In choosing Buttigieg for his cabinet Biden could be preparing the ground for a possible successor –

System

In choosing Buttigieg for his cabinet Biden could be preparing the ground for a possible successor – politicalbetting.com

With the inauguration on January 20th getting closer Joe Biden’s going through the process almost everyday of announcing new members of his team. Of all of them so far the most well-known name came yesterday with the choice of Pete Buttigieg to be the transportation secretary.

Read the full story here

IshmaelZ

1st

Alphabet_Soup

Not too sure about Buttigieg. Has he said anything about transport, yet?

Pulpstar

The 2024 US POTUS betting is going to be amazing.
Harris probably starts out as a very weak favourite. The GOP side will be the biggest clown show on earth.

HYUFD

https://twitter.com/PaulBrandITV/status/1339538572253257729?s=20
https://twitter.com/PaulBrandITV/status/1339538817355755520?s=20

HYUFD

On the latest 2024 polling of Democrats not only is Buttigieg behind VP elect Harris and Michelle Obama if Biden does not run again, he is also behind AOC

https://twitter.com/Politics_Polls/status/1338677290457157634?s=20

HYUFD

Pulpstar said:

The 2024 US POTUS betting is going to be amazing.
Harris probably starts out as a very weak favourite. The GOP side will be the biggest clown show on earth.

GOP numbers

https://twitter.com/Politics_Polls/status/1338678411586228225?s=20

Gallowgate

Northumberland Tories are gonna be frothing like no tomorrow about staying in Tier 3.

Gallowgate

It's very clear that Tier 3 is not enough.

RobD

Pulpstar said:

The 2024 US POTUS betting is going to be amazing.
Harris probably starts out as a very weak favourite. The GOP side will be the biggest clown show on earth.

You ready for those 12-way debates?

Philip_Thompson

Harris should be the odds-on favourite for 2024 and Buttigieg being in the Cabinet could perhaps stymie his ability to run against her if she does run?

How often do you have a Cabinet member running against an incumbent Veep seeking to succeed the President?

RobD

Gallowgate said:

It's very clear that Tier 3 is not enough.

Wasn't the complaint that cases were already coming down in some tier 3 areas before the recent lockdown?

TheScreamingEagles

This government really does hate the North.

Leeds has much lower rates than Bristol and North Somerset but guess which one was moved own to Tier 2?

Andy_JS

Interestingly when I was in Hereford a few months ago it was noticeable how many people were wearing facemasks outside as well as inside. That in itself may not achieve anything but it could be an indication that people there were/are being more careful about the virus in general.

Gallowgate

RobD said:

Gallowgate said:

It's very clear that Tier 3 is not enough.

Wasn't the complaint that cases were already coming down in some tier 3 areas before the recent lockdown?

I think they were but as time goes on people start bending the rules more and more.

Remember the North East has been in what is essentially now "Tier 3" since September.

The vaccine is the only hope.

dixiedean

Gallowgate said:

Northumberland Tories are gonna be frothing like no tomorrow about staying in Tier 3.

Indeed. Although NCC have downgraded their virus denial, and upped their game since the ousting of Peter Jackson.

Gaussian

Wales' delayed cases have arrived: 11,468. Adding them to the incomplete numbers in the previous four days gives 13,841 across the five days. The corresponding five days in the previous week had 8,923 cases, so that's a 55% increase. Reported cases per week per 100,000 now at 589.

In the local numbers, Merthyr Tydfil is now over 1,000, but those are only up to Dec 12.

TheScreamingEagles

Very unlikely the Saudi takeover of Newcastle United Comedy Club takes place now.

The Premier League has agreed a new $500million (£367m) TV rights deal for the Middle East with Qatar-owned beIN Sports that will run until 2025.

The deal will cover Saudi Arabia despite that country’s conflict with Qatar which has been all broadcasts blocked since 2017. It may also infuriate Newcastle United fans who were angered that Saudi piracy of beIN Sports’ output led to the collapse of a proposed takeover by Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund.

The agreement was voted for by 19 of the 20 Premier League clubs at a meeting today — Newcastle United, who are in a legal dispute with the Premier League over the failed takeover bid, were the only club to vote against it.

The cash sum is the same as the existing contract which expires in 2022 but that is seen by media industry experts as a good deal in a TV rights environment affected by the coronavirus pandemic.

The deal is for the 2022-2025 rights cycle and means beIN, the Premier League’s broadcast partner since 2013, can broadcast all 380 matches live in each season across all 24 countries in the region.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/sport/premier-league-agrees-new-500m-tv-deal-with-bein-sports-5vml6g9gf

FrancisUrquhart

Gaussian said:

Wales' delayed cases have arrived: 11,468. Adding them to the incomplete numbers in the previous four days gives 13,841 across the five days. The corresponding five days in the previous week had 8,923 cases, so that's a 55% increase. Reported cases per week per 100,000 now at 589.

In the local numbers, Merthyr Tydfil is now over 1,000, but those are only up to Dec 12.

They need to have gone into a proper lockdown like yesterday.

Theuniondivvie

Gallowgate said:

It's very clear that Tier 3 is not enough.

https://youtu.be/GIDIFXALlOc

Pulpstar

TheScreamingEagles said:

This government really does hate the North.

Leeds has much lower rates than Bristol and North Somerset but guess which one was moved own to Tier 2?

'Marching on together'.

YBarddCwsc

FPT

rjk said:

YBarddCwsc said:

rjk said:

Philip_Thompson said:

rjk said:

glw said:

rjk said:

glw said:

rjk said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

I also believe the NAO found 184 million items of PPE were not fit for purpose.

The weird thing here is that we ought have had enormous stockpiles of PPE, of the kind that would make panic buying unnecessary. The UK was rated as #1 in the world for pandemic preparedness precisely because we were supposed to have these stockpiles. Watch about a minute of this to see what this was meant to look like as of 2018, it's quite spooky: https://youtu.be/RmGiDUczhqQ?t=295

But, when the need came, where was the stockpile? Apparently some of it was sold off, some as late as January 2020! Other parts had expired, going beyond safe use-by dates. I can't entirely blame the government for panic-buying if there was truly no other option, but the fact that there was no other option is a scandal in and of itself.

That pandemic preparedness rating was for flu. That's what we and many other countries were focused on.

The PPE is the same for flu.

Sure, but the rating for the UK's pandemic planning was based upon how the UK would fight influenza. So it's a red herring. The rating based upon how we fight influenza has little bearing on how ready we were for fighting COVID-19. I would say it's quite clear that our PPE stockpile and the supply chains were not remotely adequate for the latter.

Obviously the flu anti-virals are useless. But look at the video: there are also stacks and stacks of boxes with labels like 3M and Nitrex - this is PPE. The same PPE you'd want in a novel flu pandemic was the PPE we needed for COVID-19, yet there were shortages almost immediately. If anything, we got a lucky break because the first wave was only fairly brief, and yet we were out of PPE almost immediately. The care home -> hospital -> care home transmission network was so dangerous because very few people in that chain had access to the necessary PPE, and this is where a large proportion of our deaths came from.

How much PPE do you stockpile though? Three months? Six months?

If we were to say six months that seems reasonable. Only issue is that the pandemic increased our consumption of certain PPE items by over 50-fold. Meaning that we were using 12 months of PPE every single week.

Six months stockpile then is enough to get you from Monday to Thursday. Not through a pandemic.

But the whole point of stockpiling is to be able to deal with a pandemic. You're meant to expect that you're going to need to use lots of it! That's why you do it! You're meant to stockpile for 6-12 months of usage at pandemic levels, because why would you stockpile otherwise? Again, from the documentary: "Dotted around the country are secret depots housing vast stockpiles, all poised for the next big outbreak. Protective kit so that health workers can carry out their job safely... It is critical that the right supplies are in the right place at the right time". This was 2018, so I don't think it's unreasonable to ask what changed in the intervening year-and-a-bit.

This is the conundrum at the heart of Johnsonism, for me. On the one hand, we have the optimistic stuff about how Britain can do better, "best country in the world" and all that. And this is fantastic! We really should be aiming to be the best country in the world, and we should be optimistic about making real improvements in the lives of our fellow citizens and the wealth of our nation. We know that opportunities for improvement exist, and we should be optimistic about discovering more.

But as soon as any practical consideration comes up, there's this retreat to "well, we're not quite the worst" and "how could anyone have done any better?" or "it was the wrong kind of pandemic". It's all a bit "sorry, your train isn't here because there are leaves on the line". The gap between the optimism implied by the rhetoric and the low expectations that exist for real-world performance is staggering.

The amount of PPE you need depends on the characteristics of the disease. If you stockpile 6 months for a flu pandemic, and you are hit by a disease for which the infection period is, say, twice as long, and which spreads three times as rapidly, then you are already down to about a month.

The whole world was hit by an unknown disease that had never existed before. The main mechanism of the transmission was initially unclear, its severity, its infection rate, the incubation period, its death rate were all completely unknown. Look how long it took the WHO to recommend the wearing of face masks -- it was months.

It is not possible to plan effectively for such a disease.

Here's a test for you.

Suppose you were asked to mitigate the risk for the next existential risk to humanity.

What would you do? (Note I am not even telling you that the next existential risk will be an airborne disease, or even a disease at all). It is not possible to plan for such events.

This doesn't make any sense. Obviously any pandemic disease is unknown before it spreads - that's how it is able to evade immunity and existing vaccines. All of the details of precise mechanism of transmission (e.g. aerosolisation), incubation period, severity etc. are also unknown before the pandemic appears, so can have no bearing on the anticipatory measures you take before it happens. You rely on things like PPE precisely because they're not specific to any disease, they rely on simple and universal principles of hygiene.

"It is not possible to plan effectively" is just more low expectations. The government knew that a pandemic was possible, and claimed to have been stockpiling the PPE we needed for exactly this purpose, with footage of people driving forklift trucks around the secret depots containing said PPE only two years ago. Where was it?

You basic point seems to be: we were (meant to be) prepared for a flu pandemic, so why were we not prepared for a COVID pandemic?

And the answer is that the properties of the two diseases are very different.

It is not possible to plan effectively for very rare, very destructive events. We do not know whether the next risk will be biological, or from space, or from technology, or from the global environment.

Even if it is biological, we do not know whether it will be a pandemic, or an engineered disease, or a deliberate or accidental release from a global weapons program.

It is not possible to prepare for such things.

The last global biological pandemic on this scale happened in 1918, and was flu. The Government was (meant to be) prepared for a flu pandemic.

Presumably the Government will now plan for coronavirus-like disease pandemics. But, the next existential risk (maybe in a century's time) will almost certainly not be a coronavirus pandemic.

And then the equivalent of rjk will be saying: why did we not plan for it?

ClippP

Philip_Thompson said:

Harris should be the odds-on favourite for 2024 and Buttigieg being in the Cabinet could perhaps stymie his ability to run against her if she does run?
How often do you have a Cabinet member running against an incumbent Veep seeking to succeed the President?

Getting just a little bit ahead of yourself here, I think. President Biden has not yet been installed and his Cabinet has not yet started to show what they can do.

Nigelb

Alphabet_Soup said:

Not too sure about Buttigieg. Has he said anything about transport, yet?

Some stuff.
https://slate.com/business/2020/12/pete-buttigieg-transportation-secretary-itll-be-fine.html

TheScreamingEagles

Pulpstar said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

This government really does hate the North.

Leeds has much lower rates than Bristol and North Somerset but guess which one was moved own to Tier 2?

'Marching on together'.

War of the monster trucks time more like.

theProle

Gallowgate said:

RobD said:

Gallowgate said:

It's very clear that Tier 3 is not enough.

Wasn't the complaint that cases were already coming down in some tier 3 areas before the recent lockdown?

I think they were but as time goes on please start bending the rules more and more.

Remember the North East has been in what is essentially now "Tier 3" since September.

The vaccine is the only hope.

Is there any actual evidence that tier 3 vs tier 2 makes any difference to spread?
I strongly suspect it makes almost no difference. It's tier 1 to tier 2 that may make a difference.

The problem is that this cuts both ways. It makes literally no difference to my life that I'm currently in tier 3 (in an area with almost no cases, but that's by the by) vs tier 2. The thing which is wrecking chunks of my life is the no household mixing (and at least anecdotally this is all anyone who is still making any effort to follow the rules cares about).

The problem with keeping areas at tier 3 is that compliance will just keep dropping, especially when anyone can look at the Covid maps and correctly conclude it's not actually very prevalent. Lockdowns are like morphine - the first hit is very powerful, but you have to keep giving a bigger dose for the same effect - and eventually even that doesn't work. Also like morphine, they increasingly do damage to the patient as a side effect.

Nigelb

Philip_Thompson said:

Harris should be the odds-on favourite for 2024 and Buttigieg being in the Cabinet could perhaps stymie his ability to run against her if she does run?

How often do you have a Cabinet member running against an incumbent Veep seeking to succeed the President?

I agree with you on this, Philip.
I think it would be pretty difficult for him to thread that needle; he's a far more likely bet for VP in 2024.

Nigelb

TheScreamingEagles said:

This government really does hate the North.

Leeds has much lower rates than Bristol and North Somerset but guess which one was moved own to Tier 2?

No, I think it's just utterly indifferent to anything much outside of London.
Though it makes an exception for Scotland.

Foxy

YBarddCwsc said:

FPT

rjk said:

YBarddCwsc said:

rjk said:

Philip_Thompson said:

rjk said:

glw said:

rjk said:

glw said:

rjk said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

I also believe the NAO found 184 million items of PPE were not fit for purpose.

The weird thing here is that we ought have had enormous stockpiles of PPE, of the kind that would make panic buying unnecessary. The UK was rated as #1 in the world for pandemic preparedness precisely because we were supposed to have these stockpiles. Watch about a minute of this to see what this was meant to look like as of 2018, it's quite spooky: https://youtu.be/RmGiDUczhqQ?t=295

But, when the need came, where was the stockpile? Apparently some of it was sold off, some as late as January 2020! Other parts had expired, going beyond safe use-by dates. I can't entirely blame the government for panic-buying if there was truly no other option, but the fact that there was no other option is a scandal in and of itself.

That pandemic preparedness rating was for flu. That's what we and many other countries were focused on.

The PPE is the same for flu.

Sure, but the rating for the UK's pandemic planning was based upon how the UK would fight influenza. So it's a red herring. The rating based upon how we fight influenza has little bearing on how ready we were for fighting COVID-19. I would say it's quite clear that our PPE stockpile and the supply chains were not remotely adequate for the latter.

Obviously the flu anti-virals are useless. But look at the video: there are also stacks and stacks of boxes with labels like 3M and Nitrex - this is PPE. The same PPE you'd want in a novel flu pandemic was the PPE we needed for COVID-19, yet there were shortages almost immediately. If anything, we got a lucky break because the first wave was only fairly brief, and yet we were out of PPE almost immediately. The care home -> hospital -> care home transmission network was so dangerous because very few people in that chain had access to the necessary PPE, and this is where a large proportion of our deaths came from.

How much PPE do you stockpile though? Three months? Six months?

If we were to say six months that seems reasonable. Only issue is that the pandemic increased our consumption of certain PPE items by over 50-fold. Meaning that we were using 12 months of PPE every single week.

Six months stockpile then is enough to get you from Monday to Thursday. Not through a pandemic.

But the whole point of stockpiling is to be able to deal with a pandemic. You're meant to expect that you're going to need to use lots of it! That's why you do it! You're meant to stockpile for 6-12 months of usage at pandemic levels, because why would you stockpile otherwise? Again, from the documentary: "Dotted around the country are secret depots housing vast stockpiles, all poised for the next big outbreak. Protective kit so that health workers can carry out their job safely... It is critical that the right supplies are in the right place at the right time". This was 2018, so I don't think it's unreasonable to ask what changed in the intervening year-and-a-bit.

This is the conundrum at the heart of Johnsonism, for me. On the one hand, we have the optimistic stuff about how Britain can do better, "best country in the world" and all that. And this is fantastic! We really should be aiming to be the best country in the world, and we should be optimistic about making real improvements in the lives of our fellow citizens and the wealth of our nation. We know that opportunities for improvement exist, and we should be optimistic about discovering more.

But as soon as any practical consideration comes up, there's this retreat to "well, we're not quite the worst" and "how could anyone have done any better?" or "it was the wrong kind of pandemic". It's all a bit "sorry, your train isn't here because there are leaves on the line". The gap between the optimism implied by the rhetoric and the low expectations that exist for real-world performance is staggering.

The amount of PPE you need depends on the characteristics of the disease. If you stockpile 6 months for a flu pandemic, and you are hit by a disease for which the infection period is, say, twice as long, and which spreads three times as rapidly, then you are already down to about a month.

The whole world was hit by an unknown disease that had never existed before. The main mechanism of the transmission was initially unclear, its severity, its infection rate, the incubation period, its death rate were all completely unknown. Look how long it took the WHO to recommend the wearing of face masks -- it was months.

It is not possible to plan effectively for such a disease.

Here's a test for you.

Suppose you were asked to mitigate the risk for the next existential risk to humanity.

What would you do? (Note I am not even telling you that the next existential risk will be an airborne disease, or even a disease at all). It is not possible to plan for such events.

This doesn't make any sense. Obviously any pandemic disease is unknown before it spreads - that's how it is able to evade immunity and existing vaccines. All of the details of precise mechanism of transmission (e.g. aerosolisation), incubation period, severity etc. are also unknown before the pandemic appears, so can have no bearing on the anticipatory measures you take before it happens. You rely on things like PPE precisely because they're not specific to any disease, they rely on simple and universal principles of hygiene.

"It is not possible to plan effectively" is just more low expectations. The government knew that a pandemic was possible, and claimed to have been stockpiling the PPE we needed for exactly this purpose, with footage of people driving forklift trucks around the secret depots containing said PPE only two years ago. Where was it?

You basic point seems to be: we were (meant to be) prepared for a flu pandemic, so why were we not prepared for a COVID pandemic?

And the answer is that the properties of the two diseases are very different.

It is not possible to plan effectively for very rare, very destructive events. We do not know whether the next risk will be biological, or from space, or from technology, or from the global environment.

Even if it is biological, we do not know whether it will be a pandemic, or an engineered disease, or a deliberate or accidental release from a global weapons program.

It is not possible to prepare for such things.

The last global biological pandemic on this scale happened in 1918, and was flu. The Government was (meant to be) prepared for a flu pandemic.

Presumably the Government will now plan for coronavirus-like disease pandemics. But, the next existential risk (maybe in a century's time) will almost certainly not be a coronavirus pandemic.

And then the equivalent of rjk will be saying: why did we not plan for it?

The Western Pacific had planned for it, indeed South Korea wargamed a coronavirus epidemic at the end of last year.

Pulpstar

Philip_Thompson said:

Harris should be the odds-on favourite for 2024 and Buttigieg being in the Cabinet could perhaps stymie his ability to run against her if she does run?

How often do you have a Cabinet member running against an incumbent Veep seeking to succeed the President?

Harris should be favourite, but there is no way on God's green earth she should be odds on.

Theuniondivvie

One for DavidL. I think you're still safe on PB.

https://twitter.com/AndyRTodd/status/1339489060889505792?s=20

TheScreamingEagles

My legendary modesty forbids me from mentioning that back in September I tipped Mayor Pete at 66/1 for 2024.

CarlottaVance

.@RichardFerrand [President of National Assembley]: "If we are sick it is because we have not paid as much attention as necessary (...) We must be very vigilant (...) . It is not a question of fault, it is a question of responsibility "#le79Inter

https://twitter.com/franceinter/status/1321718252913991680?s=20

FrancisUrquhart

Theuniondivvie said:

One for DavidL. I think you're still safe on PB.

twitter.com/AndyRTodd/status/1339489060889505792?s=20

What about Die Hard being a Christmas film?

Foxy

I wonder if HM will be quite so frank?

https://twitter.com/nicktolhurst/status/1339538271609753602?s=19

TheScreamingEagles

Nigelb said:

Philip_Thompson said:

Harris should be the odds-on favourite for 2024 and Buttigieg being in the Cabinet could perhaps stymie his ability to run against her if she does run?

How often do you have a Cabinet member running against an incumbent Veep seeking to succeed the President?

I agree with you on this, Philip.
I think it would be pretty difficult for him to thread that needle; he's a far more likely bet for VP in 2024.

I've suggested to the Yorkshire Party that they branch out and become the Northern Party.

I'd join and I reckon we'd win a majority of seats in the North in 2024.

The Harrying of the North will not be forgotten.

CarlottaVance

Nigelb said:

Philip_Thompson said:

Harris should be the odds-on favourite for 2024 and Buttigieg being in the Cabinet could perhaps stymie his ability to run against her if she does run?

How often do you have a Cabinet member running against an incumbent Veep seeking to succeed the President?

I agree with you on this, Philip.
I think it would be pretty difficult for him to thread that needle; he's a far more likely bet for VP in 2024.

He could run in 2060 and still be younger than Biden is today...

Gaussian

FrancisUrquhart said:

Gaussian said:

Wales' delayed cases have arrived: 11,468. Adding them to the incomplete numbers in the previous four days gives 13,841 across the five days. The corresponding five days in the previous week had 8,923 cases, so that's a 55% increase. Reported cases per week per 100,000 now at 589.

In the local numbers, Merthyr Tydfil is now over 1,000, but those are only up to Dec 12.

They need to have gone into a proper lockdown like yesterday.

Alert level 3 ought to have an effect on the numbers any day now. Please.

TheScreamingEagles

FrancisUrquhart said:

Theuniondivvie said:

One for DavidL. I think you're still safe on PB.

twitter.com/AndyRTodd/status/1339489060889505792?s=20

What about Die Hard being a Christmas film?

Bruce Willis has spoken on the matter.

Not a Christmas film.

Pulpstar

Which tier is Tobias Ellwood in ?

CarlottaVance

https://twitter.com/jonworth/status/1339545016033796096?s=20

Andy_JS

Foxy said:

I wonder if HM will be quite so frank?

https://twitter.com/nicktolhurst/status/1339538271609753602?s=19

Why not compare Sweden to France, Italy, Spain etc, as well as with its immediate neighbours?

HYUFD

Nigelb said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

This government really does hate the North.

Leeds has much lower rates than Bristol and North Somerset but guess which one was moved own to Tier 2?

No, I think it's just utterly indifferent to anything much outside of London.
Though it makes an exception for Scotland.

If that is the case why is London in Tier 3 from this week then? Hereford is in the Midlands and the only area moved down to Tier 1 this week

TheScreamingEagles

Andy_JS said:

Foxy said:

I wonder if HM will be quite so frank?

https://twitter.com/nicktolhurst/status/1339538271609753602?s=19

Why not compare Sweden to France, Italy, Spain etc, as well as with its immediate neighbours?

Because Tegnell and others said throughout most of 2020 that Sweden should be compared with its neighbours.

YBarddCwsc

Foxy said:

YBarddCwsc said:

FPT

rjk said:

YBarddCwsc said:

rjk said:

Philip_Thompson said:

rjk said:

glw said:

rjk said:

glw said:

rjk said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

I also believe the NAO found 184 million items of PPE were not fit for purpose.

The weird thing here is that we ought have had enormous stockpiles of PPE, of the kind that would make panic buying unnecessary. The UK was rated as #1 in the world for pandemic preparedness precisely because we were supposed to have these stockpiles. Watch about a minute of this to see what this was meant to look like as of 2018, it's quite spooky: https://youtu.be/RmGiDUczhqQ?t=295

But, when the need came, where was the stockpile? Apparently some of it was sold off, some as late as January 2020! Other parts had expired, going beyond safe use-by dates. I can't entirely blame the government for panic-buying if there was truly no other option, but the fact that there was no other option is a scandal in and of itself.

That pandemic preparedness rating was for flu. That's what we and many other countries were focused on.

The PPE is the same for flu.

Sure, but the rating for the UK's pandemic planning was based upon how the UK would fight influenza. So it's a red herring. The rating based upon how we fight influenza has little bearing on how ready we were for fighting COVID-19. I would say it's quite clear that our PPE stockpile and the supply chains were not remotely adequate for the latter.

Obviously the flu anti-virals are useless. But look at the video: there are also stacks and stacks of boxes with labels like 3M and Nitrex - this is PPE. The same PPE you'd want in a novel flu pandemic was the PPE we needed for COVID-19, yet there were shortages almost immediately. If anything, we got a lucky break because the first wave was only fairly brief, and yet we were out of PPE almost immediately. The care home -> hospital -> care home transmission network was so dangerous because very few people in that chain had access to the necessary PPE, and this is where a large proportion of our deaths came from.

How much PPE do you stockpile though? Three months? Six months?

If we were to say six months that seems reasonable. Only issue is that the pandemic increased our consumption of certain PPE items by over 50-fold. Meaning that we were using 12 months of PPE every single week.

Six months stockpile then is enough to get you from Monday to Thursday. Not through a pandemic.

But the whole point of stockpiling is to be able to deal with a pandemic. You're meant to expect that you're going to need to use lots of it! That's why you do it! You're meant to stockpile for 6-12 months of usage at pandemic levels, because why would you stockpile otherwise? Again, from the documentary: "Dotted around the country are secret depots housing vast stockpiles, all poised for the next big outbreak. Protective kit so that health workers can carry out their job safely... It is critical that the right supplies are in the right place at the right time". This was 2018, so I don't think it's unreasonable to ask what changed in the intervening year-and-a-bit.

This is the conundrum at the heart of Johnsonism, for me. On the one hand, we have the optimistic stuff about how Britain can do better, "best country in the world" and all that. And this is fantastic! We really should be aiming to be the best country in the world, and we should be optimistic about making real improvements in the lives of our fellow citizens and the wealth of our nation. We know that opportunities for improvement exist, and we should be optimistic about discovering more.

But as soon as any practical consideration comes up, there's this retreat to "well, we're not quite the worst" and "how could anyone have done any better?" or "it was the wrong kind of pandemic". It's all a bit "sorry, your train isn't here because there are leaves on the line". The gap between the optimism implied by the rhetoric and the low expectations that exist for real-world performance is staggering.

The amount of PPE you need depends on the characteristics of the disease. If you stockpile 6 months for a flu pandemic, and you are hit by a disease for which the infection period is, say, twice as long, and which spreads three times as rapidly, then you are already down to about a month.

The whole world was hit by an unknown disease that had never existed before. The main mechanism of the transmission was initially unclear, its severity, its infection rate, the incubation period, its death rate were all completely unknown. Look how long it took the WHO to recommend the wearing of face masks -- it was months.

It is not possible to plan effectively for such a disease.

Here's a test for you.

Suppose you were asked to mitigate the risk for the next existential risk to humanity.

What would you do? (Note I am not even telling you that the next existential risk will be an airborne disease, or even a disease at all). It is not possible to plan for such events.

This doesn't make any sense. Obviously any pandemic disease is unknown before it spreads - that's how it is able to evade immunity and existing vaccines. All of the details of precise mechanism of transmission (e.g. aerosolisation), incubation period, severity etc. are also unknown before the pandemic appears, so can have no bearing on the anticipatory measures you take before it happens. You rely on things like PPE precisely because they're not specific to any disease, they rely on simple and universal principles of hygiene.

"It is not possible to plan effectively" is just more low expectations. The government knew that a pandemic was possible, and claimed to have been stockpiling the PPE we needed for exactly this purpose, with footage of people driving forklift trucks around the secret depots containing said PPE only two years ago. Where was it?

You basic point seems to be: we were (meant to be) prepared for a flu pandemic, so why were we not prepared for a COVID pandemic?

And the answer is that the properties of the two diseases are very different.

It is not possible to plan effectively for very rare, very destructive events. We do not know whether the next risk will be biological, or from space, or from technology, or from the global environment.

Even if it is biological, we do not know whether it will be a pandemic, or an engineered disease, or a deliberate or accidental release from a global weapons program.

It is not possible to prepare for such things.

The last global biological pandemic on this scale happened in 1918, and was flu. The Government was (meant to be) prepared for a flu pandemic.

Presumably the Government will now plan for coronavirus-like disease pandemics. But, the next existential risk (maybe in a century's time) will almost certainly not be a coronavirus pandemic.

And then the equivalent of rjk will be saying: why did we not plan for it?

The Western Pacific had planned for it, indeed South Korea wargamed a coronavirus epidemic at the end of last year.

Well done, South Korea. They have handled this well (although partly that was previous mishandled experience with SARS).

But much of the "why we were not prepared" arguments seem to me to be a posteriori thinking.

We don't know whether South Korea will handle the next existential risk well, because we don't know what it is.

Perhaps it will be a Near-Earth asteroid -- a bigger Tunguska Event -- heading for Seoul. Not very likely, but certainly not impossible. Big impact events occur every few centuries.

Nigelb

YBarddCwsc said:

FPT

rjk said:

YBarddCwsc said:

rjk said:

Philip_Thompson said:

rjk said:

glw said:

rjk said:

glw said:

rjk said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

I also believe the NAO found 184 million items of PPE were not fit for purpose.

The weird thing here is that we ought have had enormous stockpiles of PPE, of the kind that would make panic buying unnecessary. The UK was rated as #1 in the world for pandemic preparedness precisely because we were supposed to have these stockpiles. Watch about a minute of this to see what this was meant to look like as of 2018, it's quite spooky: https://youtu.be/RmGiDUczhqQ?t=295

But, when the need came, where was the stockpile? Apparently some of it was sold off, some as late as January 2020! Other parts had expired, going beyond safe use-by dates. I can't entirely blame the government for panic-buying if there was truly no other option, but the fact that there was no other option is a scandal in and of itself.

That pandemic preparedness rating was for flu. That's what we and many other countries were focused on.

The PPE is the same for flu.

Sure, but the rating for the UK's pandemic planning was based upon how the UK would fight influenza. So it's a red herring. The rating based upon how we fight influenza has little bearing on how ready we were for fighting COVID-19. I would say it's quite clear that our PPE stockpile and the supply chains were not remotely adequate for the latter.

Obviously the flu anti-virals are useless. But look at the video: there are also stacks and stacks of boxes with labels like 3M and Nitrex - this is PPE. The same PPE you'd want in a novel flu pandemic was the PPE we needed for COVID-19, yet there were shortages almost immediately. If anything, we got a lucky break because the first wave was only fairly brief, and yet we were out of PPE almost immediately. The care home -> hospital -> care home transmission network was so dangerous because very few people in that chain had access to the necessary PPE, and this is where a large proportion of our deaths came from.

How much PPE do you stockpile though? Three months? Six months?

If we were to say six months that seems reasonable. Only issue is that the pandemic increased our consumption of certain PPE items by over 50-fold. Meaning that we were using 12 months of PPE every single week.

Six months stockpile then is enough to get you from Monday to Thursday. Not through a pandemic.

But the whole point of stockpiling is to be able to deal with a pandemic. You're meant to expect that you're going to need to use lots of it! That's why you do it! You're meant to stockpile for 6-12 months of usage at pandemic levels, because why would you stockpile otherwise? Again, from the documentary: "Dotted around the country are secret depots housing vast stockpiles, all poised for the next big outbreak. Protective kit so that health workers can carry out their job safely... It is critical that the right supplies are in the right place at the right time". This was 2018, so I don't think it's unreasonable to ask what changed in the intervening year-and-a-bit.

This is the conundrum at the heart of Johnsonism, for me. On the one hand, we have the optimistic stuff about how Britain can do better, "best country in the world" and all that. And this is fantastic! We really should be aiming to be the best country in the world, and we should be optimistic about making real improvements in the lives of our fellow citizens and the wealth of our nation. We know that opportunities for improvement exist, and we should be optimistic about discovering more.

But as soon as any practical consideration comes up, there's this retreat to "well, we're not quite the worst" and "how could anyone have done any better?" or "it was the wrong kind of pandemic". It's all a bit "sorry, your train isn't here because there are leaves on the line". The gap between the optimism implied by the rhetoric and the low expectations that exist for real-world performance is staggering.

The amount of PPE you need depends on the characteristics of the disease. If you stockpile 6 months for a flu pandemic, and you are hit by a disease for which the infection period is, say, twice as long, and which spreads three times as rapidly, then you are already down to about a month.

The whole world was hit by an unknown disease that had never existed before. The main mechanism of the transmission was initially unclear, its severity, its infection rate, the incubation period, its death rate were all completely unknown. Look how long it took the WHO to recommend the wearing of face masks -- it was months.

It is not possible to plan effectively for such a disease.

Here's a test for you.

Suppose you were asked to mitigate the risk for the next existential risk to humanity.

What would you do? (Note I am not even telling you that the next existential risk will be an airborne disease, or even a disease at all). It is not possible to plan for such events.

This doesn't make any sense. Obviously any pandemic disease is unknown before it spreads - that's how it is able to evade immunity and existing vaccines. All of the details of precise mechanism of transmission (e.g. aerosolisation), incubation period, severity etc. are also unknown before the pandemic appears, so can have no bearing on the anticipatory measures you take before it happens. You rely on things like PPE precisely because they're not specific to any disease, they rely on simple and universal principles of hygiene.

"It is not possible to plan effectively" is just more low expectations. The government knew that a pandemic was possible, and claimed to have been stockpiling the PPE we needed for exactly this purpose, with footage of people driving forklift trucks around the secret depots containing said PPE only two years ago. Where was it?

You basic point seems to be: we were (meant to be) prepared for a flu pandemic, so why were we not prepared for a COVID pandemic?

And the answer is that the properties of the two diseases are very different.

It is not possible to plan effectively for very rare, very destructive events. We do not know whether the next risk will be biological, or from space, or from technology, or from the global environment.

Even if it is biological, we do not know whether it will be a pandemic, or an engineered disease, or a deliberate or accidental release from a global weapons program.

It is not possible to prepare for such things.

The last global biological pandemic on this scale happened in 1918, and was flu. The Government was (meant to be) prepared for a flu pandemic.

Presumably the Government will now plan for coronavirus-like disease pandemics. But, the next existential risk (maybe in a century's time) will almost certainly not be a coronavirus pandemic.

And then the equivalent of rjk will be saying: why did we not plan for it?

I disagree completely.
Setting aside @Foxy 's point that several Asian nations did plan for the pandemic, the tools developed to deal with this one are equally applicable to any future pandemic.

For example, both PCR and rapid antigen tests were available quite soon after the virus was identified and sequenced.
A public health laboratory infrastructure (not the extremely expensive set of labs we now have in place) could be maintained indefinitely at reasonable expense, alongside some local track & trace capacity.
Contingency plans for properly managing isolation of infected individuals - which we still don't have - could be drawn up.
And manufacturing capacity for cheap mass antigen tests could be maintained, again at pretty reasonable expense (as opposed to Tory mates no-bid rates).

And we're not going to unlearn how to produce mRNA vaccines.

TheScreamingEagles

Pulpstar said:

Which tier is Tobias Ellwood in ?

Tier 2.

Nigelb

Pulpstar said:

Philip_Thompson said:

Harris should be the odds-on favourite for 2024 and Buttigieg being in the Cabinet could perhaps stymie his ability to run against her if she does run?

How often do you have a Cabinet member running against an incumbent Veep seeking to succeed the President?

Harris should be favourite, but there is no way on God's green earth she should be odds on.

Not least because Biden might run again (though probably won't).

Nigelb

TheScreamingEagles said:

My legendary modesty forbids me from mentioning that back in September I tipped Mayor Pete at 66/1 for 2024.

Probably still fair odds.

Monkeys

Are we saying that transportation can provide a route to the presidency?

HYUFD

https://twitter.com/Tobias_Ellwood/status/1339547033745670144?s=20

TheScreamingEagles

Grim as it sounds, I'd avoid laying Harris in this market, she may well be the incumbent President come 2024 and it's hard to shift an incumbent President in a primary.

Even Gerald Ford overcame a primary challenge from Reagan.

The last imperfect example would be LBJ.

HYUFD

https://twitter.com/ElectionMapsUK/status/1339542035636903944?s=20

Nigelb

TheScreamingEagles said:

FrancisUrquhart said:

Theuniondivvie said:

One for DavidL. I think you're still safe on PB.

twitter.com/AndyRTodd/status/1339489060889505792?s=20

What about Die Hard being a Christmas film?

Bruce Willis has spoken on the matter.

Not a Christmas film.

Actors frequently have little idea of what films are about, though. That's why you have directors.
I'm agnostic on the matter.

Theuniondivvie

JRM being cnuty isn't news of course..

https://twitter.com/MirrorPolitics/status/1339541300446715904?s=20

MarqueeMark

Andy_JS said:

Interestingly when I was in Hereford a few months ago it was noticeable how many people were wearing facemasks outside as well as inside. That in itself may not achieve anything but it could be an indication that people there were/are being more careful about the virus in general.

Also, the SAS shoot anyone who doesn't......

rottenborough

excellent header. totally agree

FrancisUrquhart

HYUFD said:

https://twitter.com/Tobias_Ellwood/status/1339547033745670144?s=20

Never heard of Zoom?

HYUFD

TheScreamingEagles said:

Nigelb said:

Philip_Thompson said:

Harris should be the odds-on favourite for 2024 and Buttigieg being in the Cabinet could perhaps stymie his ability to run against her if she does run?

How often do you have a Cabinet member running against an incumbent Veep seeking to succeed the President?

I agree with you on this, Philip.
I think it would be pretty difficult for him to thread that needle; he's a far more likely bet for VP in 2024.

I've suggested to the Yorkshire Party that they branch out and become the Northern Party.

I'd join and I reckon we'd win a majority of seats in the North in 2024.

The Harrying of the North will not be forgotten.

There already is one

https://twitter.com/FreeNorthNow/status/1336798652300464130?s=20

TheScreamingEagles

Nigelb said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

FrancisUrquhart said:

Theuniondivvie said:

One for DavidL. I think you're still safe on PB.

twitter.com/AndyRTodd/status/1339489060889505792?s=20

What about Die Hard being a Christmas film?

Bruce Willis has spoken on the matter.

Not a Christmas film.

Actors frequently have little idea of what films are about, though. That's why you have directors.
I'm agnostic on the matter.

Kinda on topic, the best President of the 21st Century has also weighed in.

https://twitter.com/FallonTonight/status/1335091748272484353

TheScreamingEagles

HYUFD said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

Nigelb said:

Philip_Thompson said:

Harris should be the odds-on favourite for 2024 and Buttigieg being in the Cabinet could perhaps stymie his ability to run against her if she does run?

How often do you have a Cabinet member running against an incumbent Veep seeking to succeed the President?

I agree with you on this, Philip.
I think it would be pretty difficult for him to thread that needle; he's a far more likely bet for VP in 2024.

I've suggested to the Yorkshire Party that they branch out and become the Northern Party.

I'd join and I reckon we'd win a majority of seats in the North in 2024.

The Harrying of the North will not be forgotten.

There already is one

https://twitter.com/FreeNorthNow/status/1336798652300464130?s=20

But I don't want to secede from the UK, I want my country back.

MarqueeMark

Andy_JS said:

Foxy said:

I wonder if HM will be quite so frank?

https://twitter.com/nicktolhurst/status/1339538271609753602?s=19

Why not compare Sweden to France, Italy, Spain etc, as well as with its immediate neighbours?

Because in Sweden, it is all about your immediate neighbours.

MarqueeMark

Herefordshire going into Tier 1 is surely just about trolling the Welsh, isn't it?

JACK_W

Here at Auchentennach I have placed Mrs Jack W and her credit and debit cards into Tier 5 that sadly requires no contact until a review in 2021. As you may imagine the news has not been greeted with an abundance of festive cheer.

Titter ...

Theuniondivvie

TheScreamingEagles said:

HYUFD said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

Nigelb said:

Philip_Thompson said:

Harris should be the odds-on favourite for 2024 and Buttigieg being in the Cabinet could perhaps stymie his ability to run against her if she does run?

How often do you have a Cabinet member running against an incumbent Veep seeking to succeed the President?

I agree with you on this, Philip.
I think it would be pretty difficult for him to thread that needle; he's a far more likely bet for VP in 2024.

I've suggested to the Yorkshire Party that they branch out and become the Northern Party.

I'd join and I reckon we'd win a majority of seats in the North in 2024.

The Harrying of the North will not be forgotten.

There already is one

https://twitter.com/FreeNorthNow/status/1336798652300464130?s=20

But I don't want to secede from the UK, I want my country back.

Dunno, I think the NIPs is the party for you.

Nigelb

Theuniondivvie said:

JRM being cnuty isn't news of course..

https://twitter.com/MirrorPolitics/status/1339541300446715904?s=20

Shame would seem to be something of an alien concept for Rees Mogg.

TheScreamingEagles

https://twitter.com/DavidHenigUK/status/1339551185884372992

Nigelb

TheScreamingEagles said:

Nigelb said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

FrancisUrquhart said:

Theuniondivvie said:

One for DavidL. I think you're still safe on PB.

twitter.com/AndyRTodd/status/1339489060889505792?s=20

What about Die Hard being a Christmas film?

Bruce Willis has spoken on the matter.

Not a Christmas film.

Actors frequently have little idea of what films are about, though. That's why you have directors.
I'm agnostic on the matter.

Kinda on topic, the best President of the 21st Century has also weighed in.

Like everyone else, he gets one vote.

Carnyx

Andy_JS said:

NickPalmer said:

DougSeal said:

In many ways we are more European but there are significant areas where we are closer to the US - dramatic arts and music being the main ones. One can easily imagine someone from the UK or Ireland becoming the host of the biggest US late night talk show a la James Corden, but it is harder to imagine someone from another EU country doing the same. The cinematic versions of all-American comic book heroes like Batman, Spiderman and Superman have all been played by Brits within the last decade. There's a reason why British films are not included in a "foreign" category at the Oscars.

Yes, I don't want to overstate it - language is still an issue, though English is pervasive among Europeans under 40, and Anglo-American music and movies are big across Europe. One can make an argument that English-speaking culture has colonised much of the world with reverse influences more limited - although TV series like The Killing and The Bridge are very successful in relative terms, they are still a niche in British culture.

I was thinking more in terms of social norms, though - attitudes to work, fun, socialising, sex, drinking, drugs, etc. have become more similar across urban Europe in ways that many older folk find partly attractive and partly repellent, but in any case quite similar across European borders. It's interesting to consider why some things travel and some don't. American light entertainment is almost universally enjoyed, while American preoccupation with religion seems eccentric in much of Europe.

This is apparently one of the biggest differences between mainland European countries and English-speaking countries: the inheritance laws.

(£)

https://www.economist.com/europe/2009/10/15/where-theres-a-will-theres-a-row

"Where there's a will there's a row
What inheritance laws tell you about Europe and why Britain is the odd man out"

FPT - can't read as paywalled, but it is topical to remind you that Scotland has a continental style inheritance system, with substantial rights for spouses and children. I remember the horror of the PBTories when I happened to mention this a few years back!

TheScreamingEagles

Theuniondivvie said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

HYUFD said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

Nigelb said:

Philip_Thompson said:

Harris should be the odds-on favourite for 2024 and Buttigieg being in the Cabinet could perhaps stymie his ability to run against her if she does run?

How often do you have a Cabinet member running against an incumbent Veep seeking to succeed the President?

I agree with you on this, Philip.
I think it would be pretty difficult for him to thread that needle; he's a far more likely bet for VP in 2024.

I've suggested to the Yorkshire Party that they branch out and become the Northern Party.

I'd join and I reckon we'd win a majority of seats in the North in 2024.

The Harrying of the North will not be forgotten.

There already is one

https://twitter.com/FreeNorthNow/status/1336798652300464130?s=20

But I don't want to secede from the UK, I want my country back.

Dunno, I think the NIPs is the party for you.

Nips have gotten me into so much trouble in my life, oh you meant the North Independence Party.

MaxPB

That Welsh data looks terrible. Will be interesting to see how it shakes out by specimen date and if there's been any kind of drop off or not.

YBarddCwsc

Nigelb said:

YBarddCwsc said:

FPT

rjk said:

YBarddCwsc said:

rjk said:

Philip_Thompson said:

rjk said:

glw said:

rjk said:

glw said:

rjk said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

I also believe the NAO found 184 million items of PPE were not fit for purpose.

The weird thing here is that we ought have had enormous stockpiles of PPE, of the kind that would make panic buying unnecessary. The UK was rated as #1 in the world for pandemic preparedness precisely because we were supposed to have these stockpiles. Watch about a minute of this to see what this was meant to look like as of 2018, it's quite spooky: https://youtu.be/RmGiDUczhqQ?t=295

But, when the need came, where was the stockpile? Apparently some of it was sold off, some as late as January 2020! Other parts had expired, going beyond safe use-by dates. I can't entirely blame the government for panic-buying if there was truly no other option, but the fact that there was no other option is a scandal in and of itself.

That pandemic preparedness rating was for flu. That's what we and many other countries were focused on.

The PPE is the same for flu.

Sure, but the rating for the UK's pandemic planning was based upon how the UK would fight influenza. So it's a red herring. The rating based upon how we fight influenza has little bearing on how ready we were for fighting COVID-19. I would say it's quite clear that our PPE stockpile and the supply chains were not remotely adequate for the latter.

Obviously the flu anti-virals are useless. But look at the video: there are also stacks and stacks of boxes with labels like 3M and Nitrex - this is PPE. The same PPE you'd want in a novel flu pandemic was the PPE we needed for COVID-19, yet there were shortages almost immediately. If anything, we got a lucky break because the first wave was only fairly brief, and yet we were out of PPE almost immediately. The care home -> hospital -> care home transmission network was so dangerous because very few people in that chain had access to the necessary PPE, and this is where a large proportion of our deaths came from.

How much PPE do you stockpile though? Three months? Six months?

If we were to say six months that seems reasonable. Only issue is that the pandemic increased our consumption of certain PPE items by over 50-fold. Meaning that we were using 12 months of PPE every single week.

Six months stockpile then is enough to get you from Monday to Thursday. Not through a pandemic.

But the whole point of stockpiling is to be able to deal with a pandemic. You're meant to expect that you're going to need to use lots of it! That's why you do it! You're meant to stockpile for 6-12 months of usage at pandemic levels, because why would you stockpile otherwise? Again, from the documentary: "Dotted around the country are secret depots housing vast stockpiles, all poised for the next big outbreak. Protective kit so that health workers can carry out their job safely... It is critical that the right supplies are in the right place at the right time". This was 2018, so I don't think it's unreasonable to ask what changed in the intervening year-and-a-bit.

This is the conundrum at the heart of Johnsonism, for me. On the one hand, we have the optimistic stuff about how Britain can do better, "best country in the world" and all that. And this is fantastic! We really should be aiming to be the best country in the world, and we should be optimistic about making real improvements in the lives of our fellow citizens and the wealth of our nation. We know that opportunities for improvement exist, and we should be optimistic about discovering more.

But as soon as any practical consideration comes up, there's this retreat to "well, we're not quite the worst" and "how could anyone have done any better?" or "it was the wrong kind of pandemic". It's all a bit "sorry, your train isn't here because there are leaves on the line". The gap between the optimism implied by the rhetoric and the low expectations that exist for real-world performance is staggering.

The amount of PPE you need depends on the characteristics of the disease. If you stockpile 6 months for a flu pandemic, and you are hit by a disease for which the infection period is, say, twice as long, and which spreads three times as rapidly, then you are already down to about a month.

The whole world was hit by an unknown disease that had never existed before. The main mechanism of the transmission was initially unclear, its severity, its infection rate, the incubation period, its death rate were all completely unknown. Look how long it took the WHO to recommend the wearing of face masks -- it was months.

It is not possible to plan effectively for such a disease.

Here's a test for you.

Suppose you were asked to mitigate the risk for the next existential risk to humanity.

What would you do? (Note I am not even telling you that the next existential risk will be an airborne disease, or even a disease at all). It is not possible to plan for such events.

This doesn't make any sense. Obviously any pandemic disease is unknown before it spreads - that's how it is able to evade immunity and existing vaccines. All of the details of precise mechanism of transmission (e.g. aerosolisation), incubation period, severity etc. are also unknown before the pandemic appears, so can have no bearing on the anticipatory measures you take before it happens. You rely on things like PPE precisely because they're not specific to any disease, they rely on simple and universal principles of hygiene.

"It is not possible to plan effectively" is just more low expectations. The government knew that a pandemic was possible, and claimed to have been stockpiling the PPE we needed for exactly this purpose, with footage of people driving forklift trucks around the secret depots containing said PPE only two years ago. Where was it?

You basic point seems to be: we were (meant to be) prepared for a flu pandemic, so why were we not prepared for a COVID pandemic?

And the answer is that the properties of the two diseases are very different.

It is not possible to plan effectively for very rare, very destructive events. We do not know whether the next risk will be biological, or from space, or from technology, or from the global environment.

Even if it is biological, we do not know whether it will be a pandemic, or an engineered disease, or a deliberate or accidental release from a global weapons program.

It is not possible to prepare for such things.

The last global biological pandemic on this scale happened in 1918, and was flu. The Government was (meant to be) prepared for a flu pandemic.

Presumably the Government will now plan for coronavirus-like disease pandemics. But, the next existential risk (maybe in a century's time) will almost certainly not be a coronavirus pandemic.

And then the equivalent of rjk will be saying: why did we not plan for it?

I disagree completely.
Setting aside @Foxy 's point that several Asian nations did plan for the pandemic, the tools developed to deal with this one are equally applicable to any future pandemic.

For example, both PCR and rapid antigen tests were available quite soon after the virus was identified and sequenced.
A public health laboratory infrastructure (not the extremely expensive set of labs we now have in place) could be maintained indefinitely at reasonable expense, alongside some local track & trace capacity.
Contingency plans for properly managing isolation of infected individuals - which we still don't have - could be drawn up.
And manufacturing capacity for cheap mass antigen tests could be maintained, again at pretty reasonable expense (as opposed to Tory mates no-bid rates).

And we're not going to unlearn how to produce mRNA vaccines.

Sure, several Asian countries were better prepared for the pandemic -- but that is at the cost of severe restrictions on civil liberties that those countries are willing to accept. It is not really fair to compare South Korea or PR China with us, because there is no way those restrictions could be implemented here at the present moment.

I called some of my Beijing buddies the other day, and the level of restrictions in place even in Beijing (where there is no local transmission) is still terrifying. You sign in by smartphone wherever you go. The Government knows where you are at all time.

However, I was talking more generally about rare, destructive events, not just biological threats. We do not know whether the next threat will be a pandemic. It could e.g, come from space. Rare impact events are rare -- but not very rare on century timescales.

And, there are diseases for which vaccines cannot be developed. Humans are very ingenious. And some humans are very bad.

I am sure a bad, but ingenious, human can create a disease for which it is not true that "the tools developed to deal with this one are equally applicable to any future pandemic."

FrancisUrquhart

TheScreamingEagles said:

Theuniondivvie said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

HYUFD said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

Nigelb said:

Philip_Thompson said:

Harris should be the odds-on favourite for 2024 and Buttigieg being in the Cabinet could perhaps stymie his ability to run against her if she does run?

How often do you have a Cabinet member running against an incumbent Veep seeking to succeed the President?

I agree with you on this, Philip.
I think it would be pretty difficult for him to thread that needle; he's a far more likely bet for VP in 2024.

I've suggested to the Yorkshire Party that they branch out and become the Northern Party.

I'd join and I reckon we'd win a majority of seats in the North in 2024.

The Harrying of the North will not be forgotten.

There already is one

https://twitter.com/FreeNorthNow/status/1336798652300464130?s=20

But I don't want to secede from the UK, I want my country back.

Dunno, I think the NIPs is the party for you.

Nips have gotten me into so much trouble in my life, oh you meant the North Independence Party.

The biggest machine learning conference until recently was called NIPS, and the website url is still nips.cc

Could they have picked a worse name with a dodgier URL?

Foxy

Monkeys said:

Are we saying that transportation can provide a route to the presidency?

He will be on the fast track for sure...

TheScreamingEagles

Nigelb said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

Nigelb said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

FrancisUrquhart said:

Theuniondivvie said:

One for DavidL. I think you're still safe on PB.

twitter.com/AndyRTodd/status/1339489060889505792?s=20

What about Die Hard being a Christmas film?

Bruce Willis has spoken on the matter.

Not a Christmas film.

Actors frequently have little idea of what films are about, though. That's why you have directors.
I'm agnostic on the matter.

Kinda on topic, the best President of the 21st Century has also weighed in.

Like everyone else, he gets one vote.

E pluribus unum.

https://twitter.com/YouGovAmerica/status/1338566497862606856

TheScreamingEagles

FrancisUrquhart said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

Theuniondivvie said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

HYUFD said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

Nigelb said:

Philip_Thompson said:

Harris should be the odds-on favourite for 2024 and Buttigieg being in the Cabinet could perhaps stymie his ability to run against her if she does run?

How often do you have a Cabinet member running against an incumbent Veep seeking to succeed the President?

I agree with you on this, Philip.
I think it would be pretty difficult for him to thread that needle; he's a far more likely bet for VP in 2024.

I've suggested to the Yorkshire Party that they branch out and become the Northern Party.

I'd join and I reckon we'd win a majority of seats in the North in 2024.

The Harrying of the North will not be forgotten.

There already is one

https://twitter.com/FreeNorthNow/status/1336798652300464130?s=20

But I don't want to secede from the UK, I want my country back.

Dunno, I think the NIPs is the party for you.

Nips have gotten me into so much trouble in my life, oh you meant the North Independence Party.

The biggest machine learning conference until recently was called NIPS, and the website url is still nips.cc

Could they have picked a worse name with a dodgier URL?

Sheffield Hallam University may have outdone them.

Theuniondivvie

I'm assuming it's probably a good thing but I'm still often amazed by how benevolent I feel toward folk that I loathed in my tempestuous youth. May be a consequence of contrasting them with the absolute ********* and ***** in charge of HMG currently of course.

https://twitter.com/LordSpeaker/status/1339551083392348160?s=20

Casino_Royale

HYUFD said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

Nigelb said:

Philip_Thompson said:

Harris should be the odds-on favourite for 2024 and Buttigieg being in the Cabinet could perhaps stymie his ability to run against her if she does run?

How often do you have a Cabinet member running against an incumbent Veep seeking to succeed the President?

I agree with you on this, Philip.
I think it would be pretty difficult for him to thread that needle; he's a far more likely bet for VP in 2024.

I've suggested to the Yorkshire Party that they branch out and become the Northern Party.

I'd join and I reckon we'd win a majority of seats in the North in 2024.

The Harrying of the North will not be forgotten.

There already is one

https://twitter.com/FreeNorthNow/status/1336798652300464130?s=20

Which has shot itself in the foot of what was already a fringe issue by adding four unnecessary extra bullets.

TheScreamingEagles

Theuniondivvie said:

I'm assuming it's probably a good thing but I'm still often amazed by how benevolent I feel toward folk that I loathed in my tempestuous youth. May be a side effect of contrasting them with the absolute ********* and ***** in charge of HMG currently of course.

https://twitter.com/LordSpeaker/status/1339551083392348160?s=20

You should have always loved Norman Fowler the man is a secular saint, always has been.

Thanks to him hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people are alive today who would otherwise not be.

His approach on the AIDS crisis was brilliant.

Casino_Royale

Mayor Pete didn't win but he got a plurality in Iowa, nearly a million votes and impressed everyone he worked with.

Kamala Harris, with the greatest respect, was a disappointment and bowed out before the race even began.

So he's definitely value.

Theuniondivvie

TheScreamingEagles said:

Theuniondivvie said:

I'm assuming it's probably a good thing but I'm still often amazed by how benevolent I feel toward folk that I loathed in my tempestuous youth. May be a side effect of contrasting them with the absolute ********* and ***** in charge of HMG currently of course.

https://twitter.com/LordSpeaker/status/1339551083392348160?s=20

You should have always loved Norman Fowler the man is a secular saint, always has been.

Thanks to him hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people are alive today who would not be.

His approach on the AIDS crisis was brilliant.

Well, you don't tend to see the big picture when you're in your teens/early 20s.

SirNorfolkPassmore

On topic, I don't think Pete Buttigieg will even run in 2024 (if Biden does indeed stand down after one term).

He'd only be 42, whereas Harris will be 60. Plenty of time for opinions on homosexuality to evolve in the US (and he does have a problem there with the older black electorate in particular). He's catapulted himself onto the national stage and into the public eye. If he does a good job at Transportation (a visible job but a tricky one in terms of getting a good, cross-party infrastructure deal), he has every prospect of being VP or a key role like Secretary of State under Harris.

He's played a blinder this year to go from a mayor of a city which (to put it in context) is a little smaller than Exeter to a national player. He's in no massive hurry - he'd be 50 after two Harris terms or 58 after two Harris terms AND two GOP terms after that if it pans out that way - both totally credible times to be going for it.

A further issue is that, by joining the administration, Buttigieg has tied himself to it. So the best chance for a non-Harris Democrat in 2024 is if the administration is unpopular. But that would strengthen a Governor like Cuomo or Newsom, not the Transportation Secretary, who'd be part of the problem.

I know politics is littered with people who waited when they should have gone for it, and their one chance slipped away - and maybe he'll join that club. But if we're talking about what he's genuinely likely to do, I really think he'll sit it out.

Casino_Royale

FPT - I've looked at the IndyRef poll.

There's still a lead but I suspect not as strong a one as the headlines suggest because I think a majority of the "don't knows" would go to No in the event of a poll being called.

The true position at present is probably between 51%-56% Yes and 44% to 49% No.

To be clear, that's not good for the Unionist cause. It doesn't necessarily mean it's all over yet.

It probably needs a new UK governance settlement and new UK PM to clinch it though.

HYUFD

Farage preparing to cry betrayal again

https://twitter.com/Nigel_Farage/status/1339553103574683648?s=20

Nigelb

YBarddCwsc said:

Nigelb said:

YBarddCwsc said:

FPT

rjk said:

YBarddCwsc said:

rjk said:

Philip_Thompson said:

rjk said:

glw said:

rjk said:

glw said:

rjk said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

I also believe the NAO found 184 million items of PPE were not fit for purpose.

The weird thing here is that we ought have had enormous stockpiles of PPE, of the kind that would make panic buying unnecessary. The UK was rated as #1 in the world for pandemic preparedness precisely because we were supposed to have these stockpiles. Watch about a minute of this to see what this was meant to look like as of 2018, it's quite spooky: https://youtu.be/RmGiDUczhqQ?t=295

But, when the need came, where was the stockpile? Apparently some of it was sold off, some as late as January 2020! Other parts had expired, going beyond safe use-by dates. I can't entirely blame the government for panic-buying if there was truly no other option, but the fact that there was no other option is a scandal in and of itself.

That pandemic preparedness rating was for flu. That's what we and many other countries were focused on.

The PPE is the same for flu.

Sure, but the rating for the UK's pandemic planning was based upon how the UK would fight influenza. So it's a red herring. The rating based upon how we fight influenza has little bearing on how ready we were for fighting COVID-19. I would say it's quite clear that our PPE stockpile and the supply chains were not remotely adequate for the latter.

Obviously the flu anti-virals are useless. But look at the video: there are also stacks and stacks of boxes with labels like 3M and Nitrex - this is PPE. The same PPE you'd want in a novel flu pandemic was the PPE we needed for COVID-19, yet there were shortages almost immediately. If anything, we got a lucky break because the first wave was only fairly brief, and yet we were out of PPE almost immediately. The care home -> hospital -> care home transmission network was so dangerous because very few people in that chain had access to the necessary PPE, and this is where a large proportion of our deaths came from.

How much PPE do you stockpile though? Three months? Six months?

If we were to say six months that seems reasonable. Only issue is that the pandemic increased our consumption of certain PPE items by over 50-fold. Meaning that we were using 12 months of PPE every single week.

Six months stockpile then is enough to get you from Monday to Thursday. Not through a pandemic.

But the whole point of stockpiling is to be able to deal with a pandemic. You're meant to expect that you're going to need to use lots of it! That's why you do it! You're meant to stockpile for 6-12 months of usage at pandemic levels, because why would you stockpile otherwise? Again, from the documentary: "Dotted around the country are secret depots housing vast stockpiles, all poised for the next big outbreak. Protective kit so that health workers can carry out their job safely... It is critical that the right supplies are in the right place at the right time". This was 2018, so I don't think it's unreasonable to ask what changed in the intervening year-and-a-bit.

This is the conundrum at the heart of Johnsonism, for me. On the one hand, we have the optimistic stuff about how Britain can do better, "best country in the world" and all that. And this is fantastic! We really should be aiming to be the best country in the world, and we should be optimistic about making real improvements in the lives of our fellow citizens and the wealth of our nation. We know that opportunities for improvement exist, and we should be optimistic about discovering more.

But as soon as any practical consideration comes up, there's this retreat to "well, we're not quite the worst" and "how could anyone have done any better?" or "it was the wrong kind of pandemic". It's all a bit "sorry, your train isn't here because there are leaves on the line". The gap between the optimism implied by the rhetoric and the low expectations that exist for real-world performance is staggering.

The amount of PPE you need depends on the characteristics of the disease. If you stockpile 6 months for a flu pandemic, and you are hit by a disease for which the infection period is, say, twice as long, and which spreads three times as rapidly, then you are already down to about a month.

The whole world was hit by an unknown disease that had never existed before. The main mechanism of the transmission was initially unclear, its severity, its infection rate, the incubation period, its death rate were all completely unknown. Look how long it took the WHO to recommend the wearing of face masks -- it was months.

It is not possible to plan effectively for such a disease.

Here's a test for you.

Suppose you were asked to mitigate the risk for the next existential risk to humanity.

What would you do? (Note I am not even telling you that the next existential risk will be an airborne disease, or even a disease at all). It is not possible to plan for such events.

This doesn't make any sense. Obviously any pandemic disease is unknown before it spreads - that's how it is able to evade immunity and existing vaccines. All of the details of precise mechanism of transmission (e.g. aerosolisation), incubation period, severity etc. are also unknown before the pandemic appears, so can have no bearing on the anticipatory measures you take before it happens. You rely on things like PPE precisely because they're not specific to any disease, they rely on simple and universal principles of hygiene.

"It is not possible to plan effectively" is just more low expectations. The government knew that a pandemic was possible, and claimed to have been stockpiling the PPE we needed for exactly this purpose, with footage of people driving forklift trucks around the secret depots containing said PPE only two years ago. Where was it?

You basic point seems to be: we were (meant to be) prepared for a flu pandemic, so why were we not prepared for a COVID pandemic?

And the answer is that the properties of the two diseases are very different.

It is not possible to plan effectively for very rare, very destructive events. We do not know whether the next risk will be biological, or from space, or from technology, or from the global environment.

Even if it is biological, we do not know whether it will be a pandemic, or an engineered disease, or a deliberate or accidental release from a global weapons program.

It is not possible to prepare for such things.

The last global biological pandemic on this scale happened in 1918, and was flu. The Government was (meant to be) prepared for a flu pandemic.

Presumably the Government will now plan for coronavirus-like disease pandemics. But, the next existential risk (maybe in a century's time) will almost certainly not be a coronavirus pandemic.

And then the equivalent of rjk will be saying: why did we not plan for it?

I disagree completely.
Setting aside @Foxy 's point that several Asian nations did plan for the pandemic, the tools developed to deal with this one are equally applicable to any future pandemic.

For example, both PCR and rapid antigen tests were available quite soon after the virus was identified and sequenced.
A public health laboratory infrastructure (not the extremely expensive set of labs we now have in place) could be maintained indefinitely at reasonable expense, alongside some local track & trace capacity.
Contingency plans for properly managing isolation of infected individuals - which we still don't have - could be drawn up.
And manufacturing capacity for cheap mass antigen tests could be maintained, again at pretty reasonable expense (as opposed to Tory mates no-bid rates).

And we're not going to unlearn how to produce mRNA vaccines.

Sure, several Asian countries were better prepared for the pandemic -- but that is at the cost of severe restrictions on civil liberties that those countries are willing to accept. It is not really fair to compare South Korea or PR China with us, because there is no way those restrictions could be implemented here at the present moment.

I called some of my Beijing buddies the other day, and the level of restrictions in place even in Beijing (where there is no local transmission) is still terrifying. You sign in by smartphone wherever you go. The Government knows where you are at all time.

However, I was talking more generally about rare, destructive events, not just biological threats. We do not know whether the next threat will be a pandemic. It could e.g, come from space. Rare impact events are rare -- but not very rare on century timescales.

And, there are diseases for which vaccines cannot be developed. Humans are very ingenious. And some humans are very bad.

I am sure a bad, but ingenious, human can create a disease for which it is not true that "the tools developed to deal with this one are equally applicable to any future pandemic."

Rapid sequencing, rapid mass testing, isolation of infected individuals, and vaccines ought to be applicable to any infection. And certainly the first three.

Theuniondivvie

Speaking of the absolute ********* and ***** in charge of HMG currently..

https://twitter.com/MrKenShabby/status/1339554625003941888?s=20

Philip_Thompson

Pulpstar said:

Philip_Thompson said:

Harris should be the odds-on favourite for 2024 and Buttigieg being in the Cabinet could perhaps stymie his ability to run against her if she does run?

How often do you have a Cabinet member running against an incumbent Veep seeking to succeed the President?

Harris should be favourite, but there is no way on God's green earth she should be odds on.

I disagree. Democrats should be heavy favourites to retain the Presidency in 2024 - and Harris should be heavy favourite to be the Democrat nominee.

Casino_Royale

Theuniondivvie said:

Speaking of the absolute ********* and ***** in charge of HMG currently..

https://twitter.com/MrKenShabby/status/1339554625003941888?s=20

It beggars belief he was made a Lord.

IanB2

Theuniondivvie said:

I'm assuming it's probably a good thing but I'm still often amazed by how benevolent I feel toward folk that I loathed in my tempestuous youth. May be a side effect of contrasting them with the absolute ********* and ***** in charge of HMG currently of course.

https://twitter.com/LordSpeaker/status/1339551083392348160?s=20

The arrogance that many politicians project when they have power over us fades after leaving office, and they become more balanced and rounded people. Portillo and Balls are two obviously prominent examples but there are many others.

DavidL

O/t, apologies but English schools to have a phased return after the holidays: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-55348886

So why the hell was the Education department threatening court proceedings against Greenwich only this week? Williamson really is special. And not in a good way.

SirNorfolkPassmore

TheScreamingEagles said:

My legendary modesty forbids me from mentioning that back in September I tipped Mayor Pete at 66/1 for 2024.

He's only edged into 40/1. Perhaps your legendary modest might forbid you from bragging about your prescience until he's come into at least 10/1?

contrarian

HYUFD said:

Farage preparing to cry betrayal again

https://twitter.com/Nigel_Farage/status/1339553103574683648?s=20

The BP were complaining today about the Electoral Commission dragging their feet on their renaming to Reform.

I wonder whether they are better off staying as they are.

Andy_Cooke

TheScreamingEagles said:

Andy_JS said:

Foxy said:

I wonder if HM will be quite so frank?

https://twitter.com/nicktolhurst/status/1339538271609753602?s=19

Why not compare Sweden to France, Italy, Spain etc, as well as with its immediate neighbours?

Because Tegnell and others said throughout most of 2020 that Sweden should be compared with its neighbours.

And because its immediate neighbours have similar socio-economic setups, similar cultural default levels of social distancing, similar climate, and so forth.

Why wouldn't you compare them to their closest neighbours in geographical, social, political, cultural, and economic senses but with very different countries with very different setups?

Beibheirli_C

Theuniondivvie said:

Speaking of the absolute ********* and ***** in charge of HMG currently..

https://twitter.com/MrKenShabby/status/1339554625003941888?s=20

Who?

contrarian

MaxPB said:

That Welsh data looks terrible. Will be interesting to see how it shakes out by specimen date and if there's been any kind of drop off or not.

an 89-year old relative of mine is in a Welsh hospital and has just contracted covid whilst in there.

DavidL

What does the Secretary of Transport actually do and how does Buttigieg build profile in such a role?

The current Secretary of Transport is someone called Chao. No? Me neither.

Philip_Thompson

HYUFD said:

Farage preparing to cry betrayal again

https://twitter.com/Nigel_Farage/status/1339553103574683648?s=20

Does anyone care?

He can say what he wants he's history. Whats he going to do? Get back on his dinghy and start chasing migrants again?

DavidL

Theuniondivvie said:

One for DavidL. I think you're still safe on PB.

https://twitter.com/AndyRTodd/status/1339489060889505792?s=20

I may need to duck out some of the core debates though, like pineapple on pizza and is Die Hard a Christmas movie? Just to be on the safe side.

nico679

Agreement apparently reached on procurement rules so of course some clueless Leavers on twitter are now moaning .

Procurement is part of every trade deal but the EU hate overwhelms any common sense or logic . It’s always the same story , ignoring that this allows UK companies to be treated fairly in the EU but of course it’s always seen as some EU plot to screw the UK.

As for Farage any deal he’ll scream betrayal over. He needs to just STFU !

YBarddCwsc

Nigelb said:

YBarddCwsc said:

Sure, several Asian countries were better prepared for the pandemic -- but that is at the cost of severe restrictions on civil liberties that those countries are willing to accept. It is not really fair to compare South Korea or PR China with us, because there is no way those restrictions could be implemented here at the present moment.

I called some of my Beijing buddies the other day, and the level of restrictions in place even in Beijing (where there is no local transmission) is still terrifying. You sign in by smartphone wherever you go. The Government knows where you are at all time.

However, I was talking more generally about rare, destructive events, not just biological threats. We do not know whether the next threat will be a pandemic. It could e.g, come from space. Rare impact events are rare -- but not very rare on century timescales.

And, there are diseases for which vaccines cannot be developed. Humans are very ingenious. And some humans are very bad.

I am sure a bad, but ingenious, human can create a disease for which it is not true that "the tools developed to deal with this one are equally applicable to any future pandemic."

Rapid sequencing, rapid mass testing, isolation of infected individuals, and vaccines ought to be applicable to any infection. And certainly the first three.

To kill all of humanity with a pandemic, what do I need to do?

(And something will one day kill all of humanity, just as something killed the dinosaurs).

I need to make the disease MORE fatal than COVID, and I need to make it MORE infectious. But, I need to ensure delayed onset, so that the pathogen does not kill the human host before the host infects more and more people.

And now the question is: could a biotechnologist create such a disease ?

Nature may take some time to create such a killer disease, but with human help ...

YBarddCwsc

contrarian said:

MaxPB said:

That Welsh data looks terrible. Will be interesting to see how it shakes out by specimen date and if there's been any kind of drop off or not.

an 89-year old relative of mine is in a Welsh hospital and has just contracted covid whilst in there.

Unfortunately, the Welsh hospitals have been epicentres of the disease.

Best wishes for your relative.