BBC saying current tests are not picking up many cases of the new variant
The test can't pick them up, or it can't distinguish them?
It appears the former. Only special labs are picking it up, they said just now
If it is substantively different, can we be confidence the vaccines will still work?
How though does that square with the argument that we know there's a new strain because we're seeing the numbers increase so quickly?
They said tests are only picking up some of the new strain, not none of them.
The news channel has moved on and it isn’t a point they have yet come back to. But it might explain the apparent government panic.
If you see a written report it could you share it here? Would be very interesting to read what evidence they have for this claim. I can only hope it was just journalist saying it, chances are they got confused.
It is possible it was sloppy journalism and he meant to say that only specialist labs can tell the two strains apart. Which wasn’t how it came across.
Whitty in his presentation said that the new strain contains 23 different genetic changes from the old, an unusually large number for a mutation.
Meh. Let's see what happens in the spring when tens of millions have been vaccinated, the gloom lifts, and life and liberty gradually return to normal. If that goes well, no one will care too much about a necessarily truncated Christmas.
Meanwhile, at least the Northerners will be (relatively!) happy...
I'm sorry but nobody believes a word of this bullsh8t any more, based if nothing else on the assurances given to MPs and the public by Johnson's government in the past.
Today its a mutant strain. In the spring it will be some other reason. For authoritarians, there is always a good reason. If you think the people who lord it over our lives are going to give up that power so easily, well I have a bridge to sell you.
We are in this for the duration. We are in it until this government is replaced by one that realises that rule by 'not overwhelming the NHS' is destroying our country. Its culture, its economy, its mental health, its future, its liberty. Almost irretrievably.
I mention the numbers Johnson is racking up, and all I get is insults. Presumably you don;t want to face them either.
No. You don't believe it. The majority of people clearly do and were very much in favour of tougher measures well before Johnson started signalling it. Go bury your head back in the sand where you belong.
Quite. The issue is not the tougher measure but the fact that Johnson cannot get ahead of the game. Hancock told the Commons on Monday that there was a new varient that may have been responsible for the rise in cases. On Wednesday Johnson was all over Starmer for suggesting that the Christmas truce may have been a mistake. Now today.
Trouble is he can't help being a politician. Right now we don't need a politician, we need a leader.
Meh. Let's see what happens in the spring when tens of millions have been vaccinated, the gloom lifts, and life and liberty gradually return to normal. If that goes well, no one will care too much about a necessarily truncated Christmas.
Meanwhile, at least the Northerners will be (relatively!) happy...
I'm sorry but nobody believes a word of this bullsh8t any more, based if nothing else on the assurances given to MPs and the public by Johnson's government in the past.
Today its a mutant strain. In the spring it will be some other reason. For authoritarians, there is always a good reason. If you think the people who lord it over our lives are going to give up that power so easily, well I have a bridge to sell you.
We are in this for the duration. We are in it until this government is replaced by one that realises that rule by 'not overwhelming the NHS' is destroying our country. Its culture, its economy, its mental health, its future, its liberty. Almost irretrievably.
I mention the numbers Johnson is racking up, and all I get is insults. Presumably you don;t want to face them either.
You seriously think these restrictions are going to be in place until 2024?
Two points If I posted this six months ago you would have said - you seriously think these restrictions will be in place in December 2020?
and
It doesn;t really matter what's in place in 2024. The damage is being done now.
I repeat how do we get from a 400bn deficit to balancing the books?
How do we convince businesses they won't be arbitrarily shut down in the future if something Chris Whitty doesn;t like turns up? ask yourself, would you open a pub? start any people to people business whatsoever?
This is for keeps mate. Your sunlit uplands are not coming back. Not next year, not for decades. Have you not seen the numbers FFS?
I knew we were in it for the long-haul until a vaccine was approved and distributed. We are almost there now, thankfully. As for the deficit, a lot of that is temporary, although it will take a while for things to recover.
'It will take a while for things to recover' is one of the understatements of the year along with Johnson's 'turn the tide in twelve weeks' back in March.
Definitely a few years. But run the counter-factual, what would have been the impact of a collapsed health system if this had been let to run amok, as you seem to want?
@Big_G_NorthWales I don't respond to you anymore after your bullying incident but you have no right to call out comments to my posts, stop acting like the forum police and leave @IanB2 alone, it was clearly a light-hearted joke.
Think it was said early analysis showed the R value for this new variant is 0.4 higher than the original variant.
Even in March we never got the R value below 0.6 (did we?????) therefore surely if accurate no area can ever get out of tier 4 until vaccinations have brought down infection rates.
I reckon this will be more popular than however many months of lockdown would be needed as the alternative after Christmas.
I fear we will get the ultra lockdown anyway in new year.
No we won’t. No way will the government shut schools unless forced to by staffing shortages (which may well take the form of a two-week strike, the way things are going). They have invested too much political capital into saying school reopening has worked that even though we can all see it has been at best a decidedly mixed success, they won’t back down.
Meh. Let's see what happens in the spring when tens of millions have been vaccinated, the gloom lifts, and life and liberty gradually return to normal. If that goes well, no one will care too much about a necessarily truncated Christmas.
Meanwhile, at least the Northerners will be (relatively!) happy...
I'm sorry but nobody believes a word of this bullsh8t any more, based if nothing else on the assurances given to MPs and the public by Johnson's government in the past.
Today its a mutant strain. In the spring it will be some other reason. For authoritarians, there is always a good reason. If you think the people who lord it over our lives are going to give up that power so easily, well I have a bridge to sell you.
We are in this for the duration. We are in it until this government is replaced by one that realises that rule by 'not overwhelming the NHS' is destroying our country. Its culture, its economy, its mental health, its future, its liberty. Almost irretrievably.
I mention the numbers Johnson is racking up, and all I get is insults. Presumably you don;t want to face them either.
No. You don't believe it. The majority of people clearly do and were very much in favour of tougher measures well before Johnson started signalling it. Go bury your head back in the sand where you belong.
Quite. The issue is not the tougher measure but the fact that Johnson cannot get ahead of the game. Hancock told the Commons on Monday that there was a new varient that may have been responsible for the rise in cases. On Wednesday Johnson was all over Starmer for suggesting that the Christmas truce may have been a mistake. Now today.
Trouble is he can't help being a politician. Right now we don't need a politician, we need a leader.
Great at campaigning, which is what he was doing at that Openreach place yesterday, can't govern for shit. HIGNFY has a lot to answer for.
One small upside of the latest shambles is that Johnson's crappy Brexit deal is more likely to get the nod, I think. We're well past the levels of Johnson-inflicted chaos that a nation can put up with.
Except that the only people who count (as one of us on PB keeps telling us) are the Tory Party and in the immediate future that means the Tory MPs in Westminster. They are already gibbering like a bunch of lower primates with their bendy bananas stolen. It's not put them in a good mood to be, as they see it, ritually mounted yet again by the alpha male monkey to express his dominance and told to go out again to defend his latest change of mind. Especially with the organ grinder off to have an eye test or something. I really don't know what will happen.
@Big_G_NorthWales I don't respond to you anymore after your bullying incident but you have no right to call out comments to my posts, stop acting like the forum police and leave @IanB2 alone, it was clearly a light-hearted joke.
Do me a favour and sod off, thanks kindly.
He has no right? Can't anyone reply to anyone on here, unless they have been banned from doing so by the moderator?
At least Boris bit the bullet and actually did something sensible for once.
Credit to you for that. But I would still suggest he has not gone far enough in some specific areas. Communal worship should have been stopped and schools remained closed until they knew they were on top of this. I am not sure that 3 weeks will be enough to ensure it is safe to reopen secondary schools
Agree Richard, can only hope he starts to get ahead of the game instead of always playing catchup. I think he is just not suited for tough times.
@Big_G_NorthWales I don't respond to you anymore after your bullying incident but you have no right to call out comments to my posts, stop acting like the forum police and leave @IanB2 alone, it was clearly a light-hearted joke.
Do me a favour and sod off, thanks kindly.
He has no right? Can't anyone reply to anyone on here, unless they have been banned from doing so by the moderator?
Fine, he has the right to respond and take offence at somebody else's comment about somebody else - however stupid and pointless - but I have every right to tell him to sod off as well.
It's a balls up but I see no enthusiasm for Captain Hindsight who only seeks to make political capital and doesn't provide any alternative direction or leadership.
Keir Starmer called for action and Johnson called him scrooge and he said that cancelling Christmas would be inhuman.
Meh. Let's see what happens in the spring when tens of millions have been vaccinated, the gloom lifts, and life and liberty gradually return to normal. If that goes well, no one will care too much about a necessarily truncated Christmas.
Meanwhile, at least the Northerners will be (relatively!) happy...
I'm sorry but nobody believes a word of this bullsh8t any more, based if nothing else on the assurances given to MPs and the public by Johnson's government in the past.
Today its a mutant strain. In the spring it will be some other reason. For authoritarians, there is always a good reason. If you think the people who lord it over our lives are going to give up that power so easily, well I have a bridge to sell you.
We are in this for the duration. We are in it until this government is replaced by one that realises that rule by 'not overwhelming the NHS' is destroying our country. Its culture, its economy, its mental health, its future, its liberty. Almost irretrievably.
I mention the numbers Johnson is racking up, and all I get is insults. Presumably you don;t want to face them either.
No. You don't believe it. The majority of people clearly do and were very much in favour of tougher measures well before Johnson started signalling it. Go bury your head back in the sand where you belong.
Let’s be clear. I hate Johnson. I also despise him.
But anyone who thinks his instincts are authoritarian on this is simply not looking at the facts.
On the contrary, he’s been far too relaxed for far too long far too often.
Truthfully, that is a positive about him as a person. I prefer my leaders not to be fascists. But it isn’t helpful right now. May or Brown with their controlling instincts would have done better.
Not sure, Drakeford's instincts are pretty controlling actually. He's not done much better than Boris.
I think the horrible truth is that to beat this virus, you really do have to be semi-fascist in the control that you exert on your population (cf China).
@Big_G_NorthWales I don't respond to you anymore after your bullying incident but you have no right to call out comments to my posts, stop acting like the forum police and leave @IanB2 alone, it was clearly a light-hearted joke.
Do me a favour and sod off, thanks kindly.
I will do as I wish and would suggest you calm down
One small upside of the latest shambles is that Johnson's crappy Brexit deal is more likely to get the nod, I think. We're well past the levels of Johnson-inflicted chaos that a nation can put up with.
Except that the only people who count (as one of us on PB keeps telling us) are the Tory Party and in the immediate future that means the Tory MPs in Westminster. They are already gibbering like a bunch of lower primates with their bendy bananas stolen. It's not put them in a good mood to be, as they see it, ritually mounted yet again by the alpha male monkey to express his dominance and told to go out again to defend his latest change of mind. Especially with the organ grinder off to have an eye test or something. I really don't know what will happen.
Nice post! But there WILL be a Deal. TINA.
I do hope so. But I'm feeling a bit happier we have some controls coming and a bit less risk than before. I'm off now to do something nice like read a SF novel.
@Big_G_NorthWales I don't respond to you anymore after your bullying incident but you have no right to call out comments to my posts, stop acting like the forum police and leave @IanB2 alone, it was clearly a light-hearted joke.
Do me a favour and sod off, thanks kindly.
He has no right? Can't anyone reply to anyone on here, unless they have been banned from doing so by the moderator?
Fine, he has the right to respond and take offence at somebody else's comment about somebody else - however stupid and pointless - but I have every right to tell him to sod off as well.
I actually think it's a fair point, editing someone's quote should be a no-no. Even if that makes me a massive humbug given that it is clearly done in jest.
@Big_G_NorthWales I don't respond to you anymore after your bullying incident but you have no right to call out comments to my posts, stop acting like the forum police and leave @IanB2 alone, it was clearly a light-hearted joke.
Do me a favour and sod off, thanks kindly.
I will do as I wish and would suggest you calm down
@Big_G_NorthWales I don't respond to you anymore after your bullying incident but you have no right to call out comments to my posts, stop acting like the forum police and leave @IanB2 alone, it was clearly a light-hearted joke.
Do me a favour and sod off, thanks kindly.
He has no right? Can't anyone reply to anyone on here, unless they have been banned from doing so by the moderator?
Fine, he has the right to respond and take offence at somebody else's comment about somebody else - however stupid and pointless - but I have every right to tell him to sod off as well.
I actually think it's a fair point, editing someone's quote should be a no-no. Even if that makes me a massive humbug given that it is clearly done in jest.
The comment edited was MY comment, I don't give a toss, Ian didn't do anything out of order. Surely what I think in this case is at least somewhat relevant since it was made about me lol
Meh. Let's see what happens in the spring when tens of millions have been vaccinated, the gloom lifts, and life and liberty gradually return to normal. If that goes well, no one will care too much about a necessarily truncated Christmas.
Meanwhile, at least the Northerners will be (relatively!) happy...
I'm sorry but nobody believes a word of this bullsh8t any more, based if nothing else on the assurances given to MPs and the public by Johnson's government in the past.
Today its a mutant strain. In the spring it will be some other reason. For authoritarians, there is always a good reason. If you think the people who lord it over our lives are going to give up that power so easily, well I have a bridge to sell you.
We are in this for the duration. We are in it until this government is replaced by one that realises that rule by 'not overwhelming the NHS' is destroying our country. Its culture, its economy, its mental health, its future, its liberty. Almost irretrievably.
I mention the numbers Johnson is racking up, and all I get is insults. Presumably you don;t want to face them either.
'We are in it until this government is replaced'
The wonderful thing is that if we both keep posting, we get to see which of us will turn out to be right, and which wrong, in real time. Exciting, isn't it?
I really, really hope with all my heart that you are right and I am wrong. Sincerely.
@Big_G_NorthWales I don't respond to you anymore after your bullying incident but you have no right to call out comments to my posts, stop acting like the forum police and leave @IanB2 alone, it was clearly a light-hearted joke.
Do me a favour and sod off, thanks kindly.
He has no right? Can't anyone reply to anyone on here, unless they have been banned from doing so by the moderator?
Fine, he has the right to respond and take offence at somebody else's comment about somebody else - however stupid and pointless - but I have every right to tell him to sod off as well.
I actually think it's a fair point, editing someone's quote should be a no-no. Even if that makes me a massive humbug given that it is clearly done in jest.
The comment edited was MY comment, I don't give a toss, Ian didn't do anything out of order. Surely what I think in this case is at least somewhat relevant since it was made about me lol
I wasn't saying it wasn't relevant. I was just saying what I think, hence the "I actually think" part...
@Big_G_NorthWales I don't respond to you anymore after your bullying incident but you have no right to call out comments to my posts, stop acting like the forum police and leave @IanB2 alone, it was clearly a light-hearted joke.
Do me a favour and sod off, thanks kindly.
I will do as I wish and would suggest you calm down
Oh do fuck off, I'm going back to ignoring you.
And I really do not have a care what you do though I have never used that language to a fellow poster
@Big_G_NorthWales I don't respond to you anymore after your bullying incident but you have no right to call out comments to my posts, stop acting like the forum police and leave @IanB2 alone, it was clearly a light-hearted joke.
Do me a favour and sod off, thanks kindly.
He has no right? Can't anyone reply to anyone on here, unless they have been banned from doing so by the moderator?
Fine, he has the right to respond and take offence at somebody else's comment about somebody else - however stupid and pointless - but I have every right to tell him to sod off as well.
I actually think it's a fair point, editing someone's quote should be a no-no. Even if that makes me a massive humbug given that it is clearly done in jest.
The comment edited was MY comment, I don't give a toss, Ian didn't do anything out of order. Surely what I think in this case is at least somewhat relevant since it was made about me lol
I wasn't saying it wasn't relevant. I was just saying what I think, hence the "I actually think" part...
And I think you're wrong in this particular case, thanks for playing!
@Big_G_NorthWales I don't respond to you anymore after your bullying incident but you have no right to call out comments to my posts, stop acting like the forum police and leave @IanB2 alone, it was clearly a light-hearted joke.
Do me a favour and sod off, thanks kindly.
He has no right? Can't anyone reply to anyone on here, unless they have been banned from doing so by the moderator?
Neither of them should be telling others what they can and cannot post.
Big_G in particular has no high horse to ride, after the unmitigated stream of c**p we had to read from him throughout 2019. (bonus point for the correct use of ‘unmitigated’)
Think it was said early analysis showed the R value for this new variant is 0.4 higher than the original variant.
Even in March we never got the R value below 0.6 (did we?????) therefore surely if accurate no area can ever get out of tier 4 until vaccinations have brought down infection rates.
Or it evolves again to be less contagious.
In my non-expert view I have been thinking similarly.
Getting R down to 0.8-0.9 was a major achievement in the original lockdown. Doing it in one of these newer lockdowns which are a bit more nuanced (and don't really account for schools), at the same time as adding 0.4 to R...seems hard to see how tier 4 is going to help other than slow the rate of increase.
Which probably means that ultimately it's just going to be lockdown for much of the country until at least the first phase of the vaccination is complete, or it turns out the new strain is more infectious but less serious, or some other black swan comes along.
@Big_G_NorthWales I don't respond to you anymore after your bullying incident but you have no right to call out comments to my posts, stop acting like the forum police and leave @IanB2 alone, it was clearly a light-hearted joke.
Do me a favour and sod off, thanks kindly.
He has no right? Can't anyone reply to anyone on here, unless they have been banned from doing so by the moderator?
Fine, he has the right to respond and take offence at somebody else's comment about somebody else - however stupid and pointless - but I have every right to tell him to sod off as well.
I actually think it's a fair point, editing someone's quote should be a no-no. Even if that makes me a massive humbug given that it is clearly done in jest.
For sure, if it’s done without a great big flag making clear that the previous post has been changed.
In non-Boris clown news I am fairly certain bot GOP Senate candidates will win in Georgia despite my personal revulsion of both of them.
I am out of the market.
Looks like it now and that Biden will be the first President since Bush Snr in 1989 not to enter office with his party in control of both chambers of Congress
Meh. Let's see what happens in the spring when tens of millions have been vaccinated, the gloom lifts, and life and liberty gradually return to normal. If that goes well, no one will care too much about a necessarily truncated Christmas.
Meanwhile, at least the Northerners will be (relatively!) happy...
I'm sorry but nobody believes a word of this bullsh8t any more, based if nothing else on the assurances given to MPs and the public by Johnson's government in the past.
Today its a mutant strain. In the spring it will be some other reason. For authoritarians, there is always a good reason. If you think the people who lord it over our lives are going to give up that power so easily, well I have a bridge to sell you.
We are in this for the duration. We are in it until this government is replaced by one that realises that rule by 'not overwhelming the NHS' is destroying our country. Its culture, its economy, its mental health, its future, its liberty. Almost irretrievably.
I mention the numbers Johnson is racking up, and all I get is insults. Presumably you don;t want to face them either.
No. You don't believe it. The majority of people clearly do and were very much in favour of tougher measures well before Johnson started signalling it. Go bury your head back in the sand where you belong.
Let’s be clear. I hate Johnson. I also despise him.
But anyone who thinks his instincts are authoritarian on this is simply not looking at the facts.
On the contrary, he’s been far too relaxed for far too long far too often.
Truthfully, that is a positive about him as a person. I prefer my leaders not to be fascists. But it isn’t helpful right now. May or Brown with their controlling instincts would have done better.
Not sure, Drakeford's instincts are pretty controlling actually. He's not done much better than Boris.
I think the horrible truth is that to beat this virus, you really do have to be semi-fascist in the control that you exert on your population (cf China).
Wouldn’t have said Drakeford was that controlling. Leaving aside the fact he’s even more incoherent and inconsistent than Johnson, the problem with his famous ‘circuit breaker’ was that it lasted one week before reopening the majority of schools and then a week later almost all restrictions vanished.
A true authoritarian would have kept a much tighter grip through November.
@Big_G_NorthWales I don't respond to you anymore after your bullying incident but you have no right to call out comments to my posts, stop acting like the forum police and leave @IanB2 alone, it was clearly a light-hearted joke.
Do me a favour and sod off, thanks kindly.
He has no right? Can't anyone reply to anyone on here, unless they have been banned from doing so by the moderator?
Neither of them should be telling others what they can and cannot post.
Big_G in particular has no high horse to ride, after the unmitigated stream of c**p we had to read from him throughout 2019.
With respect you do not need to read my posts if they upset you
I reckon this will be more popular than however many months of lockdown would be needed as the alternative after Christmas.
I fear we will get the ultra lockdown anyway in new year.
No we won’t. No way will the government shut schools unless forced to by staffing shortages (which may well take the form of a two-week strike, the way things are going). They have invested too much political capital into saying school reopening has worked that even though we can all see it has been at best a decidedly mixed success, they won’t back down.
So we will not get ‘ultra lockdown.’
Interesting to find out what the rules are for shutting schools and who makes the decision.
Back at the end of November my son was told to self isolate because two friends he sat with had tested positive. He was due back on Friday 11th December when there would then be one week to go to end of term.
But on 1st December the school sent a letter out saying that the number of positive tests coming back were so high that, in consultation with the local health authorities, the decision had been made to shut the school to all but essential workers children and those taking mock GCSEs in year 11. This was reviewed on a weekly basis but the school did not reopen before the end of term.
I find it hard to reconcile this with the news from London that some schools are being threatened with legal action for closing. Nor did central Government seem to have any part to play in the decision in Grantham.
Meh. Let's see what happens in the spring when tens of millions have been vaccinated, the gloom lifts, and life and liberty gradually return to normal. If that goes well, no one will care too much about a necessarily truncated Christmas.
Meanwhile, at least the Northerners will be (relatively!) happy...
I'm sorry but nobody believes a word of this bullsh8t any more, based if nothing else on the assurances given to MPs and the public by Johnson's government in the past.
Today its a mutant strain. In the spring it will be some other reason. For authoritarians, there is always a good reason. If you think the people who lord it over our lives are going to give up that power so easily, well I have a bridge to sell you.
We are in this for the duration. We are in it until this government is replaced by one that realises that rule by 'not overwhelming the NHS' is destroying our country. Its culture, its economy, its mental health, its future, its liberty. Almost irretrievably.
I mention the numbers Johnson is racking up, and all I get is insults. Presumably you don;t want to face them either.
No. You don't believe it. The majority of people clearly do and were very much in favour of tougher measures well before Johnson started signalling it. Go bury your head back in the sand where you belong.
Let’s be clear. I hate Johnson. I also despise him.
But anyone who thinks his instincts are authoritarian on this is simply not looking at the facts.
On the contrary, he’s been far too relaxed for far too long far too often.
Truthfully, that is a positive about him as a person. I prefer my leaders not to be fascists. But it isn’t helpful right now. May or Brown with their controlling instincts would have done better.
Not sure, Drakeford's instincts are pretty controlling actually. He's not done much better than Boris.
I think the horrible truth is that to beat this virus, you really do have to be semi-fascist in the control that you exert on your population (cf China).
Wouldn’t have said Drakeford was that controlling. Leaving aside the fact he’s even more incoherent and inconsistent than Johnson, the problem with his famous ‘circuit breaker’ was that it lasted one week before reopening the majority of schools and then a week later almost all restrictions vanished.
A true authoritarian would have kept a much tighter grip through November.
The Welsh lockdown was simply too short - Drakeford can absolutely be held responsible for that and he should be.
@Big_G_NorthWales I don't respond to you anymore after your bullying incident but you have no right to call out comments to my posts, stop acting like the forum police and leave @IanB2 alone, it was clearly a light-hearted joke.
Do me a favour and sod off, thanks kindly.
He has no right? Can't anyone reply to anyone on here, unless they have been banned from doing so by the moderator?
Fine, he has the right to respond and take offence at somebody else's comment about somebody else - however stupid and pointless - but I have every right to tell him to sod off as well.
I actually think it's a fair point, editing someone's quote should be a no-no. Even if that makes me a massive humbug given that it is clearly done in jest.
For sure, if it’s done without a great big flag making clear that the previous post has been changed.
I reckon this will be more popular than however many months of lockdown would be needed as the alternative after Christmas.
I fear we will get the ultra lockdown anyway in new year.
No we won’t. No way will the government shut schools unless forced to by staffing shortages (which may well take the form of a two-week strike, the way things are going). They have invested too much political capital into saying school reopening has worked that even though we can all see it has been at best a decidedly mixed success, they won’t back down.
I reckon this will be more popular than however many months of lockdown would be needed as the alternative after Christmas.
I fear we will get the ultra lockdown anyway in new year.
No we won’t. No way will the government shut schools unless forced to by staffing shortages (which may well take the form of a two-week strike, the way things are going). They have invested too much political capital into saying school reopening has worked that even though we can all see it has been at best a decidedly mixed success, they won’t back down.
So we will not get ‘ultra lockdown.’
Govt will shut schools again if this gets out of control again.
@Big_G_NorthWales I don't respond to you anymore after your bullying incident but you have no right to call out comments to my posts, stop acting like the forum police and leave @IanB2 alone, it was clearly a light-hearted joke.
Do me a favour and sod off, thanks kindly.
He has no right? Can't anyone reply to anyone on here, unless they have been banned from doing so by the moderator?
Neither of them should be telling others what they can and cannot post.
Big_G in particular has no high horse to ride, after the unmitigated stream of c**p we had to read from him throughout 2019.
With respect you do not need to read my posts if they upset you
Sadly the fact that they were all c**p didn’t become evident until the end of that year.
I reckon this will be more popular than however many months of lockdown would be needed as the alternative after Christmas.
I fear we will get the ultra lockdown anyway in new year.
No we won’t. No way will the government shut schools unless forced to by staffing shortages (which may well take the form of a two-week strike, the way things are going). They have invested too much political capital into saying school reopening has worked that even though we can all see it has been at best a decidedly mixed success, they won’t back down.
So we will not get ‘ultra lockdown.’
Interesting to find out what the rules are for shutting schools and who makes the decision.
Back at the end of November my son was told to self isolate because two friends he sat with had tested positive. He was due back on Friday 11th December when there would then be one week to go to end of term.
But on 1st December the school sent a letter out saying that the number of positive tests coming back were so high that, in consultation with the local health authorities, the decision had been made to shut the school to all but essential workers children and those taking mock GCSEs in year 11. This was reviewed on a weekly basis but the school did not reopen before the end of term.
I find it hard to reconcile this with the news from London that some schools are being threatened with legal action for closing. Nor did central Government seem to have any part to play in the decision in Grantham.
There are two possible answers:
1) The government doesn’t actually care what happens in Lincolnshire. Which is possible, even probable, but doesn’t fit with the way they treated schools in Lancashire and Yorkshire.
2] More likely, as this was a reactive, not a preventative, measure, there was no case to intervene.
In answer to your question, it is a decision made by the academy chain/local authority (delete as applicable) in consultation with the health and safety branch of the local council. However, it is subject to review by the Department of Education through their regional Education Commissioners.
Sobering FB post from the daughter of a fellow-councillor: Nothing about blame or self-pity, just heartfelt.
I know a lot of people are upset about Christmas but as a nurse working for a big NHS trust, all I can think about is getting through the next few months, having enough beds for people who are ill and the staff and resources to manage the sick and give them the best chance of recovery. We need to have ITU beds available for those that need them. It’s worth a sedate Christmas period to ensure we can try and protect others. There are people right now who aren’t sure if husbands, wives, daughters, sons, sisters, brothers and parent’s will make it, they are having a miserable Christmas, not knowing if they will be bereaved very soon and unable to even hold their hand or kiss them when they need it so much. It’s bad in the hospitals I work for. Very bad. It breaks my heart. It will be the first Christmas I spend away from my Leo, it’s sad and not what I wanted but it’s for the best. It’s just a day really. Please put it all into perspective ❤️🙏🏼
Think it was said early analysis showed the R value for this new variant is 0.4 higher than the original variant.
Even in March we never got the R value below 0.6 (did we?????) therefore surely if accurate no area can ever get out of tier 4 until vaccinations have brought down infection rates.
Or it evolves again to be less contagious.
In my non-expert view I have been thinking similarly.
Getting R down to 0.8-0.9 was a major achievement in the original lockdown. Doing it in one of these newer lockdowns which are a bit more nuanced (and don't really account for schools), at the same time as adding 0.4 to R...seems hard to see how tier 4 is going to help other than slow the rate of increase.
Which probably means that ultimately it's just going to be lockdown for much of the country until at least the first phase of the vaccination is complete, or it turns out the new strain is more infectious but less serious, or some other black swan comes along.
I've been wondering about this. If the new strain is much more contagious but slightly less dangerous, that might tally with the vast recent increase in cases and yet the NHS appearing under pressure but , not yet at least, completely overwhelmed. Let's all hope so, anyway.
@Big_G_NorthWales I don't respond to you anymore after your bullying incident but you have no right to call out comments to my posts, stop acting like the forum police and leave @IanB2 alone, it was clearly a light-hearted joke.
Do me a favour and sod off, thanks kindly.
He has no right? Can't anyone reply to anyone on here, unless they have been banned from doing so by the moderator?
Neither of them should be telling others what they can and cannot post.
Big_G in particular has no high horse to ride, after the unmitigated stream of c**p we had to read from him throughout 2019.
With respect you do not need to read my posts if they upset you
Sadly the fact that they were all c**p didn’t become evident until the end of that year.
Meh. Let's see what happens in the spring when tens of millions have been vaccinated, the gloom lifts, and life and liberty gradually return to normal. If that goes well, no one will care too much about a necessarily truncated Christmas.
Meanwhile, at least the Northerners will be (relatively!) happy...
I'm sorry but nobody believes a word of this bullsh8t any more, based if nothing else on the assurances given to MPs and the public by Johnson's government in the past.
Today its a mutant strain. In the spring it will be some other reason. For authoritarians, there is always a good reason. If you think the people who lord it over our lives are going to give up that power so easily, well I have a bridge to sell you.
We are in this for the duration. We are in it until this government is replaced by one that realises that rule by 'not overwhelming the NHS' is destroying our country. Its culture, its economy, its mental health, its future, its liberty. Almost irretrievably.
I mention the numbers Johnson is racking up, and all I get is insults. Presumably you don;t want to face them either.
You seriously think these restrictions are going to be in place until 2024?
Two points If I posted this six months ago you would have said - you seriously think these restrictions will be in place in December 2020?
and
It doesn;t really matter what's in place in 2024. The damage is being done now.
I repeat how do we get from a 400bn deficit to balancing the books?
How do we convince businesses they won't be arbitrarily shut down in the future if something Chris Whitty doesn;t like turns up? ask yourself, would you open a pub? start any people to people business whatsoever?
This is for keeps mate. Your sunlit uplands are not coming back. Not next year, not for decades. Have you not seen the numbers FFS?
I knew we were in it for the long-haul until a vaccine was approved and distributed. We are almost there now, thankfully. As for the deficit, a lot of that is temporary, although it will take a while for things to recover.
'It will take a while for things to recover' is one of the understatements of the year along with Johnson's 'turn the tide in twelve weeks' back in March.
Definitely a few years. But run the counter-factual, what would have been the impact of a collapsed health system if this had been let to run amok, as you seem to want?
Thing is, if we continue to run our lives and all our policy based on what the people who work in the health say will or will not collapse the health service, we are in massive trouble.
And anyway, the NHS HAS collapsed. Look at the hundreds of thousands of missed treatments for other diseases that are a matter of record. Try getting a GP appointment. Many thousands of non covid patients have died because of these. The NHS has effectively disintegrated, despite all our 'sacrifices' for it.
What would be the difference in 'letting covid run riot', in real terms?
@Big_G_NorthWales I don't respond to you anymore after your bullying incident but you have no right to call out comments to my posts, stop acting like the forum police and leave @IanB2 alone, it was clearly a light-hearted joke.
Do me a favour and sod off, thanks kindly.
He has no right? Can't anyone reply to anyone on here, unless they have been banned from doing so by the moderator?
Neither of them should be telling others what they can and cannot post.
Big_G in particular has no high horse to ride, after the unmitigated stream of c**p we had to read from him throughout 2019.
With respect you do not need to read my posts if they upset you
Sadly the fact that they were all c**p didn’t become evident until the end of that year.
I am too polite to respond
But not too polite not to have stuck your unwanted 5p in, in the first place.
Sobering FB post from the daughter of a fellow-councillor: Nothing about blame or self-pity, just heartfelt.
I know a lot of people are upset about Christmas but as a nurse working for a big NHS trust, all I can think about is getting through the next few months, having enough beds for people who are ill and the staff and resources to manage the sick and give them the best chance of recovery. We need to have ITU beds available for those that need them. It’s worth a sedate Christmas period to ensure we can try and protect others. There are people right now who aren’t sure if husbands, wives, daughters, sons, sisters, brothers and parent’s will make it, they are having a miserable Christmas, not knowing if they will be bereaved very soon and unable to even hold their hand or kiss them when they need it so much. It’s bad in the hospitals I work for. Very bad. It breaks my heart. It will be the first Christmas I spend away from my Leo, it’s sad and not what I wanted but it’s for the best. It’s just a day really. Please put it all into perspective ❤️🙏🏼
I am sure the scientists on here will be interested in Steve Baker MP's plan to reform scientific modelling
Before research is presented to ministers or the civil service it should be pre-vetted by a new Office of Research Integrity, that:
a. Seeks out disagreement both within and outside the academic community.
b. Is trained in how to critically review research papers using in-house statistical expertise, under time pressure. Papers found to be using obsolete data, containing logical fallacies, questionable causative and/or statistical models, or insufficiently supported or biased assumptions, should not be approved for use.
c. Requires evidence of model validation against reality. Validation studies should be performed by a third party outside the domain being validated (i.e. researchers in a field would not be allowed to validate for government use research produced by researchers in that same field)
d. Has the power to disbar researchers from being on projects that receive public money in case of detected research fraud.
Once I have stopped giggling .... I'll post Steve Baker MP's plan to ensure high coding standards.
(He does appear to have an MSc in Computation from Oxford).
What concerns me is that the new strain apparently adds 0.4 to R. So, unless, you're below 0.6, Covid is liable to spread exponentially. Lockdown is going to go on for months until vaccine really kicks in. Or am I missing something?
Think it was said early analysis showed the R value for this new variant is 0.4 higher than the original variant.
Even in March we never got the R value below 0.6 (did we?????) therefore surely if accurate no area can ever get out of tier 4 until vaccinations have brought down infection rates.
Or it evolves again to be less contagious.
I don't think you can add and subtract R quite like that. If lockdown works by reducing opportunities to spread, then it will be more effective in reducing R for a very virulent disease. But this new variant is definitely bad news and probably we will need to do more than the 1st time round....
Meh. Let's see what happens in the spring when tens of millions have been vaccinated, the gloom lifts, and life and liberty gradually return to normal. If that goes well, no one will care too much about a necessarily truncated Christmas.
Meanwhile, at least the Northerners will be (relatively!) happy...
I'm sorry but nobody believes a word of this bullsh8t any more, based if nothing else on the assurances given to MPs and the public by Johnson's government in the past.
Today its a mutant strain. In the spring it will be some other reason. For authoritarians, there is always a good reason. If you think the people who lord it over our lives are going to give up that power so easily, well I have a bridge to sell you.
We are in this for the duration. We are in it until this government is replaced by one that realises that rule by 'not overwhelming the NHS' is destroying our country. Its culture, its economy, its mental health, its future, its liberty. Almost irretrievably.
I mention the numbers Johnson is racking up, and all I get is insults. Presumably you don;t want to face them either.
'We are in it until this government is replaced'
The wonderful thing is that if we both keep posting, we get to see which of us will turn out to be right, and which wrong, in real time. Exciting, isn't it?
The thought of a crap Starmer led government full of a bunch of donkeys does not make me feel any better
Think it was said early analysis showed the R value for this new variant is 0.4 higher than the original variant.
Even in March we never got the R value below 0.6 (did we?????) therefore surely if accurate no area can ever get out of tier 4 until vaccinations have brought down infection rates.
Or it evolves again to be less contagious.
I don't think you can add and subtract R quite like that. If lockdown works by reducing opportunities to spread, then it will be more effective in reducing R for a very virulent disease. But this new variant is definitely bad news and probably we will need to do more than the 1st time round....
Depends how vicious it is. If it spreads rapidly among people who don’t suffer badly from it, because those who might have been vaccinated, we can relax our guard a little.
Meh. Let's see what happens in the spring when tens of millions have been vaccinated, the gloom lifts, and life and liberty gradually return to normal. If that goes well, no one will care too much about a necessarily truncated Christmas.
Meanwhile, at least the Northerners will be (relatively!) happy...
I'm sorry but nobody believes a word of this bullsh8t any more, based if nothing else on the assurances given to MPs and the public by Johnson's government in the past.
Today its a mutant strain. In the spring it will be some other reason. For authoritarians, there is always a good reason. If you think the people who lord it over our lives are going to give up that power so easily, well I have a bridge to sell you.
We are in this for the duration. We are in it until this government is replaced by one that realises that rule by 'not overwhelming the NHS' is destroying our country. Its culture, its economy, its mental health, its future, its liberty. Almost irretrievably.
I mention the numbers Johnson is racking up, and all I get is insults. Presumably you don;t want to face them either.
You seriously think these restrictions are going to be in place until 2024?
Two points If I posted this six months ago you would have said - you seriously think these restrictions will be in place in December 2020?
and
It doesn;t really matter what's in place in 2024. The damage is being done now.
I repeat how do we get from a 400bn deficit to balancing the books?
How do we convince businesses they won't be arbitrarily shut down in the future if something Chris Whitty doesn;t like turns up? ask yourself, would you open a pub? start any people to people business whatsoever?
This is for keeps mate. Your sunlit uplands are not coming back. Not next year, not for decades. Have you not seen the numbers FFS?
I knew we were in it for the long-haul until a vaccine was approved and distributed. We are almost there now, thankfully. As for the deficit, a lot of that is temporary, although it will take a while for things to recover.
'It will take a while for things to recover' is one of the understatements of the year along with Johnson's 'turn the tide in twelve weeks' back in March.
Definitely a few years. But run the counter-factual, what would have been the impact of a collapsed health system if this had been let to run amok, as you seem to want?
Thing is, if we continue to run our lives and all our policy based on what the people who work in the health say will or will not collapse the health service, we are in massive trouble.
And anyway, the NHS HAS collapsed. Look at the hundreds of thousands of missed treatments for other diseases that are a matter of record. Try getting a GP appointment. Many thousands of non covid patients have died because of these. The NHS has effectively disintegrated, despite all our 'sacrifices' for it.
What would be the difference in 'letting covid run riot', in real terms?
Tens if not hundreds of thousands of more deaths and very likely a collapse of the Government. Then you would have had even stricter lockdowns and the only difference would be all those deaths which would be on your conscience - if you actually had one.
There was a big question as to whether they should have been open through December. Didn’t stop the government forcing us to keep them open.
extraordinary how people are happy to deny our future their human right to a decent uninterrupted education over a disease that does not affect them whatsoever.
It looks like either Texas has screwed up their data submission, or they just reported a huge backlog of cases, at about 15 times the moving average they must have had problems for many weeks.
There was a big question as to whether they should have been open through December. Didn’t stop the government forcing us to keep them open.
extraordinary how people are happy to deny our future their human right to a decent uninterrupted education over a disease that does not affect them whatsoever.
It looks like either Texas has screwed up their data submission, or they just reported a huge backlog of cases, at about 15 times the moving average they must have had problems for many weeks.
Think it was said early analysis showed the R value for this new variant is 0.4 higher than the original variant.
Even in March we never got the R value below 0.6 (did we?????) therefore surely if accurate no area can ever get out of tier 4 until vaccinations have brought down infection rates.
Or it evolves again to be less contagious.
I don't think you can add and subtract R quite like that. If lockdown works by reducing opportunities to spread, then it will be more effective in reducing R for a very virulent disease. But this new variant is definitely bad news and probably we will need to do more than the 1st time round....
To be fair, I think it was the government scientists telling us it added like that. Probably the reality is indeed more complex, but the simple message for the nation to parse was very much presented as that.
I thought Sturgeons approach for post Christmas school was sensible. Extra week holiday and then a week of online. Allows for ability to start to see how spread is going, if it is the new mutant variant etc.
There was a big question as to whether they should have been open through December. Didn’t stop the government forcing us to keep them open.
extraordinary how people are happy to deny our future their human right to a decent uninterrupted education over a disease that does not affect them whatsoever.
There are many extraordinary things in life. It’s extraordinary how dishonest and indeed nasty, badly written and foolish most of your posts are, but that doesn’t stop you typing them.
Similarly, it’s extraordinary that even somebody as dense as you can’t quite get it’s not just about the children, or even about vulnerable staff - it’s about how it causes rapid transmission of the virus.
I reckon this will be more popular than however many months of lockdown would be needed as the alternative after Christmas.
I fear we will get the ultra lockdown anyway in new year.
No we won’t. No way will the government shut schools unless forced to by staffing shortages (which may well take the form of a two-week strike, the way things are going). They have invested too much political capital into saying school reopening has worked that even though we can all see it has been at best a decidedly mixed success, they won’t back down.
So we will not get ‘ultra lockdown.’
Interesting to find out what the rules are for shutting schools and who makes the decision.
Back at the end of November my son was told to self isolate because two friends he sat with had tested positive. He was due back on Friday 11th December when there would then be one week to go to end of term.
But on 1st December the school sent a letter out saying that the number of positive tests coming back were so high that, in consultation with the local health authorities, the decision had been made to shut the school to all but essential workers children and those taking mock GCSEs in year 11. This was reviewed on a weekly basis but the school did not reopen before the end of term.
I find it hard to reconcile this with the news from London that some schools are being threatened with legal action for closing. Nor did central Government seem to have any part to play in the decision in Grantham.
There are two possible answers:
1) The government doesn’t actually care what happens in Lincolnshire. Which is possible, even probable, but doesn’t fit with the way they treated schools in Lancashire and Yorkshire.
2] More likely, as this was a reactive, not a preventative, measure, there was no case to intervene.
In answer to your question, it is a decision made by the academy chain/local authority (delete as applicable) in consultation with the health and safety branch of the local council. However, it is subject to review by the Department of Education through their regional Education Commissioners.
Cheers. That does explain it pretty well.
Obviously for me it has worked out very well. My son thrives in the home/remote schooling environment and it means we have been able to follow a pretty strict isolation (except for essential shopping) for a good 3 weeks prior to Christmas. This help hugely as we are a support bubble for my mother who lives alone and is isolating. It means we can ensure she is not completely alone at Christmas with the minimum of fear that we might pass something on to her.
I am sure the scientists on here will be interested in Steve Baker MP's plan to reform scientific modelling
Before research is presented to ministers or the civil service it should be pre-vetted by a new Office of Research Integrity, that:
a. Seeks out disagreement both within and outside the academic community.
b. Is trained in how to critically review research papers using in-house statistical expertise, under time pressure. Papers found to be using obsolete data, containing logical fallacies, questionable causative and/or statistical models, or insufficiently supported or biased assumptions, should not be approved for use.
c. Requires evidence of model validation against reality. Validation studies should be performed by a third party outside the domain being validated (i.e. researchers in a field would not be allowed to validate for government use research produced by researchers in that same field)
d. Has the power to disbar researchers from being on projects that receive public money in case of detected research fraud.
Once I have stopped giggling .... I'll post Steve Baker MP's plan to ensure high coding standards.
(He does appear to have an MSc in Computation from Oxford).
Being a modeller is a bitch.
The modellers will probably spend half their time listing all their assumptions, caveats, weaknesses, uncertainties, etc., only for as soon as they then present the results of their modelled, approximate, best-guess predictions-but-don't-hang-your-hat-on-them forecasts the politician immediately will forget or not understand any of that and assume what is being presented is absolute unequivocal fact, which of course it isn't.
Most of that list is just sensible practice though, more worrying you have to put it in writing not to use bad logic or well out of date data.
Meh. Let's see what happens in the spring when tens of millions have been vaccinated, the gloom lifts, and life and liberty gradually return to normal. If that goes well, no one will care too much about a necessarily truncated Christmas.
Meanwhile, at least the Northerners will be (relatively!) happy...
I'm sorry but nobody believes a word of this bullsh8t any more, based if nothing else on the assurances given to MPs and the public by Johnson's government in the past.
Today its a mutant strain. In the spring it will be some other reason. For authoritarians, there is always a good reason. If you think the people who lord it over our lives are going to give up that power so easily, well I have a bridge to sell you.
We are in this for the duration. We are in it until this government is replaced by one that realises that rule by 'not overwhelming the NHS' is destroying our country. Its culture, its economy, its mental health, its future, its liberty. Almost irretrievably.
I mention the numbers Johnson is racking up, and all I get is insults. Presumably you don;t want to face them either.
You seriously think these restrictions are going to be in place until 2024?
Two points If I posted this six months ago you would have said - you seriously think these restrictions will be in place in December 2020?
and
It doesn;t really matter what's in place in 2024. The damage is being done now.
I repeat how do we get from a 400bn deficit to balancing the books?
How do we convince businesses they won't be arbitrarily shut down in the future if something Chris Whitty doesn;t like turns up? ask yourself, would you open a pub? start any people to people business whatsoever?
This is for keeps mate. Your sunlit uplands are not coming back. Not next year, not for decades. Have you not seen the numbers FFS?
I knew we were in it for the long-haul until a vaccine was approved and distributed. We are almost there now, thankfully. As for the deficit, a lot of that is temporary, although it will take a while for things to recover.
'It will take a while for things to recover' is one of the understatements of the year along with Johnson's 'turn the tide in twelve weeks' back in March.
Definitely a few years. But run the counter-factual, what would have been the impact of a collapsed health system if this had been let to run amok, as you seem to want?
Thing is, if we continue to run our lives and all our policy based on what the people who work in the health say will or will not collapse the health service, we are in massive trouble.
And anyway, the NHS HAS collapsed. Look at the hundreds of thousands of missed treatments for other diseases that are a matter of record. Try getting a GP appointment. Many thousands of non covid patients have died because of these. The NHS has effectively disintegrated, despite all our 'sacrifices' for it.
What would be the difference in 'letting covid run riot', in real terms?
Tens if not hundreds of thousands of more deaths and very likely a collapse of the Government. Then you would have had even stricter lockdowns and the only difference would be all those deaths which would be on your conscience - if you actually had one.
That is complete speculation from you based on nothing but supposition.
For me its you who have no conscience.
You are happy to heap on the young and the unborn any penury whatsoever, including stopping their vital education, to preserve the lives of SOME people over eighty who already have comorbidities and have already lived longer than any generation in human history.
Like a first world war general sending those young men over the top at the Somme.
It looks like either Texas has screwed up their data submission, or they just reported a huge backlog of cases, at about 15 times the moving average they must have had problems for many weeks.
Could be FFS adding an extra 0?
I don't know, it's not that simple in the total, but it could be in the data itself. That said I would have thought that the CDC keeps a close eye on submissions, and not just publish any data they receive.
Meh. Let's see what happens in the spring when tens of millions have been vaccinated, the gloom lifts, and life and liberty gradually return to normal. If that goes well, no one will care too much about a necessarily truncated Christmas.
Meanwhile, at least the Northerners will be (relatively!) happy...
I'm sorry but nobody believes a word of this bullsh8t any more, based if nothing else on the assurances given to MPs and the public by Johnson's government in the past.
Today its a mutant strain. In the spring it will be some other reason. For authoritarians, there is always a good reason. If you think the people who lord it over our lives are going to give up that power so easily, well I have a bridge to sell you.
We are in this for the duration. We are in it until this government is replaced by one that realises that rule by 'not overwhelming the NHS' is destroying our country. Its culture, its economy, its mental health, its future, its liberty. Almost irretrievably.
I mention the numbers Johnson is racking up, and all I get is insults. Presumably you don;t want to face them either.
No. You don't believe it. The majority of people clearly do and were very much in favour of tougher measures well before Johnson started signalling it. Go bury your head back in the sand where you belong.
Let’s be clear. I hate Johnson. I also despise him.
But anyone who thinks his instincts are authoritarian on this is simply not looking at the facts.
On the contrary, he’s been far too relaxed for far too long far too often.
Truthfully, that is a positive about him as a person. I prefer my leaders not to be fascists. But it isn’t helpful right now. May or Brown with their controlling instincts would have done better.
Not sure, Drakeford's instincts are pretty controlling actually. He's not done much better than Boris.
I think the horrible truth is that to beat this virus, you really do have to be semi-fascist in the control that you exert on your population (cf China).
Wouldn’t have said Drakeford was that controlling. Leaving aside the fact he’s even more incoherent and inconsistent than Johnson, the problem with his famous ‘circuit breaker’ was that it lasted one week before reopening the majority of schools and then a week later almost all restrictions vanished.
A true authoritarian would have kept a much tighter grip through November.
The Welsh lockdown was simply too short - Drakeford can absolutely be held responsible for that and he should be.
Meh. Let's see what happens in the spring when tens of millions have been vaccinated, the gloom lifts, and life and liberty gradually return to normal. If that goes well, no one will care too much about a necessarily truncated Christmas.
Meanwhile, at least the Northerners will be (relatively!) happy...
I'm sorry but nobody believes a word of this bullsh8t any more, based if nothing else on the assurances given to MPs and the public by Johnson's government in the past.
Today its a mutant strain. In the spring it will be some other reason. For authoritarians, there is always a good reason. If you think the people who lord it over our lives are going to give up that power so easily, well I have a bridge to sell you.
We are in this for the duration. We are in it until this government is replaced by one that realises that rule by 'not overwhelming the NHS' is destroying our country. Its culture, its economy, its mental health, its future, its liberty. Almost irretrievably.
I mention the numbers Johnson is racking up, and all I get is insults. Presumably you don;t want to face them either.
'We are in it until this government is replaced'
The wonderful thing is that if we both keep posting, we get to see which of us will turn out to be right, and which wrong, in real time. Exciting, isn't it?
I really, really hope with all my heart that you are right and I am wrong. Sincerely.
I reckon this will be more popular than however many months of lockdown would be needed as the alternative after Christmas.
I fear we will get the ultra lockdown anyway in new year.
No we won’t. No way will the government shut schools unless forced to by staffing shortages (which may well take the form of a two-week strike, the way things are going). They have invested too much political capital into saying school reopening has worked that even though we can all see it has been at best a decidedly mixed success, they won’t back down.
So we will not get ‘ultra lockdown.’
Interesting to find out what the rules are for shutting schools and who makes the decision.
Back at the end of November my son was told to self isolate because two friends he sat with had tested positive. He was due back on Friday 11th December when there would then be one week to go to end of term.
But on 1st December the school sent a letter out saying that the number of positive tests coming back were so high that, in consultation with the local health authorities, the decision had been made to shut the school to all but essential workers children and those taking mock GCSEs in year 11. This was reviewed on a weekly basis but the school did not reopen before the end of term.
I find it hard to reconcile this with the news from London that some schools are being threatened with legal action for closing. Nor did central Government seem to have any part to play in the decision in Grantham.
There are two possible answers:
1) The government doesn’t actually care what happens in Lincolnshire. Which is possible, even probable, but doesn’t fit with the way they treated schools in Lancashire and Yorkshire.
2] More likely, as this was a reactive, not a preventative, measure, there was no case to intervene.
In answer to your question, it is a decision made by the academy chain/local authority (delete as applicable) in consultation with the health and safety branch of the local council. However, it is subject to review by the Department of Education through their regional Education Commissioners.
Cheers. That does explain it pretty well.
Obviously for me it has worked out very well. My son thrives in the home/remote schooling environment and it means we have been able to follow a pretty strict isolation (except for essential shopping) for a good 3 weeks prior to Christmas. This help hugely as we are a support bubble for my mother who lives alone and is isolating. It means we can ensure she is not completely alone at Christmas with the minimum of fear that we might pass something on to her.
I’m glad it’s working out OK for you.
It is not perhaps working out quite so well for others here, like @Philip_Thompson or indeed me. Equally, for me that’s a professional risk and one I am quite well paid for.
But that is the point. A sensible government would have tried to make it work for as many people as possible. Online learning for a week before with vulnerable or PPC children still allowed to attend physical school would have made everything much easier. And truthfully, that isn’t a week when lots of learning happens.
Meh. Let's see what happens in the spring when tens of millions have been vaccinated, the gloom lifts, and life and liberty gradually return to normal. If that goes well, no one will care too much about a necessarily truncated Christmas.
Meanwhile, at least the Northerners will be (relatively!) happy...
I'm sorry but nobody believes a word of this bullsh8t any more, based if nothing else on the assurances given to MPs and the public by Johnson's government in the past.
Today its a mutant strain. In the spring it will be some other reason. For authoritarians, there is always a good reason. If you think the people who lord it over our lives are going to give up that power so easily, well I have a bridge to sell you.
We are in this for the duration. We are in it until this government is replaced by one that realises that rule by 'not overwhelming the NHS' is destroying our country. Its culture, its economy, its mental health, its future, its liberty. Almost irretrievably.
I mention the numbers Johnson is racking up, and all I get is insults. Presumably you don;t want to face them either.
No. You don't believe it. The majority of people clearly do and were very much in favour of tougher measures well before Johnson started signalling it. Go bury your head back in the sand where you belong.
Let’s be clear. I hate Johnson. I also despise him.
But anyone who thinks his instincts are authoritarian on this is simply not looking at the facts.
On the contrary, he’s been far too relaxed for far too long far too often.
Truthfully, that is a positive about him as a person. I prefer my leaders not to be fascists. But it isn’t helpful right now. May or Brown with their controlling instincts would have done better.
Not sure, Drakeford's instincts are pretty controlling actually. He's not done much better than Boris.
I think the horrible truth is that to beat this virus, you really do have to be semi-fascist in the control that you exert on your population (cf China).
Wouldn’t have said Drakeford was that controlling. Leaving aside the fact he’s even more incoherent and inconsistent than Johnson, the problem with his famous ‘circuit breaker’ was that it lasted one week before reopening the majority of schools and then a week later almost all restrictions vanished.
A true authoritarian would have kept a much tighter grip through November.
The Welsh lockdown was simply too short - Drakeford can absolutely be held responsible for that and he should be.
Has that new virus strain reached Wales yet?
I presume they must know, as Sturgeon was able to quote the number of mutant cases in Scotland at her press conference.
Meh. Let's see what happens in the spring when tens of millions have been vaccinated, the gloom lifts, and life and liberty gradually return to normal. If that goes well, no one will care too much about a necessarily truncated Christmas.
Meanwhile, at least the Northerners will be (relatively!) happy...
I'm sorry but nobody believes a word of this bullsh8t any more, based if nothing else on the assurances given to MPs and the public by Johnson's government in the past.
Today its a mutant strain. In the spring it will be some other reason. For authoritarians, there is always a good reason. If you think the people who lord it over our lives are going to give up that power so easily, well I have a bridge to sell you.
We are in this for the duration. We are in it until this government is replaced by one that realises that rule by 'not overwhelming the NHS' is destroying our country. Its culture, its economy, its mental health, its future, its liberty. Almost irretrievably.
I mention the numbers Johnson is racking up, and all I get is insults. Presumably you don;t want to face them either.
No. You don't believe it. The majority of people clearly do and were very much in favour of tougher measures well before Johnson started signalling it. Go bury your head back in the sand where you belong.
Let’s be clear. I hate Johnson. I also despise him.
But anyone who thinks his instincts are authoritarian on this is simply not looking at the facts.
On the contrary, he’s been far too relaxed for far too long far too often.
Truthfully, that is a positive about him as a person. I prefer my leaders not to be fascists. But it isn’t helpful right now. May or Brown with their controlling instincts would have done better.
Not sure, Drakeford's instincts are pretty controlling actually. He's not done much better than Boris.
I think the horrible truth is that to beat this virus, you really do have to be semi-fascist in the control that you exert on your population (cf China).
Wouldn’t have said Drakeford was that controlling. Leaving aside the fact he’s even more incoherent and inconsistent than Johnson, the problem with his famous ‘circuit breaker’ was that it lasted one week before reopening the majority of schools and then a week later almost all restrictions vanished.
A true authoritarian would have kept a much tighter grip through November.
The Welsh lockdown was simply too short - Drakeford can absolutely be held responsible for that and he should be.
Has that new virus strain reached Wales yet?
The apparent rising case epicentres of Camden and Penarth is surely just a coincidence?
Meh. Let's see what happens in the spring when tens of millions have been vaccinated, the gloom lifts, and life and liberty gradually return to normal. If that goes well, no one will care too much about a necessarily truncated Christmas.
Meanwhile, at least the Northerners will be (relatively!) happy...
I'm sorry but nobody believes a word of this bullsh8t any more, based if nothing else on the assurances given to MPs and the public by Johnson's government in the past.
Today its a mutant strain. In the spring it will be some other reason. For authoritarians, there is always a good reason. If you think the people who lord it over our lives are going to give up that power so easily, well I have a bridge to sell you.
We are in this for the duration. We are in it until this government is replaced by one that realises that rule by 'not overwhelming the NHS' is destroying our country. Its culture, its economy, its mental health, its future, its liberty. Almost irretrievably.
I mention the numbers Johnson is racking up, and all I get is insults. Presumably you don;t want to face them either.
You seriously think these restrictions are going to be in place until 2024?
Two points If I posted this six months ago you would have said - you seriously think these restrictions will be in place in December 2020?
and
It doesn;t really matter what's in place in 2024. The damage is being done now.
I repeat how do we get from a 400bn deficit to balancing the books?
How do we convince businesses they won't be arbitrarily shut down in the future if something Chris Whitty doesn;t like turns up? ask yourself, would you open a pub? start any people to people business whatsoever?
This is for keeps mate. Your sunlit uplands are not coming back. Not next year, not for decades. Have you not seen the numbers FFS?
I knew we were in it for the long-haul until a vaccine was approved and distributed. We are almost there now, thankfully. As for the deficit, a lot of that is temporary, although it will take a while for things to recover.
'It will take a while for things to recover' is one of the understatements of the year along with Johnson's 'turn the tide in twelve weeks' back in March.
Definitely a few years. But run the counter-factual, what would have been the impact of a collapsed health system if this had been let to run amok, as you seem to want?
Thing is, if we continue to run our lives and all our policy based on what the people who work in the health say will or will not collapse the health service, we are in massive trouble.
And anyway, the NHS HAS collapsed. Look at the hundreds of thousands of missed treatments for other diseases that are a matter of record. Try getting a GP appointment. Many thousands of non covid patients have died because of these. The NHS has effectively disintegrated, despite all our 'sacrifices' for it.
What would be the difference in 'letting covid run riot', in real terms?
Tens if not hundreds of thousands of more deaths and very likely a collapse of the Government. Then you would have had even stricter lockdowns and the only difference would be all those deaths which would be on your conscience - if you actually had one.
That is complete speculation from you based on nothing but supposition.
For me its you who have no conscience.
You are happy to heap on the young and the unborn any penury whatsoever, including stopping their vital education, to preserve the lives of SOME people over eighty who already have comorbidities and have already lived longer than any generation in human history.
Like a first world war general sending those young men over the top at the Somme.
In March, at the peak in the graph (below), we were at capacity in the NHS - anymore and we would have rapidly entered the environment that came to pass in Northern Italy. People dying in the halls, refused entry to hospitals that were full. The Nightingale Hospitals would have just offered some comfort to the dying.
The important thing to understand is that reality doesn't care. It doesn't know you. Or want to.
There was a big question as to whether they should have been open through December. Didn’t stop the government forcing us to keep them open.
extraordinary how people are happy to deny our future their human right to a decent uninterrupted education over a disease that does not affect them whatsoever.
There are many extraordinary things in life. It’s extraordinary how dishonest and indeed nasty, badly written and foolish most of your posts are, but that doesn’t stop you typing them.
Similarly, it’s extraordinary that even somebody as dense as you can’t quite get it’s not just about the children, or even about vulnerable staff - it’s about how it causes rapid transmission of the virus.
Why are you so callous and nasty to young people? why should they suffer so badly for a virus that doesn;t affect them? Only really affects people who have lived a longer life than any generation in history? and only some of them?
In non-Boris clown news I am fairly certain bot GOP Senate candidates will win in Georgia despite my personal revulsion of both of them.
I am out of the market.
Looks like it now and that Biden will be the first President since Bush Snr in 1989 not to enter office with his party in control of both chambers of Congress
Meh. Let's see what happens in the spring when tens of millions have been vaccinated, the gloom lifts, and life and liberty gradually return to normal. If that goes well, no one will care too much about a necessarily truncated Christmas.
Meanwhile, at least the Northerners will be (relatively!) happy...
I'm sorry but nobody believes a word of this bullsh8t any more, based if nothing else on the assurances given to MPs and the public by Johnson's government in the past.
Today its a mutant strain. In the spring it will be some other reason. For authoritarians, there is always a good reason. If you think the people who lord it over our lives are going to give up that power so easily, well I have a bridge to sell you.
We are in this for the duration. We are in it until this government is replaced by one that realises that rule by 'not overwhelming the NHS' is destroying our country. Its culture, its economy, its mental health, its future, its liberty. Almost irretrievably.
I mention the numbers Johnson is racking up, and all I get is insults. Presumably you don;t want to face them either.
No. You don't believe it. The majority of people clearly do and were very much in favour of tougher measures well before Johnson started signalling it. Go bury your head back in the sand where you belong.
Let’s be clear. I hate Johnson. I also despise him.
But anyone who thinks his instincts are authoritarian on this is simply not looking at the facts.
On the contrary, he’s been far too relaxed for far too long far too often.
Truthfully, that is a positive about him as a person. I prefer my leaders not to be fascists. But it isn’t helpful right now. May or Brown with their controlling instincts would have done better.
Not sure, Drakeford's instincts are pretty controlling actually. He's not done much better than Boris.
I think the horrible truth is that to beat this virus, you really do have to be semi-fascist in the control that you exert on your population (cf China).
Wouldn’t have said Drakeford was that controlling. Leaving aside the fact he’s even more incoherent and inconsistent than Johnson, the problem with his famous ‘circuit breaker’ was that it lasted one week before reopening the majority of schools and then a week later almost all restrictions vanished.
A true authoritarian would have kept a much tighter grip through November.
The Welsh lockdown was simply too short - Drakeford can absolutely be held responsible for that and he should be.
Has that new virus strain reached Wales yet?
It’s still stuck with dolphins, but it has Big Ambitions.
What concerns me is that the new strain apparently adds 0.4 to R. So, unless, you're below 0.6, Covid is liable to spread exponentially. Lockdown is going to go on for months until vaccine really kicks in. Or am I missing something?
I don't think it makes sense for it to be a constant addition to the R number. If you were able to isolate everyone, R would be zero no matter what. A 1.4x factor would be more plausible, turning 0.6 into 0.84 and Wales style 1.5 into 2.1 as currently seen in London.
Meh. Let's see what happens in the spring when tens of millions have been vaccinated, the gloom lifts, and life and liberty gradually return to normal. If that goes well, no one will care too much about a necessarily truncated Christmas.
Meanwhile, at least the Northerners will be (relatively!) happy...
I'm sorry but nobody believes a word of this bullsh8t any more, based if nothing else on the assurances given to MPs and the public by Johnson's government in the past.
Today its a mutant strain. In the spring it will be some other reason. For authoritarians, there is always a good reason. If you think the people who lord it over our lives are going to give up that power so easily, well I have a bridge to sell you.
We are in this for the duration. We are in it until this government is replaced by one that realises that rule by 'not overwhelming the NHS' is destroying our country. Its culture, its economy, its mental health, its future, its liberty. Almost irretrievably.
I mention the numbers Johnson is racking up, and all I get is insults. Presumably you don;t want to face them either.
No. You don't believe it. The majority of people clearly do and were very much in favour of tougher measures well before Johnson started signalling it. Go bury your head back in the sand where you belong.
Let’s be clear. I hate Johnson. I also despise him.
But anyone who thinks his instincts are authoritarian on this is simply not looking at the facts.
On the contrary, he’s been far too relaxed for far too long far too often.
Truthfully, that is a positive about him as a person. I prefer my leaders not to be fascists. But it isn’t helpful right now. May or Brown with their controlling instincts would have done better.
Not sure, Drakeford's instincts are pretty controlling actually. He's not done much better than Boris.
I think the horrible truth is that to beat this virus, you really do have to be semi-fascist in the control that you exert on your population (cf China).
Wouldn’t have said Drakeford was that controlling. Leaving aside the fact he’s even more incoherent and inconsistent than Johnson, the problem with his famous ‘circuit breaker’ was that it lasted one week before reopening the majority of schools and then a week later almost all restrictions vanished.
A true authoritarian would have kept a much tighter grip through November.
The Welsh lockdown was simply too short - Drakeford can absolutely be held responsible for that and he should be.
Has that new virus strain reached Wales yet?
It’s still stuck with dolphins, but it has Big Ambitions.
There was a big question as to whether they should have been open through December. Didn’t stop the government forcing us to keep them open.
extraordinary how people are happy to deny our future their human right to a decent uninterrupted education over a disease that does not affect them whatsoever.
There are many extraordinary things in life. It’s extraordinary how dishonest and indeed nasty, badly written and foolish most of your posts are, but that doesn’t stop you typing them.
Similarly, it’s extraordinary that even somebody as dense as you can’t quite get it’s not just about the children, or even about vulnerable staff - it’s about how it causes rapid transmission of the virus.
Why are you so callous and nasty to young people? why should they suffer so badly for a virus that doesn;t affect them? Only really affects people who have lived a longer life than any generation in history? and only some of them?
I'm younger, I think @ydoethur comes across a lot more sane and caring than you do frankly.
You remind me of Abe from the Simpsons shouting at a cloud, is it you who has been posting leaflets through my letterbox about how lockdowns kill? They match a lot of the nonsense of your posts, they're just as incoherent and poorly thought out.
I am sure the scientists on here will be interested in Steve Baker MP's plan to reform scientific modelling
Before research is presented to ministers or the civil service it should be pre-vetted by a new Office of Research Integrity, that:
a. Seeks out disagreement both within and outside the academic community.
b. Is trained in how to critically review research papers using in-house statistical expertise, under time pressure. Papers found to be using obsolete data, containing logical fallacies, questionable causative and/or statistical models, or insufficiently supported or biased assumptions, should not be approved for use.
c. Requires evidence of model validation against reality. Validation studies should be performed by a third party outside the domain being validated (i.e. researchers in a field would not be allowed to validate for government use research produced by researchers in that same field)
d. Has the power to disbar researchers from being on projects that receive public money in case of detected research fraud.
Once I have stopped giggling .... I'll post Steve Baker MP's plan to ensure high coding standards.
(He does appear to have an MSc in Computation from Oxford).
Being a modeller is a bitch.
The modellers will probably spend half their time listing all their assumptions, caveats, weaknesses, uncertainties, etc., only for as soon as they then present the results of their modelled, approximate, best-guess predictions-but-don't-hang-your-hat-on-them forecasts the politician immediately will forget or not understand any of that and assume what is being presented is absolute unequivocal fact, which of course it isn't.
Most of that list is just sensible practice though, more worrying you have to put it in writing not to use bad logic or well out of date data.
Most of that list is rather interesting, to be honest.
Running A, B and C teams (Best, Medium & Worst case) is recognised practise in intelligence gathering.
The inter-disciplinary model validation is an interesting idea - again, has been used to avoid group think spirals in the past.
I am sure the scientists on here will be interested in Steve Baker MP's plan to reform scientific modelling
Before research is presented to ministers or the civil service it should be pre-vetted by a new Office of Research Integrity, that:
a. Seeks out disagreement both within and outside the academic community.
b. Is trained in how to critically review research papers using in-house statistical expertise, under time pressure. Papers found to be using obsolete data, containing logical fallacies, questionable causative and/or statistical models, or insufficiently supported or biased assumptions, should not be approved for use.
c. Requires evidence of model validation against reality. Validation studies should be performed by a third party outside the domain being validated (i.e. researchers in a field would not be allowed to validate for government use research produced by researchers in that same field)
d. Has the power to disbar researchers from being on projects that receive public money in case of detected research fraud.
Once I have stopped giggling .... I'll post Steve Baker MP's plan to ensure high coding standards.
(He does appear to have an MSc in Computation from Oxford).
Being a modeller is a bitch.
The modellers will probably spend half their time listing all their assumptions, caveats, weaknesses, uncertainties, etc., only for as soon as they then present the results of their modelled, approximate, best-guess predictions-but-don't-hang-your-hat-on-them forecasts the politician immediately will forget or not understand any of that and assume what is being presented is absolute unequivocal fact, which of course it isn't.
Most of that list is just sensible practice though, more worrying you have to put it in writing not to use bad logic or well out of date data.
I think the problem is that the COVID modelling had to be done quickly.
I am very critical of its quality. But, it is not obvious how Baker's Office of Research Integrity would actually help.
How in March, was it even possible to validate the COVID modelling (Baker's point c) ? And what does he mean by "researchers in a field would not be allowed to validate for government use research produced by researchers in that same field".
It sounds as though the COVID modelling is passed immediately to an aeronautical engineer for validating.
But, that is so completely daft, that Steve Baker can't mean that, surely.
(Also, why are you called solarflare? Are you a solar physicist?)
There was a big question as to whether they should have been open through December. Didn’t stop the government forcing us to keep them open.
extraordinary how people are happy to deny our future their human right to a decent uninterrupted education over a disease that does not affect them whatsoever.
There are many extraordinary things in life. It’s extraordinary how dishonest and indeed nasty, badly written and foolish most of your posts are, but that doesn’t stop you typing them.
Similarly, it’s extraordinary that even somebody as dense as you can’t quite get it’s not just about the children, or even about vulnerable staff - it’s about how it causes rapid transmission of the virus.
Why are you so callous and nasty to young people? why should they suffer so badly for a virus that doesn;t affect them? Only really affects people who have lived a longer life than any generation in history? and only some of them?
It does affect them, you idiot. Just as it affects their teachers. And their parents.
Why are you so anxious to spread a nasty disease through everyone just to prove that you haven’t been fooled by data even someone as thick as Richard Burgon has been able to get his head round?
It looks like either Texas has screwed up their data submission, or they just reported a huge backlog of cases, at about 15 times the moving average they must have had problems for many weeks.
Remember that the Trump effect may be unwinding in the various state governments - there has been clear, and on going manipulation of data in some states.
Comments
Whitty in his presentation said that the new strain contains 23 different genetic changes from the old, an unusually large number for a mutation.
Do me a favour and sod off, thanks kindly.
Think it was said early analysis showed the R value for this new variant is 0.4 higher than the original variant.
Even in March we never got the R value below 0.6 (did we?????) therefore surely if accurate no area can ever get out of tier 4 until vaccinations have brought down infection rates.
Or it evolves again to be less contagious.
So we will not get ‘ultra lockdown.’
https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#trends_dailytrendscases
I think the horrible truth is that to beat this virus, you really do have to be semi-fascist in the control that you exert on your population (cf China).
Big_G in particular has no high horse to ride, after the unmitigated stream of c**p we had to read from him throughout 2019. (bonus point for the correct use of ‘unmitigated’)
Getting R down to 0.8-0.9 was a major achievement in the original lockdown. Doing it in one of these newer lockdowns which are a bit more nuanced (and don't really account for schools), at the same time as adding 0.4 to R...seems hard to see how tier 4 is going to help other than slow the rate of increase.
Which probably means that ultimately it's just going to be lockdown for much of the country until at least the first phase of the vaccination is complete, or it turns out the new strain is more infectious but less serious, or some other black swan comes along.
https://twitter.com/Politics_Polls/status/1340006832593506304?s=20
A true authoritarian would have kept a much tighter grip through November.
Back at the end of November my son was told to self isolate because two friends he sat with had tested positive. He was due back on Friday 11th December when there would then be one week to go to end of term.
But on 1st December the school sent a letter out saying that the number of positive tests coming back were so high that, in consultation with the local health authorities, the decision had been made to shut the school to all but essential workers children and those taking mock GCSEs in year 11. This was reviewed on a weekly basis but the school did not reopen before the end of term.
I find it hard to reconcile this with the news from London that some schools are being threatened with legal action for closing. Nor did central Government seem to have any part to play in the decision in Grantham.
1) The government doesn’t actually care what happens in Lincolnshire. Which is possible, even probable, but doesn’t fit with the way they treated schools in Lancashire and Yorkshire.
2] More likely, as this was a reactive, not a preventative, measure, there was no case to intervene.
In answer to your question, it is a decision made by the academy chain/local authority (delete as applicable) in consultation with the health and safety branch of the local council. However, it is subject to review by the Department of Education through their regional Education Commissioners.
I know a lot of people are upset about Christmas but as a nurse working for a big NHS trust, all I can think about is getting through the next few months, having enough beds for people who are ill and the staff and resources to manage the sick and give them the best chance of recovery. We need to have ITU beds available for those that need them.
It’s worth a sedate Christmas period to ensure we can try and protect others. There are people right now who aren’t sure if husbands, wives, daughters, sons, sisters, brothers and parent’s will make it, they are having a miserable Christmas, not knowing if they will be bereaved very soon and unable to even hold their hand or kiss them when they need it so much.
It’s bad in the hospitals I work for. Very bad. It breaks my heart.
It will be the first Christmas I spend away from my Leo, it’s sad and not what I wanted but it’s for the best.
It’s just a day really.
Please put it all into perspective ❤️🙏🏼
So this is the WhatsApp-shared Tory PR line, oh poor little baby Johnson who has to make tough decisions, oh boo hoo.
How about apologising to Keir Starmer?
And anyway, the NHS HAS collapsed. Look at the hundreds of thousands of missed treatments for other diseases that are a matter of record. Try getting a GP appointment. Many thousands of non covid patients have died because of these. The NHS has effectively disintegrated, despite all our 'sacrifices' for it.
What would be the difference in 'letting covid run riot', in real terms?
I am sure the scientists on here will be interested in Steve Baker MP's plan to reform scientific modelling
Before research is presented to ministers or the civil service it should be pre-vetted by a new Office of
Research Integrity, that:
a. Seeks out disagreement both within and outside the academic community.
b. Is trained in how to critically review research papers using in-house statistical expertise, under time
pressure. Papers found to be using obsolete data, containing logical fallacies, questionable causative
and/or statistical models, or insufficiently supported or biased assumptions, should not be approved
for use.
c. Requires evidence of model validation against reality. Validation studies should be performed by a
third party outside the domain being validated (i.e. researchers in a field would not be allowed to
validate for government use research produced by researchers in that same field)
d. Has the power to disbar researchers from being on projects that receive public money in case of
detected research fraud.
Once I have stopped giggling .... I'll post Steve Baker MP's plan to ensure high coding standards.
(He does appear to have an MSc in Computation from Oxford).
If the tweet is true, we need to hear if from a scientist, preferably with a link to a scientific paper or data or evidence.
If it is false, it the worst type of fake news -- spreading unnecessary alarm and confusion.
The media have behaved exceptionally badly during this pandemic.
Similarly, it’s extraordinary that even somebody as dense as you can’t quite get it’s not just about the children, or even about vulnerable staff - it’s about how it causes rapid transmission of the virus.
Obviously for me it has worked out very well. My son thrives in the home/remote schooling environment and it means we have been able to follow a pretty strict isolation (except for essential shopping) for a good 3 weeks prior to Christmas. This help hugely as we are a support bubble for my mother who lives alone and is isolating. It means we can ensure she is not completely alone at Christmas with the minimum of fear that we might pass something on to her.
The modellers will probably spend half their time listing all their assumptions, caveats, weaknesses, uncertainties, etc., only for as soon as they then present the results of their modelled, approximate, best-guess predictions-but-don't-hang-your-hat-on-them forecasts the politician immediately will forget or not understand any of that and assume what is being presented is absolute unequivocal fact, which of course it isn't.
Most of that list is just sensible practice though, more worrying you have to put it in writing not to use bad logic or well out of date data.
For me its you who have no conscience.
You are happy to heap on the young and the unborn any penury whatsoever, including stopping their vital education, to preserve the lives of SOME people over eighty who already have comorbidities and have already lived longer than any generation in human history.
Like a first world war general sending those young men over the top at the Somme.
It is not perhaps working out quite so well for others here, like @Philip_Thompson or indeed me. Equally, for me that’s a professional risk and one I am quite well paid for.
But that is the point. A sensible government would have tried to make it work for as many people as possible. Online learning for a week before with vulnerable or PPC children still allowed to attend physical school would have made everything much easier. And truthfully, that isn’t a week when lots of learning happens.
The important thing to understand is that reality doesn't care. It doesn't know you. Or want to.
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/georgia-senate-polls/?cid=rrpromo
You remind me of Abe from the Simpsons shouting at a cloud, is it you who has been posting leaflets through my letterbox about how lockdowns kill? They match a lot of the nonsense of your posts, they're just as incoherent and poorly thought out.
Running A, B and C teams (Best, Medium & Worst case) is recognised practise in intelligence gathering.
The inter-disciplinary model validation is an interesting idea - again, has been used to avoid group think spirals in the past.
I am very critical of its quality. But, it is not obvious how Baker's Office of Research Integrity would actually help.
How in March, was it even possible to validate the COVID modelling (Baker's point c) ? And what does he mean by "researchers in a field would not be allowed to validate for government use research produced by researchers in that same field".
It sounds as though the COVID modelling is passed immediately to an aeronautical engineer for validating.
But, that is so completely daft, that Steve Baker can't mean that, surely.
(Also, why are you called solarflare? Are you a solar physicist?)
Why are you so anxious to spread a nasty disease through everyone just to prove that you haven’t been fooled by data even someone as thick as Richard Burgon has been able to get his head round?
Remember that the Trump effect may be unwinding in the various state governments - there has been clear, and on going manipulation of data in some states.