary Scottish voters may wonder if the Nats were so brilliant after all, opening the universities, closing cafes one day then changing the rules the next, etc etc
"Scotland’s nationwide crackdown on indoor drinking descended into chaos on Thursday evening, less than 24 hours before strict new regulations on hospitality are due to come into force."
I think those of us on the losing side of the Brexit referendum have an awareness that facts and reality are not the fundamental deciding factors of political debate.
Sturgeon is doing a good job of persuading voters that she is doing a better job than Johnson. Perception trumps reality.
But reality is now back, to bite us on the arse, big time. Reality is now more ferociously real than it has been for decades. This is not 2016 any more.
For proof, see America. Trump is going to lose because Americans have wised up to the reality of Trump being a gibbering idiot in a time of severe national crisis.
Imagine if the Brexit vote was held now. Remain would win, handily. The extra risk would make people recoil. Polls show this:
"Wrong" to leave the EU is now ahead by a distance, and I imagine that distance has only grown as we are hurled further into the chaos of the 2nd wave. Also note that the Wrong lead began with the onset of the virus in the Spring (when it crossed over Right, which was briefly ahead)
The difference between Trump and Brexit - the mad twins of 2016 - is that with one tick Americans can make Trump go away forever. We are probably stuck with Brexit for the rest of my lifetime.
I've been having exactly the same thought. When I watch Farage still cheerleading for Trump I think there goes the man who landed us with Brexit. How could it possibly fail?
Ferfuxsake, homeopaths, I knew the Great Barrington declaration was a load of bollocks.
A widely-circulated open letter calling on governments to pursue herd immunity is counting homeopaths, therapists and fake names among its "medical" signatories, leading to accusations that it falsely represents scientific support for the controversial position.
The Great Barrington Declaration, a letter organised by prominent advocates of herd immunity, claims to have been signed by more than 15,000 scientists and medical practitioners, as well as more than 150,000 members of the general public.
Yet Sky News found dozens of fake names on the list of medical signatories, which anyone can add to if they tick a box and enter a name. These included Dr. I.P. Freely, Dr. Person Fakename and Dr. Johnny Bananas, who listed himself as a "Dr of Hard Sums".
One medical professional on the list gives his name as Dr Harold Shipman, a general practitioner in the United Kingdom.
Other famous names included Dominic Cummings, who is described as "PhD Durham Univercity".
Sky News also found 18 self-declared homeopaths listed on the open letter as medical practitioners, despite the fact that homeopathy has no scientific underpinning or clinical evidence to support its use.
In addition, the letter has been signed by well over 100 therapists, including massage therapists, hypnotherapists, psychotherapists and one Mongolian Khöömii Singer who describes himself as a "therapeutic sound practitioner".
Public health experts accused the letter, which has been used as evidence for the idea of a rift in the scientific community, of misrepresenting the level of support for the controversial concept of herd immunity.
Professor Martin McKee, Professor of European Public Health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, said it reminded him of "the messaging used to undermine public health policies on harmful substances, such as tobacco".
It couldn't work, anyway. And even if it did, it wouldn't work.
Let's step through it:
In order to get any process from As-Is to To-Be, we need to understand what's involved at each step.
Step 1 - Unscrae looking to go up an entire league or three. But only for these particular people, and usually those promoting this coincidentally fall outside the category that would be locked up.
(How will they go to hospital if needed? Will we have separate "covid-dirty" and "covid-clean" hospitals, with the latter staffed by volunteers who will be also separated from all of society and their families?)
So - we're isolating somewhere between 16% and 22% of the population. For however long it takes.
Okay - let's not get too hung up on the plausibility of this. Say, for the sake of argument, that we've somehow pulled it off. We've achieved segregation. What then?
(1/3)
Step 2 - Build up herd immunity by infecting the less vulnerable. We have three routes here: "Let it rip", "De facto restrictions, "Legal restrictions." To be honest, we may well not have much choice between Route 1 and Route 2; the people themselves would make that choice. Let's explore all three.
"Let it rip".
Remove all restrictions and let it rip through the younger and less vulnerable. Say we're starting with about 16,000 infections per day. Realistically, people aren't going to go straight back to normal instantly - people tend to be cautious. Let's say we go back to an R-rate of about 2. Leading to a 5-day doubling time.
At D+5 we've got 32,000 infections per day. Even at lower vulnerability, we'll have about 800 hospitalisations per day and 100+ deaths per day associated (a week and 2-3 weeks lagged respectively). Some areas of the country will be overloading their hospital beds already. At D+10 it's 64,000 infections per day. 1600 hospitalisations per day and 200+ deaths per day. Some NHS hospitals are now turning away covid patients. At this point, I would expect the "de facto restrictions" to be kicking in. Let's assume they don't. At D+15, it's 128,000 infections per day. The fatality rate is jumping up, as many who need hospital help can now not get it. We'll be anywhere between 500 and 1000 deaths per day. At D+20, it's quarter of a million infections per day. 1000-2000 deaths per day. And by now, the plausibility of people NOT doing effective de facto restrictions has gone. We're less than a month in and starting to dig mass graves.
Okay, Route 2 - "De facto restrictions." This segues into Route 3, "legal restrictions," but with less control. We're going to assume we level out at a constant rate of infections. We need to keep it under NHS saturation (so the death rate doesn't spike) while being as fast as possible (so we get through it as soon as possible). Maybe 100,000 infections per day should be sustainable with extra funding to the NHS (so it ceases crowding out other treatments and operations). Maybe 2000-3000 hospitalisations per day MAY be sustainable; that'd be about the level when focused on the less vulnerable.
Forty million people divided by 100,000 per day gives us 400 days. One year and one month and a couple of days. That's a hell of a long time to lock those 11-14 million up under house arrest, and to sustain those thousands of hospitalisations per day.
("But they're less vulnerable!" Yes, "less vulnerable" does not equal "invulnerable." We've also got 7.5 million or so "moderately vulnerable" people exposed. We're past 20 million shielded if we shield those and the over 65s, and getting towards the point where 100% exposure of the rest still wouldn't hit herd immunity - and WAY beyond the point of utter implausibility on the level of people segregated and shielded)
(2/3)
And the pu (3/3)
Great posts. Really.
But what about trusting people? Trusting students and inveterate boozers not to go to hug their grannies after a night on the lash or even two weeks on the lash; trusting carers to comply with sensible precautions if they look after someone else's granny; trusting the NHS worker to ensure their children sanitise and are sensible outside their school/uni bubbles; trusting people to self-regulate if they believe they are vulnerable but to make informed choices if they want to hug their grandchildren; realising that some edge cases will not be solved.
And that there will be an ongoing Covid death rate.
And the golden thread through all of this or we are all just flying blind: test, test, test.
As that fringe organisation said in March.
Thank you; it's appreciated.
I'd love to think we could just have people carry out behavioural change off their own bat to minimise risks to others. But isn't that exactly what we've been trialling since the end of July? The ONS numbers and the hospitalisation numbers aren't helpful to that.
And it still doesn't do anything about the fact that we're almost at saturation with hospital beds in some areas of the country already, and a big increase in cases - even amongst the younger and less vulnerable (they're currently concentrated in the 16-24 age band according to the ONS survey) - will see a big increase in hospitalisations.
We're already crowding out non-covid cases in hospitals; the current level isn't really sustainable (at c. 20,000 infections per day). We need to sustain well over 100,000 per day to get herd immunity within a year from now. That's melt-down levels for the NHS for any more than brief surges.
Not to mention the lingering effects for way too many, and the expiration of immunity over time.
I think there would be routes to living with the virus, but that would involve rapid, easy, and ubiquitous testing - the route of surrendering to it and letting it in as widely as possible just doesn't add up.
Good posts Andy C. Don't agree with your entire analysis but it is better and more detailed than 90% of the stuff on, say, the BBC website, or in the broadsheets
One tale re testing. It is now pretty good in places. A close family member of mine needed a test last weekend. It was booked on Saturday evening, the test was done 10am next morning at a walk in centre, there was zero waiting time, the test took 15 minutes, the results were emailed within less than 24 hours: negative
It was really rather efficient.
Thanks, LadyG. Testing is the route to living with it, if we need to for a prolonged period. I think that results need to be available within an hour if possible (because that allows a lot more things to be possible) and even more widely available.
But from everything I've read on the vaccine effort, we WILL get a working and workable vaccine. By the end of next summer, we'll probably be able to pick and choose vaccines for ease of administration, availability, efficacy, and minimalisation of side effects.
Yes, absent good, globally available vaccines, the magic bullet is probably universal testing, with results returned in minutes. Basically: instant
Then you can be given your daily I AM CLEAN visa, and you are allowed to work, go to the pub, attend school or uni, keep the economy going,
It will be a bit shit for those who test positive, but then it is shit for everyone already
In which case the test needs to be a lick and stick. No way that the deep throat and nostril jobby is going to become a daily routine. I'd rather stay housebound than be doing that.
I'm meeting a man today who runs a medical testing company here in California. They are bringing a three minute antigen test to market.
Three minutes. No special equipment needed.
I'm hoping to be able to buy 100 or so from him.
Can you get a couple of hundred million ordered for Dido while you're at it ?
Comments
Some good news was provided right beforehand: the system working swiftly and efficiently. Such news is a footnote if it's reported at all, whereas any bad news dominates.
It's similar to the way there'll never be a headline "Caring social worker does really great job." Except when it comes to the pandemic journalists reporting in partial ways that give a misleading picture can actively increase the difficulty the public faces (the most obvious potential example being increasing worry leading to unnecessary panic buying that then causes a genuine shortfall in supermarket shelves).
Anyway, I am off. Hope you all have a good weekend.
https://www.accuweather.com/en/gb/glasgow/g3-8/weather-forecast/328226
They may have the last European dictator, but there are no covid restrictions. So.....who is the freer, really?
"To the student parties - unfortunately there are far too many of you who are not taking responsibility and you have to get a grip now. We can't have universities becoming corona transmission clusters," Matilda Ernkrans told a news conference, according to The Local.
"If you go to a party and get infected, you put those close to you [at risk]. Your friends, your professor, the staff at your local supermarket, the person next to you in the library," she added.
"It is not acceptable that adults act in any other way than by taking responsibility."
Public Health Agency general-director Johan Carlson said that eight regions had been hit by outbreaks linked to universities since students returned to campus.
https://www.thelocal.se/20201009/get-a-grip-swedish-minister-tells-students-off-after-university-outbreaks
TBH now that pubs have reopened town still isn't remotely busy on a weekened night.
The next move is repression of freedom of speech.
The government won;t want all those jobless people complaining about Great Declarations while they suffer.
Its extraordinary it really is. And supported all the way by the philip Thompsons of this world
Or 'useful idiots' as Matt Hancock likes to call them.
Because we can vote to get rid of Johnson.
by the score, small law firms and accountants, retail....I could go on. It's not over yet.
Biden needs to win big to prize Trump out
Three minutes. No special equipment needed.
I'm hoping to be able to buy 100 or so from him.
https://twitter.com/rabrowne75/status/1314573401672036352?s=21
And so of course, its going to start to fail.
The last great wealth store is the UK housing stock. We can expect those huge wealth taxes any day now.
To 'save the NHS' of course.
Disaster
One problem little discussed with hospitality is how seasonal much of it is. For a lot of businesses the real money-making months are May to August, with Spring and Autumn OK and Winter is s**t except for Christmas. If we're not having Christmas Parties this year then Winter could be absolutely vile trading conditions this year.
If we're under restrictions then who on earth wants to sit outside in the north in January or February for a pint? Might be better not to trade than to do that.
With the right support then a sort of hibernation for hospitality over the winter coming out of it next Spring could see many entirely viable businesses and jobs saved.
The ambition must be to be back at a real normal, not some new normal, by the Spring.
Analysis by the Oxford experts at the CEBM was compiled from data provided by the Office for Nation Statistics (ONS).
It shows that the average age of people dying in England and Wales from Covid-19 is 82.4.
This is slightly higher than deaths caused by other illnesses, which has a median age of 81.5
I.e. that covid is unexceptional. So if you make it to 83 you aren’t just covid safe, you are immortal.
Not that I understand the stats. Most deaths are caused by illnesses, so this seems to imply that 50% of people live to be 82. Is that right?
I've seen Northern Exposure. They'll not have any more truck with Trump's malarky up there.
Anyone over state side who can enlighten us?
The printing presses will be paying for this. This will never be paid for except for via Quantitative Easing.
Something has to give - I agree - but I am not sure it will be that.
Maybe they will just print money.
This is going to get very bad, the government isn't fit for purpose if they can't run the economy.
In point of fact, if you go back to what happened during the first peak in the Spring, I do wonder if what we're now seeing is simply that resuming with the cold, crap weather rather than any kind of second wave at all? Briefly: disease arrives in country, largely by means of Hooray Henry ski holidays, and batters the crap out of London after being seeded through it by commuters. It spreads everywhere else, but total lockdown is imposed before it can infiltrate thoroughly, and so the North and Scotland in particular get off relatively lightly. We then go into Summer, where the illness finds it difficult to spread, things open up and everyone can breathe. Come September, the schools come back and the weather goes to shit. The disease spreads out of control, but - crucially - is much, much worse in the places that didn't get hit hard the first time around.
One possible conclusion that can be drawn from all of this is that, in the snotty coldy part of the year, the disease is so infectious that we only have two options: lock the entire population up until Spring, or attempt risk segmentation and otherwise let things take their course, as Professor Gupta has suggested. The disease is going to take who it's going to take, and the only means we have to try to reduce that without bringing the entire nation to destitution is to lock up the vulnerable and let the disease pass through everybody else.
This, of course, has one other horrifying implication. Not only might the restrictions already imposed or being considered now be of little or no use, but the first lockdown itself may merely have delayed the inevitable for some parts of the country and that, therefore, the whole thing was the most colossal, catastrophic waste of money in British history.
Oh well, whatever. The argument about this will doubtless continue until the point at which the country can no longer afford the fuel to keep the power supply going and society collapses, at which point we'll all be too busy hunting each other for food to worry very much about whether SAGE ever had a bloody clue what it was going on about.
🤷♂️
And sterling will collapse against those currencies.
Those countries could include America, if Trump wins.
1) People are going to reduce their social contact voluntarily as the cases rise. This is something that we've seen in most countries that have had a second wave so far. That means that hospitality will start hurting more over the next month.
2) As a result of local lockdowns, and the almost certain closing of hospitality in the north, there is going to be a group of hospitality venues that survive because of public support and a group that get nothing in lower lockdown areas and probably keel over.
The question you end up with is: "Why should a pub in london get no support when its customer base has collapsed because of COVID and a similar bar in Manchester gets seen through to March because it was in a local lockdown?". To me that screams "U Turn in November" and either all hospitality gets closed or the scheme gets extended out again.
He lost it by 2%.
It's out of control across the West
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries
Trafalgar might have been right in Michigan and Penn, but they were wrong in Nevada which means they are not all-knowing and are clearly cannot be counted upon to be 100% accurate.
They may be right, but they may be wrong. 2016 does not give us a steer on that either way.
Arizona does border Nevada though, not Michigan or Pennsylvania.
5,300 cases today, twice as many as Germany. Belgium has a total population of 11m.
The government isn't fit for purpose.
They are making decisions that will be with us for decades based on the say-so of these people. Like communists following Marx. It HAS to be right, it just HAS to.
Its worth remembering that a major chunk of the hospitality industries customers are the "vulnerable". It isn't as if pubs and restaurants are only frequented by the very young: student bars may be fine but many companies will be seeing their customers stay away because they're afraid and being told to shield.
Increasing taxes right now would be absolute insanity.
Under the pretext of prudent administration in the light of Covid19 they are flagging the possibility that the President may be doolally, which is smart politics.
Whether it works or not is another matter, but I think that's the play.
In that case we're back to the levels of resentment seen in bombed out pit communities after the Miners' Strike being extended right across that part of the country. Come the next election there may be no Tory MPs left anywhere North of Derby.
Remember all the claims of 0.1% fatality rates by sceptics?
I am staying up on Election night but doubt if I could stay awake till January for the SCOTUS to do its thing for Trump
Safety in numbers is part of what is driving this. Its OK because others are doing it. Insanity is OK as long as it is collective.
Germany and Sweden will almost definitely do better than the rest.
The Bank of England will just need to keep the printing presses on for now.
Universities - put all onsite students, staff and contractors of named universities and student residrnces in sub-Greencore style external lockdown. You can still go on campus for both learning and on-campus gyms/sports (unless actually quarantined), but SU bar is closed. You cannot go to public bars or restaurants (except for takeaway), gyms, sports, cinemas etc. and cannot continue any indoors employment off campus. Go home for exceptional reasons only (such reasons are pretty much laid out already in local lockdowns), but isolate once away from university even if negative.
Applies to all uni-level institutions in NW ex-Cumbria & Cheshire, Yorks ex-Humber & Kirklees, NE, WMids Metro ex Wolves, Nottingham, Exeter. This would be a running list.
But to look at the distribution, university otherwise only cover 10-15% of all cases. Isolating them from wider communities is necessary but not sufficient. So:
Further lockdowns: Pub and restaurant regs as per Scotland (i.e. outside only, further reduced hours, safe standing around a table OK, and encourage appropriate outdoor spaces to be made available for licensees) for Liverpool, Kniowsley, St Helens, Burnley, Pendle, Bolton, Salford, Manchester, Bradford (city wards only), Leeds (city wards only), Sheffield, Nottingham, Newcastle, Gateshead, Middleborough, Durham City, Birmingham, Exeter - no forced closures yet. (NB, prep for a bracing outdoors winter of socialising is why I'm advocating staying on BST or maybe even Double Summer Time).
Probably a few spots to add to standard lockdown as well.
Unfortunately, Boris likes to party, and Rishi doesn't like the cost of the extended fight. So we did the equivalent of celebrating VE Day in 1940. As we're now seeing, that's not the best idea.
Grasshoppers vs. ants.
It's not that it's necessarily inappropriate or wrong on her part ... just an utterly gobsmacking state of affairs to be in.
Also impossible to police, so doomed to fail from day 1.
Boy did I never ever think I would write that prior to this plague. It goes against everything I normally stand for.
Edit: or, sorry, perhaps that is your point.
Which would make control efforts slightly less difficult than otherwise.
Occurrence and transmission potential of asymptomatic and presymptomatic SARS-CoV-2 infections: A living systematic review and meta-analysis
https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.1003346
Background
There is disagreement about the level of asymptomatic severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection. We conducted a living systematic review and meta-analysis to address three questions: (1) Amongst people who become infected with SARS-CoV-2, what proportion does not experience symptoms at all during their infection? (2) Amongst people with SARS-CoV-2 infection who are asymptomatic when diagnosed, what proportion will develop symptoms later? (3) What proportion of SARS-CoV-2 transmission is accounted for by people who are either asymptomatic throughout infection or presymptomatic?
Methods and findings
We searched PubMed, Embase, bioRxiv, and medRxiv using a database of SARS-CoV-2 literature that is updated daily, on 25 March 2020, 20 April 2020, and 10 June 2020. Studies of people with SARS-CoV-2 diagnosed by reverse transcriptase PCR (RT-PCR) that documented follow-up and symptom status at the beginning and end of follow-up or modelling studies were included. One reviewer extracted data and a second verified the extraction, with disagreement resolved by discussion or a third reviewer. Risk of bias in empirical studies was assessed with an adapted checklist for case series, and the relevance and credibility of modelling studies were assessed using a published checklist. We included a total of 94 studies. The overall estimate of the proportion of people who become infected with SARS-CoV-2 and remain asymptomatic throughout infection was 20% (95% confidence interval [CI] 17–25) with a prediction interval of 3%–67% in 79 studies that addressed this review question. There was some evidence that biases in the selection of participants influence the estimate. In seven studies of defined populations screened for SARS-CoV-2 and then followed, 31% (95% CI 26%–37%, prediction interval 24%–38%) remained asymptomatic. The proportion of people that is presymptomatic could not be summarised, owing to heterogeneity....
It has arguably failed. They are past the 2nd wave but with hints of a 3rd?
My brother is one of the smartest people I know (a true autodidact). He is ferociously anti-lockdown and predicted it wouldn't work from the start. He feels vindicated, but bitter
I'm not claiming to agree with him. But I offer that nugget for the attention of PBers.