Do we really believe the EU deal is now like an episode of 24? Or will the can just be kicked a bit further and a bit further and a bit further?
I expect the EU to shrug, say "No Deal" and leave Boris to stew in his own mess.
Never going to happen.
What happened with Greece?
Greece was a supplicant trapped within the Euro that needed fiscal transfers from the rest of Europe.
The UK is a sovereign nation with its own currency that has always been giving fiscal transfers to the rest of Europe.
He who pays the piper calls the tune.
If our ability to get our own way was based on paying the piper, perhaps giving the money to the NHS instead wasn't such a smart move.
The EU aren't the piper.
The EU states and their businesses and ultimately their voters have a massive trade surplus with the UK. It is in their interests to avoid WTO to ensure that trade surplus continues uninterrupted, especially during a recession.
This comment piece makes a false claim about Birmingham nightinggale hospital being taken down and closed, which I think is completely untrue.
But this was funny:
"To be fair to Baroness Harding, the poor woman has only been given £12.6 billion to come up with a workable NHS tracking system. With that amount, you could have paid every single elderly and vulnerable person in the UK £60,000 to shield themselves in the Bahamas and used the change to recompense students for their non-existent university experience."
It may seem funny but its absolutely terrible maths and entirely untrue. Its the same terrible mistake as was made earlier in the year with this infamous Tweet being read on TV. https://twitter.com/jsmooth995/status/1235788534067482624
There are 30 million elderly and vulnerable people in the UK. Spending £60,000 on each of them would come not to £12.6 billion but instead £1,800,000,000,000 or £1.8 trillion. That's without considering the students.
People, as a whole, are terrible with handling large numbers. Our monkey brains didn't evolve to deal with them; our instinct on counting is "None," "One," "Two," "A few," "Several," "Many," "Loads," "Shitloads."
When everything falls in the shitloads category, all the numbers look the same. When "million" or "billion" or "trillion" come along, our instincts fail completely.
It actually circles around to the covid discussion another way - the famous "herd immunity through infection" thing.
Even IF we could unscramble the egg to segregate to do it. Even IF Long Covid didn't exist. Even IF immunity never ever wore off... how long would it take? Assuming no "let it rip" strategy to overload the hospitals (which virtually everyone who tilts towards this idea emphasises is NOT on the cards), we'd need to dripfeed through at a certain maximum infection rate per day. Currently we're going at under 20,000 per day, and that's loads of people and probably sustainable if we levelled off here. It is, coincidentally, heavily focused amongst the youngest (age 16-24) so our hospitalisations rates - which are already comping close to saturation in some areas and causing a lot of non-covid procedures to be postponed - would certainly not be lower than now and as we'd need more in the 24-40, 40-50, and 50-60 brackets to develop it for herd immunity, probably quite a bit worse.
Shitloads of people to get infected, divided by loads per day, leaves... well... I don't know... a month or two? Feels about right?
Nowhere near.
40,000,000 divided by 20,000 gives 2,000 days.
We'd be running that strategy for five and a half years. To halve that time, we'd need to double the infection rate beyond where we are now. To get it down to just a year and a quarter, we'd need to run at the same infection rate we reached at the absolute peak in March/April.
Why the hell don't the Great Barrington people level with us and say how long it would take to achieve it there way - if we accepted the deaths and long covid issues and could somehow work out how to segregate so well?
How many years is it that we have been waiting for Angela Merkel to force the EU to concede to us?
And now the moment is finally here.
That was what we always understood. Decisions are only made at the final moment.
When do you expect a deal?
November. Finish ratification in December.
Whatever the "deal" is I don't expect any changes to the standards and customs arrangements from 2021. We simply can't put either a physical or organisational border in place in time...
But we're ready for No Deal. We know this because the government has wagged its finger and told businesses it's their fault if they're not prepared for they don't know what.
I honestly don't think even this government is stupid/psychotic enough to countenance the added chaos of no deal on top of the Covid crisis. A similar logic will be concentrating minds on the Continent. Having said all that, the deal arrived at will still be shit.
Can someone explain to me just how Liverpool's tier 3 for 28 days differs from a circuit breaker wanted by Starmer other than he wants to paralyse the whole of England irrespective of infection rates
This comment piece makes a false claim about Birmingham nightinggale hospital being taken down and closed, which I think is completely untrue.
But this was funny:
"To be fair to Baroness Harding, the poor woman has only been given £12.6 billion to come up with a workable NHS tracking system. With that amount, you could have paid every single elderly and vulnerable person in the UK £60,000 to shield themselves in the Bahamas and used the change to recompense students for their non-existent university experience."
It may seem funny but its absolutely terrible maths and entirely untrue. Its the same terrible mistake as was made earlier in the year with this infamous Tweet being read on TV. https://twitter.com/jsmooth995/status/1235788534067482624
There are 30 million elderly and vulnerable people in the UK. Spending £60,000 on each of them would come not to £12.6 billion but instead £1,800,000,000,000 or £1.8 trillion. That's without considering the students.
People, as a whole, are terrible with handling large numbers. Our monkey brains didn't evolve to deal with them; our instinct on counting is "None," "One," "Two," "A few," "Several," "Many," "Loads," "Shitloads."
When everything falls in the shitloads category, all the numbers look the same. When "million" or "billion" or "trillion" come along, our instincts fail completely.
It actually circles around to the covid discussion another way - the famous "herd immunity through infection" thing.
Even IF we could unscramble the egg to segregate to do it. Even IF Long Covid didn't exist. Even IF immunity never ever wore off... how long would it take? Assuming no "let it rip" strategy to overload the hospitals (which virtually everyone who tilts towards this idea emphasises is NOT on the cards), we'd need to dripfeed through at a certain maximum infection rate per day. Currently we're going at under 20,000 per day, and that's loads of people and probably sustainable if we levelled off here. It is, coincidentally, heavily focused amongst the youngest (age 16-24) so our hospitalisations rates - which are already comping close to saturation in some areas and causing a lot of non-covid procedures to be postponed - would certainly not be lower than now and as we'd need more in the 24-40, 40-50, and 50-60 brackets to develop it for herd immunity, probably quite a bit worse.
Shitloads of people to get infected, divided by loads per day, leaves... well... I don't know... a month or two? Feels about right?
Nowhere near.
40,000,000 divided by 20,000 gives 2,000 days.
We'd be running that strategy for five and a half years. To halve that time, we'd need to double the infection rate beyond where we are now. To get it down to just a year and a quarter, we'd need to run at the same infection rate we reached at the absolute peak in March/April.
Why the hell don't the Great Barrington people level with us and say how long it would take to achieve it there way - if we accepted the deaths and long covid issues and could somehow work out how to segregate so well?
When so many people are incapable of dealing with basic arithmetic (albeit with big numbers), it's no great surprise that exponential growth remains beyond the comprehension of even more!
This comment piece makes a false claim about Birmingham nightinggale hospital being taken down and closed, which I think is completely untrue.
But this was funny:
"To be fair to Baroness Harding, the poor woman has only been given £12.6 billion to come up with a workable NHS tracking system. With that amount, you could have paid every single elderly and vulnerable person in the UK £60,000 to shield themselves in the Bahamas and used the change to recompense students for their non-existent university experience."
It may seem funny but its absolutely terrible maths and entirely untrue. Its the same terrible mistake as was made earlier in the year with this infamous Tweet being read on TV. https://twitter.com/jsmooth995/status/1235788534067482624
There are 30 million elderly and vulnerable people in the UK. Spending £60,000 on each of them would come not to £12.6 billion but instead £1,800,000,000,000 or £1.8 trillion. That's without considering the students.
People, as a whole, are terrible with handling large numbers. Our monkey brains didn't evolve to deal with them; our instinct on counting is "None," "One," "Two," "A few," "Several," "Many," "Loads," "Shitloads."
When everything falls in the shitloads category, all the numbers look the same. When "million" or "billion" or "trillion" come along, our instincts fail completely.
It actually circles around to the covid discussion another way - the famous "herd immunity through infection" thing.
Even IF we could unscramble the egg to segregate to do it. Even IF Long Covid didn't exist. Even IF immunity never ever wore off... how long would it take? Assuming no "let it rip" strategy to overload the hospitals (which virtually everyone who tilts towards this idea emphasises is NOT on the cards), we'd need to dripfeed through at a certain maximum infection rate per day. Currently we're going at under 20,000 per day, and that's loads of people and probably sustainable if we levelled off here. It is, coincidentally, heavily focused amongst the youngest (age 16-24) so our hospitalisations rates - which are already comping close to saturation in some areas and causing a lot of non-covid procedures to be postponed - would certainly not be lower than now and as we'd need more in the 24-40, 40-50, and 50-60 brackets to develop it for herd immunity, probably quite a bit worse.
Shitloads of people to get infected, divided by loads per day, leaves... well... I don't know... a month or two? Feels about right?
Nowhere near.
40,000,000 divided by 20,000 gives 2,000 days.
We'd be running that strategy for five and a half years. To halve that time, we'd need to double the infection rate beyond where we are now. To get it down to just a year and a quarter, we'd need to run at the same infection rate we reached at the absolute peak in March/April.
Why the hell don't the Great Barrington people level with us and say how long it would take to achieve it there way - if we accepted the deaths and long covid issues and could somehow work out how to segregate so well?
Especially as the 'postponements' are at no cost whatever.
Operations are not being delayed Cancer checks are not being missed in their millions. There is no upsurge in mental illness. Hundreds of thousands are not losing everything.
What's not to like about consequence-free postponements of death for people with an average age of 82 with 2.7 co-morbidities?
FFS. Nobody in their right mind would plough on with this during the worst public health and economic crisis since the War. Just agree a one or two year extension to the transition and let's get back to dealing with the crisis. It's not as if the europeans are not in the same shitty boat up a shitty covid rancid creek.
Do we really believe the EU deal is now like an episode of 24? Or will the can just be kicked a bit further and a bit further and a bit further?
I expect the EU to shrug, say "No Deal" and leave Boris to stew in his own mess.
Never going to happen.
What happened with Greece?
Greece was a supplicant trapped within the Euro that needed fiscal transfers from the rest of Europe.
The UK is a sovereign nation with its own currency that has always been giving fiscal transfers to the rest of Europe.
He who pays the piper calls the tune.
If our ability to get our own way was based on paying the piper, perhaps giving the money to the NHS instead wasn't such a smart move.
The EU aren't the piper.
The EU states and their businesses and ultimately their voters have a massive trade surplus with the UK. It is in their interests to avoid WTO to ensure that trade surplus continues uninterrupted, especially during a recession.
We hold all the cards.
Going from SM/CU to a Canada-style deal would disrupt the status quo almost as much as going to WTO terms, so if this is our leverage, it only works if we lever ourselves into another extension.
Can someone explain to me just how Liverpool's tier 3 for 28 days differs from a circuit breaker wanted by Starmer other than he wants to paralyse the whole of England irrespective of infection rates
The local lockdowns have been demonstrable failures. The national lockdown in April worked.
We're going to have a deal agreed in principle by tomorrow, surely? Or, if not, we'll know tomorrow that it's a no-deal crash out. The uncertainty will be over. That's what Boris said, and he's not a man to miss a self-imposed deadline.
Especially as the 'postponements' are at no cost whatever.
Operations are not being delayed Cancer checks are not being missed in their millions. There is no upsurge in mental illness. Hundreds of thousands are not losing everything.
What's not to like about consequence-free postponements of death for people with an average age of 82 with 2.7 co-morbidities?
Tell us more about the medical interventions which do more than merely postponing deaths, and the characteristics other than age on the basis of which it is legitimate to value human lives differentially.
We're going to have a deal agreed in principle by tomorrow, surely? Or, if not, we'll know tomorrow that it's a no-deal crash out. The uncertainty will be over. That's what Boris said, and he's not a man to miss a self-imposed deadline.
Missing his self-imposed deadlines just shows them that we're serious, or something...
Do we really believe the EU deal is now like an episode of 24? Or will the can just be kicked a bit further and a bit further and a bit further?
Can we set Jack Bauer on Michel Barnier?
Seriously, it’s looking like a number of sectoral deals on which there’s agreement, rather than one big deal - likely reconvening in February or March to take stock of how things are working in practice.
We're going to have a deal agreed in principle by tomorrow, surely? Or, if not, we'll know tomorrow that it's a no-deal crash out. The uncertainty will be over. That's what Boris said, and he's not a man to miss a self-imposed deadline.
BoZo seems to be of the view that any hint of compromise with Europe will somehow tarnish his image as a politician and statesman, without grasping the reality that it's already completely and utterly wrecked.
This comment piece makes a false claim about Birmingham nightinggale hospital being taken down and closed, which I think is completely untrue.
But this was funny:
"To be fair to Baroness Harding, the poor woman has only been given £12.6 billion to come up with a workable NHS tracking system. With that amount, you could have paid every single elderly and vulnerable person in the UK £60,000 to shield themselves in the Bahamas and used the change to recompense students for their non-existent university experience."
It may seem funny but its absolutely terrible maths and entirely untrue. Its the same terrible mistake as was made earlier in the year with this infamous Tweet being read on TV. https://twitter.com/jsmooth995/status/1235788534067482624
There are 30 million elderly and vulnerable people in the UK. Spending £60,000 on each of them would come not to £12.6 billion but instead £1,800,000,000,000 or £1.8 trillion. That's without considering the students.
People, as a whole, are terrible with handling large numbers. Our monkey brains didn't evolve to deal with them; our instinct on counting is "None," "One," "Two," "A few," "Several," "Many," "Loads," "Shitloads."
When everything falls in the shitloads category, all the numbers look the same. When "million" or "billion" or "trillion" come along, our instincts fail completely.
It actually circles around to the covid discussion another way - the famous "herd immunity through infection" thing.
Even IF we could unscramble the egg to segregate to do it. Even IF Long Covid didn't exist. Even IF immunity never ever wore off... how long would it take? Assuming no "let it rip" strategy to overload the hospitals (which virtually everyone who tilts towards this idea emphasises is NOT on the cards), we'd need to dripfeed through at a certain maximum infection rate per day. Currently we're going at under 20,000 per day, and that's loads of people and probably sustainable if we levelled off here. It is, coincidentally, heavily focused amongst the youngest (age 16-24) so our hospitalisations rates - which are already comping close to saturation in some areas and causing a lot of non-covid procedures to be postponed - would certainly not be lower than now and as we'd need more in the 24-40, 40-50, and 50-60 brackets to develop it for herd immunity, probably quite a bit worse.
Shitloads of people to get infected, divided by loads per day, leaves... well... I don't know... a month or two? Feels about right?
Nowhere near.
40,000,000 divided by 20,000 gives 2,000 days.
We'd be running that strategy for five and a half years. To halve that time, we'd need to double the infection rate beyond where we are now. To get it down to just a year and a quarter, we'd need to run at the same infection rate we reached at the absolute peak in March/April.
Why the hell don't the Great Barrington people level with us and say how long it would take to achieve it there way - if we accepted the deaths and long covid issues and could somehow work out how to segregate so well?
Can someone explain to me just how Liverpool's tier 3 for 28 days differs from a circuit breaker wanted by Starmer other than he wants to paralyse the whole of England irrespective of infection rates
The local lockdowns have been demonstrable failures. The national lockdown in April worked.
Precisely. We need to replicate what we did in March/April, but this time use a proper test, trace and isolate system afterwards to keep R down.
We won't though. The government doesn't have the guts or authority to do so, and so will just press on with these half-hearted measures while the bodies pile up and the economy collapses. Oh, and Brexit. Merry Christmas.
Can someone explain to me just how Liverpool's tier 3 for 28 days differs from a circuit breaker wanted by Starmer other than he wants to paralyse the whole of England irrespective of infection rates
The local lockdowns have been demonstrable failures. The national lockdown in April worked.
Precisely. We need to replicate what we did in March/April, but this time use a proper test, trace and isolate system afterwards to keep R down.
We won't though. The government doesn't have the guts or authority to do so, and so will just press on with these half-hearted measures while the bodies pile up and the economy collapses. Oh, and Brexit. Merry Christmas.
But what do you mean by proper trace system? Nobody in the west has one, because even for small case numbers it isn't possible to keep up with the spread.
We are trying a "circuit break" in central Scotland. Too early to tell yet but we should know whether it has worked in reducing the number of cases in a week or so. This is a real life experiment in UK conditions and I think that the government can wait to see the outcome before going further in England.
So, the question is what are the politicians doing with the time they bought?
Not necessarily just about buying time.
If you have a test, trace, isolate system with a certain capacity, a circuit breaker could reduce cases down low enough to be within that capacity, so that you can control and reduce the disease.
If we had only 1 COVID case a day, presumably even Dido Harding would be able to successfully test, trace and isolate all of that case's contacts.
Whether this circuit breaker will get us within that capacity... no idea but probably not.
Especially as the 'postponements' are at no cost whatever.
Operations are not being delayed Cancer checks are not being missed in their millions. There is no upsurge in mental illness. Hundreds of thousands are not losing everything.
What's not to like about consequence-free postponements of death for people with an average age of 82 with 2.7 co-morbidities?
At least part of that is the wrong way round.
If cases are kept low, then hospitals have capacity to do those other things.
If cases are not kept under control, then everything else has to shut down to treat the coronavirus patients.
I know there were still a lot of postponements in hospital care over the summer, my own family was affected and I think most of those services should have been up and running at full capacity again when cases were low. It's a failing that they were not.
As for the mental health and economic consequences, those are real and dire, but not controlling cases have consequences there too.
Whatever approach is taken, there are plenty of downsides. I remain unconvinced that attempting to control cases in the short to medium term is the worst option.
PS: If we really want to decide we no longer care about 82 year olds (is that ok, @OldKingCole ?) then we should note that most of those suffering most from the restrictions to hospital services are older people with morbidity. Yes, there will of course be younger people missing cancer checks and diagnoses and possibly treatment (but in Leeds at least I know for a fact that e.g. children's cancer services have been running at full rate throughout) but they'll be in a minority, just as they are in a minority of those dying from coronavirus.
We're going to have a deal agreed in principle by tomorrow, surely? Or, if not, we'll know tomorrow that it's a no-deal crash out. The uncertainty will be over. That's what Boris said, and he's not a man to miss a self-imposed deadline.
Relax. Johnson is taking 𝑷̲̅𝑬̲̅𝑹̲̅𝑺̲̅𝑶̲̅𝑵̲̅𝑨̲̅𝑳̲̅ 𝑪̲̅𝑯̲̅𝑨̲̅𝑹̲̅𝑮̲̅𝑬̲̅ of the negotiations.
We are trying a "circuit break" in central Scotland. Too early to tell yet but we should know whether it has worked in reducing the number of cases in a week or so. This is a real life experiment in UK conditions and I think that the government can wait to see the outcome before going further in England.
So, the question is what are the politicians doing with the time they bought?
Not necessarily just about buying time.
If you have a test, trace, isolate system with a certain capacity, a circuit breaker could reduce cases down low enough to be within that capacity, so that you can control and reduce the disease.
If we had only 1 COVID case a day, presumably even Dido Harding would be able to successfully test, trace and isolate all of that case's contacts.
Whether this circuit breaker will get us within that capacity... no idea but probably not.
Still all about them using their private chums to do the testing etc , they have burned shedloads of money to line their pals pockets. A fraction of that into the existing NHS labs and structures / processes etc would have been 10x better. Being Tories they instinctively think of the private sector and their donor / crook chums and throw money at them.
Except on testing, the Tories did exactly that, they trusted PHE with testing and PHE failed miserably to increase capacity...not in small part because you can't just magic up things PCR machines.
The Germans were so good because they straight away used a mixture of public and private labs....remember the PCR test itself was developed by a private company in Germany and PHE rejected buying the licence for it, instead repeating the process and wasting another month.
I come back to the obvious. The fact that the Republicans on Capitol Hill are so desperate to get Amy Coney Barrett confirmed to the Supreme Court ahead of Nov 3rd tells you they know they've lost. And almost certainly not only the White House but Congress.
I hope Biden adds two more Justices so as to compound the Republican's defeat...
Biden should add 4 justices and 2 States.
Packing the court is a rubbish idea.
It is - and the Republicans have been at it at state level for a while. And succeeded with the Arizona and Georgia state supreme courts.
How many years is it that we have been waiting for Angela Merkel to force the EU to concede to us?
And now the moment is finally here.
That was what we always understood. Decisions are only made at the final moment.
When do you expect a deal?
November. Finish ratification in December.
Whatever the "deal" is I don't expect any changes to the standards and customs arrangements from 2021. We simply can't put either a physical or organisational border in place in time...
But we're ready for No Deal. We know this because the government has wagged its finger and told businesses it's their fault if they're not prepared for they don't know what.
Indeed. Happily in the real world business isn't prepared for no deal. How could it be when the Goods Vehicle Movement Service doesn't yet exist?
Doctors in Liverpool say those partying in the city do not care people are dying
It is sad but seems succinct
This generation seems extraordinarily self-centred
Tell that to my 26 year-old, graduate son, who was unemployed for six months and applied for literally hundreds of jobs before finally starting one on Monday as a labourer in a recycling centre. He had also signed up for a year long course to train as a plumber and has been doing that for a month. Yesterday, after working his 7am to 4.30 pm shift, he got an email from the college saying two people in his class had tested positive for covid and he needed to self-isolate for two weeks. He phoned work this morning to tell them and now no longer has a job. Like millions of others all he’s tried to do is the right thing. Check your privilege, Charles!
I hope things get better for him. He’s one of the good ones.
I come back to the obvious. The fact that the Republicans on Capitol Hill are so desperate to get Amy Coney Barrett confirmed to the Supreme Court ahead of Nov 3rd tells you they know they've lost. And almost certainly not only the White House but Congress.
I hope Biden adds two more Justices so as to compound the Republican's defeat...
Biden should add 4 justices and 2 States.
Packing the court is a rubbish idea.
It is - and the Republicans have been at it at state level for a while. And succeeded with the Arizona and Georgia state supreme courts.
Yes, it's rubbish there too, developing that into a national strategy is stupid. Though the whole idea of partisan justices seems an odd thing to me and ultimately I don't really care because it's America, not the UK.
Can someone explain to me just how Liverpool's tier 3 for 28 days differs from a circuit breaker wanted by Starmer other than he wants to paralyse the whole of England irrespective of infection rates
The local lockdowns have been demonstrable failures. The national lockdown in April worked.
I come back to the obvious. The fact that the Republicans on Capitol Hill are so desperate to get Amy Coney Barrett confirmed to the Supreme Court ahead of Nov 3rd tells you they know they've lost. And almost certainly not only the White House but Congress.
I hope Biden adds two more Justices so as to compound the Republican's defeat...
Biden should add 4 justices and 2 States.
Packing the court is a rubbish idea.
It is.
Doing nothing after the Republicans packed the court is a rubbish idea too.
The rebuplicans had a fair wind, they didn't add justices. It just means the next time there's a GOP president and house they'll add 6 more until the bench becomes huge.
I think the shanigans the Republicans have gotten up to are more than a 'fair wind' but so what if the GOP do that next time? That's next time's problem, the Democrats adding Justices now would be payback for what the Republicans have already done not may theoretically do next time.
The bridge has already been crossed of bending the rules past breaking point, so two need to play at that game. If traditional rules still applied then the Democrats could fillibuster ACB until after the new President is inaugurated, they can't because the GOP have changed the rules. Adding Justices is within the rules.
No it's a rubbish idea which turns into a ridiculous arms race and before you know there bench is 101 and growing.
The Dems got unlucky with the timings of deaths and not controling the senate. That will swing back and it's clear that Gorsuch isn't a Trump toadie and even Kavanaugh has some Independent thought. I don't know what the new person is about but I'm sure she's more than qualified to hold the position.
The essential problem is that with the confirmation of Barrett, you will have a conservative court perhaps for the next two decades - and one which was made so on the back of the votes of a minority of the US popular vote. Waiting a generation for it to 'swing back' is really not politically viable. And will become less so once a 6-3 court starts issuing rulings.
We're going to have a deal agreed in principle by tomorrow, surely? Or, if not, we'll know tomorrow that it's a no-deal crash out. The uncertainty will be over. That's what Boris said, and he's not a man to miss a self-imposed deadline.
This comment piece makes a false claim about Birmingham nightinggale hospital being taken down and closed, which I think is completely untrue.
But this was funny:
"To be fair to Baroness Harding, the poor woman has only been given £12.6 billion to come up with a workable NHS tracking system. With that amount, you could have paid every single elderly and vulnerable person in the UK £60,000 to shield themselves in the Bahamas and used the change to recompense students for their non-existent university experience."
It may seem funny but its absolutely terrible maths and entirely untrue. Its the same terrible mistake as was made earlier in the year with this infamous Tweet being read on TV. https://twitter.com/jsmooth995/status/1235788534067482624
There are 30 million elderly and vulnerable people in the UK. Spending £60,000 on each of them would come not to £12.6 billion but instead £1,800,000,000,000 or £1.8 trillion. That's without considering the students.
People, as a whole, are terrible with handling large numbers. Our monkey brains didn't evolve to deal with them; our instinct on counting is "None," "One," "Two," "A few," "Several," "Many," "Loads," "Shitloads."
When everything falls in the shitloads category, all the numbers look the same. When "million" or "billion" or "trillion" come along, our instincts fail completely.
It actually circles around to the covid discussion another way - the famous "herd immunity through infection" thing.
Even IF we could unscramble the egg to segregate to do it. Even IF Long Covid didn't exist. Even IF immunity never ever wore off... how long would it take? Assuming no "let it rip" strategy to overload the hospitals (which virtually everyone who tilts towards this idea emphasises is NOT on the cards), we'd need to dripfeed through at a certain maximum infection rate per day. Currently we're going at under 20,000 per day, and that's loads of people and probably sustainable if we levelled off here. It is, coincidentally, heavily focused amongst the youngest (age 16-24) so our hospitalisations rates - which are already comping close to saturation in some areas and causing a lot of non-covid procedures to be postponed - would certainly not be lower than now and as we'd need more in the 24-40, 40-50, and 50-60 brackets to develop it for herd immunity, probably quite a bit worse.
Shitloads of people to get infected, divided by loads per day, leaves... well... I don't know... a month or two? Feels about right?
Nowhere near.
40,000,000 divided by 20,000 gives 2,000 days.
We'd be running that strategy for five and a half years. To halve that time, we'd need to double the infection rate beyond where we are now. To get it down to just a year and a quarter, we'd need to run at the same infection rate we reached at the absolute peak in March/April.
Why the hell don't the Great Barrington people level with us and say how long it would take to achieve it there way - if we accepted the deaths and long covid issues and could somehow work out how to segregate so well?
Can someone explain to me just how Liverpool's tier 3 for 28 days differs from a circuit breaker wanted by Starmer other than he wants to paralyse the whole of England irrespective of infection rates
The circuit breaker would be more drachonian than Tier 3. I think.
Can someone explain to me just how Liverpool's tier 3 for 28 days differs from a circuit breaker wanted by Starmer other than he wants to paralyse the whole of England irrespective of infection rates
The local lockdowns have been demonstrable failures. The national lockdown in April worked.
I come back to the obvious. The fact that the Republicans on Capitol Hill are so desperate to get Amy Coney Barrett confirmed to the Supreme Court ahead of Nov 3rd tells you they know they've lost. And almost certainly not only the White House but Congress.
I hope Biden adds two more Justices so as to compound the Republican's defeat...
Biden should add 4 justices and 2 States.
Packing the court is a rubbish idea.
It is - and the Republicans have been at it at state level for a while. And succeeded with the Arizona and Georgia state supreme courts.
Yes, it's rubbish there too, developing that into a national strategy is stupid. Though the whole idea of partisan justices seems an odd thing to me and ultimately I don't really care because it's America, not the UK.
Partisan and elected judges is a wierd one to an outsider.
The one that really gets me though, is the level of micromanagement by politicians in the electoral process itself - so we get a mayor or a governor specifying how many polling stations are allowed where and what time they open, then after the election they get to draw the boundaries as they see fit. Maybe the founding fathers never expected the hyper-partisanship we have today.
Can someone explain to me just how Liverpool's tier 3 for 28 days differs from a circuit breaker wanted by Starmer other than he wants to paralyse the whole of England irrespective of infection rates
The circuit breaker would be more drachonian than Tier 3. I think.
I would have thought so but like so much of covid how much more drachonian
I come back to the obvious. The fact that the Republicans on Capitol Hill are so desperate to get Amy Coney Barrett confirmed to the Supreme Court ahead of Nov 3rd tells you they know they've lost. And almost certainly not only the White House but Congress.
I hope Biden adds two more Justices so as to compound the Republican's defeat...
Biden should add 4 justices and 2 States.
Packing the court is a rubbish idea.
It is.
Doing nothing after the Republicans packed the court is a rubbish idea too.
The rebuplicans had a fair wind, they didn't add justices. It just means the next time there's a GOP president and house they'll add 6 more until the bench becomes huge.
I think the shanigans the Republicans have gotten up to are more than a 'fair wind' but so what if the GOP do that next time? That's next time's problem, the Democrats adding Justices now would be payback for what the Republicans have already done not may theoretically do next time.
The bridge has already been crossed of bending the rules past breaking point, so two need to play at that game. If traditional rules still applied then the Democrats could fillibuster ACB until after the new President is inaugurated, they can't because the GOP have changed the rules. Adding Justices is within the rules.
No it's a rubbish idea which turns into a ridiculous arms race and before you know there bench is 101 and growing.
The Dems got unlucky with the timings of deaths and not controling the senate. That will swing back and it's clear that Gorsuch isn't a Trump toadie and even Kavanaugh has some Independent thought. I don't know what the new person is about but I'm sure she's more than qualified to hold the position.
The essential problem is that with the confirmation of Barrett, you will have a conservative court perhaps for the next two decades - and one which was made so on the back of the votes of a minority of the US popular vote. Waiting a generation for it to 'swing back' is really not politically viable. And will become less so once a 6-3 court starts issuing rulings.
Looking at the measures, other than schools off for 2 weeks (rather than 1), it just looks like Tier 3 restrictions. Places like gyms and places of worship will still be open, so it isn't a lockdown like March.
This is going to turn into is a cornish pasty a significant meal nonsense isn't it. Starmer will claim NI did a circuit breaker, we should follow.
Can someone explain to me just how Liverpool's tier 3 for 28 days differs from a circuit breaker wanted by Starmer other than he wants to paralyse the whole of England irrespective of infection rates
The local lockdowns have been demonstrable failures. The national lockdown in April worked.
I come back to the obvious. The fact that the Republicans on Capitol Hill are so desperate to get Amy Coney Barrett confirmed to the Supreme Court ahead of Nov 3rd tells you they know they've lost. And almost certainly not only the White House but Congress.
I hope Biden adds two more Justices so as to compound the Republican's defeat...
Biden should add 4 justices and 2 States.
Packing the court is a rubbish idea.
It is.
Doing nothing after the Republicans packed the court is a rubbish idea too.
The rebuplicans had a fair wind, they didn't add justices. It just means the next time there's a GOP president and house they'll add 6 more until the bench becomes huge.
I think the shanigans the Republicans have gotten up to are more than a 'fair wind' but so what if the GOP do that next time? That's next time's problem, the Democrats adding Justices now would be payback for what the Republicans have already done not may theoretically do next time.
The bridge has already been crossed of bending the rules past breaking point, so two need to play at that game. If traditional rules still applied then the Democrats could fillibuster ACB until after the new President is inaugurated, they can't because the GOP have changed the rules. Adding Justices is within the rules.
No it's a rubbish idea which turns into a ridiculous arms race and before you know there bench is 101 and growing.
The Dems got unlucky with the timings of deaths and not controling the senate. That will swing back and it's clear that Gorsuch isn't a Trump toadie and even Kavanaugh has some Independent thought. I don't know what the new person is about but I'm sure she's more than qualified to hold the position.
The essential problem is that with the confirmation of Barrett, you will have a conservative court perhaps for the next two decades - and one which was made so on the back of the votes of a minority of the US popular vote. Waiting a generation for it to 'swing back' is really not politically viable. And will become less so once a 6-3 court starts issuing rulings.
I come back to the obvious. The fact that the Republicans on Capitol Hill are so desperate to get Amy Coney Barrett confirmed to the Supreme Court ahead of Nov 3rd tells you they know they've lost. And almost certainly not only the White House but Congress.
I hope Biden adds two more Justices so as to compound the Republican's defeat...
Biden should add 4 justices and 2 States.
Packing the court is a rubbish idea.
It is.
Doing nothing after the Republicans packed the court is a rubbish idea too.
The rebuplicans had a fair wind, they didn't add justices. It just means the next time there's a GOP president and house they'll add 6 more until the bench becomes huge.
I think the shanigans the Republicans have gotten up to are more than a 'fair wind' but so what if the GOP do that next time? That's next time's problem, the Democrats adding Justices now would be payback for what the Republicans have already done not may theoretically do next time.
The bridge has already been crossed of bending the rules past breaking point, so two need to play at that game. If traditional rules still applied then the Democrats could fillibuster ACB until after the new President is inaugurated, they can't because the GOP have changed the rules. Adding Justices is within the rules.
No it's a rubbish idea which turns into a ridiculous arms race and before you know there bench is 101 and growing.
The Dems got unlucky with the timings of deaths and not controling the senate. That will swing back and it's clear that Gorsuch isn't a Trump toadie and even Kavanaugh has some Independent thought. I don't know what the new person is about but I'm sure she's more than qualified to hold the position.
The essential problem is that with the confirmation of Barrett, you will have a conservative court perhaps for the next two decades - and one which was made so on the back of the votes of a minority of the US popular vote. Waiting a generation for it to 'swing back' is really not politically viable. And will become less so once a 6-3 court starts issuing rulings.
Especially as the 'postponements' are at no cost whatever.
Operations are not being delayed Cancer checks are not being missed in their millions. There is no upsurge in mental illness. Hundreds of thousands are not losing everything.
What's not to like about consequence-free postponements of death for people with an average age of 82 with 2.7 co-morbidities?
At least part of that is the wrong way round.
If cases are kept low, then hospitals have capacity to do those other things.
If cases are not kept under control, then everything else has to shut down to treat the coronavirus patients.
I know there were still a lot of postponements in hospital care over the summer, my own family was affected and I think most of those services should have been up and running at full capacity again when cases were low. It's a failing that they were not.
As for the mental health and economic consequences, those are real and dire, but not controlling cases have consequences there too.
Whatever approach is taken, there are plenty of downsides. I remain unconvinced that attempting to control cases in the short to medium term is the worst option.
PS: If we really want to decide we no longer care about 82 year olds (is that ok, @OldKingCole ?) then we should note that most of those suffering most from the restrictions to hospital services are older people with morbidity. Yes, there will of course be younger people missing cancer checks and diagnoses and possibly treatment (but in Leeds at least I know for a fact that e.g. children's cancer services have been running at full rate throughout) but they'll be in a minority, just as they are in a minority of those dying from coronavirus.
It also shows that as well as not understanding big numbers, people don't understand averages, either. They seem to want to use the average as the representative of the entire distribution, for some reason. It just means (for a median) that half were above this and half were below.
If half of all people who died were under 82.4, does that mean that if all those over 82.4 who died had been fine, there wouldn't have been a problem? Would half the number of deaths have been okay?
Because it would still be staggering, and involve not a single person over 82.4
It also glosses over the hospitalisations, which would be crucial if we didn't take steps to control the virus. A big chunk of those hospitalised would have died without hospital assistance.
The median age since the start of August of those hospitalised has been 64. So half were older; half were younger.
The interquartile range was 44-80.
So a quarter were under 44.
That makes the implication that it only affects octogenarians look a bit daft.
I come back to the obvious. The fact that the Republicans on Capitol Hill are so desperate to get Amy Coney Barrett confirmed to the Supreme Court ahead of Nov 3rd tells you they know they've lost. And almost certainly not only the White House but Congress.
I hope Biden adds two more Justices so as to compound the Republican's defeat...
Biden should add 4 justices and 2 States.
Packing the court is a rubbish idea.
It is.
Doing nothing after the Republicans packed the court is a rubbish idea too.
The rebuplicans had a fair wind, they didn't add justices. It just means the next time there's a GOP president and house they'll add 6 more until the bench becomes huge.
I think the shanigans the Republicans have gotten up to are more than a 'fair wind' but so what if the GOP do that next time? That's next time's problem, the Democrats adding Justices now would be payback for what the Republicans have already done not may theoretically do next time.
The bridge has already been crossed of bending the rules past breaking point, so two need to play at that game. If traditional rules still applied then the Democrats could fillibuster ACB until after the new President is inaugurated, they can't because the GOP have changed the rules. Adding Justices is within the rules.
No it's a rubbish idea which turns into a ridiculous arms race and before you know there bench is 101 and growing.
The Dems got unlucky with the timings of deaths and not controling the senate. That will swing back and it's clear that Gorsuch isn't a Trump toadie and even Kavanaugh has some Independent thought. I don't know what the new person is about but I'm sure she's more than qualified to hold the position.
The essential problem is that with the confirmation of Barrett, you will have a conservative court perhaps for the next two decades - and one which was made so on the back of the votes of a minority of the US popular vote. Waiting a generation for it to 'swing back' is really not politically viable. And will become less so once a 6-3 court starts issuing rulings.
Is it 6-3 though?
Alito, Thomas and Barrett are ultra-conservative. So you need Roberts (Who is definitely a conservative) and either Kavanaugh or Gorsuch to side with the more centrist Kagan to swing a vote. Breyer and Sotomayor are both liberal. Effectively it's going to be 6-3 on conservative/liberal issues most of the time. Votes such as Gorsuch voting for gay rights make the news because they're unexpected.
Can someone explain to me just how Liverpool's tier 3 for 28 days differs from a circuit breaker wanted by Starmer other than he wants to paralyse the whole of England irrespective of infection rates
The local lockdowns have been demonstrable failures. The national lockdown in April worked.
They only started today
Not in Leicester and other places.
Was Leicester as strict as Liverpool under tier 3
Yes, they never left most of the March lockdown rules like the rest of the country.
Update - my son has heard back from his work again. They have now told him they will keep his job open. There was a miscommunication previously. So, that is very good news and he is extremely relieved. Good for them, too. I am not sure that others are as lucky, though.
This comment piece makes a false claim about Birmingham nightinggale hospital being taken down and closed, which I think is completely untrue.
But this was funny:
"To be fair to Baroness Harding, the poor woman has only been given £12.6 billion to come up with a workable NHS tracking system. With that amount, you could have paid every single elderly and vulnerable person in the UK £60,000 to shield themselves in the Bahamas and used the change to recompense students for their non-existent university experience."
It may seem funny but its absolutely terrible maths and entirely untrue. Its the same terrible mistake as was made earlier in the year with this infamous Tweet being read on TV. https://twitter.com/jsmooth995/status/1235788534067482624
There are 30 million elderly and vulnerable people in the UK. Spending £60,000 on each of them would come not to £12.6 billion but instead £1,800,000,000,000 or £1.8 trillion. That's without considering the students.
People, as a whole, are terrible with handling large numbers. Our monkey brains didn't evolve to deal with them; our instinct on counting is "None," "One," "Two," "A few," "Several," "Many," "Loads," "Shitloads."
When everything falls in the shitloads category, all the numbers look the same. When "million" or "billion" or "trillion" come along, our instincts fail completely.
It actually circles around to the covid discussion another way - the famous "herd immunity through infection" thing.
Even IF we could unscramble the egg to segregate to do it. Even IF Long Covid didn't exist. Even IF immunity never ever wore off... how long would it take? Assuming no "let it rip" strategy to overload the hospitals (which virtually everyone who tilts towards this idea emphasises is NOT on the cards), we'd need to dripfeed through at a certain maximum infection rate per day. Currently we're going at under 20,000 per day, and that's loads of people and probably sustainable if we levelled off here. It is, coincidentally, heavily focused amongst the youngest (age 16-24) so our hospitalisations rates - which are already comping close to saturation in some areas and causing a lot of non-covid procedures to be postponed - would certainly not be lower than now and as we'd need more in the 24-40, 40-50, and 50-60 brackets to develop it for herd immunity, probably quite a bit worse.
Shitloads of people to get infected, divided by loads per day, leaves... well... I don't know... a month or two? Feels about right?
Nowhere near.
40,000,000 divided by 20,000 gives 2,000 days.
We'd be running that strategy for five and a half years. To halve that time, we'd need to double the infection rate beyond where we are now. To get it down to just a year and a quarter, we'd need to run at the same infection rate we reached at the absolute peak in March/April.
Why the hell don't the Great Barrington people level with us and say how long it would take to achieve it there way - if we accepted the deaths and long covid issues and could somehow work out how to segregate so well?
Update - my son has heard back from his work again. They have now told him they will keep his job open. There was a miscommunication previously. So, that is very good news and he is extremely relieved. Good for them, too. I am not sure that others are as lucky, though.
Really good news. Am delighted for him and your family
I think GOP voter suppression would probably be working better if it was say Mitt Romney vs Hillary Clinton. Plenty of people wouldn't give a toss about who wins that one.
Tories down 3 points, after a shit storm. The Starmer Out brigade will love it.
Yeah we're not in a USA-2020 voting dynamic here right now. People know the Tories haven't been very good but substantively Starmer and Johnson are very close on Covid measures. It's not Biden vs Trump.
We're going to have a deal agreed in principle by tomorrow, surely? Or, if not, we'll know tomorrow that it's a no-deal crash out. The uncertainty will be over. That's what Boris said, and he's not a man to miss a self-imposed deadline.
Yep. It's Do or Die day. So learning from history it looks like he gets thwarted by an alliance of spineless MPs and nefarious Eurocrats and it's a snap "Save Our Fish!" general election in December.
We're going to have a deal agreed in principle by tomorrow, surely? Or, if not, we'll know tomorrow that it's a no-deal crash out. The uncertainty will be over. That's what Boris said, and he's not a man to miss a self-imposed deadline.
Yep. It's Do or Die day. So learning from history it looks like he gets thwarted by an alliance of spineless MPs and nefarious Eurocrats and it's a snap "Save Our Fish!" general election in December.
All that'd do is give him the seat numbers May had back in 2017 or so ! He'd be in a worse spot.
I come back to the obvious. The fact that the Republicans on Capitol Hill are so desperate to get Amy Coney Barrett confirmed to the Supreme Court ahead of Nov 3rd tells you they know they've lost. And almost certainly not only the White House but Congress.
I hope Biden adds two more Justices so as to compound the Republican's defeat...
Biden should add 4 justices and 2 States.
Packing the court is a rubbish idea.
It is - and the Republicans have been at it at state level for a while. And succeeded with the Arizona and Georgia state supreme courts.
Yes, it's rubbish there too, developing that into a national strategy is stupid. Though the whole idea of partisan justices seems an odd thing to me and ultimately I don't really care because it's America, not the UK.
Partisan and elected judges is a wierd one to an outsider.
The one that really gets me though, is the level of micromanagement by politicians in the electoral process itself - so we get a mayor or a governor specifying how many polling stations are allowed where and what time they open, then after the election they get to draw the boundaries as they see fit. Maybe the founding fathers never expected the hyper-partisanship we have today.
Although the USA is a federal republic, when it comes to elections it is more like a confederation. The federal constitution & government specifies how many delegates are sent to Capitol Hill and on what dates the elections are held, but most other aspects are chosen by each state. That this can be manipulated on the local level is nuts (at least for a democracy it is).
A proper federal system should have consistent rules across the whole republic for federal elections. Within state elections would be able to be held under individual state rules, but mayoral and local elections should held under rules agreed by the state government.
I come back to the obvious. The fact that the Republicans on Capitol Hill are so desperate to get Amy Coney Barrett confirmed to the Supreme Court ahead of Nov 3rd tells you they know they've lost. And almost certainly not only the White House but Congress.
I hope Biden adds two more Justices so as to compound the Republican's defeat...
Biden should add 4 justices and 2 States.
Packing the court is a rubbish idea.
It is - and the Republicans have been at it at state level for a while. And succeeded with the Arizona and Georgia state supreme courts.
Yes, it's rubbish there too, developing that into a national strategy is stupid. Though the whole idea of partisan justices seems an odd thing to me and ultimately I don't really care because it's America, not the UK.
Partisan and elected judges is a wierd one to an outsider.
The one that really gets me though, is the level of micromanagement by politicians in the electoral process itself - so we get a mayor or a governor specifying how many polling stations are allowed where and what time they open, then after the election they get to draw the boundaries as they see fit. Maybe the founding fathers never expected the hyper-partisanship we have today.
You would hope, and I think they hoped, that the voters would see that it is a bad idea and vote against it - and unlike in the UK they can do so at the primary stage so that they can still vote for their side, but for someone on their side who will play fair.
Turns out that winning dirty beats losing with dignity.
I don't like it, but I can't work out how you can convince both sides to walk back from it. So the other side will have to up the ante. Or they lose.
Doctors in Liverpool say those partying in the city do not care people are dying
It is sad but seems succinct
This generation seems extraordinarily self-centred
“The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers.”
― Socrates
That's a lovely quote. He's a bit old-fashioned, but was a fine footballer.
I had no idea that boring game was around in ancient Greece. I always thought of ancient Greece as a country sparkling with new ideas and interests and philosophies, sweeping away old ideas and shaping the world to come.
Not a bunch of grumpy blokes sitting in the taverna grousing about the offside rule.....
So why misattribute that Victor Meldrew twaddle to Socrates? It's not just that he didn't say it but that he wouldn't in a million years have said it.
Primary source required. We know that Socrates said things because Plato and (to a lesser extent) Xenophon tell us about it, and this doesn't appear to be in either.
I believe current thinking is that it is possible (if the quote was invented in the 20th Century from whole cloth) the quote came from a play which has a caricature of Socrates in it.
That said Plato was know to complain about the Youth in similar terms http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=plat.+rep.+8.562e Why,” I said, “the father habitually tries to resemble the child and is afraid of his sons, and the son likens himself to the father and feels no awe or fear of his parents"
I come back to the obvious. The fact that the Republicans on Capitol Hill are so desperate to get Amy Coney Barrett confirmed to the Supreme Court ahead of Nov 3rd tells you they know they've lost. And almost certainly not only the White House but Congress.
I hope Biden adds two more Justices so as to compound the Republican's defeat...
Biden should add 4 justices and 2 States.
Packing the court is a rubbish idea.
It is.
Doing nothing after the Republicans packed the court is a rubbish idea too.
The rebuplicans had a fair wind, they didn't add justices. It just means the next time there's a GOP president and house they'll add 6 more until the bench becomes huge.
I think the shanigans the Republicans have gotten up to are more than a 'fair wind' but so what if the GOP do that next time? That's next time's problem, the Democrats adding Justices now would be payback for what the Republicans have already done not may theoretically do next time.
The bridge has already been crossed of bending the rules past breaking point, so two need to play at that game. If traditional rules still applied then the Democrats could fillibuster ACB until after the new President is inaugurated, they can't because the GOP have changed the rules. Adding Justices is within the rules.
No it's a rubbish idea which turns into a ridiculous arms race and before you know there bench is 101 and growing.
The Dems got unlucky with the timings of deaths and not controling the senate. That will swing back and it's clear that Gorsuch isn't a Trump toadie and even Kavanaugh has some Independent thought. I don't know what the new person is about but I'm sure she's more than qualified to hold the position.
The essential problem is that with the confirmation of Barrett, you will have a conservative court perhaps for the next two decades - and one which was made so on the back of the votes of a minority of the US popular vote. Waiting a generation for it to 'swing back' is really not politically viable. And will become less so once a 6-3 court starts issuing rulings.
The court had a certain balance. It was technically a "5/4" conservative lean but that is not sufficient to hardcode a bias. Swapping the most liberal judge for a conservative fundamentalist doesn't just tilt the court it transforms it. You now have a significant bias potentially in place for 20 years. If Biden wins and the Dems take the Senate they are bound to do something about it. Doubt they will choose expansion of the bench though. I think it will be something less explosive and more defensible to non partisans.
Especially as the 'postponements' are at no cost whatever.
Operations are not being delayed Cancer checks are not being missed in their millions. There is no upsurge in mental illness. Hundreds of thousands are not losing everything.
What's not to like about consequence-free postponements of death for people with an average age of 82 with 2.7 co-morbidities?
You do realize that the 82 year old probably isn't going to keel over for many, many more years don't you and you are prepared to deprive him/her of that life?
To quote 'More or Less' for the umpteenth time, an 80 year old has a life expectancy of 10 years. An 80 year old obese man with a heart condition has a life expectancy of 5 years.
This comment piece makes a false claim about Birmingham nightinggale hospital being taken down and closed, which I think is completely untrue.
But this was funny:
"To be fair to Baroness Harding, the poor woman has only been given £12.6 billion to come up with a workable NHS tracking system. With that amount, you could have paid every single elderly and vulnerable person in the UK £60,000 to shield themselves in the Bahamas and used the change to recompense students for their non-existent university experience."
It may seem funny but its absolutely terrible maths and entirely untrue. Its the same terrible mistake as was made earlier in the year with this infamous Tweet being read on TV. https://twitter.com/jsmooth995/status/1235788534067482624
There are 30 million elderly and vulnerable people in the UK. Spending £60,000 on each of them would come not to £12.6 billion but instead £1,800,000,000,000 or £1.8 trillion. That's without considering the students.
There aren't 30m elderly or vulnerable.
It depends how you define elderly or vulnerable but that is how many have been considered vulnerable enough to be made eligible for the flu shot.
Everybody over 50 is eligible for the flu shot this year;
Where on earth do you get that from? No they aren't!
My GP surgery and most I know of are only offering it to over 65's unless you are of vulnerable health.
There's a MASSIVE shortage and the only way I can get it is to buy it privately from an ad hoc service. Boots, Lloyds and Superdrug have all suspended private shots.
Mine costs £55 and I have to wait until Nov 21st: the first slot available.
Had mine yesterday.
Had mine several weeks ago. It was the most efficient process I have come across. All doors already open with a masked person standing at each turning to direct me. First person sprayed my hands (not that I got to touch anything). Needle in the arm and booted out thru a different route again with masked person at each change in direction.
Got to car about 1 minute later not convinced I had actually had the jab!
Yes this was very efficient , done in school hall , based daily on initial of your name. I went down late in day and just walked through , disinfected hands then walked through and Doc asked me a couple of questions, 2 secs for jab and out the other side, exceedingly efficient.
Can someone explain to me just how Liverpool's tier 3 for 28 days differs from a circuit breaker wanted by Starmer other than he wants to paralyse the whole of England irrespective of infection rates
The circuit breaker would be more drachonian than Tier 3. I think.
Yes. Whitty said Tier 3 "Very High" isn't enough so there would need to be action above that - "Extremely High". Always helpful at the presser announcing the new tiering system when the scientist alleged to have created the tiers throws them in the bin.
Can someone explain to me just how Liverpool's tier 3 for 28 days differs from a circuit breaker wanted by Starmer other than he wants to paralyse the whole of England irrespective of infection rates
The local lockdowns have been demonstrable failures. The national lockdown in April worked.
Precisely. We need to replicate what we did in March/April, but this time use a proper test, trace and isolate system afterwards to keep R down.
We won't though. The government doesn't have the guts or authority to do so, and so will just press on with these half-hearted measures while the bodies pile up and the economy collapses. Oh, and Brexit. Merry Christmas.
But what do you mean by proper trace system? Nobody in the west has one, because even for small case numbers it isn't possible to keep up with the spread.
It's possible for low case numbers, but for what we've got now, you really need mass testing - isolation. If you detect enough of the infected, tracing can be eliminated for the equation.
This comment piece makes a false claim about Birmingham nightinggale hospital being taken down and closed, which I think is completely untrue.
But this was funny:
"To be fair to Baroness Harding, the poor woman has only been given £12.6 billion to come up with a workable NHS tracking system. With that amount, you could have paid every single elderly and vulnerable person in the UK £60,000 to shield themselves in the Bahamas and used the change to recompense students for their non-existent university experience."
It may seem funny but its absolutely terrible maths and entirely untrue. Its the same terrible mistake as was made earlier in the year with this infamous Tweet being read on TV. https://twitter.com/jsmooth995/status/1235788534067482624
There are 30 million elderly and vulnerable people in the UK. Spending £60,000 on each of them would come not to £12.6 billion but instead £1,800,000,000,000 or £1.8 trillion. That's without considering the students.
There aren't 30m elderly or vulnerable.
It depends how you define elderly or vulnerable but that is how many have been considered vulnerable enough to be made eligible for the flu shot.
Everybody over 50 is eligible for the flu shot this year;
Where on earth do you get that from? No they aren't!
My GP surgery and most I know of are only offering it to over 65's unless you are of vulnerable health.
There's a MASSIVE shortage and the only way I can get it is to buy it privately from an ad hoc service. Boots, Lloyds and Superdrug have all suspended private shots.
Mine costs £55 and I have to wait until Nov 21st: the first slot available.
Had mine yesterday.
Had mine several weeks ago. It was the most efficient process I have come across. All doors already open with a masked person standing at each turning to direct me. First person sprayed my hands (not that I got to touch anything). Needle in the arm and booted out thru a different route again with masked person at each change in direction.
Got to car about 1 minute later not convinced I had actually had the jab!
Yes this was very efficient , done in school hall , based daily on initial of your name. I went down late in day and just walked through , disinfected hands then walked through and Doc asked me a couple of questions, 2 secs for jab and out the other side, exceedingly efficient.
Nice to hear from you Malcolm (even if you do hate us LDs).
I come back to the obvious. The fact that the Republicans on Capitol Hill are so desperate to get Amy Coney Barrett confirmed to the Supreme Court ahead of Nov 3rd tells you they know they've lost. And almost certainly not only the White House but Congress.
I hope Biden adds two more Justices so as to compound the Republican's defeat...
Biden should add 4 justices and 2 States.
Packing the court is a rubbish idea.
It is.
Doing nothing after the Republicans packed the court is a rubbish idea too.
The rebuplicans had a fair wind, they didn't add justices. It just means the next time there's a GOP president and house they'll add 6 more until the bench becomes huge.
I think the shanigans the Republicans have gotten up to are more than a 'fair wind' but so what if the GOP do that next time? That's next time's problem, the Democrats adding Justices now would be payback for what the Republicans have already done not may theoretically do next time.
The bridge has already been crossed of bending the rules past breaking point, so two need to play at that game. If traditional rules still applied then the Democrats could fillibuster ACB until after the new President is inaugurated, they can't because the GOP have changed the rules. Adding Justices is within the rules.
No it's a rubbish idea which turns into a ridiculous arms race and before you know there bench is 101 and growing.
The Dems got unlucky with the timings of deaths and not controling the senate. That will swing back and it's clear that Gorsuch isn't a Trump toadie and even Kavanaugh has some Independent thought. I don't know what the new person is about but I'm sure she's more than qualified to hold the position.
The essential problem is that with the confirmation of Barrett, you will have a conservative court perhaps for the next two decades - and one which was made so on the back of the votes of a minority of the US popular vote. Waiting a generation for it to 'swing back' is really not politically viable. And will become less so once a 6-3 court starts issuing rulings.
The court had a certain balance. It was technically a "5/4" conservative lean but that is not sufficient to hardcode a bias. Swapping the most liberal judge for a conservative fundamentalist doesn't just tilt the court it transforms it. You now have a significant bias potentially in place for 20 years. If Biden wins and the Dems take the Senate they are bound to do something about it. Doubt they will choose expansion of the bench though. I think it will be something less explosive and more defensible to non partisans.
This comment piece makes a false claim about Birmingham nightinggale hospital being taken down and closed, which I think is completely untrue.
But this was funny:
"To be fair to Baroness Harding, the poor woman has only been given £12.6 billion to come up with a workable NHS tracking system. With that amount, you could have paid every single elderly and vulnerable person in the UK £60,000 to shield themselves in the Bahamas and used the change to recompense students for their non-existent university experience."
It may seem funny but its absolutely terrible maths and entirely untrue. Its the same terrible mistake as was made earlier in the year with this infamous Tweet being read on TV. https://twitter.com/jsmooth995/status/1235788534067482624
There are 30 million elderly and vulnerable people in the UK. Spending £60,000 on each of them would come not to £12.6 billion but instead £1,800,000,000,000 or £1.8 trillion. That's without considering the students.
There aren't 30m elderly or vulnerable.
It depends how you define elderly or vulnerable but that is how many have been considered vulnerable enough to be made eligible for the flu shot.
Everybody over 50 is eligible for the flu shot this year;
Where on earth do you get that from? No they aren't!
My GP surgery and most I know of are only offering it to over 65's unless you are of vulnerable health.
There's a MASSIVE shortage and the only way I can get it is to buy it privately from an ad hoc service. Boots, Lloyds and Superdrug have all suspended private shots.
Mine costs £55 and I have to wait until Nov 21st: the first slot available.
Had mine yesterday.
Had mine several weeks ago. It was the most efficient process I have come across. All doors already open with a masked person standing at each turning to direct me. First person sprayed my hands (not that I got to touch anything). Needle in the arm and booted out thru a different route again with masked person at each change in direction.
Got to car about 1 minute later not convinced I had actually had the jab!
Yes this was very efficient , done in school hall , based daily on initial of your name. I went down late in day and just walked through , disinfected hands then walked through and Doc asked me a couple of questions, 2 secs for jab and out the other side, exceedingly efficient.
Nice to hear from you Malcolm (even if you do hate us LDs).
I come back to the obvious. The fact that the Republicans on Capitol Hill are so desperate to get Amy Coney Barrett confirmed to the Supreme Court ahead of Nov 3rd tells you they know they've lost. And almost certainly not only the White House but Congress.
I hope Biden adds two more Justices so as to compound the Republican's defeat...
Biden should add 4 justices and 2 States.
Packing the court is a rubbish idea.
It is.
Doing nothing after the Republicans packed the court is a rubbish idea too.
The rebuplicans had a fair wind, they didn't add justices. It just means the next time there's a GOP president and house they'll add 6 more until the bench becomes huge.
I think the shanigans the Republicans have gotten up to are more than a 'fair wind' but so what if the GOP do that next time? That's next time's problem, the Democrats adding Justices now would be payback for what the Republicans have already done not may theoretically do next time.
The bridge has already been crossed of bending the rules past breaking point, so two need to play at that game. If traditional rules still applied then the Democrats could fillibuster ACB until after the new President is inaugurated, they can't because the GOP have changed the rules. Adding Justices is within the rules.
No it's a rubbish idea which turns into a ridiculous arms race and before you know there bench is 101 and growing.
The Dems got unlucky with the timings of deaths and not controling the senate. That will swing back and it's clear that Gorsuch isn't a Trump toadie and even Kavanaugh has some Independent thought. I don't know what the new person is about but I'm sure she's more than qualified to hold the position.
The essential problem is that with the confirmation of Barrett, you will have a conservative court perhaps for the next two decades - and one which was made so on the back of the votes of a minority of the US popular vote. Waiting a generation for it to 'swing back' is really not politically viable. And will become less so once a 6-3 court starts issuing rulings.
The court had a certain balance. It was technically a "5/4" conservative lean but that is not sufficient to hardcode a bias. Swapping the most liberal judge for a conservative fundamentalist doesn't just tilt the court it transforms it. You now have a significant bias potentially in place for 20 years. If Biden wins and the Dems take the Senate they are bound to do something about it. Doubt they will choose expansion of the bench though. I think it will be something less explosive and more defensible to non partisans.
The Republicans have won the popular vote for the presidency just once since the 1980s (and even then only with the advantage of incumbency). That is no mandate for controlling the Supreme Court for a generation. The Democrats have every right to fix this travesty in whatever way the constitution allows.
Comments
The EU states and their businesses and ultimately their voters have a massive trade surplus with the UK. It is in their interests to avoid WTO to ensure that trade surplus continues uninterrupted, especially during a recession.
We hold all the cards.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=n4-4bvuX7qA
"We'd be running that strategy for five and a half years."
Sweden's Tegnell: "this is a marathon not a sprint"
Seriously, it’s looking like a number of sectoral deals on which there’s agreement, rather than one big deal - likely reconvening in February or March to take stock of how things are working in practice.
https://twitter.com/matthewchampion/status/1316315681349087232?s=21
What did we do to deserve this?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8YUWDrLazCg
We won't though. The government doesn't have the guts or authority to do so, and so will just press on with these half-hearted measures while the bodies pile up and the economy collapses. Oh, and Brexit. Merry Christmas.
If cases are kept low, then hospitals have capacity to do those other things.
If cases are not kept under control, then everything else has to shut down to treat the coronavirus patients.
I know there were still a lot of postponements in hospital care over the summer, my own family was affected and I think most of those services should have been up and running at full capacity again when cases were low. It's a failing that they were not.
As for the mental health and economic consequences, those are real and dire, but not controlling cases have consequences there too.
Whatever approach is taken, there are plenty of downsides. I remain unconvinced that attempting to control cases in the short to medium term is the worst option.
PS: If we really want to decide we no longer care about 82 year olds (is that ok, @OldKingCole ?) then we should note that most of those suffering most from the restrictions to hospital services are older people with morbidity. Yes, there will of course be younger people missing cancer checks and diagnoses and possibly treatment (but in Leeds at least I know for a fact that e.g. children's cancer services have been running at full rate throughout) but they'll be in a minority, just as they are in a minority of those dying from coronavirus.
BBC News - Schools to close and tight new hospitality rules in Northern Ireland
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-54533643
And succeeded with the Arizona and Georgia state supreme courts.
https://twitter.com/marinklevy/status/1314317591586971648
https://youtu.be/vC5UTUAxgpE
Waiting a generation for it to 'swing back' is really not politically viable. And will become less so once a 6-3 court starts issuing rulings.
https://twitter.com/SkyNews/status/1316184957459533824
The one that really gets me though, is the level of micromanagement by politicians in the electoral process itself - so we get a mayor or a governor specifying how many polling stations are allowed where and what time they open, then after the election they get to draw the boundaries as they see fit. Maybe the founding fathers never expected the hyper-partisanship we have today.
This is going to turn into is a cornish pasty a significant meal nonsense isn't it. Starmer will claim NI did a circuit breaker, we should follow.
The differences seem to only be marginal
If half of all people who died were under 82.4, does that mean that if all those over 82.4 who died had been fine, there wouldn't have been a problem? Would half the number of deaths have been okay?
Because it would still be staggering, and involve not a single person over 82.4
It also glosses over the hospitalisations, which would be crucial if we didn't take steps to control the virus.
A big chunk of those hospitalised would have died without hospital assistance.
The median age since the start of August of those hospitalised has been 64.
So half were older; half were younger.
The interquartile range was 44-80.
So a quarter were under 44.
That makes the implication that it only affects octogenarians look a bit daft.
Effectively it's going to be 6-3 on conservative/liberal issues most of the time. Votes such as Gorsuch voting for gay rights make the news because they're unexpected.
In short, it provides no more in the way of a solution than, say, regular lockdowns. We'd still be in exactly the same position if we followed it.
Heck of a marathon.
This is getting silly
https://twitter.com/ChrisHopkins92/status/1316326964882534401
Tories down 3 points, after a shit storm. The Starmer Out brigade will love it.
This guy is an SNP strategist. He may be on the wind up, otoh I might have to eat my words about an anticlimax.
https://twitter.com/rosscolquhoun/status/1316320982752276480?s=20
https://twitter.com/rosscolquhoun/status/1316323624249430017?s=20
A proper federal system should have consistent rules across the whole republic for federal elections. Within state elections would be able to be held under individual state rules, but mayoral and local elections should held under rules agreed by the state government.
Tier 3 is localized, circuit breaker (CB) is national.
Tier 3 keeps pubs and bars open if they serve food. CB does not.
Tier 3 keeps offices open. CB shuts all non-essential offices.
Tier 3 keeps restaurants open. CB shuts them.
Tier 3 (AFAICS) does not restrict travel. CB says essential travel only.
Turns out that winning dirty beats losing with dignity.
I don't like it, but I can't work out how you can convince both sides to walk back from it. So the other side will have to up the ante. Or they lose.
To quote 'More or Less' for the umpteenth time, an 80 year old has a life expectancy of 10 years. An 80 year old obese man with a heart condition has a life expectancy of 5 years.
If you detect enough of the infected, tracing can be eliminated for the equation.