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Home truths about Covid-19 – politicalbetting.com
Home truths about Covid-19 – politicalbetting.com
OK, time to take stock. Covid-19 cases are rising again. Where should we go from here? Plenty of others will use the statistics to construct arguments for preferred courses of action. I intend instead to focus on some big, simple and mostly unpalatable truths.
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If we had not offered Corbyn again this would have all been prevented.
He earns a million quid a month.
I don't think a vaccine will be found for a long time, I don't think there is a viable track and trace solution and it's a waste of time and money looking for one and I don't think locking down does a lot other than string the crisis out over a longer period of time.
Of course all government policy on it is going to be a disaster as there is nothing productive they can actually do.
I think Governments around the world have got themselves into the dilemma that, if they start to say we cannot go on lockdown because of the costs involved, their previous actions will be questioned and they will just be chucked out at the next election. Hence, they stick with the same policy knowing that it is unsustainable
Two weeks won't change anything. Two months would unlikely to change anything. After the blip of the schools going back and stupidly offering testing to anybody with a sniffle or coming back from holiday and wanted to just check (rather than the German system of having a gatekeeper to ensure only those with the correct symptoms get one), testing seems to be working.
The trace element can never work. It isn't possible to do this manually. How would Labour improve this? I heard some muttering around give to local councils, so they can knock on people's doors. But that's even slower than phoning / texting them. Its all far too late by the time you have actually manually worked out who is at risk.
It is intellectually dishonest to say we can just have 2 week shutdown and that solve the problems. Nobody will know in 2 weeks if it worked, how well it worked. If you are going to advocate a shutdown again, it either has to be a longer one OR as part of an ongoing plan of regular shutdowns.
Plus in your head Marcus Rashford pays no tax I'm guessing.
His career is short - about 15 years earning £20m a year? - diddums.
Over his career of 15 years he will earn over £100 million. Do you think he will have to have a testimonial so that he can buy a pub?
The CCIF is funded by donations from various institutions such as....the EU.
Regardless of your view of the EU, it's good to know the the UK will soon no longer be funding this sort of thing from now on.
Rashford who earns approximately 200,000 childrens' meals a month, demands the government does more to help those worse off than himself.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/10/20/tyranny-data-has-put-us-mercy-new-covid-priesthood/
Also I have my doubts they can keep this up until COVID is completely gone, the virus hasn't finished yet.
And no, they are not forever. We don't even have an effective test-and-trace yet, so it's far too early to talk in those terms.
What do you think the death toll would have been like if the country hadn't gone into a de facto and de jure lockdown in March?
Yes the schools will go back after an extra week or two of half term. No one else will be allowed to.
The first being detecting people as soon as they are infectious, rather than days after they start to show symptoms; the second ensuring that most of those who are or have a high risk of being infectious isolate themselves for two weeks.
PCR testing doesn't do the first, won't even if it gets up to half a million tests a day; and once the infection levels are high enough contact tracing doesn't either.
And the efforts to encourage people to isolate are utterly feeble.
Mass tests which provide a more or less instant readout would sort the first, and incentives to isolate the second. It's not rocket science; it's not even advanced management consultancy.
Saying a month would be much more honest, which is probably why the Tier reviews are 28 days after implementation.
For the record the I think the lockdown in March was on balance the right thing to do because the virus was novel and we didn't know what was going to hit. We do now. And we should learn from Sweden.
China Backs Off From Fight With K-Pop Fans
https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/10/20/china-south-korea-bts-kpop-nationalism-soft-power/
The PRC proved no match for ARMY. When the K-pop superstar group BTS acknowledged the shared sacrifice of Americans and Koreans as they received the Korea Society’s James A. Van Fleet Award, named after a U.S. general during the Korean War, Chinese social media roiled with outrage, perceiving BTS’s message to be a slight against Chinese soldiers in the war. The Global Times, China’s state-owned tabloid, blasted the group for its “one-sided attitude” that “negate[d] history.” Online stores began pulling BTS-related product, anticipating the kind of nationalist frenzy that has cost giant franchises like the NBA and the South Korean supermarket store Lotte hundreds of millions of dollars in the past.
But China’s media offensive against the kings of K-pop barely lasted two days...
So we should expect the present government approach in England will fail.
The tiered approach in England may not work and eventually everyone will be in Tier 3 (or, perhaps Tier 3+), but I don't think that what's right for Northern Ireland, Wales and Scotland (though, aren't they going for tiers too?) is necessarily right for England giving the differences in size.
The article perhaps underestimates the real trouble that a vaccine could bring.
"A vaccine doesn't have to be 100 per cent effective, but it doesn't need to be to bring the disease under control."
If the vaccine is even slightly dangerous -- in the sense that there are some unforeseen side effects for some people, or it does not protect everyone or some unfortunate people go on to develop COVID -- then the take-up is going to be modest.
I think it is likely that the vaccine will have some serious long-term side-effects for some people, and it will fail to protect some people -- especially if it is rolled out to many millions.
It will just take a few stories of people who were "killed by the vaccine" in the Daily Mail, and Piers Morgan ranting furiously about incompetent scientists & pharma companies, for there to be panic & thence poor take-up.
Bluntly, many people will perceive that it is not in their interests to take such a vaccine -- although it is the wider interest of the nation. It is the classic prisoner's dilemma.
They may well prefer to trust their own cautiousness rather than a vaccine.
It didn't, after all, take much to cause panic about MMR, which is a much better tested vaccine.
Well that's the view I'm taking anyway.
Edit: Obviously this wouldn't apply to the spanish flu of '18 or possibly HK flu in '68 but the strains that go round most years are way way way less dangerous than those.
He is a bright guy with some kind of political radar and, as chancellor, is privy to any number of economic forecasts of this spending plan vs that spending plan.
The amount of money given out in the last few months has been extraordinary (witness the latest borrowing figures) and at some point, someone has to say "enough".
So was the scheme too generous to start with (not so politically savvy, maybe); and was Manchester's £5m the place to draw the line? Perhaps.
But the straw has to come at some point and I'm sure national destabilisation was not portrayed as a tail event in many of his forecasts.
Yes to £12 billion for Dido's failing track and trace, £45 million to help Dirty Desmond, £25 million for the shithole that is Newark, and coincidentally Robert Jenrick's seat, but no to extra £5 million for poor Mancs?
The dishonesty about that policy is absolutely disgusting and the media have done such an awful job of scrutinising a policy that is being presented as a short term temporary measure and will end up becoming the new normal for a very long time.
Covid has killed way more with the country locked down.
He says "the public are still by and large putting public health ahead of economics" - yes but is that because they understand health but not economics?
Basically, all routes amount to "muddling through" until a vaccine rescues us. There are no good options.
It would not be remotely difficult, with Opposition support, to communicate fixed period lockdowns - no ifs no buts - to a public that is already receptive to the idea.
"Following the science" isn't really about data, tables, graphs, and figures, despite that being what the public perceive it to be (mainly because the scientifically illiterate members of the media who are the loudest on the subject perceive it to be that).
It's about using a functioning bullshit detector so that you can't fool yourself with either wishful thinking or adhering to a favourite hypothesis (or being fooled by feeling 'ownership' of a concept and wanting to 'defend' it - or by perceiving that holding to a single position shows 'strength'*)
*Because science involves genuinely attempting to disprove hypotheses and refusing to be too attached, when someone says that 'they've always believed/known this', I tend to think, "Okay - but you COULD still be right, I guess"
When people post that they've 'researched' something online, I do wonder:
1 - Did you carry out a detailed literature search, uncover the breadth of studies indicating various possible answers, compare them for confounding factors, assess each one for what could or could not have been missed or incorrectly added and derive an outcome?
or
2 - Did you look around online until you found a number or graph that said what you wanted it to say, refuse to question it in any way, and present it as gospel truth?
(Three guesses as to which of them has near-100% outcomes. And the first two don't count)
Neil is one of the Narnia believers who want for it to have been possible that if we'd ignored it, it would have all gone away - and thus Sweden MUST have had virtually no restrictions and had life go on as normal and MUST have been all but unaffected by the virus, PROVING that if we'd done the same, we'd have all been fine.
When written down like that, it's obviously all mince, and Toby Youngite True Believers will insist that's not what they mean at all, but every time they bring it up, it's with exactly that subtext.
I haven't heard a single journalist ask the simple obvious questions about the 2 week idea.
Mmm ....
CW & PV have not given a great account of themselves & I value their judgment accordingly. I trusted them at the beginning, and defended them on pb.com. No more.
They have done badly. The UK has a great scientific tradition, and we should've been able to do at least as well as Germany.
Sure, the politicians cop some of the blame, but the scientific advice at the beginning was very poor.
We should always remember Adern or Iron Erna have done much. much better.
And they run countries with little of the scientific expertise that the UK can call on.
It would be a shame (for Lab) if SKS was only 2yrs into his 4yr election strategy when an election was called.
The self-employed scheme was pretty extraordinary in that it allowed up to £2500 pm if your business had been affected by covid - even if it was affected only very marginally.
A member of my family, who really needs the money, qualified for nothing purely because he receives a state pension that is very marginally over his S/E net profit. Result = zero financial support.
https://twitter.com/DanKennett/status/1318894568046297088
I know Witty said at the beginning this could be for years, but then all the focus of announcements was just wait a few weeks we will get antibody testing, we will get the app, we will get a vaccine etc etc etc.
In regards to Marcus Rashford I have no idea why he was given an MBE . If he managed to persuade his fellow premiership footballers to give up 1% of their salaries to feed children then he would deserve it.
Having difficulties with the North?
Deflect it by drawing attention to a heavily subsidised, nationalised, frequent, shockingly cheap transport system that is completely free for all not aged between 18 and 60.
We don't necessarily need a better system (although obviously that's the main prize), we also would benefit from just having lower case numbers to avoid overwhelming the current system.
But it's a fair question - and here are the things that should be in place post-circuit breaker (most of which Lab have suggested):
1) 500 quid payment for those self-isolating on low incomes. This I believe has not started in all local authorities but is being rolled out. IMO this should be for everyone, not means-tested (Labour proposal). Just because someone is not on benefits does not mean they can 'afford' to lose their income for a week.
2) Better enforcement of those supposed to isolate (govt is starting this it seems).
3) Shift to local public health teams doing the contact tracing by default. They are clearly better at this than Dido Harding & her call centers (Labour proposal).
4) Scale-up of rapid diagnostic tests which could become the default over the next 6 months. Govt hasn't ordered the WHO approved SD Biosensor or Abbott tests, I suppose because they are hoping a better one will come along.
Other benefits:
We desperately need to get levels as low as possible before Christmas when families are likely to gather.
Sky said Darren Lumsden's face inking of the number 88 was in memory of the year his late father Trevor lost his life - and nothing to do with a code, fashioned around the numerical order of letters in the alphabet, meaning Heil Hitler.
But today his 66-year-old parent revealed he was very much alive - and living in a smart three-storey house in Bristol, not far from his carpenter son.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8863181/Father-death-used-Sky-explain-contestants-Nazi-style-tattoo-alive.html
The key words are Tory squalor. Because to the right, they can't have this truth held up for examination. Because they *like* squalor. Because they couldn't give a rat fuck about kids growing up dirt poor like Rashford did. After all, kids have been going hungry for years, so why should they have to do anything about it now?
https://twitter.com/Haggis_UK/status/1318884900620193792
Maybe they've simply managed to successfully target the most dangerous vectors of spread, rather than clamping down on everything.
Of course it's not only Sweden who have taken this approach. Places like Japan have done likewise.
The trouble with the "lockdown" (lite) policies is that they notionally aim for zero Covid whilst leaving huge holes. If you are going to leave huge holes then it makes no sense to have very harsh restrictions, including of things which will only have a peripheral impact.
The health/economy trade off won't be the same in every pub. But we are effectively treating all pubs as the same. Similarly why close all "non-essential" shops under eg. Welsh lockdown rules. Non essential shops can function without being remotely dangerous spreading vectors, if they take reasonable precautions. Why shut them down then?