This very much suggests we are shutting down entire regions, and ruining their economies, to defend the health of kids who will never get sick
No it does not. That is a significant rise in the orange graph and the escalating case numbers in hospital are not kids.
If the orange graph was a flat line you'd be right. It isn't.
And it would also need for students to be all-but-immune to the virus, as well.
People have segued straight from “less likely to get so ill they’d need hospital treatment and far more likely to recover if they do, but can end up with long-term issues” to “it does nothing to them.”
Is it a case of really wanting that to be true? Because I can fully understand that - my second daughter is a first year student right now. But wanting it to be true doesn’t change that most students who catch it get ill and some less lucky ones will end up in hospital, and quite a few will have issues lasting a long time.
Looking at the regional admissions figures, it does look as if it breaks through to an older population in time, following on from the students.
Why do we think there was no stand out epidemic amongst students first time around?
How about this. First time round university students were in the middle of their (final) term (of the year). There wasn't necessarily a route for significant base infection of the population, and at the end of the year many students are spending their time in established social groups.
Second time around thousands of students descended on the campuses from all over the country - some with high areas of infection and some not. In the first weeks there is widespread mixing in large groups as students get to meet their new compatriots in student domitories and on courses. This is some of the most cramped and overcrowded accommodation in the country. There was nothing to resist the spread.
And... first time around there was zero testing. So it may well have been all over campuses and the question is based on a false premise.
Good thinking. The former is probably the nub of it. Back then, the virus was seeded by people coming from abroad, being leisure and business travellers, who didn't have a lot of interaction with students who were away at their studies, and the students themselves were in established social groups at uni.
So it wasn't until the summer holidays that students picked up infections from their families, non uni friends and non uni social places. Now, with the added dimension of a cohort of new students from all over, it is spreading through unis quite rapidly.
It does however follow from the first conclusion that the epidemics within unis - which isn't likely to be throwing up much medical workload given their minimal age-related risk of serious illness - presents a relatively low risk to the rest of the community, provided it burns out well before they all come home for Xmas.
I saw the question earlier but had no time to answer. Part can be put down to what Alex_ suggested. Another part explanation is that the disease spreading through student populations would not have been easy to spot inthe first wave then. (which to be fair Alex_'s last suggestion hints at). The proportion of positive cases found in February/March was low and usually only tested if some symptoms were present. By late march almost all the students had returned to their parental home. Add in the fact that the age of most student mean their symtoms are light, not many would have wanted to get tested anyway.
Even if there were warm spots (as opposed to hotspots) in some unis, it would have been very difficult to realise it.
Andy C is (possibly unfairly, I must admit) cast as one of the most pro-lockdown voices on PB.
Even he would keep hospitality open.
It does see as if government wants to be seen to "do something", if if that something is not supported by the evidence.
For maximum clarity:
- I think the 10pm curfew has had negligible evidence presented for it and smacks of a compromise of being "seen to do something." I'd eliminate it as part of my package. - Table service only, separated by 2 metres, and a strict limit of people through the door. - Policed by spot checks; any violation sees loss of licence (those who abide by the rules shouldn't be disadvantaged compared to people playing fast and loose) - Targetted direct support (such as a monthly grant equal to their running costs as reported to HMRC for the average of the last two comparable months (eg October 2019 and October 2018) - Monitoring of the situation (ongoing estimates of the infection levels from within each of pubs, restaurants, etc) with a view to closing specifically temporarily if still necessary until the next item comes along - Widespread rolling out of the spit-tests that were being pioneered in June. Pubs and restaurants can have two areas if necessary (those compatible with the above, and one where normal rules apply) subject to taking the spit test, waiting a half hour or however long for the result, and finding a negative outcome (with emphasis to the public that this isn't guaranteed safe - some infectees will get through but the average spread will be way down, and if you can't accept that, don't go in).
Even though we both see the situation from different view points I think our end goal is basically the same. Prevent the economic and social destruction that comes with a second lockdown or whatever the tier 3 measures are.
There are so many things that the government could be doing better. Rapid testing is specifically an area that the government has let perfect be the enemy of good. The Abbott rapid test hits almost 90% accuracy compared to PCR testing, it is a viable solution for wide community and venue testing.
What do you think of moving from isolation to hotel based separation for people who test positive? To me it is close to a silver bullet which will bring the R down quite drastically.
I honestly don't know. The implications of that if you've got a single-parent family or one with specific caring responsibilities would need to be carefully addressed. It would help a lot with adherence, but anyone pulled into it would need full financial support for the duration.
One thing that's key for me is to find ways to preserve as much as possible of normal life, because that's crucial to getting widespread opt-in and adherence. A second is direct support to people and industries most affected. A third is evidence-based solutions (and avoiding any wishful thinking or cherry-picking, because reality will bite us hard and people will react and overreact. Ex-engineer, ex-military, ex-skydiver, and current microlight pilot talking, there. And to lighten the tone, have a photo from yesterday evening racing the sunset back to my home airfield after a flight over Cheddar Gorge)
I mean, I get that there's an urge to balance the books, but given that we're still in the middle of the greatest natural disaster to affect all of us in our lifetimes, there's some prioritisation here. People shouting that we need to balance the books right now smack of - well, visualise yourself in a disaster movie, in a car trying to outrace a tidal wave. Someone on the back seat is shouting that we should slow down because driving slower is safer, and if we did 56 mph, it'd be more economical.
In the long run, we're going to have to pay for it, yes. We do, however, need to get to the long run first.
Yes, full financial support would be absolutely necessary to ensure people do it. The idea in my view is people get £500 per week to stay in isolation at a hotel where everything is provided (food, internet, Netflix, PlayStations and a WFH space) for up to three weeks or until two consecutive negative tests are recorded. The cost of the policy isn't low and as you say I don't think it's a good way of saving money but we need to outrun the oncoming wave.
We'd need to separate around 400k people at the peak which would cost £6bn to run every week but then it would fall very rapidly as the number of people with the virus out in the community falls drastically and the transmission rate drops as a result.
Isolation of people with the virus is the key to defeating it in the short term and right now only 1 in 5 people who test positive fully isolate. Money and resources could raise this to 2 in 5 but really we need to push this up to above 9 in 10 for transmission to come down in a society which isn't locked down. That was our major failure in the summer, we allowed people to self certify quarantine on arrival from red list countries and self certify their own isolation.
@kinabalu someone suggests playing Russian Roulette and hands you a revolver with eight chambers, one bullet.
Gun against your temple and you have to shoot yourself once. Would you "clearly" survive? Or would you be favoured to survive?
I think you've missed my post clarifying but ok we can do this one too -
If I were to be placed in that unfortunate position I would indeed be "clearly favoured" to survive the shot.
Shades of De Niro and Walken here.
Odds of putting a man on Mars by 2035 say Musk 250/1 Nasa 500/1 1000/1 the field. On those quite possible numbers Musk is both clearly favoured to do it, and clearly not going to do it.
But if we are talking binaries - such as Trump v Biden - where 1 of the 2 outcomes is "favoured" it means it is more likely to happen than not.
And then (imo) "clearly favoured" means FAR more likely to happen than not.
My suggestion of another lockdown is looking more and more sensible.
What has changed since you last suggested it an hour ago?
We have even more data. Cases are totally out of control.
You got that from one additional day's worth of data?
It confirms what I already said, cases continue to be out of control.
Surprising, given that no new data was actually released at the briefing.
Erh, there was data released? Lots of information from the experts was presented.
Yeah, data from yesterday.
And...? That's more data, as I said cases continue to be out of control.
It's plainly clear that the experts think a national lockdown is necessary, you can see it on their faces. We have totally failed to get a grip on this.
Why are the experts writing 'we want a lockdown ' on their faces? .... in invisible ink...
I have heard the most pubs dont serve food quoted by industry people. Here are the latest figures I could find, which seem to confirm this. Broken down into food led and drinks led, admittedly. All pubs serve crisps obviously. The majority round here certainly don't serve cooked food. And, yes, there's a North South divide.
I would close pubs and restaurants down completely, if nothing else.
Based on what evidence? You're as bad as Boris and Gove.
If people are inclined to not go out, they will not spread the virus. Because of "get back to the pub" people have been ignoring the rules I am afraid to say. Booze = no social distancing.
I would then ban all indoors mixing and make it outside only.
Starmer really is useless isn't he. The goal is completely open, the goalkeeper has been sent off as well as the whole blood defence and he's smashed it over the bar. The lack of talent in both political parties is absolutely shocking.
538 have Trump's chances down at 13% yet their lead still says Biden is "favoured" to win the election.
Time for a "clearly" surely?
Looking at their Senate forecasts, I believe 538 use 10% as their cut-off.
So Cornyn is "favoured" (88%) to win Texas over Hegar (12%) whereas Hyde-Smith (91%) is "clearly favoured" to win Mississippi over Espy (9%).
There's no science in the terminology, but that's just their cut-off.
It's completely daft of them to use any of these terms. I appreciate that they are desperate to dumb down (hence the God-awful cartoons, acres of wasted screen space and completely brain-dead random simulations which tell you precisely nothing), but what on earth makes them think that, having come up with something precise like a '12% probability', it's helpful to call it 'likely' or 'very likely' or 'favoured' or 'strongly favoured', any of which is vague and tells you less than the actual figure tells you?
Starmer really is useless isn't he. The goal is completely open, the goalkeeper has been sent off as well as the whole blood defence and he's smashed it over the bar. The lack of talent in both political parties is absolutely shocking.
He needs to take a position now, he should be IMHO, backing a full lockdown.
So "food based" pubs to stay open on Merseyside. Boozers to shut. Spoons stays. Makes zero sense and reveals a class bias imho.
Aren't pretty much all pubs "food based" these days? Or is this just - edgy cocktail bars in town must close, but everything else can stay open?
No. The majority of pubs don't serve food.
Really? I can't think of a single pub that doesn't serve food.
In my experience almost all pubs offer food but there are still plenty of establishments where the offer is hypothetical. Most of the Irish pubs in Kilburn, for example, do not in practice serve food unless one counts Guinness.
I see Trump is in the midst of another bizarre, stream of consciousness Twitter rant.
This worked well for him when trying to deflect attention from his own problems - all good, old-fashioned, dead cat stuff.
But he's clearly behind now and really has to pick one consistent line of attack now to give himself any sort of chance. The ADHD approach isn't good for that. What does he want the final three weeks of the election to be about? What's his elevator pitch at this late stage? Because the high-energy, low-focus, scattergun stuff just runs down the clock and plays into Biden's hands.
TBH 13.4 cases per 100,000 per week is a pretty low chance of meeting someone in your daily life. How low would Burnham have wanted it to go?
Exactly. This is a non-runner. God knows what Van Tam is playing at.
Edit: A more relevant discussion would be whether the North had it less seriously last time and therefore there is less immunity around.
Exactly, London has hit 20% immunity. The R requirement for exponential growth is just a lot higher than everywhere else in the country. Additionally the people who are likely to interact with each other (younger) probably have immunity rates north of 30%. The virus doesn't have as many potential hosts to infect.
I wouldn't be surprised if parts of zone 2 and 3 London have already achieved herd immunity, especially those areas close to transport hubs like Heathrow or St Pancras.
Heathrow is Zone 6. St Pancras is Zone 1.
The people who work at Heathrow live in and around Acton.
Not true, most of them live in Hounslow or Hillingdon.
- being too complacent about travel from Europe in January and February - moving OAPs into homes from hospitals without testing them - developing the NHS-X app rather than using Apple/Google technology - closing schools at all, or at least without a clear plan to reopen them.
The first let the virus in in the first place (at least with the numbers and speed it came), the second may have cost 10-20k lives, the third has meant we're unprepared for the second wave and the fourth has blighted a year's schooling for a generation.
However, no. 1 accorded with expert advice, so I think it's mainly the other three I'd hold them responsible for.
And afaik there's no evidence that Prime Minister Starmer would have done anything different on any of them.
Nevertheless a government that makes a mistake is accountable for it; saying the other guy would have done the same doesn’t give you a free pass (the Tories would also have invaded Iraq, for example, yet Blair is to blame).
To your list I would add:
- slowing down the testing programme and actively restricting testing as the first wave came to an end; - allowing Cummings to get away with his lies fatally undermining public confidence in the fairness and reasonableness of the first lockdown; - the confusion created by Bozo’s blustering during the first address to the nation including torpedoing his own ‘clear’ five point scale at launch: - the never ending chopping and changing of restrictions imposed on businesses in different sectors and locations, countries moving in an out of quarantine, disrupting lives and business and allowing no-one to plan ahead; - the increasingly obvious fact that lack of a long term plan and political in-fighting right up to Cabinet is hampering our response. - appointing chums like Harding to big jobs they have no qualifications for
I’d also add not extending the Brexit transition in the totally unforeseen circumstances of the virus crisis to remove a further source of uncertainty for business.
- As well as being too complacent on European travel early (but probably only from mid-February), I'd add that we were too complacent in July/August and didn't take account of social elements in where we safelisted (you're going somewhere where nightclubs are open, you'll have to quarantine). We didn't make clear enough upfront to anyone going abroad, that they should plan and be able to quarantine on return. - I don't see NHS-X as a big error: a centralised approach was a good fit with existing UK health IT and, given Google-Apple announcement was only mid April, we weren't especially slow to pivot. An app seems to a bolt on rather than a central plank in most countries. We oversold it though. - Gearing test and trace for volume rather than turnaround, not going hard enough on rapid testing - even if you did not know quite where it fitted in at the start, it was clear that it provided a different capability. - Not integrating with and bolstering local teams for track and trace well enough. - Not having a clear enough plan on how local restrictions would be handled and basically winging it, resulting in confusion. Lifting restrictions (e.g. in Lancashire, Bolton) when rates were not obviously low.
At this stage we need to: - Get test and trace both testing and tracing faster. - Build volume in rapid testing - Use the right restrictions at the right times to suppress R quickly and keep it suppressed. Still act locally and at work/education place level, but don't pussyfoot around. - Have rapid and bulk testing ready for re-opening so we can quickly contact trace the cousin viral lines of an infection, not just the child viral lines. - Invest heavily in the QR element of the app, every potential superspread location, every pub, every train carriage, should have QR everywhere - when you get table service QR and QR again. Start trying to roll out QR tokens. - Discharge pressures on the NHS will rise again. Ensure hospitals and care homes do not repeat the spring and the means to avoid that are in place, good isolation of returnees to care homes, testing and common sense guidelines for visiting. If you think we've done this already, double, triple, quadruple check.
Starmer really is useless isn't he. The goal is completely open, the goalkeeper has been sent off as well as the whole blood defence and he's smashed it over the bar. The lack of talent in both political parties is absolutely shocking.
100% agree. Except I'd broaden it to include the LibDems and Greens.
Starmer really is useless isn't he. The goal is completely open, the goalkeeper has been sent off as well as the whole blood defence and he's smashed it over the bar. The lack of talent in both political parties is absolutely shocking.
He needs to take a position now, he should be IMHO, backing a full lockdown.
Regardless of the numbers, excluding pubs which serve food is entirely illogical. Does a laminated menu offer some hitherto unsuspected protection from the virus?
Starmer really is useless isn't he. The goal is completely open, the goalkeeper has been sent off as well as the whole blood defence and he's smashed it over the bar. The lack of talent in both political parties is absolutely shocking.
He needs to take a position now, he should be IMHO, backing a full lockdown.
And lose all remaining support?
It's the right position to take. What position would you like him to take?
Starmer really is useless isn't he. The goal is completely open, the goalkeeper has been sent off as well as the whole blood defence and he's smashed it over the bar. The lack of talent in both political parties is absolutely shocking.
He needs to take a position now, he should be IMHO, backing a full lockdown.
You’ve ignored this previously - but I’ll try again.
“Full lockdown”? Schools included? University students left on campus or sent home? All shops shut (other than supermarkets) Hospitals cancelling all non urgent treatment?
Regardless of the numbers, excluding pubs which serve food is entirely illogical. Does a laminated menu offer some hitherto unsuspected protection from the virus?
The restaurants I've been to since lockdown 1 ended all the menus are now accessed via a QR code on your phone.
I would close pubs and restaurants down completely, if nothing else.
Why? What evidence is there that pubs and restaurants being open has lead to the increase in cases?
JPMorgan analyzed data from 30 million Chase cardholders and Johns Hopkins University’s case tracker and found that higher restaurant spending in a state predicted a rise in new infections there three weeks later.
In-person restaurant spending was “particularly predictive.”
Conversely, higher spending at supermarkets predicted a slower spread of the virus.
538 have Trump's chances down at 13% yet their lead still says Biden is "favoured" to win the election.
Time for a "clearly" surely?
Looking at their Senate forecasts, I believe 538 use 10% as their cut-off.
So Cornyn is "favoured" (88%) to win Texas over Hegar (12%) whereas Hyde-Smith (91%) is "clearly favoured" to win Mississippi over Espy (9%).
There's no science in the terminology, but that's just their cut-off.
It's completely daft of them to use any of these terms. I appreciate that they are desperate to dumb down (hence the God-awful cartoons, acres of wasted screen space and completely brain-dead random simulations which tell you precisely nothing), but what on earth makes them think that, having come up with something precise like a '12% probability', it's helpful to call it 'likely' or 'very likely' or 'favoured' or 'strongly favoured', any of which is vague and tells you less than the actual figure tells you?
I don't agree. I agree numbers tell you more than the words, but lots of people aren't all that comfortable with probabilities and why not summarise for them? Even scientific journals will report "significant" results in the abstract which beg all sorts of questions (How far over the significance threshold? How did you pick your statistical tests and when? Did it replicate? What's the effect size? etc) You look in the detail if you want to know the detail, and at the headline if you want the headline.
TBH 13.4 cases per 100,000 per week is a pretty low chance of meeting someone in your daily life. How low would Burnham have wanted it to go?
Exactly. This is a non-runner. God knows what Van Tam is playing at.
Edit: A more relevant discussion would be whether the North had it less seriously last time and therefore there is less immunity around.
Exactly, London has hit 20% immunity. The R requirement for exponential growth is just a lot higher than everywhere else in the country. Additionally the people who are likely to interact with each other (younger) probably have immunity rates north of 30%. The virus doesn't have as many potential hosts to infect.
I wouldn't be surprised if parts of zone 2 and 3 London have already achieved herd immunity, especially those areas close to transport hubs like Heathrow or St Pancras.
Heathrow is Zone 6. St Pancras is Zone 1.
The people who work at Heathrow live in and around Acton.
Not true, most of them live in Hounslow or Hillingdon.
I would close pubs and restaurants down completely, if nothing else.
Why? What evidence is there that pubs and restaurants being open has lead to the increase in cases?
JPMorgan analyzed data from 30 million Chase cardholders and Johns Hopkins University’s case tracker and found that higher restaurant spending in a state predicted a rise in new infections there three weeks later.
In-person restaurant spending was “particularly predictive.”
Conversely, higher spending at supermarkets predicted a slower spread of the virus.
Pennsylvania Clinton 48.9 (47.5) Trump 45.2 (48.2)
Wisconsin Clinton 49.6 (46.5) Trump 44.3 (47.2)
So let's take the worst case scenario for Biden - a Michigan style error on Trump (+3.3%) and a Wisconsin style error on Biden (-3.1%). Polling average first, calculated error in brackets.
The numbers do not lie. Even if the worst possible polling deviations from 2016 are applied to these swing states, Biden still wins.
And as a follow up to this, as far as I'm aware 538 is already applying a dampener on Biden's figures - at least on a national level. Likewise the possibility of polls being 3% out in both directions at the same time in every state is miniscule.
So on the same error as 2016 Trump wins Florida and Biden wins Pennsylvania and Wisconsin by 0.1%, on that basis it could still be a nail biting night for Democrats
Yes but that kind of error from the polls only occurred in Wisconsin. The chance of the same error happening in EVERY state is tiny. It didn't even happen in 2016.
Trump may only need it to happen in Wisconsin, with some polls already showing him back ahead in Florida and Ohio and Arizona only Wisconsin would be enough for him to be re elected even if he loses Pennsylvania and Michigan
It's going to be hilarious if Trump manages to win. I really hope he does it.
OFF my Winterval card list!
I think @Dura_Ace is something of a Russian specialist ? That clearly encompasses Russian humour.
Starmer really is useless isn't he. The goal is completely open, the goalkeeper has been sent off as well as the whole blood defence and he's smashed it over the bar. The lack of talent in both political parties is absolutely shocking.
Is that just because he doesn't agree with you?
What Starmer wants, and has done for a long time, is localised action to deal with outbreaks and significant rises in infection. He thinks powers should be devolved to local areas to test, trace and isolate, using personal contact. Money needs to be given to local authorities and health teams to support this. He thinks restrictions should be used as necessary, including quite draconian ones in the worst affected areas.
Now, it looks to me as if the government is moving, albeit slowly, to what Starmer has been calling for. He's winning, not losing. And he'd be a fool to oppose changes he's been calling for, and he's not a fool.
- being too complacent about travel from Europe in January and February - moving OAPs into homes from hospitals without testing them - developing the NHS-X app rather than using Apple/Google technology - closing schools at all, or at least without a clear plan to reopen them.
The first let the virus in in the first place (at least with the numbers and speed it came), the second may have cost 10-20k lives, the third has meant we're unprepared for the second wave and the fourth has blighted a year's schooling for a generation.
However, no. 1 accorded with expert advice, so I think it's mainly the other three I'd hold them responsible for.
And afaik there's no evidence that Prime Minister Starmer would have done anything different on any of them.
Fair enough take. But politics does not work this way. When things go horribly run under a government the public do not conduct forensic counterfactuals asking themselves if the opposition would have been any better. For example, the financial crash and resulting economic downturn and crisis in the public finances which dominated the GE of 2010. There was no evidence that the situation would have been better or would have been better handled by a Cameron Conservative government rather than Brown's Labour one - the opposite if anything - but this did not prevent a narrative of "Labour's mess" taking root. Similarly here, regardless of how you think Starmer would have performed relative to Johnson, if this pans out as badly as it looks like doing, this government will own it.
The reason that Labour owned the Financial Crash in 2008 was because Cameron and Osborne were effective in pinning the blame to them. They had a simple story, "Labour didn't fix the roof when the sun was shining," which was true enough to pass muster, even if it had nothing to do with banking regulation. And they repeated it enough so that it became part of the common consciousness.
Starmer has not found the simple message to use to pin the blame for Covid onto the Conservatives in general and Johnson in particular. It's not inevitable that they will take the majority of the blame. Labour have to convince the public that they should.
Starmer really is useless isn't he. The goal is completely open, the goalkeeper has been sent off as well as the whole blood defence and he's smashed it over the bar. The lack of talent in both political parties is absolutely shocking.
He needs to take a position now, he should be IMHO, backing a full lockdown.
And lose all remaining support?
It's the right position to take. What position would you like him to take?
Support people to isolate with cash payments and hotel rooms/food/entertainment.
Push for widespread roll out of rapid testing at indoor venues and transit hubs.
Tough restrictions on arriving travellers and forced hotel isolation for 5 days and a negative PCR test.
Allow pubs to reopen to full hours, institute table service and sitting only room with mask wearing while standing for anyone.
Mandatory mask wearing in all indoor places, no exceptions even for health reasons. People who are unable to work due to this are supported with 100% wage subsidies based on their average wage over the 12 months before the virus.
These are all practical policies that will support the economy and people without destroying the social fabric of the nation.
538 have Trump's chances down at 13% yet their lead still says Biden is "favoured" to win the election.
Time for a "clearly" surely?
Looking at their Senate forecasts, I believe 538 use 10% as their cut-off.
So Cornyn is "favoured" (88%) to win Texas over Hegar (12%) whereas Hyde-Smith (91%) is "clearly favoured" to win Mississippi over Espy (9%).
There's no science in the terminology, but that's just their cut-off.
It's completely daft of them to use any of these terms. I appreciate that they are desperate to dumb down (hence the God-awful cartoons, acres of wasted screen space and completely brain-dead random simulations which tell you precisely nothing), but what on earth makes them think that, having come up with something precise like a '12% probability', it's helpful to call it 'likely' or 'very likely' or 'favoured' or 'strongly favoured', any of which is vague and tells you less than the actual figure tells you?
I don't agree. I agree numbers tell you more than the words, but lots of people aren't all that comfortable with probabilities and why not summarise for them? Even scientific journals will report "significant" results in the abstract which beg all sorts of questions (How far over the significance threshold? How did you pick your statistical tests and when? Did it replicate? What's the effect size? etc) You look in the detail if you want to know the detail, and at the headline if you want the headline.
TBH 13.4 cases per 100,000 per week is a pretty low chance of meeting someone in your daily life. How low would Burnham have wanted it to go?
Exactly. This is a non-runner. God knows what Van Tam is playing at.
Edit: A more relevant discussion would be whether the North had it less seriously last time and therefore there is less immunity around.
Exactly, London has hit 20% immunity. The R requirement for exponential growth is just a lot higher than everywhere else in the country. Additionally the people who are likely to interact with each other (younger) probably have immunity rates north of 30%. The virus doesn't have as many potential hosts to infect.
I wouldn't be surprised if parts of zone 2 and 3 London have already achieved herd immunity, especially those areas close to transport hubs like Heathrow or St Pancras.
Heathrow is Zone 6. St Pancras is Zone 1.
The people who work at Heathrow live in and around Acton.
Not true, most of them live in Hounslow or Hillingdon.
I think fundamentally we went wrong over the summer. That was really the time to get serious, we'd bought time with lockdown.
We should have had a proper track and trace system, I would have banned holidays abroad, restricted the borders. Eat Out To Help Out should not have happened.
I would have introduced rule of six then and kept it to outdoors only. Pubs/restaurants would have remained closed and I would have enforced mask wearing at all times in public places and indoors. At the end, we could have opened restaurants up at lunchtime.
This would have been backed by Government support.
538 have Trump's chances down at 13% yet their lead still says Biden is "favoured" to win the election.
Time for a "clearly" surely?
Looking at their Senate forecasts, I believe 538 use 10% as their cut-off.
So Cornyn is "favoured" (88%) to win Texas over Hegar (12%) whereas Hyde-Smith (91%) is "clearly favoured" to win Mississippi over Espy (9%).
There's no science in the terminology, but that's just their cut-off.
It's completely daft of them to use any of these terms. I appreciate that they are desperate to dumb down (hence the God-awful cartoons, acres of wasted screen space and completely brain-dead random simulations which tell you precisely nothing), but what on earth makes them think that, having come up with something precise like a '12% probability', it's helpful to call it 'likely' or 'very likely' or 'favoured' or 'strongly favoured', any of which is vague and tells you less than the actual figure tells you?
I don't agree. I agree numbers tell you more than the words, but lots of people aren't all that comfortable with probabilities and why not summarise for them? Even scientific journals will report "significant" results in the abstract which beg all sorts of questions (How far over the significance threshold? How did you pick your statistical tests and when? Did it replicate? What's the effect size? etc) You look in the detail if you want to know the detail, and at the headline if you want the headline.
Yet the headline seems to be causing immense confusion. We've just had a ping-pong match here on what the terms mean and what they should mean. Who cares? Just look at the numbers. If someone doesn't understand probabilities, they're not going to get much out of a website which presents, you know, probabilities.
Starmer really is useless isn't he. The goal is completely open, the goalkeeper has been sent off as well as the whole blood defence and he's smashed it over the bar. The lack of talent in both political parties is absolutely shocking.
He needs to take a position now, he should be IMHO, backing a full lockdown.
And lose all remaining support?
It's the right position to take. What position would you like him to take?
Support people to isolate with cash payments and hotel rooms/food/entertainment.
Push for widespread roll out of rapid testing at indoor venues and transit hubs.
Tough restrictions on arriving travellers and forced hotel isolation for 5 days and a negative PCR test.
Allow pubs to reopen to full hours, institute table service and sitting only room with mask wearing while standing for anyone.
Mandatory mask wearing in all indoor places, no exceptions even for health reasons. People who are unable to work due to this are supported with 100% wage subsidies based on their average wage over the 12 months before the virus.
These are all practical policies that will support the economy and people without destroying the social fabric of the nation.
All good stuff and certainly better than what has been proposed so far. I still think it's too late but as an interim measure, better than nothing.
I think fundamentally we went wrong over the summer. That was really the time to get serious, we'd bought time with lockdown.
We should have had a proper track and trace system, I would have banned holidays abroad, restricted the borders. Eat Out To Help Out should not have happened.
I would have introduced rule of six then and kept it to outdoors only. Pubs/restaurants would have remained closed and I would have enforced mask wearing at all times in public places and indoors. At the end, we could have opened restaurants up at lunchtime.
This would have been backed by Government support.
That all sounds so depressing Horse. It would just not have been sustainable. Being able to see friends and family properly through the very brief window we had in the North East was a lifeline.
So "food based" pubs to stay open on Merseyside. Boozers to shut. Spoons stays. Makes zero sense and reveals a class bias imho.
Here in Berlin, for two or three weeks during "The Easing" in May, bars were allowed to open only if they were licensed as a Bar/Restaurant. I was surprised to see a local microbrewery was open on the first night, even though the only food available there is Bretzel (salty bread). That night I talked to the landlord of another nearby pub, which does genuinely serve meals. He said that in Berlin lots of bars apply for a licence with food when they change landlord, regardless of whether they serve food. The point is that it is the application for a licence that costs, but an alcohol/food costs only a little more than an alcohol only license. So bars many apply for alcohol/food anyway, regardless, so that if they build a kitchen and provide food in the future they do not need to reapply for a costly licence.
The main reason for writing this is anecdote, but it also shows that often business categories like "pubs that serve food" can in reality mean something dfferent to what normal folk like me think it means.
I think fundamentally we went wrong over the summer. That was really the time to get serious, we'd bought time with lockdown.
We should have had a proper track and trace system, I would have banned holidays abroad, restricted the borders. Eat Out To Help Out should not have happened.
I would have introduced rule of six then and kept it to outdoors only. Pubs/restaurants would have remained closed and I would have enforced mask wearing at all times in public places and indoors. At the end, we could have opened restaurants up at lunchtime.
This would have been backed by Government support.
That all sounds so depressing Horse. It would just not have been sustainable. Being able to see friends and family properly through the very brief window we had in the North East was a lifeline.
I am afraid I think it was the only way to keep this under control. Now we could have started to open up more.
Perhaps exceptions for those living alone but I think the crux of what I am getting at, was needed.
Starmer really is useless isn't he. The goal is completely open, the goalkeeper has been sent off as well as the whole blood defence and he's smashed it over the bar. The lack of talent in both political parties is absolutely shocking.
He needs to take a position now, he should be IMHO, backing a full lockdown.
And lose all remaining support?
It's the right position to take. What position would you like him to take?
Support people to isolate with cash payments and hotel rooms/food/entertainment.
Push for widespread roll out of rapid testing at indoor venues and transit hubs.
Tough restrictions on arriving travellers and forced hotel isolation for 5 days and a negative PCR test.
Allow pubs to reopen to full hours, institute table service and sitting only room with mask wearing while standing for anyone.
Mandatory mask wearing in all indoor places, no exceptions even for health reasons. People who are unable to work due to this are supported with 100% wage subsidies based on their average wage over the 12 months before the virus.
These are all practical policies that will support the economy and people without destroying the social fabric of the nation.
All good stuff and certainly better than what has been proposed so far. I still think it's too late but as an interim measure, better than nothing.
Except for pubs, I would close them entirely.
There's still no logical reasoning behind that, you just seem to have this weird obsession with closing down pubs despite little evidence it will make any difference. We know the major transmission vector is people's front rooms. Closing down pubs sends people into front rooms. So you also have to stop household mixing, but that is notoriously difficult to police and requires an army of citizen snitches which is no way to conduct a free society.
No, the answer is making the community safe by removing people with the virus from the community until they don't have it. Hotel based separation is the answer, it works in the short and medium term until there is a vaccine.
There's a feeling these days that a short hike from the US coast and you'll enter a vast hinterland of racist and religious bigots. This was what I thought 12 years ago when I dismissed Mike's famous 50/1 tip on OBAMA. These people do exist but so do those who got Obama over the line and fortunately there are sufficient numbers to see Trump loses whoever his opponent
Regardless of the numbers, excluding pubs which serve food is entirely illogical. Does a laminated menu offer some hitherto unsuspected protection from the virus?
The restaurants I've been to since lockdown 1 ended all the menus are now accessed via a QR code on your phone.
Congratulations. You may have discovered the cause of the second wave
I think fundamentally we went wrong over the summer. That was really the time to get serious, we'd bought time with lockdown.
We should have had a proper track and trace system, I would have banned holidays abroad, restricted the borders. Eat Out To Help Out should not have happened.
I would have introduced rule of six then and kept it to outdoors only. Pubs/restaurants would have remained closed and I would have enforced mask wearing at all times in public places and indoors. At the end, we could have opened restaurants up at lunchtime.
This would have been backed by Government support.
That all sounds so depressing Horse. It would just not have been sustainable. Being able to see friends and family properly through the very brief window we had in the North East was a lifeline.
I am afraid I think it was the only way to keep this under control. Now we could have started to open up more.
Perhaps exceptions for those living alone but I think the crux of what I am getting at, was needed.
I know you don't agree.
You seem to be desirous of a simple solution to a simple problem. Something very left wing and very right wing people have in common. Whereas the problem we face is actually a multiple set of conflicting problems and not simple at all.
- being too complacent about travel from Europe in January and February - moving OAPs into homes from hospitals without testing them - developing the NHS-X app rather than using Apple/Google technology - closing schools at all, or at least without a clear plan to reopen them.
The first let the virus in in the first place (at least with the numbers and speed it came), the second may have cost 10-20k lives, the third has meant we're unprepared for the second wave and the fourth has blighted a year's schooling for a generation.
However, no. 1 accorded with expert advice, so I think it's mainly the other three I'd hold them responsible for.
And afaik there's no evidence that Prime Minister Starmer would have done anything different on any of them.
Fair enough take. But politics does not work this way. When things go horribly run under a government the public do not conduct forensic counterfactuals asking themselves if the opposition would have been any better. For example, the financial crash and resulting economic downturn and crisis in the public finances which dominated the GE of 2010. There was no evidence that the situation would have been better or would have been better handled by a Cameron Conservative government rather than Brown's Labour one - the opposite if anything - but this did not prevent a narrative of "Labour's mess" taking root. Similarly here, regardless of how you think Starmer would have performed relative to Johnson, if this pans out as badly as it looks like doing, this government will own it.
The reason that Labour owned the Financial Crash in 2008 was because Cameron and Osborne were effective in pinning the blame to them. They had a simple story, "Labour didn't fix the roof when the sun was shining," which was true enough to pass muster, even if it had nothing to do with banking regulation. And they repeated it enough so that it became part of the common consciousness.
Starmer has not found the simple message to use to pin the blame for Covid onto the Conservatives in general and Johnson in particular. It's not inevitable that they will take the majority of the blame. Labour have to convince the public that they should.
A good point. The narrative of "Tory virus failure" will not write itself. There is work to do.
So "food based" pubs to stay open on Merseyside. Boozers to shut. Spoons stays. Makes zero sense and reveals a class bias imho.
Here in Berlin, for two or three weeks during "The Easing" in May, bars were allowed to open only if they were licensed as a Bar/Restaurant. I was surprised to see a local microbrewery was open on the first night, even though the only food available there is Bretzel (salty bread). That night I talked to the landlord of another nearby pub, which does genuinely serve meals. He said that in Berlin lots of bars apply for a licence with food when they change landlord, regardless of whether they serve food. The point is that it is the application for a licence that costs, but an alcohol/food costs only a little more than an alcohol only license. So bars many apply for alcohol/food anyway, regardless, so that if they build a kitchen and provide food in the future they do not need to reapply for a costly licence.
The main reason for writing this is anecdote, but it also shows that often business categories like "pubs that serve food" can in reality mean something dfferent to what normal folk like me think it means.
Yes. I'd be investing in a Breville sandwich maker and a lawyer were I a basic boozer landlord.
I think fundamentally we went wrong over the summer. That was really the time to get serious, we'd bought time with lockdown.
We should have had a proper track and trace system, I would have banned holidays abroad, restricted the borders. Eat Out To Help Out should not have happened.
I would have introduced rule of six then and kept it to outdoors only. Pubs/restaurants would have remained closed and I would have enforced mask wearing at all times in public places and indoors. At the end, we could have opened restaurants up at lunchtime.
This would have been backed by Government support.
That all sounds so depressing Horse. It would just not have been sustainable. Being able to see friends and family properly through the very brief window we had in the North East was a lifeline.
I am afraid I think it was the only way to keep this under control. Now we could have started to open up more.
Perhaps exceptions for those living alone but I think the crux of what I am getting at, was needed.
I know you don't agree.
The basic crux of your argument seems to be “we shouldn’t have opened up, when numbers were very low (and falling). We should have waited a month or so for numbers to still be very low. Ignoring the fact that by the time we started to open up the Govt was following - the whole thing was rapidly breaking down anyway.
The problem wasn’t the measures taken to reopen the economy. It was the complete failure to create the conditions to put a lid on any future growth in numbers.
There's a feeling these days that a short hike from the US coast and you'll enter a vast hinterland of racist and religious bigots. This was what I thought 12 years ago when I dismissed Mike's famous 50/1 tip on OBAMA. These people do exist but so do those who got Obama over the line and fortunately there are sufficient numbers to see Trump loses whoever his opponent
Exactly my feeling. America is not beyond the pale. It will not give Trump another term.
Can anyone see these figures on the YouGov website? When I click on the link, or go direct to the website, I still get the model output as at 3rd October, with Biden on 343.
I think fundamentally we went wrong over the summer. That was really the time to get serious, we'd bought time with lockdown.
We should have had a proper track and trace system, I would have banned holidays abroad, restricted the borders. Eat Out To Help Out should not have happened.
I would have introduced rule of six then and kept it to outdoors only. Pubs/restaurants would have remained closed and I would have enforced mask wearing at all times in public places and indoors. At the end, we could have opened restaurants up at lunchtime.
This would have been backed by Government support.
That all sounds so depressing Horse. It would just not have been sustainable. Being able to see friends and family properly through the very brief window we had in the North East was a lifeline.
I am afraid I think it was the only way to keep this under control. Now we could have started to open up more.
Perhaps exceptions for those living alone but I think the crux of what I am getting at, was needed.
I know you don't agree.
You seem to be desirous of a simple solution to a simple problem. Something very left wing and very right wing people have in common. Whereas the problem we face is actually a multiple set of conflicting problems and not simple at all.
I think fundamentally we end up in lockdown 2.0 because the other options aren't working.
However, I think I am right to say we came out of the first lockdown too quickly and we had time in July to prepare. We did not.
Starmer really is useless isn't he. The goal is completely open, the goalkeeper has been sent off as well as the whole blood defence and he's smashed it over the bar. The lack of talent in both political parties is absolutely shocking.
He needs to take a position now, he should be IMHO, backing a full lockdown.
And lose all remaining support?
It's the right position to take. What position would you like him to take?
Support people to isolate with cash payments and hotel rooms/food/entertainment.
Push for widespread roll out of rapid testing at indoor venues and transit hubs.
Tough restrictions on arriving travellers and forced hotel isolation for 5 days and a negative PCR test.
Allow pubs to reopen to full hours, institute table service and sitting only room with mask wearing while standing for anyone.
Mandatory mask wearing in all indoor places, no exceptions even for health reasons. People who are unable to work due to this are supported with 100% wage subsidies based on their average wage over the 12 months before the virus.
These are all practical policies that will support the economy and people without destroying the social fabric of the nation.
All good stuff and certainly better than what has been proposed so far. I still think it's too late but as an interim measure, better than nothing.
Except for pubs, I would close them entirely.
There's still no logical reasoning behind that, you just seem to have this weird obsession with closing down pubs despite little evidence it will make any difference. We know the major transmission vector is people's front rooms. Closing down pubs sends people into front rooms. So you also have to stop household mixing, but that is notoriously difficult to police and requires an army of citizen snitches which is no way to conduct a free society.
No, the answer is making the community safe by removing people with the virus from the community until they don't have it. Hotel based separation is the answer, it works in the short and medium term until there is a vaccine.
The policies to remove people from the population aren't currently working, or are non-existent.
I think you're right with what you say - I think it's too late to implement it though. This should have been in place from July.
I think fundamentally we went wrong over the summer. That was really the time to get serious, we'd bought time with lockdown.
We should have had a proper track and trace system, I would have banned holidays abroad, restricted the borders. Eat Out To Help Out should not have happened.
I would have introduced rule of six then and kept it to outdoors only. Pubs/restaurants would have remained closed and I would have enforced mask wearing at all times in public places and indoors. At the end, we could have opened restaurants up at lunchtime.
This would have been backed by Government support.
That all sounds so depressing Horse. It would just not have been sustainable. Being able to see friends and family properly through the very brief window we had in the North East was a lifeline.
I am afraid I think it was the only way to keep this under control. Now we could have started to open up more.
Perhaps exceptions for those living alone but I think the crux of what I am getting at, was needed.
I know you don't agree.
The basic crux of your argument seems to be “we shouldn’t have opened up, when numbers were very low (and falling). We should have waited a month or so for numbers to still be very low. Ignoring the fact that by the time we started to open up the Govt was following - the whole thing was rapidly breaking down anyway.
The problem wasn’t the measures taken to reopen the economy. It was the complete failure to create the conditions to put a lid on any future growth in numbers.
Absolutely right on with what I said, we should not have opened up at the pace we did.
We should have used July/August to get into place systems so we wouldn't need another lockdown. We failed and hence another is I think, inevitable.
There's a feeling these days that a short hike from the US coast and you'll enter a vast hinterland of racist and religious bigots. This was what I thought 12 years ago when I dismissed Mike's famous 50/1 tip on OBAMA. These people do exist but so do those who got Obama over the line and fortunately there are sufficient numbers to see Trump loses whoever his opponent
Nevertheless when we came up with the fix of encouraging all our religious nutters to go settle over there, it is fair to say that we may not have fully thought through the longer term consequences?
Starmer really is useless isn't he. The goal is completely open, the goalkeeper has been sent off as well as the whole blood defence and he's smashed it over the bar. The lack of talent in both political parties is absolutely shocking.
He needs to take a position now, he should be IMHO, backing a full lockdown.
And lose all remaining support?
It's the right position to take. What position would you like him to take?
Support people to isolate with cash payments and hotel rooms/food/entertainment.
Push for widespread roll out of rapid testing at indoor venues and transit hubs.
Tough restrictions on arriving travellers and forced hotel isolation for 5 days and a negative PCR test.
Allow pubs to reopen to full hours, institute table service and sitting only room with mask wearing while standing for anyone.
Mandatory mask wearing in all indoor places, no exceptions even for health reasons. People who are unable to work due to this are supported with 100% wage subsidies based on their average wage over the 12 months before the virus.
These are all practical policies that will support the economy and people without destroying the social fabric of the nation.
All good stuff and certainly better than what has been proposed so far. I still think it's too late but as an interim measure, better than nothing.
Except for pubs, I would close them entirely.
There's still no logical reasoning behind that, you just seem to have this weird obsession with closing down pubs despite little evidence it will make any difference. We know the major transmission vector is people's front rooms. Closing down pubs sends people into front rooms. So you also have to stop household mixing, but that is notoriously difficult to police and requires an army of citizen snitches which is no way to conduct a free society.
No, the answer is making the community safe by removing people with the virus from the community until they don't have it. Hotel based separation is the answer, it works in the short and medium term until there is a vaccine.
The policies to remove people from the population aren't currently working, or are non-existent.
I think you're right with what you say - I think it's too late to implement it though. This should have been in place from July.
Along with the financial package to make those isolating not fall into penury. Of course politicians and the media were focussed on them and their mates on furlough schemes.
Starmer really is useless isn't he. The goal is completely open, the goalkeeper has been sent off as well as the whole blood defence and he's smashed it over the bar. The lack of talent in both political parties is absolutely shocking.
He needs to take a position now, he should be IMHO, backing a full lockdown.
And lose all remaining support?
It's the right position to take. What position would you like him to take?
Support people to isolate with cash payments and hotel rooms/food/entertainment.
Push for widespread roll out of rapid testing at indoor venues and transit hubs.
Tough restrictions on arriving travellers and forced hotel isolation for 5 days and a negative PCR test.
Allow pubs to reopen to full hours, institute table service and sitting only room with mask wearing while standing for anyone.
Mandatory mask wearing in all indoor places, no exceptions even for health reasons. People who are unable to work due to this are supported with 100% wage subsidies based on their average wage over the 12 months before the virus.
These are all practical policies that will support the economy and people without destroying the social fabric of the nation.
All good stuff and certainly better than what has been proposed so far. I still think it's too late but as an interim measure, better than nothing.
Except for pubs, I would close them entirely.
There's still no logical reasoning behind that, you just seem to have this weird obsession with closing down pubs despite little evidence it will make any difference. We know the major transmission vector is people's front rooms. Closing down pubs sends people into front rooms. So you also have to stop household mixing, but that is notoriously difficult to police and requires an army of citizen snitches which is no way to conduct a free society.
No, the answer is making the community safe by removing people with the virus from the community until they don't have it. Hotel based separation is the answer, it works in the short and medium term until there is a vaccine.
The policies to remove people from the population aren't currently working, or are non-existent.
I think you're right with what you say - I think it's too late to implement it though. This should have been in place from July.
Along with the financial package to make those isolating not fall into penury. Of course politicians and the media were focussed on them and their mates on furlough schemes.
Starmer really is useless isn't he. The goal is completely open, the goalkeeper has been sent off as well as the whole blood defence and he's smashed it over the bar. The lack of talent in both political parties is absolutely shocking.
He needs to take a position now, he should be IMHO, backing a full lockdown.
And lose all remaining support?
It's the right position to take. What position would you like him to take?
Support people to isolate with cash payments and hotel rooms/food/entertainment.
Push for widespread roll out of rapid testing at indoor venues and transit hubs.
Tough restrictions on arriving travellers and forced hotel isolation for 5 days and a negative PCR test.
Allow pubs to reopen to full hours, institute table service and sitting only room with mask wearing while standing for anyone.
Mandatory mask wearing in all indoor places, no exceptions even for health reasons. People who are unable to work due to this are supported with 100% wage subsidies based on their average wage over the 12 months before the virus.
These are all practical policies that will support the economy and people without destroying the social fabric of the nation.
All good stuff and certainly better than what has been proposed so far. I still think it's too late but as an interim measure, better than nothing.
Except for pubs, I would close them entirely.
There's still no logical reasoning behind that, you just seem to have this weird obsession with closing down pubs despite little evidence it will make any difference. We know the major transmission vector is people's front rooms. Closing down pubs sends people into front rooms. So you also have to stop household mixing, but that is notoriously difficult to police and requires an army of citizen snitches which is no way to conduct a free society.
No, the answer is making the community safe by removing people with the virus from the community until they don't have it. Hotel based separation is the answer, it works in the short and medium term until there is a vaccine.
The policies to remove people from the population aren't currently working, or are non-existent.
I think you're right with what you say - I think it's too late to implement it though. This should have been in place from July.
It actually isn't too late, the government could push through the policy tomorrow and start doing it next week with all new positive cases (and families if necessary) in all of the empty hotels across the country and let the councils run the programmes, they'll know local catering companies and delivery mechanisms better than someone in Whitehall.
It's a policy which brings down transmission very fast and has proven to work.
Can anyone see these figures on the YouGov website? When I click on the link, or go direct to the website, I still get the model output as at 3rd October, with Biden on 343.
Starmer really is useless isn't he. The goal is completely open, the goalkeeper has been sent off as well as the whole blood defence and he's smashed it over the bar. The lack of talent in both political parties is absolutely shocking.
He needs to take a position now, he should be IMHO, backing a full lockdown.
And lose all remaining support?
It's the right position to take. What position would you like him to take?
Support people to isolate with cash payments and hotel rooms/food/entertainment.
Push for widespread roll out of rapid testing at indoor venues and transit hubs.
Tough restrictions on arriving travellers and forced hotel isolation for 5 days and a negative PCR test.
Allow pubs to reopen to full hours, institute table service and sitting only room with mask wearing while standing for anyone.
Mandatory mask wearing in all indoor places, no exceptions even for health reasons. People who are unable to work due to this are supported with 100% wage subsidies based on their average wage over the 12 months before the virus.
These are all practical policies that will support the economy and people without destroying the social fabric of the nation.
All good stuff and certainly better than what has been proposed so far. I still think it's too late but as an interim measure, better than nothing.
Except for pubs, I would close them entirely.
There's still no logical reasoning behind that, you just seem to have this weird obsession with closing down pubs despite little evidence it will make any difference. We know the major transmission vector is people's front rooms. Closing down pubs sends people into front rooms. So you also have to stop household mixing, but that is notoriously difficult to police and requires an army of citizen snitches which is no way to conduct a free society.
No, the answer is making the community safe by removing people with the virus from the community until they don't have it. Hotel based separation is the answer, it works in the short and medium term until there is a vaccine.
The policies to remove people from the population aren't currently working, or are non-existent.
I think you're right with what you say - I think it's too late to implement it though. This should have been in place from July.
It actually isn't too late, the government could push through the policy tomorrow and start doing it next week with all new positive cases (and families if necessary) in all of the empty hotels across the country and let the councils run the programmes, they'll know local catering companies and delivery mechanisms better than someone in Whitehall.
It's a policy which brings down transmission very fast and has proven to work.
I think it is too late because realistically it isn't going to happen tomorrow. This Government will wait until the last minute and then introduce it.
Again, I agree with what you say and I think if we can avoid a lockdown we should but I am afraid I simply see no other option.
I don't want a lockdown, I live in London and it would be awful. I do however think it is necessary.
OK, I solved the YouGov mystery. It seems to be some bug related to saved cookies. Using a different browser I get the latest update Biden 363. I'll post an update to my summary of the forecast models shortly.
0.38 isn't that bad for something like this, when there are clearly multiple factors at work and you are only looking at the bivariate relationship, ignoring everything else. Just eye-balling the chart will tell you there is some relationship between the two variables, although that doesn't imply causation of course.
There's a feeling these days that a short hike from the US coast and you'll enter a vast hinterland of racist and religious bigots. This was what I thought 12 years ago when I dismissed Mike's famous 50/1 tip on OBAMA. These people do exist but so do those who got Obama over the line and fortunately there are sufficient numbers to see Trump loses whoever his opponent
Yeah, funny how it's the coastal US that is woke and the coastal UK that is unwoke.
There's a feeling these days that a short hike from the US coast and you'll enter a vast hinterland of racist and religious bigots. This was what I thought 12 years ago when I dismissed Mike's famous 50/1 tip on OBAMA. These people do exist but so do those who got Obama over the line and fortunately there are sufficient numbers to see Trump loses whoever his opponent
Nevertheless when we came up with the fix of encouraging all our religious nutters to go settle over there, it is fair to say that we may not have fully thought through the longer term consequences?
The irony is that the bits where the religious nutters went are now fairly sane, while it is the bits where the hard headed capitalists (slave owners) went that are full of nutters now.
Burnham on sky in the same interview blamed eat out to help out and pubs reopening too soon for reason North has seen higher cases, while also arguing we can't shut pubs and restaurants because his data shows they aren't responsible for much spreading of COVID....
As far as Charlotte is concerned . . . she's absolutely 100% correct that Warrington is not in Merseyside and never has been. But from the graphic she's sent it looks like she was tagged in error to an invitation for Merseyside then immediately sent another message saying it is separate - considering both messages have the same "1h" timestamp and the notifications are together so doesn't look like one was cleared before the other.
The original decision for the lockdown decision for Liverpool and Warrington listed it as Liverpool, Warrington (and 2 more I forget) so Warrington was listed separately from Liverpool.
There's a feeling these days that a short hike from the US coast and you'll enter a vast hinterland of racist and religious bigots. This was what I thought 12 years ago when I dismissed Mike's famous 50/1 tip on OBAMA. These people do exist but so do those who got Obama over the line and fortunately there are sufficient numbers to see Trump loses whoever his opponent
Yeah, funny how it's the coastal US that is woke and the coastal UK that is unwoke.
Andy C is (possibly unfairly, I must admit) cast as one of the most pro-lockdown voices on PB.
Even he would keep hospitality open.
It does see as if government wants to be seen to "do something", if if that something is not supported by the evidence.
For maximum clarity:
- I think the 10pm curfew has had negligible evidence presented for it and smacks of a compromise of being "seen to do something." I'd eliminate it as part of my package. - Table service only, separated by 2 metres, and a strict limit of people through the door. - Policed by spot checks; any violation sees loss of licence (those who abide by the rules shouldn't be disadvantaged compared to people playing fast and loose) - Targetted direct support (such as a monthly grant equal to their running costs as reported to HMRC for the average of the last two comparable months (eg October 2019 and October 2018) - Monitoring of the situation (ongoing estimates of the infection levels from within each of pubs, restaurants, etc) with a view to closing specifically temporarily if still necessary until the next item comes along - Widespread rolling out of the spit-tests that were being pioneered in June. Pubs and restaurants can have two areas if necessary (those compatible with the above, and one where normal rules apply) subject to taking the spit test, waiting a half hour or however long for the result, and finding a negative outcome (with emphasis to the public that this isn't guaranteed safe - some infectees will get through but the average spread will be way down, and if you can't accept that, don't go in).
Even though we both see the situation from different view points I think our end goal is basically the same. Prevent the economic and social destruction that comes with a second lockdown or whatever the tier 3 measures are.
There are so many things that the government could be doing better. Rapid testing is specifically an area that the government has let perfect be the enemy of good. The Abbott rapid test hits almost 90% accuracy compared to PCR testing, it is a viable solution for wide community and venue testing.
What do you think of moving from isolation to hotel based separation for people who test positive? To me it is close to a silver bullet which will bring the R down quite drastically.
I honestly don't know. The implications of that if you've got a single-parent family or one with specific caring responsibilities would need to be carefully addressed. It would help a lot with adherence, but anyone pulled into it would need full financial support for the duration.
One thing that's key for me is to find ways to preserve as much as possible of normal life, because that's crucial to getting widespread opt-in and adherence. A second is direct support to people and industries most affected. A third is evidence-based solutions (and avoiding any wishful thinking or cherry-picking, because reality will bite us hard and people will react and overreact. Ex-engineer, ex-military, ex-skydiver, and current microlight pilot talking, there. And to lighten the tone, have a photo from yesterday evening racing the sunset back to my home airfield after a flight over Cheddar Gorge)
I mean, I get that there's an urge to balance the books, but given that we're still in the middle of the greatest natural disaster to affect all of us in our lifetimes, there's some prioritisation here. People shouting that we need to balance the books right now smack of - well, visualise yourself in a disaster movie, in a car trying to outrace a tidal wave. Someone on the back seat is shouting that we should slow down because driving slower is safer, and if we did 56 mph, it'd be more economical.
In the long run, we're going to have to pay for it, yes. We do, however, need to get to the long run first.
Yes, full financial support would be absolutely necessary to ensure people do it. The idea in my view is people get £500 per week to stay in isolation at a hotel where everything is provided (food, internet, Netflix, PlayStations and a WFH space) for up to three weeks or until two consecutive negative tests are recorded. The cost of the policy isn't low and as you say I don't think it's a good way of saving money but we need to outrun the oncoming wave.
We'd need to separate around 400k people at the peak which would cost £6bn to run every week but then it would fall very rapidly as the number of people with the virus out in the community falls drastically and the transmission rate drops as a result.
Isolation of people with the virus is the key to defeating it in the short term and right now only 1 in 5 people who test positive fully isolate. Money and resources could raise this to 2 in 5 but really we need to push this up to above 9 in 10 for transmission to come down in a society which isn't locked down. That was our major failure in the summer, we allowed people to self certify quarantine on arrival from red list countries and self certify their own isolation.
Yes, this is what was done in the UAE earlier in the outbreak, when they went through the areas of high-density accommodation testing everyone - anyone positive and their room-mates were moved to hotels and isolated in single rooms until they tested negative.
Also, and I know it’s been said a hundred times before, but the same should go for all international arrivals, quarantined at a managed facility until tested negative.
Well, he is not far wrong with California, at least LA. Downtown is apparently totally dystopian
Sigh, have you been watching Blade Runner again? That said, I do get distinct Blade Runner feels whenever I have reason to pass through the Long Island Railroad concourse at Penn Station.
Because a bunch of stupid journalists want to get that narrative going, that it’s because evil Tories hate the north, rather than the simple truth that restrictions are being put in place based purely on infection rates.
Because a bunch of stupid journalists want to get that narrative going, that it’s because evil Tories hate the north, rather than the simple truth that restrictions are being put in place based purely on infection rates.
Yes, it's completely irresponsible of the media, and indeed opposition politicians.
Starmer really is useless isn't he. The goal is completely open, the goalkeeper has been sent off as well as the whole blood defence and he's smashed it over the bar. The lack of talent in both political parties is absolutely shocking.
He needs to take a position now, he should be IMHO, backing a full lockdown.
And lose all remaining support?
It's the right position to take. What position would you like him to take?
Support people to isolate with cash payments and hotel rooms/food/entertainment.
Push for widespread roll out of rapid testing at indoor venues and transit hubs.
Tough restrictions on arriving travellers and forced hotel isolation for 5 days and a negative PCR test.
Allow pubs to reopen to full hours, institute table service and sitting only room with mask wearing while standing for anyone.
Mandatory mask wearing in all indoor places, no exceptions even for health reasons. People who are unable to work due to this are supported with 100% wage subsidies based on their average wage over the 12 months before the virus.
These are all practical policies that will support the economy and people without destroying the social fabric of the nation.
All good stuff and certainly better than what has been proposed so far. I still think it's too late but as an interim measure, better than nothing.
Except for pubs, I would close them entirely.
There's still no logical reasoning behind that, you just seem to have this weird obsession with closing down pubs despite little evidence it will make any difference. We know the major transmission vector is people's front rooms. Closing down pubs sends people into front rooms. So you also have to stop household mixing, but that is notoriously difficult to police and requires an army of citizen snitches which is no way to conduct a free society.
No, the answer is making the community safe by removing people with the virus from the community until they don't have it. Hotel based separation is the answer, it works in the short and medium term until there is a vaccine.
The policies to remove people from the population aren't currently working, or are non-existent.
I think you're right with what you say - I think it's too late to implement it though. This should have been in place from July.
It actually isn't too late, the government could push through the policy tomorrow and start doing it next week with all new positive cases (and families if necessary) in all of the empty hotels across the country and let the councils run the programmes, they'll know local catering companies and delivery mechanisms better than someone in Whitehall.
It's a policy which brings down transmission very fast and has proven to work.
I think it is too late because realistically it isn't going to happen tomorrow. This Government will wait until the last minute and then introduce it.
Again, I agree with what you say and I think if we can avoid a lockdown we should but I am afraid I simply see no other option.
I don't want a lockdown, I live in London and it would be awful. I do however think it is necessary.
No they won't, but the discussion is what Starmer should be proposing instead of a second lockdown. There are so many Labour mayors and councils that would be up for such a policy that he could get a lot of buy in and then force the government into it. He's just not very good at politics it turns out. He can only do lawyerly carping as he did with brexit.
Comments
Even if there were warm spots (as opposed to hotspots) in some unis, it would have been very difficult to realise it.
We'd need to separate around 400k people at the peak which would cost £6bn to run every week but then it would fall very rapidly as the number of people with the virus out in the community falls drastically and the transmission rate drops as a result.
Isolation of people with the virus is the key to defeating it in the short term and right now only 1 in 5 people who test positive fully isolate. Money and resources could raise this to 2 in 5 but really we need to push this up to above 9 in 10 for transmission to come down in a society which isn't locked down. That was our major failure in the summer, we allowed people to self certify quarantine on arrival from red list countries and self certify their own isolation.
And then (imo) "clearly favoured" means FAR more likely to happen than not.
https://twitter.com/miqdaad/status/1315638330608975872
Here are the latest figures I could find, which seem to confirm this.
Broken down into food led and drinks led, admittedly. All pubs serve crisps obviously. The majority round here certainly don't serve cooked food.
And, yes, there's a North South divide.
https://www.morningadvertiser.co.uk/Article/2018/04/18/How-many-food-led-pubs-are-there
I would then ban all indoors mixing and make it outside only.
This worked well for him when trying to deflect attention from his own problems - all good, old-fashioned, dead cat stuff.
But he's clearly behind now and really has to pick one consistent line of attack now to give himself any sort of chance. The ADHD approach isn't good for that. What does he want the final three weeks of the election to be about? What's his elevator pitch at this late stage? Because the high-energy, low-focus, scattergun stuff just runs down the clock and plays into Biden's hands.
Well I can absolutely agree with Johnson on that
- I don't see NHS-X as a big error: a centralised approach was a good fit with existing UK health IT and, given Google-Apple announcement was only mid April, we weren't especially slow to pivot. An app seems to a bolt on rather than a central plank in most countries. We oversold it though.
- Gearing test and trace for volume rather than turnaround, not going hard enough on rapid testing - even if you did not know quite where it fitted in at the start, it was clear that it provided a different capability.
- Not integrating with and bolstering local teams for track and trace well enough.
- Not having a clear enough plan on how local restrictions would be handled and basically winging it, resulting in confusion. Lifting restrictions (e.g. in Lancashire, Bolton) when rates were not obviously low.
At this stage we need to:
- Get test and trace both testing and tracing faster.
- Build volume in rapid testing
- Use the right restrictions at the right times to suppress R quickly and keep it suppressed. Still act locally and at work/education place level, but don't pussyfoot around.
- Have rapid and bulk testing ready for re-opening so we can quickly contact trace the cousin viral lines of an infection, not just the child viral lines.
- Invest heavily in the QR element of the app, every potential superspread location, every pub, every train carriage, should have QR everywhere - when you get table service QR and QR again. Start trying to roll out QR tokens.
- Discharge pressures on the NHS will rise again. Ensure hospitals and care homes do not repeat the spring and the means to avoid that are in place, good isolation of returnees to care homes, testing and common sense guidelines for visiting. If you think we've done this already, double, triple, quadruple check.
He's not in much position to do anymore unless the Tories start dropping. That ain't happening before Brexit, if it ever happens at all.
Hung Parliament is the best he can do, IMHO
Does a laminated menu offer some hitherto unsuspected protection from the virus?
“Full lockdown”? Schools included? University students left on campus or sent home? All shops shut (other than supermarkets) Hospitals cancelling all non urgent treatment?
It made people feel like it was all over, that was the wrong action to take. Them being scared would have been better
Hounslow: 10,760
Hillingdon: 8,960
Ealing: 5,760
Slough: 4,090)
0.38. Get. To. Fuck.
What Starmer wants, and has done for a long time, is localised action to deal with outbreaks and significant rises in infection. He thinks powers should be devolved to local areas to test, trace and isolate, using personal contact. Money needs to be given to local authorities and health teams to support this. He thinks restrictions should be used as necessary, including quite draconian ones in the worst affected areas.
Now, it looks to me as if the government is moving, albeit slowly, to what Starmer has been calling for. He's winning, not losing. And he'd be a fool to oppose changes he's been calling for, and he's not a fool.
Starmer has not found the simple message to use to pin the blame for Covid onto the Conservatives in general and Johnson in particular. It's not inevitable that they will take the majority of the blame. Labour have to convince the public that they should.
Push for widespread roll out of rapid testing at indoor venues and transit hubs.
Tough restrictions on arriving travellers and forced hotel isolation for 5 days and a negative PCR test.
Allow pubs to reopen to full hours, institute table service and sitting only room with mask wearing while standing for anyone.
Mandatory mask wearing in all indoor places, no exceptions even for health reasons. People who are unable to work due to this are supported with 100% wage subsidies based on their average wage over the 12 months before the virus.
These are all practical policies that will support the economy and people without destroying the social fabric of the nation.
We should have had a proper track and trace system, I would have banned holidays abroad, restricted the borders. Eat Out To Help Out should not have happened.
I would have introduced rule of six then and kept it to outdoors only. Pubs/restaurants would have remained closed and I would have enforced mask wearing at all times in public places and indoors. At the end, we could have opened restaurants up at lunchtime.
This would have been backed by Government support.
Except for pubs, I would close them entirely.
Here in Berlin, for two or three weeks during "The Easing" in May, bars were allowed to open only if they were licensed as a Bar/Restaurant. I was surprised to see a local microbrewery was open on the first night, even though the only food available there is Bretzel (salty bread). That night I talked to the landlord of another nearby pub, which does genuinely serve meals. He said that in Berlin lots of bars apply for a licence with food when they change landlord, regardless of whether they serve food. The point is that it is the application for a licence that costs, but an alcohol/food costs only a little more than an alcohol only license. So bars many apply for alcohol/food anyway, regardless, so that if they build a kitchen and provide food in the future they do not need to reapply for a costly licence.
The main reason for writing this is anecdote, but it also shows that often business categories like "pubs that serve food" can in reality mean something dfferent to what normal folk like me think it means.
Perhaps exceptions for those living alone but I think the crux of what I am getting at, was needed.
I know you don't agree.
No, the answer is making the community safe by removing people with the virus from the community until they don't have it. Hotel based separation is the answer, it works in the short and medium term until there is a vaccine.
It's the same old Tories who don't care about the north.
Not confirmed
The problem wasn’t the measures taken to reopen the economy. It was the complete failure to create the conditions to put a lid on any future growth in numbers.
https://twitter.com/YouGovAmerica/status/1315624866096312320
However, I think I am right to say we came out of the first lockdown too quickly and we had time in July to prepare. We did not.
I think you're right with what you say - I think it's too late to implement it though. This should have been in place from July.
Let the confirmation hearings begin!
We should have used July/August to get into place systems so we wouldn't need another lockdown. We failed and hence another is I think, inevitable.
"Are you a Republican?"
"Yes"
"You're hired!"
Of course politicians and the media were focussed on them and their mates on furlough schemes.
It's a policy which brings down transmission very fast and has proven to work.
Biden 53.3% (+0.6%)
Trump 44.6% (-0.6%)
Again, I agree with what you say and I think if we can avoid a lockdown we should but I am afraid I simply see no other option.
I don't want a lockdown, I live in London and it would be awful. I do however think it is necessary.
Biden 52% (+3)
Trump 43% (-3)
However I might not remember correctly.
The original decision for the lockdown decision for Liverpool and Warrington listed it as Liverpool, Warrington (and 2 more I forget) so Warrington was listed separately from Liverpool.
LOOSENING the rules, Jesus Christ God help us
Also, and I know it’s been said a hundred times before, but the same should go for all international arrivals, quarantined at a managed facility until tested negative.
For comparison, SpreadEx (who always seem to be a bit higher on Biden) go 323-331.
You just do not understand the complexities and the need to keep the economy functioning wherever possible