A bunch of entryists spitting their dummies out. I think I'll give it a miss.
I wonder how long someone is in a party before they stop being an entryist, or if they still act as a coordinated, separate group within the entered body they remain it forever.
Boris was between a rock and a hard place on christmas - the real problem was not keeping in the country under stronger measures for the couple of weeks before christmas.
Oh yes. Ending Lockdown 2 at the beginning of December was possible the stupidest of Bozo's catalogue of stupidities.
For me the pointers are that the Trump coalition is not a winning coalition at the federal level going forwards.
The easier thing for GOP politicians is to cleave to the Trumpsters, because of their enthusiasm. But that is what has driven the ABTs out of the party and has lost the GOP most independents and thus the absolutely essential suburbs.
For me, the way back for the GOP is the painful one. Excise their most passionate supporters, the Trumpsters. Rebuild the center right, win back the suburbs. Regain the trust of women.
To me, this will take at least one more bad election cycle result (2022), which alas is not guaranteed, followed by 4-6 years of rebuilding. It could go faster than that but equally it is not guaranteed to happen at all, but it is my best bet.
On topic: I gaze into the future of the Republican party - not too far, just a couple of years - and I see no Trump or Trumpdom there. What I do see, however and alas, are elements of the MAGA agenda still in the mix.
The million $ puzzle which imo must be solved in order to predict where the party goes is as follows - Of the 73m who voted for Donald Trump what are the approx weightings (adjusted for overlap) for the 4 main categories?
1. Love Trump. Lucky to have him. Helluva guy and a total one off. Just so into everything about the man. 2. Always vote Republican. It's what I am - a Republican. Cut me and I bleed tax cuts & voter suppression. 3. Not big on politics. Only care about the economy. Thought he'd done ok on that. Why change. 4. Trump? Can take him or leave him but I like his hard right national populist rhetoric and policies.
No particular order there except that I've put the last one last for a reason. I think it's the smallest.
Very rough guesses:
1. 10 2. 50 3. 8 4. 5
Although 1 and 4 are largely the same category, if we're being honest.
Much obliged. This is what I'm looking for. Unadorned numbers that I can crunch thro the "Predict the Near Term Future of the GOP" model I've developed (mainly for betting purposes but also to aid my superforecasting and related punditry).
- No bright future for MAGA without Trump. - Republican party v Trump is a mismatch. Party prevails.
Much easier to split the 73, so: 1. 20 2. 45 3. 6 4. 2
That's an interesting one, thanks.
Think we might be saying that the MAGA element - voters who love a bit of hardcore nativist nationalism but are indifferent to the Trump delivery mechanism - is negligible.
So let's drop it and merge me, you, pulpstar, BluestBlue et alia to get -
1. I'm a Republican stupid - 65 2. I'm a Trumpster and I AM stupid - 25 3. It's the economy obvs - 10
Nice clear pointers emerging now.
But what are they?
The problem with that approach of going back to the suburbanites is that (a) they are increasing socially liberal due to college education, (b) are more fickle and so (c) you would have to blow up your base by switching to a more socially liberal / economically right-wing stance in the hope - and it would be no more than a hope - that you can persuade people who deserted you to switch back.
There is another thing here as well. Hispanics, Asian-Americans and Black people, on the whole, tend to be socially conservative. If the Republicans continue to make inroads into the HIspanic vote, then that more than outweighs their losses in the suburbs. Ditch the socially conservative agenda to appeal to suburban types and you have lost that.
If you abandon the cities and the suburbs, you cannot take the House. Period.
Well, the Republicans nearly did.
The tragedy is that the 'rebels' were so exercised at the growing inequalities in income and wealth - and the growing distance between politicians and the people they are supposed to represent - that they turned to a brand of extreme Republicanism that was never likely to want to deliver them any sort of relief.
The big question of our era is why centre-left politicians have proved so unable to put forward a comprehensive platform to rectify the egregious distortions of 21st century society in a way that can carry a majority of sensibly minded voters in the centre of political opinion?
Within our lifetimes, if the centre-left doesn't rise to the challenge of our times, then the future will be left to the extremes.
The simple explanation is that centre-left politicians now spend most of their energy and efforts prioritising culturally liberal stances than the economic concerns that concern most people. I've pointed out here to those that scream racist at Trump voters that a good chunk of them would have voted for Obama in 2008. They didn't care he was Black but they did care about their economic conditions. However, the Democrat party became so embroiled in cultural issues that it dropped the ball on the economic front.
This line of attack might have worked in the past, but it has lost much of its potency given the Democrats' clean sweep in the world's second-largest democracy. And your boy, a poster child for the opposite approach, getting his backside handed to him.
He didn't really get his backside handed to him though did he? Biden won the election by the same number of EV votes as Trump, a victory that we were told at the time was minimal because if only 70K voters had switched sides, Clinton would have won. Only this time, if only 44K (if I remember correctly) had switched sides, Trump would have won. The Democrats nearly lost control of the House. And you have a 50/50 Senate.
And, no, the attack lines are still relevant. It was stupid of Biden et al to use the BLM line last night because it had no relevance in the scheme of things and was done in response to the post on social media showing the response to BLM protests. I pointed out pre-election that the focus on BLM risked driving Hispanics to the GOP, which is one of the few things I got right about November
I did the maths on this. Trump would have won 270 v 269 if he had taken Wisconsin, Arizona and Georgia.
To win those states he would have needed 10371 voters to vote the other way in Wisconsin, 5228 in Arizona and 5889 in Georgia.
So, adding these, 21459 votes the other way (apportioned in the correct states) would have given Trump victory.
(Happy for someone to check my maths.)
It shows how close this election really was. If it wasn`t for the pox Trump would have won.
That's also a very good point for whether Trumpism has any future or not. There is a strong argument for saying that this election is a one-off given the impact of Covid and its economic effects.
If we had a "normal" election, i.e. where Covid hadn't happened, how many on here are confident - and would have put money on it - that Biden would have won?
This doesn't scan. You're both over and under thinking it. Quite a feat.
Yes, "Trumpism" might have a future if its key ingredient - Trump - had not been exposed by the pandemic as an incompetent fraud and by events post election as a wannabe fascist.
But he was and he was, so it doesn't.
There is also the practical matter that, come January 2025, that poisonous key ingredient will be older than Joe Biden is now, assuming he's still alive.
Yep. He appears robust but he's an old man. Plus legal and money problems. Plus badly discredited. And about to lose the trappings of office. I think he's over in politics. I could be wrong but it's a reasonably confident prediction.
Update My Uncle and Mum are now back on for their 2nd Pfizer vaccine 21 days after the first as the GP Practice say they do not have sufficient manpower to and are not willing to cancel everyone and rebook at such short notice.
That testing curve you see? That's *exactly* what we're going to see with vaccinations. It'll start slowly and grow and grow.
Over the course of a week, we'll go from "we're not doing enough!" to "oh, the end is in sight". I forecast that week to be in the first half of March.
I pray you are right, and you might well be right, the problem is can we get to March without total apocalypse?
I do not see how the NHS can sustain 3000+ new patients every day. IF it stays at that level. That's at least 150,000 new patients by the end of Feb. Impossible.
At that point Neil Ferguson's original prediction (much derided on here) of a possible death toll from Covid plus a crashed NHS, comes into focus. 500,000 dead.
The vaccines and lockdowns need to start working very very soon.
The lockdown will start showing effects by the beginning of next week. Yes, the new variant is more contagious.
But if people aren't seeing other people, the virus won't spread.
Go look at Belgium - disaster on the vaccines front, but at least they've got their second wave under control.
We don't know if these lockdowns are sufficient, against Supercovid, to drive R under 1. That is the enormous question yet to be answered.
Belgium is encouraging, but they didn't have the Cockney Pest, did they?
Some Canadian snowbirds - retired people who travel south for the winter - are finding they are able to get vaccinations in Florida earlier than they could if they remained at home.
Florida is allowing anyone over the age of 65 to be vaccinated for no charge. That includes non-citizens.
Getting a vaccine there is like winning the lottery, one couple tell CBC News. They say they were able to book vaccinations for other Canadian friends, who are now planning to travel to Florida for the jab after initially postponing their trip due to lack of vaccination.
I heard from a military type friend yesterday that private clinics in Bahrain are offering Pfizer for hard money.
A friend whose wife is stuck in Juarez, Mexico bought one for herself and her mother.
There's a Florida nursing home that was offering excess Pfizer doses in return for "donations".
My wife is just back from the frozen wastes otherwise known as our local retail park where, amongst other things, she was picking up click and collect ink for our printer. She says that she has never seen it so busy, not even on a Saturday, with queues everywhere and lots of people picking up from every store. Tesco's was bursting at the seams and none of the restrictions that were in place in the earlier lockdowns, such as 1 way aisles or distancing at the checkouts or limits on numbers in the store were apparent.
The reality is that this lockdown is simply not happening around here for all intents and purposes. It is absolutely nothing like February-April last year when the streets were deathly quiet. In light of this these figures are hardly a surprise. As @Leon pointed out the other day delivery of the vaccine is not a marathon but a sprint, a race to the finishing line with our hospitals as the prize. It's going to be close.
Gulp.
I think that's right. When I drove into work back then, there were a couple of weeks when I encountered maybe two or three other vehicles on a ten mile journey. Now traffic is like any normal school holiday.
Same here. I live on a main (urban) road and I've no idea where all the cars are going.
Perhaps the problem is that some people absolutely must do some leisure shopping and if the supermarket is the only place open, then that's where they'll go. A bit like those that must have foreign holidays but on a local scale.
This isn't stopping the new variant. No chance.
Same in my city. On our dog walk every day, around 11am, cars are streaming towards the city centre on the main road. In March/April it was really quiet. And every day we ask one another the same question: where on earth are they all going? There are no supermarkets in the city centre. It's baffling.
That testing curve you see? That's *exactly* what we're going to see with vaccinations. It'll start slowly and grow and grow.
Over the course of a week, we'll go from "we're not doing enough!" to "oh, the end is in sight". I forecast that week to be in the first half of March.
I pray you are right, and you might well be right, the problem is can we get to March without total apocalypse?
I do not see how the NHS can sustain 3000+ new patients every day. IF it stays at that level. That's at least 150,000 new patients by the end of Feb. Impossible.
At that point Neil Ferguson's original prediction (much derided on here) of a possible death toll from Covid plus a crashed NHS, comes into focus. 500,000 dead.
The vaccines and lockdowns need to start working very very soon.
The lockdown will start showing effects by the beginning of next week. Yes, the new variant is more contagious.
But if people aren't seeing other people, the virus won't spread.
Go look at Belgium - disaster on the vaccines front, but at least they've got their second wave under control.
We don't know if these lockdowns are sufficient, against Supercovid, to drive R under 1. That is the enormous question yet to be answered.
Belgium is encouraging, but they didn't have the Cockney Pest, did they?
A disease can have an R of 100: if people simply aren't in contact with other people, then it won't spread.
A bigger issue is simply that lots of people are ignoring the lockdown.
I really struggle to comprehend the absolute god like worship of Trump. He really hasn't done much for those down trodden.
Neither, objectively, has God. So I guess it's at least consistent
I have often thought that the most sensible religion is that of Yaohnanen tribe. Who worship Prince Philip.
- Their god quite definitely exists. He actually turned up. - He has actually given them stuff. - He is married to a woman who in theory can (or knows people who can) destroy any nation on the planet in 30 minutes. - A couple of times, other countries have considered said religion a reason to consult with the UK before doing things that might interfere with their island.
So a religion who God exists and has used His power to help His People.
That testing curve you see? That's *exactly* what we're going to see with vaccinations. It'll start slowly and grow and grow.
Over the course of a week, we'll go from "we're not doing enough!" to "oh, the end is in sight". I forecast that week to be in the first half of March.
I pray you are right, and you might well be right, the problem is can we get to March without total apocalypse?
I do not see how the NHS can sustain 3000+ new patients every day. IF it stays at that level. That's at least 150,000 new patients by the end of Feb. Impossible.
At that point Neil Ferguson's original prediction (much derided on here) of a possible death toll from Covid plus a crashed NHS, comes into focus. 500,000 dead.
The vaccines and lockdowns need to start working very very soon.
The lockdown will start showing effects by the beginning of next week. Yes, the new variant is more contagious.
But if people aren't seeing other people, the virus won't spread.
Go look at Belgium - disaster on the vaccines front, but at least they've got their second wave under control.
We don't know if these lockdowns are sufficient, against Supercovid, to drive R under 1. That is the enormous question yet to be answered.
Belgium is encouraging, but they didn't have the Cockney Pest, did they?
I suspect an R of 0.9 isn't going to be good enough the way things are going.
Does anyone know what the maximum steady state patient inflow is for Covid? Less than 3000/day I would imagine.
We must know roughly how long each patient stays in hospital (exit dead or alive) and the maximum capacity. That would give us the maximum sustainable rate.
Did anyone note the data on Christmas visits. The highlights:
8% of adults stayed over or hosted a stay over 35% of adults were hosts or guests on a day 9% traveled more than 30 minutes by car (presumably sizable overlap with the 5% who stopped away)
So loads stayed home, but fewer than I thought, and I think the staying over is about where I expected.
I think it's definitely enough to have been a noticeable part of the worsening of infection rates.
That testing curve you see? That's *exactly* what we're going to see with vaccinations. It'll start slowly and grow and grow.
Over the course of a week, we'll go from "we're not doing enough!" to "oh, the end is in sight". I forecast that week to be in the first half of March.
I pray you are right, and you might well be right, the problem is can we get to March without total apocalypse?
I do not see how the NHS can sustain 3000+ new patients every day. IF it stays at that level. That's at least 150,000 new patients by the end of Feb. Impossible.
At that point Neil Ferguson's original prediction (much derided on here) of a possible death toll from Covid plus a crashed NHS, comes into focus. 500,000 dead.
The vaccines and lockdowns need to start working very very soon.
The lockdown will start showing effects by the beginning of next week. Yes, the new variant is more contagious.
But if people aren't seeing other people, the virus won't spread.
Go look at Belgium - disaster on the vaccines front, but at least they've got their second wave under control.
We don't know if these lockdowns are sufficient, against Supercovid, to drive R under 1. That is the enormous question yet to be answered.
Belgium is encouraging, but they didn't have the Cockney Pest, did they?
A disease can have an R of 100: if people simply aren't in contact with other people, then it won't spread.
A bigger issue is simply that lots of people are ignoring the lockdown.
But even if they were, the lockdown might not be enough. You are describing a perfect lockdown, a la Wuhan, where everyone stays at home all day every day. Food is delivered (perhaps by robots or drones, as in Wuhan). Sick people are welded into their flats. And so forth.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi spoke with the Pentagon’s top general about “preventing an unstable” Donald Trump from launching a military conflict or using his assigned codes to launch America’s nuclear weapons.
The bold move was announced by her office Friday in a letter to Housen Democrats under a section titled: “Preventing an Unhinged President From Using the Nuclear Codes.”
A bunch of entryists spitting their dummies out. I think I'll give it a miss.
I wonder how long someone is in a party before they stop being an entryist, or if they still act as a coordinated, separate group within the entered body they remain it forever.
I use the word entryist out of politeness. Other ways to refer to my comrades are available.
A bunch of entryists spitting their dummies out. I think I'll give it a miss.
I wonder how long someone is in a party before they stop being an entryist, or if they still act as a coordinated, separate group within the entered body they remain it forever.
I use the word entryist out of politeness. Other ways to refer to my comrades are available.
That testing curve you see? That's *exactly* what we're going to see with vaccinations. It'll start slowly and grow and grow.
Over the course of a week, we'll go from "we're not doing enough!" to "oh, the end is in sight". I forecast that week to be in the first half of March.
I pray you are right, and you might well be right, the problem is can we get to March without total apocalypse?
I do not see how the NHS can sustain 3000+ new patients every day. IF it stays at that level. That's at least 150,000 new patients by the end of Feb. Impossible.
At that point Neil Ferguson's original prediction (much derided on here) of a possible death toll from Covid plus a crashed NHS, comes into focus. 500,000 dead.
The vaccines and lockdowns need to start working very very soon.
The lockdown will start showing effects by the beginning of next week. Yes, the new variant is more contagious.
But if people aren't seeing other people, the virus won't spread.
Go look at Belgium - disaster on the vaccines front, but at least they've got their second wave under control.
We don't know if these lockdowns are sufficient, against Supercovid, to drive R under 1. That is the enormous question yet to be answered.
Belgium is encouraging, but they didn't have the Cockney Pest, did they?
A disease can have an R of 100: if people simply aren't in contact with other people, then it won't spread.
A bigger issue is simply that lots of people are ignoring the lockdown.
If a disease isn't spreading, it can't have an R of 100. It is 0.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi spoke with the Pentagon’s top general about “preventing an unstable” Donald Trump from launching a military conflict or using his assigned codes to launch America’s nuclear weapons.
The bold move was announced by her office Friday in a letter to Housen Democrats under a section titled: “Preventing an Unhinged President From Using the Nuclear Codes.”
That testing curve you see? That's *exactly* what we're going to see with vaccinations. It'll start slowly and grow and grow.
Over the course of a week, we'll go from "we're not doing enough!" to "oh, the end is in sight". I forecast that week to be in the first half of March.
I pray you are right, and you might well be right, the problem is can we get to March without total apocalypse?
I do not see how the NHS can sustain 3000+ new patients every day. IF it stays at that level. That's at least 150,000 new patients by the end of Feb. Impossible.
At that point Neil Ferguson's original prediction (much derided on here) of a possible death toll from Covid plus a crashed NHS, comes into focus. 500,000 dead.
The vaccines and lockdowns need to start working very very soon.
The lockdown will start showing effects by the beginning of next week. Yes, the new variant is more contagious.
But if people aren't seeing other people, the virus won't spread.
Go look at Belgium - disaster on the vaccines front, but at least they've got their second wave under control.
We don't know if these lockdowns are sufficient, against Supercovid, to drive R under 1. That is the enormous question yet to be answered.
Belgium is encouraging, but they didn't have the Cockney Pest, did they?
I suspect an R of 0.9 isn't going to be good enough the way things are going.
Does anyone know what the maximum steady state patient inflow is for Covid? Less than 3000/day I would imagine.
We must know roughly how long each patient stays in hospital (exit dead or alive) and the maximum capacity. That would give us the maximum sustainable rate.
I don't think there's a well-defined maximum, because there isn't a binary outcome for hospitals being "ok" or "not ok". As numbers rise more and more I imagine we'd see a) postponements of other treatments leading to deaths only weeks or months later, b) creeping up mortality rates as each nurse has to spread their attention between more and more ICU patients, c) creeping up mortality rates as fewer patients are admitted to ICU in the first place, or discharged early from hospital to make space, d) increased mortality from heart attacks and strokes which are not treated in time. None of these will be apparent for quite a while, and some would only show as excess deaths rather than COVID deaths.
There might be "big news" events like hospital oxygen running low or tents in hospital car parks, or of course if ambulance staff were instructed not to bring older patients to hospital at all, but more likely it's a gradual degrading of service, which has already begun. So history would record that the NHS coped, but sadly a lot of people died. (And afterwards a lot of doctors and nurses quietly leave the profession because of trauma and stress.)
I'm sure that someone has thought this all through, and I'd be interested to know what contingency planning is in place, but I doubt it would be shared with the public.
A bunch of entryists spitting their dummies out. I think I'll give it a miss.
Out of curiosity - entryists from where, and spitting their dummies out about what exactly?
I am not fully across the entire nonsense of it all, but sadly there does seem to be a whiff of antisemitism involved. The entryists are from Shipley, btw.
Did anyone note the data on Christmas visits. The highlights:
8% of adults stayed over or hosted a stay over 35% of adults were hosts or guests on a day 9% traveled more than 30 minutes by car (presumably sizable overlap with the 5% who stopped away)
So loads stayed home, but fewer than I thought, and I think the staying over is about where I expected.
I think it's definitely enough to have been a noticeable part of the worsening of infection rates.
I'm not sure about a worsening of the rate -
...seems to show that without the 29th spike (imagine it used to fill the "hole" around Christmas), things having been getting worse at a rather steady pace.
My wife is just back from the frozen wastes otherwise known as our local retail park where, amongst other things, she was picking up click and collect ink for our printer. She says that she has never seen it so busy, not even on a Saturday, with queues everywhere and lots of people picking up from every store. Tesco's was bursting at the seams and none of the restrictions that were in place in the earlier lockdowns, such as 1 way aisles or distancing at the checkouts or limits on numbers in the store were apparent.
The reality is that this lockdown is simply not happening around here for all intents and purposes. It is absolutely nothing like February-April last year when the streets were deathly quiet. In light of this these figures are hardly a surprise. As @Leon pointed out the other day delivery of the vaccine is not a marathon but a sprint, a race to the finishing line with our hospitals as the prize. It's going to be close.
Gulp.
I think that's right. When I drove into work back then, there were a couple of weeks when I encountered maybe two or three other vehicles on a ten mile journey. Now traffic is like any normal school holiday.
Same here. I live on a main (urban) road and I've no idea where all the cars are going.
Perhaps the problem is that some people absolutely must do some leisure shopping and if the supermarket is the only place open, then that's where they'll go. A bit like those that must have foreign holidays but on a local scale.
This isn't stopping the new variant. No chance.
Same in my city. On our dog walk every day, around 11am, cars are streaming towards the city centre on the main road. In March/April it was really quiet. And every day we ask one another the same question: where on earth are they all going? There are no supermarkets in the city centre. It's baffling.
A bunch of entryists spitting their dummies out. I think I'll give it a miss.
I wonder how long someone is in a party before they stop being an entryist, or if they still act as a coordinated, separate group within the entered body they remain it forever.
I use the word entryist out of politeness. Other ways to refer to my comrades are available.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi spoke with the Pentagon’s top general about “preventing an unstable” Donald Trump from launching a military conflict or using his assigned codes to launch America’s nuclear weapons.
The bold move was announced by her office Friday in a letter to Housen Democrats under a section titled: “Preventing an Unhinged President From Using the Nuclear Codes.”
That testing curve you see? That's *exactly* what we're going to see with vaccinations. It'll start slowly and grow and grow.
Over the course of a week, we'll go from "we're not doing enough!" to "oh, the end is in sight". I forecast that week to be in the first half of March.
I pray you are right, and you might well be right, the problem is can we get to March without total apocalypse?
I do not see how the NHS can sustain 3000+ new patients every day. IF it stays at that level. That's at least 150,000 new patients by the end of Feb. Impossible.
At that point Neil Ferguson's original prediction (much derided on here) of a possible death toll from Covid plus a crashed NHS, comes into focus. 500,000 dead.
The vaccines and lockdowns need to start working very very soon.
The lockdown will start showing effects by the beginning of next week. Yes, the new variant is more contagious.
But if people aren't seeing other people, the virus won't spread.
Go look at Belgium - disaster on the vaccines front, but at least they've got their second wave under control.
We don't know if these lockdowns are sufficient, against Supercovid, to drive R under 1. That is the enormous question yet to be answered.
Belgium is encouraging, but they didn't have the Cockney Pest, did they?
A disease can have an R of 100: if people simply aren't in contact with other people, then it won't spread.
A bigger issue is simply that lots of people are ignoring the lockdown.
If a disease isn't spreading, it can't have an R of 100. It is 0.
No, a disease will have a base R in a standard population. NPIs can reduce that R and the perfect lockdown can reduce the R to 0, however, the base R of the disease doesn't change and if lockdown were ended viral replication would be 100 again.
Alex Salmond has launched an extraordinary personal attack on Nicola Sturgeon, calling her testimony to the inquiry into sexual assault claims made against him “simply untrue”.
In his submission to the inquiry, the former first minister said Ms Sturgeon misled parliament and broken the ministerial code which, if he is proven to be correct, would almost certainly spell the end of her political career.
Mr Salmond said the breaches included a failure to inform the civil service in good time of her meetings with him, and allowing the Scottish government to contest a civil court case against him despite having had legal advice that it was likely to collapse.
The allegations against Ms Sturgeon, who replaced Mr Salmond as first minister and leader of the SNP after the 2014 independence referendum, show how far relations have soured between the two most influential figures in the SNP have become.
The ministerial code says that any meetings about government business should be recorded and that ministers must ensure the government complies with the law. A minister found to have knowingly misled Holyrood “will be expected to offer their resignation”.
No. I bet on the 2020 market where I was correct and numerous No Mark Scotch experts were wrong. As a result this story is not relevant to my interests.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi spoke with the Pentagon’s top general about “preventing an unstable” Donald Trump from launching a military conflict or using his assigned codes to launch America’s nuclear weapons.
The bold move was announced by her office Friday in a letter to Housen Democrats under a section titled: “Preventing an Unhinged President From Using the Nuclear Codes.”
Independent blog
Because if you are dealing with someone who is unhinged, the safest way to deal with the situation is to call them unhinged as loudly and publicly as possible. Hostage negotiation 101. What an incredibly stupid and irresponsible woman.
That testing curve you see? That's *exactly* what we're going to see with vaccinations. It'll start slowly and grow and grow.
Over the course of a week, we'll go from "we're not doing enough!" to "oh, the end is in sight". I forecast that week to be in the first half of March.
I pray you are right, and you might well be right, the problem is can we get to March without total apocalypse?
I do not see how the NHS can sustain 3000+ new patients every day. IF it stays at that level. That's at least 150,000 new patients by the end of Feb. Impossible.
At that point Neil Ferguson's original prediction (much derided on here) of a possible death toll from Covid plus a crashed NHS, comes into focus. 500,000 dead.
The vaccines and lockdowns need to start working very very soon.
The lockdown will start showing effects by the beginning of next week. Yes, the new variant is more contagious.
But if people aren't seeing other people, the virus won't spread.
Go look at Belgium - disaster on the vaccines front, but at least they've got their second wave under control.
We don't know if these lockdowns are sufficient, against Supercovid, to drive R under 1. That is the enormous question yet to be answered.
Belgium is encouraging, but they didn't have the Cockney Pest, did they?
A disease can have an R of 100: if people simply aren't in contact with other people, then it won't spread.
A bigger issue is simply that lots of people are ignoring the lockdown.
But even if they were, the lockdown might not be enough. You are describing a perfect lockdown, a la Wuhan, where everyone stays at home all day every day. Food is delivered (perhaps by robots or drones, as in Wuhan). Sick people are welded into their flats. And so forth.
This might be where we have to go. Gawd elp us
I think it's fair to say that the England's current lockdown is weaker than the one we had in March. If nothing else, schools have more kids in them. (Partly because the definition of key worker is looser, but also because schools are forced to accept children from 1 KW families this time.)
Even if Covid 2020 wasn't spreadier than Covid 2019, that would be a problem, and we all think it is.
The vaccine will come, and it will save most of us. But England had seriously ballsed up the meantime; we may vaccinate quicker but have more deaths on the way.
I'm a physicist, not an expert on people. But psychologically, I can't see this ending well for us.
My wife is just back from the frozen wastes otherwise known as our local retail park where, amongst other things, she was picking up click and collect ink for our printer. She says that she has never seen it so busy, not even on a Saturday, with queues everywhere and lots of people picking up from every store. Tesco's was bursting at the seams and none of the restrictions that were in place in the earlier lockdowns, such as 1 way aisles or distancing at the checkouts or limits on numbers in the store were apparent.
The reality is that this lockdown is simply not happening around here for all intents and purposes. It is absolutely nothing like February-April last year when the streets were deathly quiet. In light of this these figures are hardly a surprise. As @Leon pointed out the other day delivery of the vaccine is not a marathon but a sprint, a race to the finishing line with our hospitals as the prize. It's going to be close.
Gulp.
I think that's right. When I drove into work back then, there were a couple of weeks when I encountered maybe two or three other vehicles on a ten mile journey. Now traffic is like any normal school holiday.
Same here. I live on a main (urban) road and I've no idea where all the cars are going.
Perhaps the problem is that some people absolutely must do some leisure shopping and if the supermarket is the only place open, then that's where they'll go. A bit like those that must have foreign holidays but on a local scale.
This isn't stopping the new variant. No chance.
Same in my city. On our dog walk every day, around 11am, cars are streaming towards the city centre on the main road. In March/April it was really quiet. And every day we ask one another the same question: where on earth are they all going? There are no supermarkets in the city centre. It's baffling.
My wife is just back from the frozen wastes otherwise known as our local retail park where, amongst other things, she was picking up click and collect ink for our printer. She says that she has never seen it so busy, not even on a Saturday, with queues everywhere and lots of people picking up from every store. Tesco's was bursting at the seams and none of the restrictions that were in place in the earlier lockdowns, such as 1 way aisles or distancing at the checkouts or limits on numbers in the store were apparent.
The reality is that this lockdown is simply not happening around here for all intents and purposes. It is absolutely nothing like February-April last year when the streets were deathly quiet. In light of this these figures are hardly a surprise. As @Leon pointed out the other day delivery of the vaccine is not a marathon but a sprint, a race to the finishing line with our hospitals as the prize. It's going to be close.
Gulp.
I think that's right. When I drove into work back then, there were a couple of weeks when I encountered maybe two or three other vehicles on a ten mile journey. Now traffic is like any normal school holiday.
Same here. I live on a main (urban) road and I've no idea where all the cars are going.
Perhaps the problem is that some people absolutely must do some leisure shopping and if the supermarket is the only place open, then that's where they'll go. A bit like those that must have foreign holidays but on a local scale.
This isn't stopping the new variant. No chance.
Same in my city. On our dog walk every day, around 11am, cars are streaming towards the city centre on the main road. In March/April it was really quiet. And every day we ask one another the same question: where on earth are they all going? There are no supermarkets in the city centre. It's baffling.
Surely Trump's issue is that as soon as Biden takes the oath of office he loses immunity from prosecution and needs to be in a country that has no extradition treaty with the US.
That testing curve you see? That's *exactly* what we're going to see with vaccinations. It'll start slowly and grow and grow.
Over the course of a week, we'll go from "we're not doing enough!" to "oh, the end is in sight". I forecast that week to be in the first half of March.
I pray you are right, and you might well be right, the problem is can we get to March without total apocalypse?
I do not see how the NHS can sustain 3000+ new patients every day. IF it stays at that level. That's at least 150,000 new patients by the end of Feb. Impossible.
At that point Neil Ferguson's original prediction (much derided on here) of a possible death toll from Covid plus a crashed NHS, comes into focus. 500,000 dead.
The vaccines and lockdowns need to start working very very soon.
The lockdown will start showing effects by the beginning of next week. Yes, the new variant is more contagious.
But if people aren't seeing other people, the virus won't spread.
Go look at Belgium - disaster on the vaccines front, but at least they've got their second wave under control.
We don't know if these lockdowns are sufficient, against Supercovid, to drive R under 1. That is the enormous question yet to be answered.
Belgium is encouraging, but they didn't have the Cockney Pest, did they?
A disease can have an R of 100: if people simply aren't in contact with other people, then it won't spread.
A bigger issue is simply that lots of people are ignoring the lockdown.
If a disease isn't spreading, it can't have an R of 100. It is 0.
No, a disease will have a base R in a standard population. NPIs can reduce that R and the perfect lockdown can reduce the R to 0, however, the base R of the disease doesn't change and if lockdown were ended viral replication would be 100 again.
So... in a perfect lockdown the R number is 0. That's what I said. There is no "base" R independent of how people interact.
That testing curve you see? That's *exactly* what we're going to see with vaccinations. It'll start slowly and grow and grow.
Over the course of a week, we'll go from "we're not doing enough!" to "oh, the end is in sight". I forecast that week to be in the first half of March.
I pray you are right, and you might well be right, the problem is can we get to March without total apocalypse?
I do not see how the NHS can sustain 3000+ new patients every day. IF it stays at that level. That's at least 150,000 new patients by the end of Feb. Impossible.
At that point Neil Ferguson's original prediction (much derided on here) of a possible death toll from Covid plus a crashed NHS, comes into focus. 500,000 dead.
The vaccines and lockdowns need to start working very very soon.
The lockdown will start showing effects by the beginning of next week. Yes, the new variant is more contagious.
But if people aren't seeing other people, the virus won't spread.
Go look at Belgium - disaster on the vaccines front, but at least they've got their second wave under control.
We don't know if these lockdowns are sufficient, against Supercovid, to drive R under 1. That is the enormous question yet to be answered.
Belgium is encouraging, but they didn't have the Cockney Pest, did they?
A disease can have an R of 100: if people simply aren't in contact with other people, then it won't spread.
A bigger issue is simply that lots of people are ignoring the lockdown.
If a disease isn't spreading, it can't have an R of 100. It is 0.
No, a disease will have a base R in a standard population. NPIs can reduce that R and the perfect lockdown can reduce the R to 0, however, the base R of the disease doesn't change and if lockdown were ended viral replication would be 100 again.
So... in a perfect lockdown the R number is 0. That's what I said. There is no "base" R independent of how people interact.
It's a very simplistic way of looking at it, the Kent COVID strain is a good example of why your explanation is poor. It has a 50-70% higher base R value than regular COVID which means existing NPIs are no longer good enough, it completely changes how governments around the world have to handle this. The base R value of any infectious disease is very important because building a series of NPIs to reduce that is how to keep it under control (or in our case, not).
Speaker Nancy Pelosi spoke with the Pentagon’s top general about “preventing an unstable” Donald Trump from launching a military conflict or using his assigned codes to launch America’s nuclear weapons.
The bold move was announced by her office Friday in a letter to Housen Democrats under a section titled: “Preventing an Unhinged President From Using the Nuclear Codes.”
Independent blog
Because if you are dealing with someone who is unhinged, the safest way to deal with the situation is to call them unhinged as loudly and publicly as possible. Hostage negotiation 101. What an incredibly stupid and irresponsible woman.
I refer the honorable gentleman to the following exhibit:
That testing curve you see? That's *exactly* what we're going to see with vaccinations. It'll start slowly and grow and grow.
Over the course of a week, we'll go from "we're not doing enough!" to "oh, the end is in sight". I forecast that week to be in the first half of March.
I pray you are right, and you might well be right, the problem is can we get to March without total apocalypse?
I do not see how the NHS can sustain 3000+ new patients every day. IF it stays at that level. That's at least 150,000 new patients by the end of Feb. Impossible.
At that point Neil Ferguson's original prediction (much derided on here) of a possible death toll from Covid plus a crashed NHS, comes into focus. 500,000 dead.
The vaccines and lockdowns need to start working very very soon.
The lockdown will start showing effects by the beginning of next week. Yes, the new variant is more contagious.
But if people aren't seeing other people, the virus won't spread.
Go look at Belgium - disaster on the vaccines front, but at least they've got their second wave under control.
We don't know if these lockdowns are sufficient, against Supercovid, to drive R under 1. That is the enormous question yet to be answered.
Belgium is encouraging, but they didn't have the Cockney Pest, did they?
A disease can have an R of 100: if people simply aren't in contact with other people, then it won't spread.
A bigger issue is simply that lots of people are ignoring the lockdown.
If a disease isn't spreading, it can't have an R of 100. It is 0.
No, a disease will have a base R in a standard population. NPIs can reduce that R and the perfect lockdown can reduce the R to 0, however, the base R of the disease doesn't change and if lockdown were ended viral replication would be 100 again.
IANAE but I think the base R (R0) must depend on the characteristics of the population it has invaded as well as the virus's own properties. Thus R0 would be 0 in a population of hermits whatever its infectivity.
That testing curve you see? That's *exactly* what we're going to see with vaccinations. It'll start slowly and grow and grow.
Over the course of a week, we'll go from "we're not doing enough!" to "oh, the end is in sight". I forecast that week to be in the first half of March.
I pray you are right, and you might well be right, the problem is can we get to March without total apocalypse?
I do not see how the NHS can sustain 3000+ new patients every day. IF it stays at that level. That's at least 150,000 new patients by the end of Feb. Impossible.
At that point Neil Ferguson's original prediction (much derided on here) of a possible death toll from Covid plus a crashed NHS, comes into focus. 500,000 dead.
The vaccines and lockdowns need to start working very very soon.
The lockdown will start showing effects by the beginning of next week. Yes, the new variant is more contagious.
But if people aren't seeing other people, the virus won't spread.
Go look at Belgium - disaster on the vaccines front, but at least they've got their second wave under control.
We don't know if these lockdowns are sufficient, against Supercovid, to drive R under 1. That is the enormous question yet to be answered.
Belgium is encouraging, but they didn't have the Cockney Pest, did they?
A disease can have an R of 100: if people simply aren't in contact with other people, then it won't spread.
A bigger issue is simply that lots of people are ignoring the lockdown.
But even if they were, the lockdown might not be enough. You are describing a perfect lockdown, a la Wuhan, where everyone stays at home all day every day. Food is delivered (perhaps by robots or drones, as in Wuhan). Sick people are welded into their flats. And so forth.
This might be where we have to go. Gawd elp us
I think it's fair to say that the England's current lockdown is weaker than the one we had in March. If nothing else, schools have more kids in them. (Partly because the definition of key worker is looser, but also because schools are forced to accept children from 1 KW families this time.)
Even if Covid 2020 wasn't spreadier than Covid 2019, that would be a problem, and we all think it is.
The vaccine will come, and it will save most of us. But England had seriously ballsed up the meantime; we may vaccinate quicker but have more deaths on the way.
I'm a physicist, not an expert on people. But psychologically, I can't see this ending well for us.
Quite a few countries will be changed, traumatically, by this. I am sure the Storming of the Capitol would not have happened without the anger, sadness, frustration brought by Covid. So already we can see it wreaking damage beyond the health effects.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi spoke with the Pentagon’s top general about “preventing an unstable” Donald Trump from launching a military conflict or using his assigned codes to launch America’s nuclear weapons.
The bold move was announced by her office Friday in a letter to Housen Democrats under a section titled: “Preventing an Unhinged President From Using the Nuclear Codes.”
Independent blog
Because if you are dealing with someone who is unhinged, the safest way to deal with the situation is to call them unhinged as loudly and publicly as possible. Hostage negotiation 101. What an incredibly stupid and irresponsible woman.
I refer the honorable gentleman to the following exhibit:
That testing curve you see? That's *exactly* what we're going to see with vaccinations. It'll start slowly and grow and grow.
Over the course of a week, we'll go from "we're not doing enough!" to "oh, the end is in sight". I forecast that week to be in the first half of March.
I pray you are right, and you might well be right, the problem is can we get to March without total apocalypse?
I do not see how the NHS can sustain 3000+ new patients every day. IF it stays at that level. That's at least 150,000 new patients by the end of Feb. Impossible.
At that point Neil Ferguson's original prediction (much derided on here) of a possible death toll from Covid plus a crashed NHS, comes into focus. 500,000 dead.
The vaccines and lockdowns need to start working very very soon.
The lockdown will start showing effects by the beginning of next week. Yes, the new variant is more contagious.
But if people aren't seeing other people, the virus won't spread.
Go look at Belgium - disaster on the vaccines front, but at least they've got their second wave under control.
We don't know if these lockdowns are sufficient, against Supercovid, to drive R under 1. That is the enormous question yet to be answered.
Belgium is encouraging, but they didn't have the Cockney Pest, did they?
I suspect an R of 0.9 isn't going to be good enough the way things are going.
Does anyone know what the maximum steady state patient inflow is for Covid? Less than 3000/day I would imagine.
We must know roughly how long each patient stays in hospital (exit dead or alive) and the maximum capacity. That would give us the maximum sustainable rate.
I don't think there's a well-defined maximum, because there isn't a binary outcome for hospitals being "ok" or "not ok". As numbers rise more and more I imagine we'd see a) postponements of other treatments leading to deaths only weeks or months later, b) creeping up mortality rates as each nurse has to spread their attention between more and more ICU patients, c) creeping up mortality rates as fewer patients are admitted to ICU in the first place, or discharged early from hospital to make space, d) increased mortality from heart attacks and strokes which are not treated in time. None of these will be apparent for quite a while, and some would only show as excess deaths rather than COVID deaths.
There might be "big news" events like hospital oxygen running low or tents in hospital car parks, or of course if ambulance staff were instructed not to bring older patients to hospital at all, but more likely it's a gradual degrading of service, which has already begun. So history would record that the NHS coped, but sadly a lot of people died. (And afterwards a lot of doctors and nurses quietly leave the profession because of trauma and stress.)
I'm sure that someone has thought this all through, and I'd be interested to know what contingency planning is in place, but I doubt it would be shared with the public.
--AS
Very true, and if the overload happens in a local concentration (Northern Italy) then the national capacity doesn't really matter because you can't move people fast enough.
I would imagine that someone in SAGE must have a rough number in mind, though, and we must be close to that capacity now.
If we assume that the current number (32000) in hospital is close to the maximum limit and the mean stay in hospital is similar to the first wave when Whitty said it was 8 days, then that implies we could 'cope' with 4000 hospital cases/day, depending on the exact distribution and how many end up in ICU.
The increase in numbers hospitalised don't suggest we are 'coping' with 3000/day. Does this mean that people are staying in hospital longer in this wave than the first?
That testing curve you see? That's *exactly* what we're going to see with vaccinations. It'll start slowly and grow and grow.
Over the course of a week, we'll go from "we're not doing enough!" to "oh, the end is in sight". I forecast that week to be in the first half of March.
I pray you are right, and you might well be right, the problem is can we get to March without total apocalypse?
I do not see how the NHS can sustain 3000+ new patients every day. IF it stays at that level. That's at least 150,000 new patients by the end of Feb. Impossible.
At that point Neil Ferguson's original prediction (much derided on here) of a possible death toll from Covid plus a crashed NHS, comes into focus. 500,000 dead.
The vaccines and lockdowns need to start working very very soon.
The lockdown will start showing effects by the beginning of next week. Yes, the new variant is more contagious.
But if people aren't seeing other people, the virus won't spread.
Go look at Belgium - disaster on the vaccines front, but at least they've got their second wave under control.
We don't know if these lockdowns are sufficient, against Supercovid, to drive R under 1. That is the enormous question yet to be answered.
Belgium is encouraging, but they didn't have the Cockney Pest, did they?
A bigger issue is simply that lots of people are ignoring the lockdown.
There also appears to be significantly more children attending school than during the last lockdown according to various family members who teach. One school had 35 in, versus 5 last time, another has 90 in versus 35 last time, and a third has 100 out of 200 on roll pupils attending.
That testing curve you see? That's *exactly* what we're going to see with vaccinations. It'll start slowly and grow and grow.
Over the course of a week, we'll go from "we're not doing enough!" to "oh, the end is in sight". I forecast that week to be in the first half of March.
I pray you are right, and you might well be right, the problem is can we get to March without total apocalypse?
I do not see how the NHS can sustain 3000+ new patients every day. IF it stays at that level. That's at least 150,000 new patients by the end of Feb. Impossible.
At that point Neil Ferguson's original prediction (much derided on here) of a possible death toll from Covid plus a crashed NHS, comes into focus. 500,000 dead.
The vaccines and lockdowns need to start working very very soon.
The lockdown will start showing effects by the beginning of next week. Yes, the new variant is more contagious.
But if people aren't seeing other people, the virus won't spread.
Go look at Belgium - disaster on the vaccines front, but at least they've got their second wave under control.
We don't know if these lockdowns are sufficient, against Supercovid, to drive R under 1. That is the enormous question yet to be answered.
Belgium is encouraging, but they didn't have the Cockney Pest, did they?
A disease can have an R of 100: if people simply aren't in contact with other people, then it won't spread.
A bigger issue is simply that lots of people are ignoring the lockdown.
If a disease isn't spreading, it can't have an R of 100. It is 0.
No, a disease will have a base R in a standard population. NPIs can reduce that R and the perfect lockdown can reduce the R to 0, however, the base R of the disease doesn't change and if lockdown were ended viral replication would be 100 again.
IANAE but I think the base R (R0) must depend on the characteristics of the population it has invaded as well as the virus's own properties. Thus R0 would be 0 in a population of hermits whatever its infectivity.
Yes, which is why viral replication in densely populated cities tends to be worse than in sparsely populated rural areas.
That testing curve you see? That's *exactly* what we're going to see with vaccinations. It'll start slowly and grow and grow.
Over the course of a week, we'll go from "we're not doing enough!" to "oh, the end is in sight". I forecast that week to be in the first half of March.
I pray you are right, and you might well be right, the problem is can we get to March without total apocalypse?
I do not see how the NHS can sustain 3000+ new patients every day. IF it stays at that level. That's at least 150,000 new patients by the end of Feb. Impossible.
At that point Neil Ferguson's original prediction (much derided on here) of a possible death toll from Covid plus a crashed NHS, comes into focus. 500,000 dead.
The vaccines and lockdowns need to start working very very soon.
The lockdown will start showing effects by the beginning of next week. Yes, the new variant is more contagious.
But if people aren't seeing other people, the virus won't spread.
Go look at Belgium - disaster on the vaccines front, but at least they've got their second wave under control.
We don't know if these lockdowns are sufficient, against Supercovid, to drive R under 1. That is the enormous question yet to be answered.
Belgium is encouraging, but they didn't have the Cockney Pest, did they?
A disease can have an R of 100: if people simply aren't in contact with other people, then it won't spread.
A bigger issue is simply that lots of people are ignoring the lockdown.
If a disease isn't spreading, it can't have an R of 100. It is 0.
No, a disease will have a base R in a standard population. NPIs can reduce that R and the perfect lockdown can reduce the R to 0, however, the base R of the disease doesn't change and if lockdown were ended viral replication would be 100 again.
IANAE but I think the base R (R0) must depend on the characteristics of the population it has invaded as well as the virus's own properties. Thus R0 would be 0 in a population of hermits whatever its infectivity.
Yes, exactly. The number and quality of interactions is a key driver in determining R. R is not a property of the pathogen alone, but a combination of that, and what we do.
Alex Salmond has launched an extraordinary personal attack on Nicola Sturgeon, calling her testimony to the inquiry into sexual assault claims made against him “simply untrue”.
In his submission to the inquiry, the former first minister said Ms Sturgeon misled parliament and broken the ministerial code which, if he is proven to be correct, would almost certainly spell the end of her political career.
Mr Salmond said the breaches included a failure to inform the civil service in good time of her meetings with him, and allowing the Scottish government to contest a civil court case against him despite having had legal advice that it was likely to collapse.
The allegations against Ms Sturgeon, who replaced Mr Salmond as first minister and leader of the SNP after the 2014 independence referendum, show how far relations have soured between the two most influential figures in the SNP have become.
The ministerial code says that any meetings about government business should be recorded and that ministers must ensure the government complies with the law. A minister found to have knowingly misled Holyrood “will be expected to offer their resignation”.
No. I bet on the 2020 market where I was correct and numerous No Mark Scotch experts were wrong. As a result this story is not relevant to my interests.
That said it smells like a process story to me.
I think unionists and nationalists alike had kinda given up on the inquiry producing anything of remark. But I do wonder.
"Events, dear boy, events".
I think this could be an event rather than a process (non) story as suggested as above. Itt has all the ingredients -mega-egos, the cause, and places in history. Above all its about the two big beasts of Scottish politics and one of them is out for blood. Potentially a Jacobean drama in the making.
Sadly with most of these resignations it feels like 6/1 leaving because a line has finally been crossed in their mind and 1/6 leaving because they think it best for their careers. If it was the former it wouldnt take much thinking about.
That testing curve you see? That's *exactly* what we're going to see with vaccinations. It'll start slowly and grow and grow.
Over the course of a week, we'll go from "we're not doing enough!" to "oh, the end is in sight". I forecast that week to be in the first half of March.
I pray you are right, and you might well be right, the problem is can we get to March without total apocalypse?
I do not see how the NHS can sustain 3000+ new patients every day. IF it stays at that level. That's at least 150,000 new patients by the end of Feb. Impossible.
At that point Neil Ferguson's original prediction (much derided on here) of a possible death toll from Covid plus a crashed NHS, comes into focus. 500,000 dead.
The vaccines and lockdowns need to start working very very soon.
The lockdown will start showing effects by the beginning of next week. Yes, the new variant is more contagious.
But if people aren't seeing other people, the virus won't spread.
Go look at Belgium - disaster on the vaccines front, but at least they've got their second wave under control.
We don't know if these lockdowns are sufficient, against Supercovid, to drive R under 1. That is the enormous question yet to be answered.
Belgium is encouraging, but they didn't have the Cockney Pest, did they?
A disease can have an R of 100: if people simply aren't in contact with other people, then it won't spread.
A bigger issue is simply that lots of people are ignoring the lockdown.
If a disease isn't spreading, it can't have an R of 100. It is 0.
No, a disease will have a base R in a standard population. NPIs can reduce that R and the perfect lockdown can reduce the R to 0, however, the base R of the disease doesn't change and if lockdown were ended viral replication would be 100 again.
IANAE but I think the base R (R0) must depend on the characteristics of the population it has invaded as well as the virus's own properties. Thus R0 would be 0 in a population of hermits whatever its infectivity.
Yes, which is why viral replication in densely populated cities tends to be worse than in sparsely populated rural areas.
You agree with Mary_Batty then as far as I can see.
That testing curve you see? That's *exactly* what we're going to see with vaccinations. It'll start slowly and grow and grow.
Over the course of a week, we'll go from "we're not doing enough!" to "oh, the end is in sight". I forecast that week to be in the first half of March.
I pray you are right, and you might well be right, the problem is can we get to March without total apocalypse?
I do not see how the NHS can sustain 3000+ new patients every day. IF it stays at that level. That's at least 150,000 new patients by the end of Feb. Impossible.
At that point Neil Ferguson's original prediction (much derided on here) of a possible death toll from Covid plus a crashed NHS, comes into focus. 500,000 dead.
The vaccines and lockdowns need to start working very very soon.
The lockdown will start showing effects by the beginning of next week. Yes, the new variant is more contagious.
But if people aren't seeing other people, the virus won't spread.
Go look at Belgium - disaster on the vaccines front, but at least they've got their second wave under control.
We don't know if these lockdowns are sufficient, against Supercovid, to drive R under 1. That is the enormous question yet to be answered.
Belgium is encouraging, but they didn't have the Cockney Pest, did they?
I suspect an R of 0.9 isn't going to be good enough the way things are going.
Does anyone know what the maximum steady state patient inflow is for Covid? Less than 3000/day I would imagine.
We must know roughly how long each patient stays in hospital (exit dead or alive) and the maximum capacity. That would give us the maximum sustainable rate.
I don't think there's a well-defined maximum, because there isn't a binary outcome for hospitals being "ok" or "not ok". As numbers rise more and more I imagine we'd see a) postponements of other treatments leading to deaths only weeks or months later, b) creeping up mortality rates as each nurse has to spread their attention between more and more ICU patients, c) creeping up mortality rates as fewer patients are admitted to ICU in the first place, or discharged early from hospital to make space, d) increased mortality from heart attacks and strokes which are not treated in time. None of these will be apparent for quite a while, and some would only show as excess deaths rather than COVID deaths.
There might be "big news" events like hospital oxygen running low or tents in hospital car parks, or of course if ambulance staff were instructed not to bring older patients to hospital at all, but more likely it's a gradual degrading of service, which has already begun. So history would record that the NHS coped, but sadly a lot of people died. (And afterwards a lot of doctors and nurses quietly leave the profession because of trauma and stress.)
I'm sure that someone has thought this all through, and I'd be interested to know what contingency planning is in place, but I doubt it would be shared with the public.
--AS
Very true, and if the overload happens in a local concentration (Northern Italy) then the national capacity doesn't really matter because you can't move people fast enough.
I would imagine, though, that someone in SAGE must have a rough number in mind, and we must be close to that capacity now.
If we assume that the current number (32000) in hospital is close to the maximum limit and the mean stay in hospital is similar to the first wave when Whitty said it was 8 days, then that implies we could 'cope' with 4000 hospital cases/day, depending on the exact distribution and how many end up in ICU.
The numbers don't suggest we are 'coping' with 3000/day. Does this mean that people are staying in hospital longer in this wave than the first?
Yes, more people surviving due to improved treatments means longer average hospital stays. No idea about the numbers though.
So really the 25th Amendment has already been informally invoked, as it may have been on Wednesday when Pence gave the orders.
There's never been a situation like that in modern American history ; I wonder what else he's free and not free to do.
Do you assume he could have unilaterally decided to use nuclear weapons at any point in his presidency and there were no checks and balances in place? I would be amazed were that the case.
That testing curve you see? That's *exactly* what we're going to see with vaccinations. It'll start slowly and grow and grow.
Over the course of a week, we'll go from "we're not doing enough!" to "oh, the end is in sight". I forecast that week to be in the first half of March.
I pray you are right, and you might well be right, the problem is can we get to March without total apocalypse?
I do not see how the NHS can sustain 3000+ new patients every day. IF it stays at that level. That's at least 150,000 new patients by the end of Feb. Impossible.
At that point Neil Ferguson's original prediction (much derided on here) of a possible death toll from Covid plus a crashed NHS, comes into focus. 500,000 dead.
The vaccines and lockdowns need to start working very very soon.
The lockdown will start showing effects by the beginning of next week. Yes, the new variant is more contagious.
But if people aren't seeing other people, the virus won't spread.
Go look at Belgium - disaster on the vaccines front, but at least they've got their second wave under control.
We don't know if these lockdowns are sufficient, against Supercovid, to drive R under 1. That is the enormous question yet to be answered.
Belgium is encouraging, but they didn't have the Cockney Pest, did they?
I suspect an R of 0.9 isn't going to be good enough the way things are going.
Does anyone know what the maximum steady state patient inflow is for Covid? Less than 3000/day I would imagine.
We must know roughly how long each patient stays in hospital (exit dead or alive) and the maximum capacity. That would give us the maximum sustainable rate.
I don't think there's a well-defined maximum, because there isn't a binary outcome for hospitals being "ok" or "not ok". As numbers rise more and more I imagine we'd see a) postponements of other treatments leading to deaths only weeks or months later, b) creeping up mortality rates as each nurse has to spread their attention between more and more ICU patients, c) creeping up mortality rates as fewer patients are admitted to ICU in the first place, or discharged early from hospital to make space, d) increased mortality from heart attacks and strokes which are not treated in time. None of these will be apparent for quite a while, and some would only show as excess deaths rather than COVID deaths.
There might be "big news" events like hospital oxygen running low or tents in hospital car parks, or of course if ambulance staff were instructed not to bring older patients to hospital at all, but more likely it's a gradual degrading of service, which has already begun. So history would record that the NHS coped, but sadly a lot of people died. (And afterwards a lot of doctors and nurses quietly leave the profession because of trauma and stress.)
I'm sure that someone has thought this all through, and I'd be interested to know what contingency planning is in place, but I doubt it would be shared with the public.
--AS
Very true, and if the overload happens in a local concentration (Northern Italy) then the national capacity doesn't really matter because you can't move people fast enough.
I would imagine that someone in SAGE must have a rough number in mind, though, and we must be close to that capacity now.
If we assume that the current number (32000) in hospital is close to the maximum limit and the mean stay in hospital is similar to the first wave when Whitty said it was 8 days, then that implies we could 'cope' with 4000 hospital cases/day, depending on the exact distribution and how many end up in ICU.
Plus, another space for each of those who sadly die in hospital....
Alex Salmond has launched an extraordinary personal attack on Nicola Sturgeon, calling her testimony to the inquiry into sexual assault claims made against him “simply untrue”.
In his submission to the inquiry, the former first minister said Ms Sturgeon misled parliament and broken the ministerial code which, if he is proven to be correct, would almost certainly spell the end of her political career.
Mr Salmond said the breaches included a failure to inform the civil service in good time of her meetings with him, and allowing the Scottish government to contest a civil court case against him despite having had legal advice that it was likely to collapse.
The allegations against Ms Sturgeon, who replaced Mr Salmond as first minister and leader of the SNP after the 2014 independence referendum, show how far relations have soured between the two most influential figures in the SNP have become.
The ministerial code says that any meetings about government business should be recorded and that ministers must ensure the government complies with the law. A minister found to have knowingly misled Holyrood “will be expected to offer their resignation”.
No. I bet on the 2020 market where I was correct and numerous No Mark Scotch experts were wrong. As a result this story is not relevant to my interests.
That said it smells like a process story to me.
I think unionists and nationalists alike had kinda given up on the inquiry producing anything of remark. But I do wonder.
"Events, dear boy, events".
I think this could be an event rather than a process (non) story as suggested as above. Itt has all the ingredients -mega-egos, the cause, and places in history. Above all its about the two big beasts of Scottish politics and one of them is out for blood. Potentially a Jacobean drama in the making.
We shall see.
I have no special insight but there doesn't appear to be anything new in the extract TSE posted. This is the same as what was said last year.
As far as I can tell taking the pulse of the nation no one gives a shit it took Sturgeon 2 days extra to notify civil servants of the meeting.
That's the only thing that is actually of any import and no one cares.
That testing curve you see? That's *exactly* what we're going to see with vaccinations. It'll start slowly and grow and grow.
Over the course of a week, we'll go from "we're not doing enough!" to "oh, the end is in sight". I forecast that week to be in the first half of March.
I pray you are right, and you might well be right, the problem is can we get to March without total apocalypse?
I do not see how the NHS can sustain 3000+ new patients every day. IF it stays at that level. That's at least 150,000 new patients by the end of Feb. Impossible.
At that point Neil Ferguson's original prediction (much derided on here) of a possible death toll from Covid plus a crashed NHS, comes into focus. 500,000 dead.
The vaccines and lockdowns need to start working very very soon.
The lockdown will start showing effects by the beginning of next week. Yes, the new variant is more contagious.
But if people aren't seeing other people, the virus won't spread.
Go look at Belgium - disaster on the vaccines front, but at least they've got their second wave under control.
We don't know if these lockdowns are sufficient, against Supercovid, to drive R under 1. That is the enormous question yet to be answered.
Belgium is encouraging, but they didn't have the Cockney Pest, did they?
I suspect an R of 0.9 isn't going to be good enough the way things are going.
Does anyone know what the maximum steady state patient inflow is for Covid? Less than 3000/day I would imagine.
We must know roughly how long each patient stays in hospital (exit dead or alive) and the maximum capacity. That would give us the maximum sustainable rate.
I don't think there's a well-defined maximum, because there isn't a binary outcome for hospitals being "ok" or "not ok". As numbers rise more and more I imagine we'd see a) postponements of other treatments leading to deaths only weeks or months later, b) creeping up mortality rates as each nurse has to spread their attention between more and more ICU patients, c) creeping up mortality rates as fewer patients are admitted to ICU in the first place, or discharged early from hospital to make space, d) increased mortality from heart attacks and strokes which are not treated in time. None of these will be apparent for quite a while, and some would only show as excess deaths rather than COVID deaths.
There might be "big news" events like hospital oxygen running low or tents in hospital car parks, or of course if ambulance staff were instructed not to bring older patients to hospital at all, but more likely it's a gradual degrading of service, which has already begun. So history would record that the NHS coped, but sadly a lot of people died. (And afterwards a lot of doctors and nurses quietly leave the profession because of trauma and stress.)
I'm sure that someone has thought this all through, and I'd be interested to know what contingency planning is in place, but I doubt it would be shared with the public.
--AS
Very true, and if the overload happens in a local concentration (Northern Italy) then the national capacity doesn't really matter because you can't move people fast enough.
I would imagine that someone in SAGE must have a rough number in mind, though, and we must be close to that capacity now.
If we assume that the current number (32000) in hospital is close to the maximum limit and the mean stay in hospital is similar to the first wave when Whitty said it was 8 days, then that implies we could 'cope' with 4000 hospital cases/day, depending on the exact distribution and how many end up in ICU.
The increase in numbers hospitalised don't suggest we are 'coping' with 3000/day. Does this mean that people are staying in hospital longer in this wave than the first?
Good question. My impression is that it's ICU more than general bed care which is under pressure, but that's only from anecdote rather than data.
I'd be interested to know the mean duration. I'm quite surprised that it was as little as 8 days in the first wave. With better treatment more survive, and of course that will increase their time in hospital, but on the other than better treatment might mean that some others recover faster.
So really the 25th Amendment has already been informally invoked, as it may have been on Wednesday when Pence gave the orders.
There's never been a situation like that in modern American history ; I wonder what else he's free and not free to do.
Do you assume he could have unilaterally decided to use nuclear weapons at any point in his presidency and there were no checks and balances in place? I would be amazed were that the case.
Maybe not in actual practice, but public principle. The public, collective constraints on him seem to be getting stronger and stronger.
If he's got much of his mind left, he'll probably look to try and move himself and some of his assets out reasonably quickly.
Alex Salmond has launched an extraordinary personal attack on Nicola Sturgeon, calling her testimony to the inquiry into sexual assault claims made against him “simply untrue”.
In his submission to the inquiry, the former first minister said Ms Sturgeon misled parliament and broken the ministerial code which, if he is proven to be correct, would almost certainly spell the end of her political career.
Mr Salmond said the breaches included a failure to inform the civil service in good time of her meetings with him, and allowing the Scottish government to contest a civil court case against him despite having had legal advice that it was likely to collapse.
The allegations against Ms Sturgeon, who replaced Mr Salmond as first minister and leader of the SNP after the 2014 independence referendum, show how far relations have soured between the two most influential figures in the SNP have become.
The ministerial code says that any meetings about government business should be recorded and that ministers must ensure the government complies with the law. A minister found to have knowingly misled Holyrood “will be expected to offer their resignation”.
No. I bet on the 2020 market where I was correct and numerous No Mark Scotch experts were wrong. As a result this story is not relevant to my interests.
That said it smells like a process story to me.
I presume having seen the uselessness of the clown cars that are the alternative parties for indy, Salmond is now pinning his hopes on his protegé Cherry to be his representative on earth, and damn the consequences.
Alex Salmond has launched an extraordinary personal attack on Nicola Sturgeon, calling her testimony to the inquiry into sexual assault claims made against him “simply untrue”.
In his submission to the inquiry, the former first minister said Ms Sturgeon misled parliament and broken the ministerial code which, if he is proven to be correct, would almost certainly spell the end of her political career.
Mr Salmond said the breaches included a failure to inform the civil service in good time of her meetings with him, and allowing the Scottish government to contest a civil court case against him despite having had legal advice that it was likely to collapse.
The allegations against Ms Sturgeon, who replaced Mr Salmond as first minister and leader of the SNP after the 2014 independence referendum, show how far relations have soured between the two most influential figures in the SNP have become.
The ministerial code says that any meetings about government business should be recorded and that ministers must ensure the government complies with the law. A minister found to have knowingly misled Holyrood “will be expected to offer their resignation”.
No. I bet on the 2020 market where I was correct and numerous No Mark Scotch experts were wrong. As a result this story is not relevant to my interests.
That said it smells like a process story to me.
I think unionists and nationalists alike had kinda given up on the inquiry producing anything of remark. But I do wonder.
"Events, dear boy, events".
I think this could be an event rather than a process (non) story as suggested as above. Itt has all the ingredients -mega-egos, the cause, and places in history. Above all its about the two big beasts of Scottish politics and one of them is out for blood. Potentially a Jacobean drama in the making.
We shall see.
I have no special insight but there doesn't appear to be anything new in the extract TSE posted. This is the same as what was said last year.
As far as I can tell taking the pulse of the nation no one gives a shit it took Sturgeon 2 days extra to notify civil servants of the meeting.
That's the only thing that is actually of any import and no one cares.
I can't see past the paywall to see what the timing is. No other newspaper seems to be running that story today.
Alex Salmond has launched an extraordinary personal attack on Nicola Sturgeon, calling her testimony to the inquiry into sexual assault claims made against him “simply untrue”.
In his submission to the inquiry, the former first minister said Ms Sturgeon misled parliament and broken the ministerial code which, if he is proven to be correct, would almost certainly spell the end of her political career.
Mr Salmond said the breaches included a failure to inform the civil service in good time of her meetings with him, and allowing the Scottish government to contest a civil court case against him despite having had legal advice that it was likely to collapse.
The allegations against Ms Sturgeon, who replaced Mr Salmond as first minister and leader of the SNP after the 2014 independence referendum, show how far relations have soured between the two most influential figures in the SNP have become.
The ministerial code says that any meetings about government business should be recorded and that ministers must ensure the government complies with the law. A minister found to have knowingly misled Holyrood “will be expected to offer their resignation”.
No. I bet on the 2020 market where I was correct and numerous No Mark Scotch experts were wrong. As a result this story is not relevant to my interests.
That said it smells like a process story to me.
I presume having seen the uselessness of the clown cars that are the alternative parties for indy, Salmond is now pinning his hopes on his protegé Cherry to be his representative on earth, and damn the consequences.
You're generally so dry I cannot actually tell if Cherry being Salmond's protege is serious or comedic.
For me the pointers are that the Trump coalition is not a winning coalition at the federal level going forwards.
The easier thing for GOP politicians is to cleave to the Trumpsters, because of their enthusiasm. But that is what has driven the ABTs out of the party and has lost the GOP most independents and thus the absolutely essential suburbs.
For me, the way back for the GOP is the painful one. Excise their most passionate supporters, the Trumpsters. Rebuild the center right, win back the suburbs. Regain the trust of women.
To me, this will take at least one more bad election cycle result (2022), which alas is not guaranteed, followed by 4-6 years of rebuilding. It could go faster than that but equally it is not guaranteed to happen at all, but it is my best bet.
This is my view too. Except I think it will not be quite such a long and difficult process. Once Trump is not POTUS, my strong sense is he'll fade quicker than most people think. And given MAGA is so wrapped up with HIM, I think that will too. I see a vibrant young Republican emerging in time for the 24 election and running on a small state, libertarian, socially "trad" ticket. He or she will have the challenge of picking up the deplorables without being deplorable. If they can, they have a decent shot.
You cannot be both libertarian and socially conservative, that is logically impossible
Agreed, though practical politics isn't always logical!
There is a current of thinking that assumes that social conservatism is a state of nature and that all the stuff the liberal left argues for is the aberration, only possible with massive state control. Make that assumption and it's not too hard to marry up "state bad, social conservatism good" in a package. Kind of Singapore, or Thatcherism, if you've only read the Ladybird Book on either topic.
Whether it works well enough for the Republicans to win an election is another matter. But without the votes that Trump uniquely reached, they need to try something...
As a self-styled neo-libertarian, I have found something to agree with HYUFD on. Libertarians by definition cannot be socially conservative.
Thinking about that, someone who regards the family as the basic unit of humanity could be libertarian in the sense of not wanting the state to get involved in any thing to do with the family but pretty socially conservative in how they run their family. I'm aware that that calling that Libertarian is a bit of a stretch though.
My point is that libertarians, at least in my view of the term, think that most social issues fall outside of their political dogma, not that there aren't libertarians who are socially conservative.
I haven't watch the TedX link, but there was quite a strong stream of social conservatism is traditional liberalism. Self-help etc. I don't feel like it's inherently incompatible with libertarianism. It is quite in line with libertarian principles (for example) to refuse to state-sponsor expensive treatments for 'self-inflicted' conditions like AIDS. Libertarianism would preclude banning 'immoral' behaviour but would actively approve of leaving those concerned to deal with the material consequences of their behaviour.
*Just to make it clear - this is not my view.
I'd agree. In its purest form (which in my view is impractical in a crowded world), libertarianism boils down to the individual being sovereign and autonomous. That is not incompatible with either conservative or liberal social views.
PS Do take the time to watch the TED talk. It is both educational and entertaining.
Given that conservative views seem to me to include wanting to regulate what others can and can't do as well as what one does or not do oneself, I would find it very difficult to conceive of a conservative libertarian who was not also a hypocrite. Surely by its very nature libertarianism should mean that all are equally freed from the strictures of the state with the exception of those which prevent doing harm to others (libertarians are not anarchists).
For once Trump has a point. Proper stormtroopers wear smart black uniforms with well-polished boots, not scruffy cod-Viking outfits and beanie hats:
I've never been able to escape the impression that an awful lot of those claiming to speak for the people, and particularly the section that might be uncharitably termed 'the great unwashed' by snobs, would disdain interaction or involvement with the actual people who support them.
I was going to say the sort who would wash their hands after shaking yours, but of course if you must shake hands that is definitely good advice as this year has shown.
Alex Salmond has launched an extraordinary personal attack on Nicola Sturgeon, calling her testimony to the inquiry into sexual assault claims made against him “simply untrue”.
In his submission to the inquiry, the former first minister said Ms Sturgeon misled parliament and broken the ministerial code which, if he is proven to be correct, would almost certainly spell the end of her political career.
Mr Salmond said the breaches included a failure to inform the civil service in good time of her meetings with him, and allowing the Scottish government to contest a civil court case against him despite having had legal advice that it was likely to collapse.
The allegations against Ms Sturgeon, who replaced Mr Salmond as first minister and leader of the SNP after the 2014 independence referendum, show how far relations have soured between the two most influential figures in the SNP have become.
The ministerial code says that any meetings about government business should be recorded and that ministers must ensure the government complies with the law. A minister found to have knowingly misled Holyrood “will be expected to offer their resignation”.
No. I bet on the 2020 market where I was correct and numerous No Mark Scotch experts were wrong. As a result this story is not relevant to my interests.
That said it smells like a process story to me.
I think unionists and nationalists alike had kinda given up on the inquiry producing anything of remark. But I do wonder.
"Events, dear boy, events".
I think this could be an event rather than a process (non) story as suggested as above. Itt has all the ingredients -mega-egos, the cause, and places in history. Above all its about the two big beasts of Scottish politics and one of them is out for blood. Potentially a Jacobean drama in the making.
We shall see.
The SNP don't seem to have a patina at the moment which gives many the impression that they're above the venality of the other parties. Salmond's accusations wouldn't have to claim a scalp for his claims to move them closer to the status of a normal political party.
That testing curve you see? That's *exactly* what we're going to see with vaccinations. It'll start slowly and grow and grow.
Over the course of a week, we'll go from "we're not doing enough!" to "oh, the end is in sight". I forecast that week to be in the first half of March.
I pray you are right, and you might well be right, the problem is can we get to March without total apocalypse?
I do not see how the NHS can sustain 3000+ new patients every day. IF it stays at that level. That's at least 150,000 new patients by the end of Feb. Impossible.
At that point Neil Ferguson's original prediction (much derided on here) of a possible death toll from Covid plus a crashed NHS, comes into focus. 500,000 dead.
The vaccines and lockdowns need to start working very very soon.
The lockdown will start showing effects by the beginning of next week. Yes, the new variant is more contagious.
But if people aren't seeing other people, the virus won't spread.
Go look at Belgium - disaster on the vaccines front, but at least they've got their second wave under control.
We don't know if these lockdowns are sufficient, against Supercovid, to drive R under 1. That is the enormous question yet to be answered.
Belgium is encouraging, but they didn't have the Cockney Pest, did they?
A disease can have an R of 100: if people simply aren't in contact with other people, then it won't spread.
A bigger issue is simply that lots of people are ignoring the lockdown.
If a disease isn't spreading, it can't have an R of 100. It is 0.
No, a disease will have a base R in a standard population. NPIs can reduce that R and the perfect lockdown can reduce the R to 0, however, the base R of the disease doesn't change and if lockdown were ended viral replication would be 100 again.
IANAE but I think the base R (R0) must depend on the characteristics of the population it has invaded as well as the virus's own properties. Thus R0 would be 0 in a population of hermits whatever its infectivity.
As I understand it, that is the differrence between R0 and R. R0 is the base infection rate if there is no kind of intervention and is driven by the biology. R is the observed rate which is affected by things such as herd immunity, vaccination, distancing, lockdowns etc.
Whatever Trump's specific intentions with inciting the mob were, given a guy ended up in the Senate chamber crying out for Pence, Pence sure has good self control to not immediately seek to destroy Trump for setting them loose on him.
It was a planned Coup. Incite a riot. Storm the Capitol thanks to a lack of law enforcement which Trump ordered. Take Pence, Pelosi etc hostage. Trump forced to call for martial law. Electoral College certificates destroyed. Fraudulent election result set aside.
Trump described as excitedly pacing the White House as it went on.
That sounds like way too complicated a plan for Trump.
ALl hell breaks loose with the MAGAs, congress can't be convened etc - so Trump sets up a "commission" to investigate the election. Remains as president whilst it is investigating - head of the commission Flynn & Lin Wood finds an astonishing number of irregularities.... Obviously and clearly doomed to failure but well this is Trump and he's deranged.
Correctly amongst the wiki pages for attempted autocoups.
Alex Salmond has launched an extraordinary personal attack on Nicola Sturgeon, calling her testimony to the inquiry into sexual assault claims made against him “simply untrue”.
In his submission to the inquiry, the former first minister said Ms Sturgeon misled parliament and broken the ministerial code which, if he is proven to be correct, would almost certainly spell the end of her political career.
Mr Salmond said the breaches included a failure to inform the civil service in good time of her meetings with him, and allowing the Scottish government to contest a civil court case against him despite having had legal advice that it was likely to collapse.
The allegations against Ms Sturgeon, who replaced Mr Salmond as first minister and leader of the SNP after the 2014 independence referendum, show how far relations have soured between the two most influential figures in the SNP have become.
The ministerial code says that any meetings about government business should be recorded and that ministers must ensure the government complies with the law. A minister found to have knowingly misled Holyrood “will be expected to offer their resignation”.
No. I bet on the 2020 market where I was correct and numerous No Mark Scotch experts were wrong. As a result this story is not relevant to my interests.
That said it smells like a process story to me.
I presume having seen the uselessness of the clown cars that are the alternative parties for indy, Salmond is now pinning his hopes on his protegé Cherry to be his representative on earth, and damn the consequences.
Alex Salmond has launched an extraordinary personal attack on Nicola Sturgeon, calling her testimony to the inquiry into sexual assault claims made against him “simply untrue”.
In his submission to the inquiry, the former first minister said Ms Sturgeon misled parliament and broken the ministerial code which, if he is proven to be correct, would almost certainly spell the end of her political career.
Mr Salmond said the breaches included a failure to inform the civil service in good time of her meetings with him, and allowing the Scottish government to contest a civil court case against him despite having had legal advice that it was likely to collapse.
The allegations against Ms Sturgeon, who replaced Mr Salmond as first minister and leader of the SNP after the 2014 independence referendum, show how far relations have soured between the two most influential figures in the SNP have become.
The ministerial code says that any meetings about government business should be recorded and that ministers must ensure the government complies with the law. A minister found to have knowingly misled Holyrood “will be expected to offer their resignation”.
No. I bet on the 2020 market where I was correct and numerous No Mark Scotch experts were wrong. As a result this story is not relevant to my interests.
That said it smells like a process story to me.
I presume having seen the uselessness of the clown cars that are the alternative parties for indy, Salmond is now pinning his hopes on his protegé Cherry to be his representative on earth, and damn the consequences.
You're generally so dry I cannot actually tell if Cherry being Salmond's protege is serious or comedic.
Sorry, I'll dampen up a bit
Protegé of Salmond (which a young Sturgeon definitely was) is too strong a word for a professional, middle aged woman who's been around the block a few times, but I would be HUGELY surprised if there wasn't fairly regular contact between Cherry and Salmond.
That testing curve you see? That's *exactly* what we're going to see with vaccinations. It'll start slowly and grow and grow.
Over the course of a week, we'll go from "we're not doing enough!" to "oh, the end is in sight". I forecast that week to be in the first half of March.
I pray you are right, and you might well be right, the problem is can we get to March without total apocalypse?
I do not see how the NHS can sustain 3000+ new patients every day. IF it stays at that level. That's at least 150,000 new patients by the end of Feb. Impossible.
At that point Neil Ferguson's original prediction (much derided on here) of a possible death toll from Covid plus a crashed NHS, comes into focus. 500,000 dead.
The vaccines and lockdowns need to start working very very soon.
The lockdown will start showing effects by the beginning of next week. Yes, the new variant is more contagious.
But if people aren't seeing other people, the virus won't spread.
Go look at Belgium - disaster on the vaccines front, but at least they've got their second wave under control.
We don't know if these lockdowns are sufficient, against Supercovid, to drive R under 1. That is the enormous question yet to be answered.
Belgium is encouraging, but they didn't have the Cockney Pest, did they?
A disease can have an R of 100: if people simply aren't in contact with other people, then it won't spread.
A bigger issue is simply that lots of people are ignoring the lockdown.
If a disease isn't spreading, it can't have an R of 100. It is 0.
No, a disease will have a base R in a standard population. NPIs can reduce that R and the perfect lockdown can reduce the R to 0, however, the base R of the disease doesn't change and if lockdown were ended viral replication would be 100 again.
IANAE but I think the base R (R0) must depend on the characteristics of the population it has invaded as well as the virus's own properties. Thus R0 would be 0 in a population of hermits whatever its infectivity.
As I understand it, that is the differrence between R0 and R. R0 is the base infection rate if there is no kind of intervention and is driven by the biology. R is the observed rate which is affected by things such as herd immunity, vaccination, distancing, lockdowns etc.
I understand the difference between R0 and Rt. What I am saying is that R0 is itself a function of the characteristics of the invaded population. Perhaps someone with knowledge of the subject can point me to chapter and verse that says it ain't so.
Could you go to the YouTube channel of my business (Just Auto Insurance - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7ab43rJxA87wpPRvPCZOqA) and subscribe. We need to get to 100 subscribers by close of business today, and we're at 51. (We're competing with another company with almost the same name!)
Could you go to the YouTube channel of my business (Just Auto Insurance - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7ab43rJxA87wpPRvPCZOqA) and subscribe. We need to get to 100 subscribers by close of business today, and we're at 51. (We're competing with another company with almost the same name!)
Could you go to the YouTube channel of my business (Just Auto Insurance - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7ab43rJxA87wpPRvPCZOqA) and subscribe. We need to get to 100 subscribers by close of business today, and we're at 51. (We're competing with another company with almost the same name!)
Could you go to the YouTube channel of my business (Just Auto Insurance - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7ab43rJxA87wpPRvPCZOqA) and subscribe. We need to get to 100 subscribers by close of business today, and we're at 51. (We're competing with another company with almost the same name!)
Could you go to the YouTube channel of my business (Just Auto Insurance - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7ab43rJxA87wpPRvPCZOqA) and subscribe. We need to get to 100 subscribers by close of business today, and we're at 51. (We're competing with another company with almost the same name!)
Comments
NYS joins NJ in going over 2,000 deaths/1m. 27 states and DC now over 1,000/1m.
12 weeks after this weekends apparently
Belgium is encouraging, but they didn't have the Cockney Pest, did they?
A bigger issue is simply that lots of people are ignoring the lockdown.
- Their god quite definitely exists. He actually turned up.
- He has actually given them stuff.
- He is married to a woman who in theory can (or knows people who can) destroy any nation on the planet in 30 minutes.
- A couple of times, other countries have considered said religion a reason to consult with the UK before doing things that might interfere with their island.
So a religion who God exists and has used His power to help His People.
Does anyone know what the maximum steady state patient inflow is for Covid? Less than 3000/day I would imagine.
We must know roughly how long each patient stays in hospital (exit dead or alive) and the maximum capacity. That would give us the maximum sustainable rate.
8% of adults stayed over or hosted a stay over
35% of adults were hosts or guests on a day
9% traveled more than 30 minutes by car (presumably sizable overlap with the 5% who stopped away)
So loads stayed home, but fewer than I thought, and I think the staying over is about where I expected.
I think it's definitely enough to have been a noticeable part of the worsening of infection rates.
This might be where we have to go. Gawd elp us
The bold move was announced by her office Friday in a letter to Housen Democrats under a section titled: “Preventing an Unhinged President From Using the Nuclear Codes.”
Independent blog
There might be "big news" events like hospital oxygen running low or tents in hospital car parks, or of course if ambulance staff were instructed not to bring older patients to hospital at all, but more likely it's a gradual degrading of service, which has already begun. So history would record that the NHS coped, but sadly a lot of people died. (And afterwards a lot of doctors and nurses quietly leave the profession because of trauma and stress.)
I'm sure that someone has thought this all through, and I'd be interested to know what contingency planning is in place, but I doubt it would be shared with the public.
--AS
...seems to show that without the 29th spike (imagine it used to fill the "hole" around Christmas), things having been getting worse at a rather steady pace.
It's not like it is forever now. Just two months.
No. I bet on the 2020 market where I was correct and numerous No Mark Scotch experts were wrong. As a result this story is not relevant to my interests.
That said it smells like a process story to me.
Even if Covid 2020 wasn't spreadier than Covid 2019, that would be a problem, and we all think it is.
The vaccine will come, and it will save most of us. But England had seriously ballsed up the meantime; we may vaccinate quicker but have more deaths on the way.
I'm a physicist, not an expert on people. But psychologically, I can't see this ending well for us.
1. Bored
2. Lonely
3. Broke
And others are
4. Horny
There is no "base" R independent of how people interact.
So really the 25th Amendment has already been informally invoked, as it may have been on Wednesday when Pence gave the orders.
There's never been a situation like that in modern American history ; I wonder what else he's free and not free to do.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jPU1AYTxwg4
Like a Cat waking up from a ball removal operation
https://twitter.com/FootbaIlComedy/status/1347602741355540484
https://twitter.com/Trippy_Zipp/status/1347444913043087360/photo/1
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9125621/Jonathan-Van-Tam-went-curry-Boris-Johnson-told-Londoners-avoid-restaurants.html
Wonders how long Mail sat on this story on JVT, but a Boris Johnson speech doesn't have force of law.
I would imagine that someone in SAGE must have a rough number in mind, though, and we must be close to that capacity now.
If we assume that the current number (32000) in hospital is close to the maximum limit and the mean stay in hospital is similar to the first wave when Whitty said it was 8 days, then that implies we could 'cope' with 4000 hospital cases/day, depending on the exact distribution and how many end up in ICU.
The increase in numbers hospitalised don't suggest we are 'coping' with 3000/day. Does this mean that people are staying in hospital longer in this wave than the first?
"Events, dear boy, events".
I think this could be an event rather than a process (non) story as suggested as above. Itt has all the ingredients -mega-egos, the cause, and places in history. Above all its about the two big beasts of Scottish politics and one of them is out for blood. Potentially a Jacobean drama in the making.
We shall see.
https://twitter.com/alexmassie/status/1347602673026158593?s=20
Better than nothing still.
As far as I can tell taking the pulse of the nation no one gives a shit it took Sturgeon 2 days extra to notify civil servants of the meeting.
That's the only thing that is actually of any import and no one cares.
I'd be interested to know the mean duration. I'm quite surprised that it was as little as 8 days in the first wave. With better treatment more survive, and of course that will increase their time in hospital, but on the other than better treatment might mean that some others recover faster.
--AS
If he's got much of his mind left, he'll probably look to try and move himself and some of his assets out reasonably quickly.
https://twitter.com/LawDavF/status/1347605643654537222
I was going to say the sort who would wash their hands after shaking yours, but of course if you must shake hands that is definitely good advice as this year has shown.
Obviously and clearly doomed to failure but well this is Trump and he's deranged.
Correctly amongst the wiki pages for attempted autocoups.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-coup
Protegé of Salmond (which a young Sturgeon definitely was) is too strong a word for a professional, middle aged woman who's been around the block a few times, but I would be HUGELY surprised if there wasn't fairly regular contact between Cherry and Salmond.
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