These countries aren't vaccinating at anything like our rate. What was the point of all the work done on vaccine and ultra rapid clinical trial and emergency speed delivery, if Whitty then starts saying 'look at countries which haven't done that - their case numbers are warning'?
A warning of what?
We have about 22 million first vaccinations out of a population of 67 million. Of whom 54 million are over 16 and eligible for vaccination.
So we are about 20% through the job of vaccinating the eligible population.
Until that is done, a relaxation of measures *will* lead to an increase in cases.
The question is how bad that will be. Once everyone down to 40 (say) is given a first vaccination, the resulting hospital load may be manageable. But it will still result in a lot of damage.
There is zero evidence of what you say. Zero. Its just supposition. Based on thin air.
There is hard evidence a completely different, less onerous and toxic policy works just as well. In winter, not summer. Without vaccine carpet bombing.
Nobody in Britain wants to face the truth, because the truth is very frightening. We have destroyed our economy, our mental health and our children's futures for very little. That's I guess that's why you won't hear about the American experience here.
These countries aren't vaccinating at anything like our rate. What was the point of all the work done on vaccine and ultra rapid clinical trial and emergency speed delivery, if Whitty then starts saying 'look at countries which haven't done that - their case numbers are warning'?
A warning of what?
We have about 22 million first vaccinations out of a population of 67 million. Of whom 54 million are over 16 and eligible for vaccination.
So we are about 20% through the job of vaccinating the eligible population.
Until that is done, a relaxation of measures *will* lead to an increase in cases.
The question is how bad that will be. Once everyone down to 40 (say) is given a first vaccination, the resulting hospital load may be manageable. But it will still result in a lot of damage.
Not sure your numbers are quite right there.
You have to be over 18 not over 16 to be eligible AIUI.
Makes a difference of only about a million or so I think. I make the vax cohort 52-53 million.
If Labour do poorly in the locals surely a leadership challenge could be expected from the left of the party. After all Corbyn faced one after less than a year of his leadership reign. Could the left muster 20% of Lab MPs? possibly just about. Could they win the membership vote? - Harder to say, but with Starmer having been a big disapointment so far who is to say the centrist membership along with those on the left who hoped they backed a future election winner in 2020 would support him again?
In this scenario, those MPs critical of Starmer with a bit of punch, those who hate the Tories and have a fair bit of popular support amongst Momentum could oust him in the right conditions.
Clive Lewis at 33/1 and John Mcdonnell at 100/1 seem like petty good outside shouts of becoming next leader IMO and repesent far better odds than the likes of Khan and Burnham with no obvious route into parliament.
The issue of next labour leader is fascinating and depressing. If a glance at Oddschecker is right, it is a proper Grand National field, being huge, with no-one shorter than about 6 or 7/1 (Rayner), and by the time you get to the 5th and 8th favourite they are people no-one at all in the normal (non PB) world has heard of.
Non MP stars like David Miliband are out of sight, while non MP Burnham is 2nd favourite. (Has anyone any idea how badly Burnham would go down among Labours new middle class outside the north? Rayner would be the same).
It stands out a mile that Labour lack a top five or so heavy hitter stellar contest either now or the foreseeable future. The second favourite isn't even a MP. The mind boggles.
I think the general mood of the membership is disappointment that the polls are poor and that Starmer hasn't set out a detailed agenda yet, but a degree of acceptance of solid reasons for both. I know literally nobody who is arguing for a leadership challenge, and I have friends ranging from solidly Blairite to super-Corbynite. I'll be surprised if there's a challenge before 2023.
If we did eventually change, I think Burnham would be in with a shot if he'd found his way back to Parliament, but Rayner would be favourite at the moment. Ashworth has a reasonably high profile, as does Clive Lewis and of course John McDonnell (but he doesn't want it). It's a mistake to think that middle-class Labour voters dislike feisty northerners - we don't vote Labour in the hope of only electing people like us.
Yes, that's my take as well. There is absolutely no appetite for a leadership contest from any faction, and Starmer is safe for at least 18 months, regardless of the local election results. It's only the Tories on here who see any real threat to Starmer, isn't it? Plus maybe a couple of Corbynites.
If/when Starmer does go, his replacement will be female I think. You don't mention Nandy - I think she has a better chance than Rayner. A long-term shot is Bridget Phillipson: north-east MP, Shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury, rather able and could, I think, go down well with the public if given the opportunity.
Someone drew a graph of the maximum number of potential deaths remaining assuming a particular vaccine efficacy, which I thought was quite a good way to present the figures. I'll see if I can find it (or even draw one myself if I can find the time).
There are definitely enough vulnerable people out there if this continues to spread in the unvaccinated, under 18s, and the unlucky 10% whose vaccine didn't work well enough.
To be fair, I don't think Whitty was saying we should lock down again, he was saying that it was likely to happen and that the government will have to decide what to do about it (if anything).
The either he (possible) or the media (probable) have presented his views in a mangled fashion. The only substance to his intervention seems to be: "well look at continental Europe, this is what happens when your vax programme is a pile of shite, see!"
Well yes, Chris, but we knew that already old chap.
You would have to be a genius of stupidity to think that Whitty wasn't talking about the UK, and that he isn't expecting a third wave. And expecting deaths among the unvaccinated and - sadly - among some of the vaccinated too. I'm not sure how he could have made that any clearer, without tattooing it on the inside of the eyelids of the terminally stupid.
{picks up tattooing needle}
Where is Peston FRS (DipSHit) ? I have an idea....
These countries aren't vaccinating at anything like our rate. What was the point of all the work done on vaccine and ultra rapid clinical trial and emergency speed delivery, if Whitty then starts saying 'look at countries which haven't done that - their case numbers are warning'?
A warning of what?
We would very much like to hear right now from the very many posters on here who have defended the medics and SAGE to the hilt
As Whitty tries to completely stymie and even reverse their aspirations towards a quicker release from lockdown, will they still leap to his defence?
Its all gone a bit quiet.
This isn't rocket science. We still have a large adult population under 60 who are almost entirely unvaccinated. The evidence we have suggests that if we open up too quickly (ie before some (presumably large) proportion of them are protected), the case rate will skyrocket, again, and enough of them will end up in hospital to overwhelm the health services. Therefore, we stay as we are for a few more months until we're confident. Then, open things up as per the roadmap.
There is no hard evidence of that whatsoever. None. That is supposition.
There is, however, plenty of evidence that a policy of targeted protections, trusting your citizens and keeping one's economy open does a similar job of controlling spread, but f8cks your economy and your citizens much less. Hard evidence. from areas of different climates. Carried out over winter.
The UK locked down last March/April, and deaths plummeted (after a few weeks delay).
Then we opened up in the autumn, and cases/deaths skyrocketed.
Then we locked down again, and they decreased again.
Except for one blip over Christmas, where mixed messaging was directly linked to a spike in cases, and subsequently deaths.
How much more evidence do you need? Do NOT mention South Dakota, or I will be very cross.
Although I agree with everything you have just said, I want to know what happens if you get very cross, so it is very tempting to be, well Contrarian.
These countries aren't vaccinating at anything like our rate. What was the point of all the work done on vaccine and ultra rapid clinical trial and emergency speed delivery, if Whitty then starts saying 'look at countries which haven't done that - their case numbers are warning'?
A warning of what?
We would very much like to hear right now from the very many posters on here who have defended the medics and SAGE to the hilt
As Whitty tries to completely stymie and even reverse their aspirations towards a quicker release from lockdown, will they still leap to his defence?
Its all gone a bit quiet.
This isn't rocket science. We still have a large adult population under 60 who are almost entirely unvaccinated. The evidence we have suggests that if we open up too quickly (ie before some (presumably large) proportion of them are protected), the case rate will skyrocket, again, and enough of them will end up in hospital to overwhelm the health services. Therefore, we stay as we are for a few more months until we're confident. Then, open things up as per the roadmap.
There is no hard evidence of that whatsoever. None. That is supposition.
There is, however, plenty of evidence that a policy of targeted protections, trusting your citizens and keeping one's economy open does a similar job of controlling spread, but f8cks your economy and your citizens much less. Hard evidence. from areas of different climates. Carried out over winter.
The UK locked down last March/April, and deaths plummeted (after a few weeks delay).
Then we opened up in the autumn, and cases/deaths skyrocketed.
Then we locked down again, and they decreased again.
Except for one blip over Christmas, where mixed messaging was directly linked to a spike in cases, and subsequently deaths.
How much more evidence do you need? Do NOT mention South Dakota, or I will be very cross.
We opened up in June and cases did not sky rocket until mid November.
These countries aren't vaccinating at anything like our rate. What was the point of all the work done on vaccine and ultra rapid clinical trial and emergency speed delivery, if Whitty then starts saying 'look at countries which haven't done that - their case numbers are warning'?
A warning of what?
We would very much like to hear right now from the very many posters on here who have defended the medics and SAGE to the hilt
As Whitty tries to completely stymie and even reverse their aspirations towards a quicker release from lockdown, will they still leap to his defence?
Its all gone a bit quiet.
This isn't rocket science. We still have a large adult population under 60 who are almost entirely unvaccinated. The evidence we have suggests that if we open up too quickly (ie before some (presumably large) proportion of them are protected), the case rate will skyrocket, again, and enough of them will end up in hospital to overwhelm the health services. Therefore, we stay as we are for a few more months until we're confident. Then, open things up as per the roadmap.
There is no hard evidence of that whatsoever. None. That is supposition.
There is, however, plenty of evidence that a policy of targeted protections, trusting your citizens and keeping one's economy open does a similar job of controlling spread, but f8cks your economy and your citizens much less. Hard evidence. from areas of different climates. Carried out over winter.
What is it that we need to trust citizens to do?
Be responsible for one`s own health - via individual approach to risk and common sense and social distancing which is self-imposed rather than legally mandated.
These countries aren't vaccinating at anything like our rate. What was the point of all the work done on vaccine and ultra rapid clinical trial and emergency speed delivery, if Whitty then starts saying 'look at countries which haven't done that - their case numbers are warning'?
A warning of what?
We would very much like to hear right now from the very many posters on here who have defended the medics and SAGE to the hilt
As Whitty tries to completely stymie and even reverse their aspirations towards a quicker release from lockdown, will they still leap to his defence?
Its all gone a bit quiet.
This isn't rocket science. We still have a large adult population under 60 who are almost entirely unvaccinated. The evidence we have suggests that if we open up too quickly (ie before some (presumably large) proportion of them are protected), the case rate will skyrocket, again, and enough of them will end up in hospital to overwhelm the health services. Therefore, we stay as we are for a few more months until we're confident. Then, open things up as per the roadmap.
There is no hard evidence of that whatsoever. None. That is supposition.
There is, however, plenty of evidence that a policy of targeted protections, trusting your citizens and keeping one's economy open does a similar job of controlling spread, but f8cks your economy and your citizens much less. Hard evidence. from areas of different climates. Carried out over winter.
The UK locked down last March/April, and deaths plummeted (after a few weeks delay).
Then we opened up in the autumn, and cases/deaths skyrocketed.
Then we locked down again, and they decreased again.
Except for one blip over Christmas, where mixed messaging was directly linked to a spike in cases, and subsequently deaths.
How much more evidence do you need? Do NOT mention South Dakota, or I will be very cross.
We opened up in June and cases did not sky rocket until mid November.
Sure they did. Why do you think we got a lockdown in the North East from September?
These countries aren't vaccinating at anything like our rate. What was the point of all the work done on vaccine and ultra rapid clinical trial and emergency speed delivery, if Whitty then starts saying 'look at countries which haven't done that - their case numbers are warning'?
A warning of what?
We would very much like to hear right now from the very many posters on here who have defended the medics and SAGE to the hilt
As Whitty tries to completely stymie and even reverse their aspirations towards a quicker release from lockdown, will they still leap to his defence?
Its all gone a bit quiet.
This isn't rocket science. We still have a large adult population under 60 who are almost entirely unvaccinated. The evidence we have suggests that if we open up too quickly (ie before some (presumably large) proportion of them are protected), the case rate will skyrocket, again, and enough of them will end up in hospital to overwhelm the health services. Therefore, we stay as we are for a few more months until we're confident. Then, open things up as per the roadmap.
There is no hard evidence of that whatsoever. None. That is supposition.
There is, however, plenty of evidence that a policy of targeted protections, trusting your citizens and keeping one's economy open does a similar job of controlling spread, but f8cks your economy and your citizens much less. Hard evidence. from areas of different climates. Carried out over winter.
The UK locked down last March/April, and deaths plummeted (after a few weeks delay).
Then we opened up in the autumn, and cases/deaths skyrocketed.
Then we locked down again, and they decreased again.
Except for one blip over Christmas, where mixed messaging was directly linked to a spike in cases, and subsequently deaths.
How much more evidence do you need? Do NOT mention South Dakota, or I will be very cross.
Although I agree with everything you have just said, I want to know what happens if you get very cross, so it is very tempting to be, well Contrarian.
My posts get even more bizarre and unreadable. I hope that is a sufficient deterrent.
Not the ones done in school, unless policy has changed from this morning. They should be, but not AIUI. Positives from home tests will be followed up with PCR,
Claims of outliers on pb.com are very much more common than actual outliers, which should be very rare.
How many polls are there in a non-election year? Maybe one a week, or so.
Then assuming a Gaussian distribution with a σ of say 2 %, we can expect to be out by 3 σ or +/- 6 % about once every 7 years.
That is how unlikely an outlier of this magnitude is.
It feels right to me, I'm afraid. And tbh no shock at all. Landslide quite recently. The one key pledge - Leave - implemented. Pandemic beaten before anyone else due to vaccine triumph. EU screwing up big time and making Brexit look wise. "Boris" colonizing everyone's head space and altering the template of what a PM should look and feel like. And nobody with the remotest interest in hearing anything from Labour, who are thus reduced to trying not to irritate. The only surprise is that the Con lead is not bigger.
I hope to see the polls tighten once things have normalized in a few months.
What if what you've just described is the 'new normal'?
Afterall it was the prepandemic normal too.
That would be unfortunate. But I doubt it is. Just before the pandemic was right after the "BBC" election - the one won on a Boris, Brexit, Corbyn basis. Two of those will not be a factor next time and the one left - Johnson - will be starting to irritate many who voted for him in the likely absence of any tangible benefits from his period in office.
All 3 will still be factors.
Boris if popular will still be leader, if unpopular looks likely to be replaced with a popular alternative.
Brexit will still be a factor, though changed, in that it will have been delivered and the government will have clear and popular outcomes like vaccine success to trumpet as a result. While the Opposition has yet to tackle the issue, they either pledge to go back in to the EEA and adopt free movement and give up control of many things which will alienate some, or they don't and get outflanked by the Lib Dems who do and alienate others. Labour seem determined to avoid the issue today but that dilemma will need facing eventually.
Corbyn may be gone but Corbynism was about more than just one man. The left and the toxic legacies he leaves behind are still there - as are the fact that Labourites are still in denial. Pre Corbyn you had Miliband who was laughed at when he claimed against all reality that Labour didn't overspend. Getting rid of Corbyn doesn't get rid of what made Labour unpopular, it was not just the man - instead the man represented some of what is wrong with Labour. Like Brexit, Starmer has done little to address non-antisemitism reasons why Corbyn and Labour and the Shadow Cabinet Starmer was a part of was so unpopular.
If Labour do poorly in the locals surely a leadership challenge could be expected from the left of the party. After all Corbyn faced one after less than a year of his leadership reign. Could the left muster 20% of Lab MPs? possibly just about. Could they win the membership vote? - Harder to say, but with Starmer having been a big disapointment so far who is to say the centrist membership along with those on the left who hoped they backed a future election winner in 2020 would support him again?
In this scenario, those MPs critical of Starmer with a bit of punch, those who hate the Tories and have a fair bit of popular support amongst Momentum could oust him in the right conditions.
Clive Lewis at 33/1 and John Mcdonnell at 100/1 seem like petty good outside shouts of becoming next leader IMO and repesent far better odds than the likes of Khan and Burnham with no obvious route into parliament.
The issue of next labour leader is fascinating and depressing. If a glance at Oddschecker is right, it is a proper Grand National field, being huge, with no-one shorter than about 6 or 7/1 (Rayner), and by the time you get to the 5th and 8th favourite they are people no-one at all in the normal (non PB) world has heard of.
Non MP stars like David Miliband are out of sight, while non MP Burnham is 2nd favourite. (Has anyone any idea how badly Burnham would go down among Labours new middle class outside the north? Rayner would be the same).
It stands out a mile that Labour lack a top five or so heavy hitter stellar contest either now or the foreseeable future. The second favourite isn't even a MP. The mind boggles.
I think the general mood of the membership is disappointment that the polls are poor and that Starmer hasn't set out a detailed agenda yet, but a degree of acceptance of solid reasons for both. I know literally nobody who is arguing for a leadership challenge, and I have friends ranging from solidly Blairite to super-Corbynite. I'll be surprised if there's a challenge before 2023.
If we did eventually change, I think Burnham would be in with a shot if he'd found his way back to Parliament, but Rayner would be favourite at the moment. Ashworth has a reasonably high profile, as does Clive Lewis and of course John McDonnell (but he doesn't want it). It's a mistake to think that middle-class Labour voters dislike feisty northerners - we don't vote Labour in the hope of only electing people like us.
Yes, that's my take as well. There is absolutely no appetite for a leadership contest from any faction, and Starmer is safe for at least 18 months, regardless of the local election results. It's only the Tories on here who see any real threat to Starmer, isn't it? Plus maybe a couple of Corbynites.
If/when Starmer does go, his replacement will be female I think. You don't mention Nandy - I think she has a better chance than Rayner. A long-term shot is Bridget Phillipson: north-east MP, Shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury, rather able and could, I think, go down well with the public if given the opportunity.
Thomas-Symonds strikes me as by far the most competent and capable and intelligent Shadow Cabinet member and could be in with a shout eventually.
He is also Welsh born and raised rather than coming from North London
Dr Rosena Allin-Khan is the one to watch.
I think her penchant for conspiracy theories will rule her out sooner or later.
These countries aren't vaccinating at anything like our rate. What was the point of all the work done on vaccine and ultra rapid clinical trial and emergency speed delivery, if Whitty then starts saying 'look at countries which haven't done that - their case numbers are warning'?
A warning of what?
We would very much like to hear right now from the very many posters on here who have defended the medics and SAGE to the hilt
As Whitty tries to completely stymie and even reverse their aspirations towards a quicker release from lockdown, will they still leap to his defence?
Its all gone a bit quiet.
This isn't rocket science. We still have a large adult population under 60 who are almost entirely unvaccinated. The evidence we have suggests that if we open up too quickly (ie before some (presumably large) proportion of them are protected), the case rate will skyrocket, again, and enough of them will end up in hospital to overwhelm the health services. Therefore, we stay as we are for a few more months until we're confident. Then, open things up as per the roadmap.
There is no hard evidence of that whatsoever. None. That is supposition.
There is, however, plenty of evidence that a policy of targeted protections, trusting your citizens and keeping one's economy open does a similar job of controlling spread, but f8cks your economy and your citizens much less. Hard evidence. from areas of different climates. Carried out over winter.
The UK locked down last March/April, and deaths plummeted (after a few weeks delay).
Then we opened up in the autumn, and cases/deaths skyrocketed.
Then we locked down again, and they decreased again.
Except for one blip over Christmas, where mixed messaging was directly linked to a spike in cases, and subsequently deaths.
How much more evidence do you need? Do NOT mention South Dakota, or I will be very cross.
We opened up in June and cases did not sky rocket until mid November.
Yeah, no. They started climbing in late September, which means infections started rising in early September. Ie when the schools reopened.
These countries aren't vaccinating at anything like our rate. What was the point of all the work done on vaccine and ultra rapid clinical trial and emergency speed delivery, if Whitty then starts saying 'look at countries which haven't done that - their case numbers are warning'?
A warning of what?
We have about 22 million first vaccinations out of a population of 67 million. Of whom 54 million are over 16 and eligible for vaccination.
So we are about 20% through the job of vaccinating the eligible population.
Until that is done, a relaxation of measures *will* lead to an increase in cases.
The question is how bad that will be. Once everyone down to 40 (say) is given a first vaccination, the resulting hospital load may be manageable. But it will still result in a lot of damage.
There is zero evidence of what you say. Zero. Its just supposition. Based on thin air.
There is hard evidence a completely different, less onerous and toxic policy works just as well. In winter, not summer. Without vaccine carpet bombing.
Nobody in Britain wants to face the truth, because the truth is very frightening. We have destroyed our economy, our mental health and our children's futures for very little. That's I guess that's why you won't hear about the American experience here.
Happy to talk about the American experience any time. Especially the way Donald Trump got booted out of office for treating the pandemic exactly as you recommend - disparaging masks, lockdowns, social distancing, making up nonsense about medical science, and playing down the virus itself as nothing more than the flu.
Someone drew a graph of the maximum number of potential deaths remaining assuming a particular vaccine efficacy, which I thought was quite a good way to present the figures. I'll see if I can find it (or even draw one myself if I can find the time).
There are definitely enough vulnerable people out there if this continues to spread in the unvaccinated, under 18s, and the unlucky 10% whose vaccine didn't work well enough.
To be fair, I don't think Whitty was saying we should lock down again, he was saying that it was likely to happen and that the government will have to decide what to do about it (if anything).
The either he (possible) or the media (probable) have presented his views in a mangled fashion. The only substance to his intervention seems to be: "well look at continental Europe, this is what happens when your vax programme is a pile of shite, see!"
Well yes, Chris, but we knew that already old chap.
You would have to be a genius of stupidity to think that Whitty wasn't talking about the UK, and that he isn't expecting a third wave. And expecting deaths among the unvaccinated and - sadly - among some of the vaccinated too. I'm not sure how he could have made that any clearer, without tattooing it on the inside of the eyelids of the terminally stupid.
Who was suggesting otherwise? Your post was waspish in the extreme, without cause. What I am asking is, what value did Whitty's intervention add? We already know there will be a rise in cases when restrictions ease, and we know we are going to have to live with covid and that zero covid is a fantasy, and we also know that the Europeans are seeing case rises because their vax programme is incredibly slow.
So what is new about Whitty's intervention? What are it's implications? Are there any at all, or is it just yet more clickbait panicky stuff without any new evidence whatsoever?
These countries aren't vaccinating at anything like our rate. What was the point of all the work done on vaccine and ultra rapid clinical trial and emergency speed delivery, if Whitty then starts saying 'look at countries which haven't done that - their case numbers are warning'?
A warning of what?
We would very much like to hear right now from the very many posters on here who have defended the medics and SAGE to the hilt
As Whitty tries to completely stymie and even reverse their aspirations towards a quicker release from lockdown, will they still leap to his defence?
Its all gone a bit quiet.
This isn't rocket science. We still have a large adult population under 60 who are almost entirely unvaccinated. The evidence we have suggests that if we open up too quickly (ie before some (presumably large) proportion of them are protected), the case rate will skyrocket, again, and enough of them will end up in hospital to overwhelm the health services. Therefore, we stay as we are for a few more months until we're confident. Then, open things up as per the roadmap.
There is no hard evidence of that whatsoever. None. That is supposition.
There is, however, plenty of evidence that a policy of targeted protections, trusting your citizens and keeping one's economy open does a similar job of controlling spread, but f8cks your economy and your citizens much less. Hard evidence. from areas of different climates. Carried out over winter.
The UK locked down last March/April, and deaths plummeted (after a few weeks delay).
Then we opened up in the autumn, and cases/deaths skyrocketed.
Then we locked down again, and they decreased again.
Except for one blip over Christmas, where mixed messaging was directly linked to a spike in cases, and subsequently deaths.
How much more evidence do you need? Do NOT mention South Dakota, or I will be very cross.
Although I agree with everything you have just said, I want to know what happens if you get very cross, so it is very tempting to be, well Contrarian.
My posts get even more bizarre and unreadable. I hope that is a sufficient deterrent.
It is very tempting to go all Qanon and see you explode into drivel.
Why is Whitty not challenged with evidence from America that the link between covid and lockdown is not what he and the rest of the SAGE committee manifestly assume it is? ie a thermostatic central heating link?
Or on the models. Why did they get Sweden so utterly wrong if the model is an accurate reflection of real life?
The models are (if correctly specified) an accurate (within predictable uncertainty) reflection of what happens if the assumptions underlying the model are true.
The models from early on set out predictions on what would happen if various actions were taken/not taken. They assumed, largely, that in the absence of legal restrictions, people would behave as normal. Sweden diverged from the models because although few restrictions were put in early on the government did ask people to reduce doing certain things and the Swedes, being Swedes, did so (the model may still have been wrong in many ways, but results in Sweden being less bad than a modelled scenario of life as usual is not evidence for the model being wrong when life and actions were far from usual.
Early on, that's more or less what you can do - model what happens if you mostly stop certain activities and what happens in you carry on. You could of course model assuming that you ban nothing, but levels of x decrease by 40% anyway due to people taking precautions, but there's no real evidence base to get that 40%.
What we've seen so far will probably help to fine tune "worst case" models in future as we'll have a better idea of how bad things can get before people self-impose restrictions and avert the naive worst case.
These countries aren't vaccinating at anything like our rate. What was the point of all the work done on vaccine and ultra rapid clinical trial and emergency speed delivery, if Whitty then starts saying 'look at countries which haven't done that - their case numbers are warning'?
A warning of what?
We would very much like to hear right now from the very many posters on here who have defended the medics and SAGE to the hilt
As Whitty tries to completely stymie and even reverse their aspirations towards a quicker release from lockdown, will they still leap to his defence?
Its all gone a bit quiet.
This isn't rocket science. We still have a large adult population under 60 who are almost entirely unvaccinated. The evidence we have suggests that if we open up too quickly (ie before some (presumably large) proportion of them are protected), the case rate will skyrocket, again, and enough of them will end up in hospital to overwhelm the health services. Therefore, we stay as we are for a few more months until we're confident. Then, open things up as per the roadmap.
There is no hard evidence of that whatsoever. None. That is supposition.
There is, however, plenty of evidence that a policy of targeted protections, trusting your citizens and keeping one's economy open does a similar job of controlling spread, but f8cks your economy and your citizens much less. Hard evidence. from areas of different climates. Carried out over winter.
The UK locked down last March/April, and deaths plummeted (after a few weeks delay).
Then we opened up in the autumn, and cases/deaths skyrocketed.
Then we locked down again, and they decreased again.
Except for one blip over Christmas, where mixed messaging was directly linked to a spike in cases, and subsequently deaths.
How much more evidence do you need? Do NOT mention South Dakota, or I will be very cross.
We opened up in June and cases did not sky rocket until mid November.
Sure they did. Why do you think we got a lockdown in the North East from September?
Someone drew a graph of the maximum number of potential deaths remaining assuming a particular vaccine efficacy, which I thought was quite a good way to present the figures. I'll see if I can find it (or even draw one myself if I can find the time).
There are definitely enough vulnerable people out there if this continues to spread in the unvaccinated, under 18s, and the unlucky 10% whose vaccine didn't work well enough.
To be fair, I don't think Whitty was saying we should lock down again, he was saying that it was likely to happen and that the government will have to decide what to do about it (if anything).
The either he (possible) or the media (probable) have presented his views in a mangled fashion. The only substance to his intervention seems to be: "well look at continental Europe, this is what happens when your vax programme is a pile of shite, see!"
Well yes, Chris, but we knew that already old chap.
I think it's more a case of if we go "Awesome - lets have nonstop raves and parties *now*" then we will have a large number of cases quite soon.
The massive falls in the UK are the vaccinations + the lockdown.
Why is Whitty not challenged with evidence from America that the link between covid and lockdown is not what he and the rest of the SAGE committee manifestly assume it is? ie a thermostatic central heating link?
Probably due to the lack of such evidence from America.
These countries aren't vaccinating at anything like our rate. What was the point of all the work done on vaccine and ultra rapid clinical trial and emergency speed delivery, if Whitty then starts saying 'look at countries which haven't done that - their case numbers are warning'?
A warning of what?
We would very much like to hear right now from the very many posters on here who have defended the medics and SAGE to the hilt
As Whitty tries to completely stymie and even reverse their aspirations towards a quicker release from lockdown, will they still leap to his defence?
Its all gone a bit quiet.
This isn't rocket science. We still have a large adult population under 60 who are almost entirely unvaccinated. The evidence we have suggests that if we open up too quickly (ie before some (presumably large) proportion of them are protected), the case rate will skyrocket, again, and enough of them will end up in hospital to overwhelm the health services. Therefore, we stay as we are for a few more months until we're confident. Then, open things up as per the roadmap.
There is no hard evidence of that whatsoever. None. That is supposition.
There is, however, plenty of evidence that a policy of targeted protections, trusting your citizens and keeping one's economy open does a similar job of controlling spread, but f8cks your economy and your citizens much less. Hard evidence. from areas of different climates. Carried out over winter.
What is it that we need to trust citizens to do?
Be responsible for one`s own health - via individual approach to risk and common sense and social distancing which is self-imposed rather than legally mandated.
Especially now that the vulnerable who can't self-isolate have been vaccinated.
These countries aren't vaccinating at anything like our rate. What was the point of all the work done on vaccine and ultra rapid clinical trial and emergency speed delivery, if Whitty then starts saying 'look at countries which haven't done that - their case numbers are warning'?
A warning of what?
We would very much like to hear right now from the very many posters on here who have defended the medics and SAGE to the hilt
As Whitty tries to completely stymie and even reverse their aspirations towards a quicker release from lockdown, will they still leap to his defence?
Its all gone a bit quiet.
This isn't rocket science. We still have a large adult population under 60 who are almost entirely unvaccinated. The evidence we have suggests that if we open up too quickly (ie before some (presumably large) proportion of them are protected), the case rate will skyrocket, again, and enough of them will end up in hospital to overwhelm the health services. Therefore, we stay as we are for a few more months until we're confident. Then, open things up as per the roadmap.
There is no hard evidence of that whatsoever. None. That is supposition.
There is, however, plenty of evidence that a policy of targeted protections, trusting your citizens and keeping one's economy open does a similar job of controlling spread, but f8cks your economy and your citizens much less. Hard evidence. from areas of different climates. Carried out over winter.
The UK locked down last March/April, and deaths plummeted (after a few weeks delay).
Then we opened up in the autumn, and cases/deaths skyrocketed.
Then we locked down again, and they decreased again.
Except for one blip over Christmas, where mixed messaging was directly linked to a spike in cases, and subsequently deaths.
How much more evidence do you need? Do NOT mention South Dakota, or I will be very cross.
We opened up in June and cases did not sky rocket until mid November.
Sure they did. Why do you think we got a lockdown in the North East from September?
These countries aren't vaccinating at anything like our rate. What was the point of all the work done on vaccine and ultra rapid clinical trial and emergency speed delivery, if Whitty then starts saying 'look at countries which haven't done that - their case numbers are warning'?
A warning of what?
We would very much like to hear right now from the very many posters on here who have defended the medics and SAGE to the hilt
As Whitty tries to completely stymie and even reverse their aspirations towards a quicker release from lockdown, will they still leap to his defence?
Its all gone a bit quiet.
This isn't rocket science. We still have a large adult population under 60 who are almost entirely unvaccinated. The evidence we have suggests that if we open up too quickly (ie before some (presumably large) proportion of them are protected), the case rate will skyrocket, again, and enough of them will end up in hospital to overwhelm the health services. Therefore, we stay as we are for a few more months until we're confident. Then, open things up as per the roadmap.
There is no hard evidence of that whatsoever. None. That is supposition.
There is, however, plenty of evidence that a policy of targeted protections, trusting your citizens and keeping one's economy open does a similar job of controlling spread, but f8cks your economy and your citizens much less. Hard evidence. from areas of different climates. Carried out over winter.
The UK locked down last March/April, and deaths plummeted (after a few weeks delay).
Then we opened up in the autumn, and cases/deaths skyrocketed.
Then we locked down again, and they decreased again.
Except for one blip over Christmas, where mixed messaging was directly linked to a spike in cases, and subsequently deaths.
How much more evidence do you need? Do NOT mention South Dakota, or I will be very cross.
Although I agree with everything you have just said, I want to know what happens if you get very cross, so it is very tempting to be, well Contrarian.
My posts get even more bizarre and unreadable. I hope that is a sufficient deterrent.
If you want to become even more expert at that ,watch Harry and Meghan when,so I am told.... the implausible becomes outright ludicrous.
These countries aren't vaccinating at anything like our rate. What was the point of all the work done on vaccine and ultra rapid clinical trial and emergency speed delivery, if Whitty then starts saying 'look at countries which haven't done that - their case numbers are warning'?
A warning of what?
We would very much like to hear right now from the very many posters on here who have defended the medics and SAGE to the hilt
As Whitty tries to completely stymie and even reverse their aspirations towards a quicker release from lockdown, will they still leap to his defence?
Its all gone a bit quiet.
This isn't rocket science. We still have a large adult population under 60 who are almost entirely unvaccinated. The evidence we have suggests that if we open up too quickly (ie before some (presumably large) proportion of them are protected), the case rate will skyrocket, again, and enough of them will end up in hospital to overwhelm the health services. Therefore, we stay as we are for a few more months until we're confident. Then, open things up as per the roadmap.
There is no hard evidence of that whatsoever. None. That is supposition.
There is, however, plenty of evidence that a policy of targeted protections, trusting your citizens and keeping one's economy open does a similar job of controlling spread, but f8cks your economy and your citizens much less. Hard evidence. from areas of different climates. Carried out over winter.
The UK locked down last March/April, and deaths plummeted (after a few weeks delay).
Then we opened up in the autumn, and cases/deaths skyrocketed.
Then we locked down again, and they decreased again.
Except for one blip over Christmas, where mixed messaging was directly linked to a spike in cases, and subsequently deaths.
How much more evidence do you need? Do NOT mention South Dakota, or I will be very cross.
We opened up in June and cases did not sky rocket until mid November.
Sure they did. Why do you think we got a lockdown in the North East from September?
Isn't that the nature of exponential growth? It starts low and then BOOM. But you can't discredit the slow initial rise as meaningless.
And that is what we have seen in various bits of Europe. Slow rise and then boom....
A sensible plan would be to balance the withdrawal of lockdown measures with the increasing levels of vaccination. Until the vaccination program is complete...
Someone drew a graph of the maximum number of potential deaths remaining assuming a particular vaccine efficacy, which I thought was quite a good way to present the figures. I'll see if I can find it (or even draw one myself if I can find the time).
There are definitely enough vulnerable people out there if this continues to spread in the unvaccinated, under 18s, and the unlucky 10% whose vaccine didn't work well enough.
To be fair, I don't think Whitty was saying we should lock down again, he was saying that it was likely to happen and that the government will have to decide what to do about it (if anything).
The either he (possible) or the media (probable) have presented his views in a mangled fashion. The only substance to his intervention seems to be: "well look at continental Europe, this is what happens when your vax programme is a pile of shite, see!"
Well yes, Chris, but we knew that already old chap.
I think it's more a case of if we go "Awesome - lets have nonstop raves and parties *now*" then we will have a large number of cases quite soon.
The massive falls in the UK are the vaccinations + the lockdown.
WHO IS EVEN SUGGESTING THIS?
The Anti-Lockdown Clowns - "Why aren't we out partying after Feb 14th?"
These countries aren't vaccinating at anything like our rate. What was the point of all the work done on vaccine and ultra rapid clinical trial and emergency speed delivery, if Whitty then starts saying 'look at countries which haven't done that - their case numbers are warning'?
A warning of what?
We would very much like to hear right now from the very many posters on here who have defended the medics and SAGE to the hilt
As Whitty tries to completely stymie and even reverse their aspirations towards a quicker release from lockdown, will they still leap to his defence?
Its all gone a bit quiet.
This isn't rocket science. We still have a large adult population under 60 who are almost entirely unvaccinated. The evidence we have suggests that if we open up too quickly (ie before some (presumably large) proportion of them are protected), the case rate will skyrocket, again, and enough of them will end up in hospital to overwhelm the health services. Therefore, we stay as we are for a few more months until we're confident. Then, open things up as per the roadmap.
There is no hard evidence of that whatsoever. None. That is supposition.
There is, however, plenty of evidence that a policy of targeted protections, trusting your citizens and keeping one's economy open does a similar job of controlling spread, but f8cks your economy and your citizens much less. Hard evidence. from areas of different climates. Carried out over winter.
The UK locked down last March/April, and deaths plummeted (after a few weeks delay).
Then we opened up in the autumn, and cases/deaths skyrocketed.
Then we locked down again, and they decreased again.
Except for one blip over Christmas, where mixed messaging was directly linked to a spike in cases, and subsequently deaths.
How much more evidence do you need? Do NOT mention South Dakota, or I will be very cross.
We opened up in June and cases did not sky rocket until mid November.
Sure they did. Why do you think we got a lockdown in the North East from September?
Isn't that the nature of exponential growth? It starts low and then BOOM. But you can't discredit the slow initial rise as meaningless.
And that is what we have seen in various bits of Europe. Slow rise and then boom....
A sensible plan would be to balance the withdrawal of lockdown measures with the increasing levels of vaccination. Until the vaccination program is complete...
Strangely.....
Absolutely it is, but I'm not convinced at all that keeping indoor dining for example closed until near the end of May is remotely a sensible balance.
Someone drew a graph of the maximum number of potential deaths remaining assuming a particular vaccine efficacy, which I thought was quite a good way to present the figures. I'll see if I can find it (or even draw one myself if I can find the time).
There are definitely enough vulnerable people out there if this continues to spread in the unvaccinated, under 18s, and the unlucky 10% whose vaccine didn't work well enough.
To be fair, I don't think Whitty was saying we should lock down again, he was saying that it was likely to happen and that the government will have to decide what to do about it (if anything).
The either he (possible) or the media (probable) have presented his views in a mangled fashion. The only substance to his intervention seems to be: "well look at continental Europe, this is what happens when your vax programme is a pile of shite, see!"
Well yes, Chris, but we knew that already old chap.
You would have to be a genius of stupidity to think that Whitty wasn't talking about the UK, and that he isn't expecting a third wave. And expecting deaths among the unvaccinated and - sadly - among some of the vaccinated too. I'm not sure how he could have made that any clearer, without tattooing it on the inside of the eyelids of the terminally stupid.
Who was suggesting otherwise? Your post was waspish in the extreme, without cause. What I am asking is, what value did Whitty's intervention add? We already know there will be a rise in cases when restrictions ease, and we know we are going to have to live with covid and that zero covid is a fantasy, and we also know that the Europeans are seeing case rises because their vax programme is incredibly slow.
So what is new about Whitty's intervention? What are it's implications? Are there any at all, or is it just yet more clickbait panicky stuff without any new evidence whatsoever?
I hope it`s not hinting at the missing of the June date for removing legal restrictions entirely...
These countries aren't vaccinating at anything like our rate. What was the point of all the work done on vaccine and ultra rapid clinical trial and emergency speed delivery, if Whitty then starts saying 'look at countries which haven't done that - their case numbers are warning'?
A warning of what?
We would very much like to hear right now from the very many posters on here who have defended the medics and SAGE to the hilt
As Whitty tries to completely stymie and even reverse their aspirations towards a quicker release from lockdown, will they still leap to his defence?
Its all gone a bit quiet.
This isn't rocket science. We still have a large adult population under 60 who are almost entirely unvaccinated. The evidence we have suggests that if we open up too quickly (ie before some (presumably large) proportion of them are protected), the case rate will skyrocket, again, and enough of them will end up in hospital to overwhelm the health services. Therefore, we stay as we are for a few more months until we're confident. Then, open things up as per the roadmap.
There is no hard evidence of that whatsoever. None. That is supposition.
There is, however, plenty of evidence that a policy of targeted protections, trusting your citizens and keeping one's economy open does a similar job of controlling spread, but f8cks your economy and your citizens much less. Hard evidence. from areas of different climates. Carried out over winter.
The UK locked down last March/April, and deaths plummeted (after a few weeks delay).
Then we opened up in the autumn, and cases/deaths skyrocketed.
Then we locked down again, and they decreased again.
Except for one blip over Christmas, where mixed messaging was directly linked to a spike in cases, and subsequently deaths.
How much more evidence do you need? Do NOT mention South Dakota, or I will be very cross.
We opened up in June and cases did not sky rocket until mid November.
Sure they did. Why do you think we got a lockdown in the North East from September?
Isn't that the nature of exponential growth? It starts low and then BOOM. But you can't discredit the slow initial rise as meaningless.
Of course it is not meaningless, I am pointing out that the evidence that if "we open up before a large proportion of the country are protected the case rate WILL skyrocket and overwhelm the NHS" is being significantly exaggerated here, not that there is no evidence or that it is meaningless.
The reality is we do not know if he can speed up the end of restrictions yet but will know much more each week as new data on the vaccination comes in. Yet despite the mantra of the govt being data not dates, and us getting significant new information each week, we are only allowed to draw conclusions from the data once every five weeks, and then it is limited to an arbitrary set of restrictions being lifted.
Indeed, if 1000 false positive school kids have to stay home until they get a series of negative results so that everyone else can go to school, is that not worth the price? Even if you multiply that by 5 (the time to get a set of negatives), 5000 at home to let the rest of us go on seems fairly simple maths.
Someone drew a graph of the maximum number of potential deaths remaining assuming a particular vaccine efficacy, which I thought was quite a good way to present the figures. I'll see if I can find it (or even draw one myself if I can find the time).
There are definitely enough vulnerable people out there if this continues to spread in the unvaccinated, under 18s, and the unlucky 10% whose vaccine didn't work well enough.
To be fair, I don't think Whitty was saying we should lock down again, he was saying that it was likely to happen and that the government will have to decide what to do about it (if anything).
The either he (possible) or the media (probable) have presented his views in a mangled fashion. The only substance to his intervention seems to be: "well look at continental Europe, this is what happens when your vax programme is a pile of shite, see!"
Well yes, Chris, but we knew that already old chap.
I think it's more a case of if we go "Awesome - lets have nonstop raves and parties *now*" then we will have a large number of cases quite soon.
The massive falls in the UK are the vaccinations + the lockdown.
WHO IS EVEN SUGGESTING THIS?
The Anti-Lockdown Clowns - "Why aren't we out partying after Feb 14th?"
Sure, fair enough, so in that case Whitty was responding to a tiny handful of loons who advocate such early exits. Okay, I'm down with that. But, in which case, his comments hardly deserve the billing they have received – quite possible though it's a PB bubble thing.
I note the Conservatives have lost their majority on Oxfordshire County Council. A sitting Con councillor has gone Independent (in OCC terms, that's an Independent Independent, of whom there are now 4, rather than a Conservative-allied Independent, of whom there are 3).
Oxfordshire has a track record of this happening, going back decades if I remember rightly.
Why is Whitty not challenged with evidence from America that the link between covid and lockdown is not what he and the rest of the SAGE committee manifestly assume it is? ie a thermostatic central heating link?
Or on the models. Why did they get Sweden so utterly wrong if the model is an accurate reflection of real life?
The models are (if correctly specified) an accurate (within predictable uncertainty) reflection of what happens if the assumptions underlying the model are true.
The models from early on set out predictions on what would happen if various actions were taken/not taken. They assumed, largely, that in the absence of legal restrictions, people would behave as normal. Sweden diverged from the models because although few restrictions were put in early on the government did ask people to reduce doing certain things and the Swedes, being Swedes, did so (the model may still have been wrong in many ways, but results in Sweden being less bad than a modelled scenario of life as usual is not evidence for the model being wrong when life and actions were far from usual.
Early on, that's more or less what you can do - model what happens if you mostly stop certain activities and what happens in you carry on. You could of course model assuming that you ban nothing, but levels of x decrease by 40% anyway due to people taking precautions, but there's no real evidence base to get that 40%.
What we've seen so far will probably help to fine tune "worst case" models in future as we'll have a better idea of how bad things can get before people self-impose restrictions and avert the naive worst case.
@rcs1000 is always saying, when discussing formal lockdowns, that, and I paraphrase: "the people will do it anyway". And he says it to prove that one way or another there will be lockdown, whether legislatively or voluntarily.
But this is to miss the point. Given the huge restriction of our freedoms imposed upon us by the government, I would be much happier with a voluntary one. Would it work? Not sure. That is the crux of the govt action. They don't trust us. Not in a conspiracy theory kind of way, just that they don't trust us to do the "right" thing.
"Many states are fully open because well it's the States and freedom trumps everything else."
I don't know if he realised the irony of his post because it could be read as disparaging - but that's the thing - freedom trumps if not everything then a hell of a lot.
These countries aren't vaccinating at anything like our rate. What was the point of all the work done on vaccine and ultra rapid clinical trial and emergency speed delivery, if Whitty then starts saying 'look at countries which haven't done that - their case numbers are warning'?
A warning of what?
We would very much like to hear right now from the very many posters on here who have defended the medics and SAGE to the hilt
As Whitty tries to completely stymie and even reverse their aspirations towards a quicker release from lockdown, will they still leap to his defence?
Its all gone a bit quiet.
This isn't rocket science. We still have a large adult population under 60 who are almost entirely unvaccinated. The evidence we have suggests that if we open up too quickly (ie before some (presumably large) proportion of them are protected), the case rate will skyrocket, again, and enough of them will end up in hospital to overwhelm the health services. Therefore, we stay as we are for a few more months until we're confident. Then, open things up as per the roadmap.
There is no hard evidence of that whatsoever. None. That is supposition.
There is, however, plenty of evidence that a policy of targeted protections, trusting your citizens and keeping one's economy open does a similar job of controlling spread, but f8cks your economy and your citizens much less. Hard evidence. from areas of different climates. Carried out over winter.
The UK locked down last March/April, and deaths plummeted (after a few weeks delay).
Then we opened up in the autumn, and cases/deaths skyrocketed.
Then we locked down again, and they decreased again.
Except for one blip over Christmas, where mixed messaging was directly linked to a spike in cases, and subsequently deaths.
How much more evidence do you need? Do NOT mention South Dakota, or I will be very cross.
We opened up in June and cases did not sky rocket until mid November.
Sure they did. Why do you think we got a lockdown in the North East from September?
Isn't that the nature of exponential growth? It starts low and then BOOM. But you can't discredit the slow initial rise as meaningless.
And that is what we have seen in various bits of Europe. Slow rise and then boom....
A sensible plan would be to balance the withdrawal of lockdown measures with the increasing levels of vaccination. Until the vaccination program is complete...
Strangely.....
But that would suggest the frankly unbelievable idea that the government had come up with a sensible plan.
Whoever organises the next Indy rally (Covid permitting) will have to work out a flag policy. EU or Catalan? Surely can't fly both.
Talking of flags - did anyone catch a bit of the Queens Commonwealth day speech? The vexiphobes here would have spontaneously combusted when watching the opening....
Its interesting - we are doing huge numbers of tests, so presumably are finding most of the cases. This is also apparent in the similarity of the ZOE ap vs cases, which is pretty close. With a lot of the European countries, the testing rate is way lower, and the suspicion must be that their actual case numbers may be significantly higher than the number reported as positive. I think at the moment we are in a very good place, especially as we are close to first dosing almost everyone most at risk of death. I do still support the slow removal of restrictions - lets get this right and make this the last time.
Why is Whitty not challenged with evidence from America that the link between covid and lockdown is not what he and the rest of the SAGE committee manifestly assume it is? ie a thermostatic central heating link?
Or on the models. Why did they get Sweden so utterly wrong if the model is an accurate reflection of real life?
The models are (if correctly specified) an accurate (within predictable uncertainty) reflection of what happens if the assumptions underlying the model are true.
The models from early on set out predictions on what would happen if various actions were taken/not taken. They assumed, largely, that in the absence of legal restrictions, people would behave as normal. Sweden diverged from the models because although few restrictions were put in early on the government did ask people to reduce doing certain things and the Swedes, being Swedes, did so (the model may still have been wrong in many ways, but results in Sweden being less bad than a modelled scenario of life as usual is not evidence for the model being wrong when life and actions were far from usual.
Early on, that's more or less what you can do - model what happens if you mostly stop certain activities and what happens in you carry on. You could of course model assuming that you ban nothing, but levels of x decrease by 40% anyway due to people taking precautions, but there's no real evidence base to get that 40%.
What we've seen so far will probably help to fine tune "worst case" models in future as we'll have a better idea of how bad things can get before people self-impose restrictions and avert the naive worst case.
@rcs1000 is always saying, when discussing formal lockdowns, that, and I paraphrase: "the people will do it anyway". And he says it to prove that one way or another there will be lockdown, whether legislatively or voluntarily.
But this is to miss the point. Given the huge restriction of our freedoms imposed upon us by the government, I would be much happier with a voluntary one. Would it work? Not sure. That is the crux of the govt action. They don't trust us. Not in a conspiracy theory kind of way, just that they don't trust us to do the "right" thing.
"Many states are fully open because well it's the States and freedom trumps everything else."
I don't know if he realised the irony of his post because it could be read as disparaging - but that's the thing - freedom trumps if not everything then a hell of a lot.
Your first paragraph: To some degree the argument defeats itself. If "the people will do it anyway" then why the need for legal restrictions in the first place?
If Labour do poorly in the locals surely a leadership challenge could be expected from the left of the party. After all Corbyn faced one after less than a year of his leadership reign. Could the left muster 20% of Lab MPs? possibly just about. Could they win the membership vote? - Harder to say, but with Starmer having been a big disapointment so far who is to say the centrist membership along with those on the left who hoped they backed a future election winner in 2020 would support him again?
In this scenario, those MPs critical of Starmer with a bit of punch, those who hate the Tories and have a fair bit of popular support amongst Momentum could oust him in the right conditions.
Clive Lewis at 33/1 and John Mcdonnell at 100/1 seem like petty good outside shouts of becoming next leader IMO and repesent far better odds than the likes of Khan and Burnham with no obvious route into parliament.
The issue of next labour leader is fascinating and depressing. If a glance at Oddschecker is right, it is a proper Grand National field, being huge, with no-one shorter than about 6 or 7/1 (Rayner), and by the time you get to the 5th and 8th favourite they are people no-one at all in the normal (non PB) world has heard of.
Non MP stars like David Miliband are out of sight, while non MP Burnham is 2nd favourite. (Has anyone any idea how badly Burnham would go down among Labours new middle class outside the north? Rayner would be the same).
It stands out a mile that Labour lack a top five or so heavy hitter stellar contest either now or the foreseeable future. The second favourite isn't even a MP. The mind boggles.
I think the general mood of the membership is disappointment that the polls are poor and that Starmer hasn't set out a detailed agenda yet, but a degree of acceptance of solid reasons for both. I know literally nobody who is arguing for a leadership challenge, and I have friends ranging from solidly Blairite to super-Corbynite. I'll be surprised if there's a challenge before 2023.
If we did eventually change, I think Burnham would be in with a shot if he'd found his way back to Parliament, but Rayner would be favourite at the moment. Ashworth has a reasonably high profile, as does Clive Lewis and of course John McDonnell (but he doesn't want it). It's a mistake to think that middle-class Labour voters dislike feisty northerners - we don't vote Labour in the hope of only electing people like us.
Yes, that's my take as well. There is absolutely no appetite for a leadership contest from any faction, and Starmer is safe for at least 18 months, regardless of the local election results. It's only the Tories on here who see any real threat to Starmer, isn't it? Plus maybe a couple of Corbynites.
If/when Starmer does go, his replacement will be female I think. You don't mention Nandy - I think she has a better chance than Rayner. A long-term shot is Bridget Phillipson: north-east MP, Shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury, rather able and could, I think, go down well with the public if given the opportunity.
Thomas-Symonds strikes me as by far the most competent and capable and intelligent Shadow Cabinet member and could be in with a shout eventually.
He is also Welsh born and raised rather than coming from North London
I don't particularly disagree, but as I said in my post I'm of the strong view that Labour's next leader will be female.
Yes, it is getting a little bit embarrassing that the Woke Party could equally well be termed the Sausage Party. Or perhaps the Patriparty?
Sadly, another example of your juvenile, banal persona winning hands down over your much more interesting and worth-reading erudite, thoughtful persona. The former seems to be winning even more often these days.
Interesting that BBC news is reporting the Palace is getting Downing St. involved in their response to H&M
Have a feeling the response is going to be "robust" when it comes?
Campbell had it right on R4 lunchtime programme. There’s nothing they can say now that will do anything other than keep the story alive. They simply need to keep their heads down for a bit and work on how, down the road, they can demonstrate by actions rather than words that they have changed (and/or that many of the accusations were false).
Someone drew a graph of the maximum number of potential deaths remaining assuming a particular vaccine efficacy, which I thought was quite a good way to present the figures. I'll see if I can find it (or even draw one myself if I can find the time).
There are definitely enough vulnerable people out there if this continues to spread in the unvaccinated, under 18s, and the unlucky 10% whose vaccine didn't work well enough.
To be fair, I don't think Whitty was saying we should lock down again, he was saying that it was likely to happen and that the government will have to decide what to do about it (if anything).
The either he (possible) or the media (probable) have presented his views in a mangled fashion. The only substance to his intervention seems to be: "well look at continental Europe, this is what happens when your vax programme is a pile of shite, see!"
Well yes, Chris, but we knew that already old chap.
You would have to be a genius of stupidity to think that Whitty wasn't talking about the UK, and that he isn't expecting a third wave. And expecting deaths among the unvaccinated and - sadly - among some of the vaccinated too. I'm not sure how he could have made that any clearer, without tattooing it on the inside of the eyelids of the terminally stupid.
Who was suggesting otherwise? Your post was waspish in the extreme, without cause. What I am asking is, what value did Whitty's intervention add? We already know there will be a rise in cases when restrictions ease, and we know we are going to have to live with covid and that zero covid is a fantasy, and we also know that the Europeans are seeing case rises because their vax programme is incredibly slow.
So what is new about Whitty's intervention? What are it's implications? Are there any at all, or is it just yet more clickbait panicky stuff without any new evidence whatsoever?
I hope it`s not hinting at the missing of the June date for removing legal restrictions entirely...
"It`s the possibility of variants you see".
It's perfectly possible that @Malmesbury is right and he was just sounding a warning against the tiny group people who say "let's unlock right now and abandon the roadmap entirely", and that this is yet another nothing burger, served up by the media for clicks.
It looks like excess death figures should be 0 this week already, though that won't be reported for a few more weeks. Certainly by Easter we should be reporting no excess deaths at all.
At that point it should be time to reopen hospitality - indoors as well as outdoors. Hold off for reopening nightclubs etc for a bit longer perhaps, but being back to 4 July 2020 restrictions.
If Labour do poorly in the locals surely a leadership challenge could be expected from the left of the party. After all Corbyn faced one after less than a year of his leadership reign. Could the left muster 20% of Lab MPs? possibly just about. Could they win the membership vote? - Harder to say, but with Starmer having been a big disapointment so far who is to say the centrist membership along with those on the left who hoped they backed a future election winner in 2020 would support him again?
In this scenario, those MPs critical of Starmer with a bit of punch, those who hate the Tories and have a fair bit of popular support amongst Momentum could oust him in the right conditions.
Clive Lewis at 33/1 and John Mcdonnell at 100/1 seem like petty good outside shouts of becoming next leader IMO and repesent far better odds than the likes of Khan and Burnham with no obvious route into parliament.
The issue of next labour leader is fascinating and depressing. If a glance at Oddschecker is right, it is a proper Grand National field, being huge, with no-one shorter than about 6 or 7/1 (Rayner), and by the time you get to the 5th and 8th favourite they are people no-one at all in the normal (non PB) world has heard of.
Non MP stars like David Miliband are out of sight, while non MP Burnham is 2nd favourite. (Has anyone any idea how badly Burnham would go down among Labours new middle class outside the north? Rayner would be the same).
It stands out a mile that Labour lack a top five or so heavy hitter stellar contest either now or the foreseeable future. The second favourite isn't even a MP. The mind boggles.
I think the general mood of the membership is disappointment that the polls are poor and that Starmer hasn't set out a detailed agenda yet, but a degree of acceptance of solid reasons for both. I know literally nobody who is arguing for a leadership challenge, and I have friends ranging from solidly Blairite to super-Corbynite. I'll be surprised if there's a challenge before 2023.
If we did eventually change, I think Burnham would be in with a shot if he'd found his way back to Parliament, but Rayner would be favourite at the moment. Ashworth has a reasonably high profile, as does Clive Lewis and of course John McDonnell (but he doesn't want it). It's a mistake to think that middle-class Labour voters dislike feisty northerners - we don't vote Labour in the hope of only electing people like us.
Yes, that's my take as well. There is absolutely no appetite for a leadership contest from any faction, and Starmer is safe for at least 18 months, regardless of the local election results. It's only the Tories on here who see any real threat to Starmer, isn't it? Plus maybe a couple of Corbynites.
If/when Starmer does go, his replacement will be female I think. You don't mention Nandy - I think she has a better chance than Rayner. A long-term shot is Bridget Phillipson: north-east MP, Shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury, rather able and could, I think, go down well with the public if given the opportunity.
Thomas-Symonds strikes me as by far the most competent and capable and intelligent Shadow Cabinet member and could be in with a shout eventually.
He is also Welsh born and raised rather than coming from North London
I don't particularly disagree, but as I said in my post I'm of the strong view that Labour's next leader will be female.
Yes, it is getting a little bit embarrassing that the Woke Party could equally well be termed the Sausage Party. Or perhaps the Patriparty?
Sadly, another example of your juvenile, banal persona winning hands down over your much more interesting and worth-reading erudite, thoughtful persona. The former seems to be winning even more often these days.
Hasnt the BB personality ratio always been about 5:1?
Someone drew a graph of the maximum number of potential deaths remaining assuming a particular vaccine efficacy, which I thought was quite a good way to present the figures. I'll see if I can find it (or even draw one myself if I can find the time).
There are definitely enough vulnerable people out there if this continues to spread in the unvaccinated, under 18s, and the unlucky 10% whose vaccine didn't work well enough.
To be fair, I don't think Whitty was saying we should lock down again, he was saying that it was likely to happen and that the government will have to decide what to do about it (if anything).
The either he (possible) or the media (probable) have presented his views in a mangled fashion. The only substance to his intervention seems to be: "well look at continental Europe, this is what happens when your vax programme is a pile of shite, see!"
Well yes, Chris, but we knew that already old chap.
You would have to be a genius of stupidity to think that Whitty wasn't talking about the UK, and that he isn't expecting a third wave. And expecting deaths among the unvaccinated and - sadly - among some of the vaccinated too. I'm not sure how he could have made that any clearer, without tattooing it on the inside of the eyelids of the terminally stupid.
Who was suggesting otherwise? Your post was waspish in the extreme, without cause. What I am asking is, what value did Whitty's intervention add? We already know there will be a rise in cases when restrictions ease, and we know we are going to have to live with covid and that zero covid is a fantasy, and we also know that the Europeans are seeing case rises because their vax programme is incredibly slow.
So what is new about Whitty's intervention? What are it's implications? Are there any at all, or is it just yet more clickbait panicky stuff without any new evidence whatsoever?
I hope it`s not hinting at the missing of the June date for removing legal restrictions entirely...
"It`s the possibility of variants you see".
It's perfectly possible that @Malmesbury is right and he was just sounding a warning against the tiny group people who say "let's unlock right now and abandon the roadmap entirely", and that this is yet another nothing burger, served up by the media for clicks.
Possible. But not certain!
He said nothing new - and was comprehensive in demolishing the 'zero covid' idea.
Its interesting - we are doing huge numbers of tests, so presumably are finding most of the cases. This is also apparent in the similarity of the ZOE ap vs cases, which is pretty close. With a lot of the European countries, the testing rate is way lower, and the suspicion must be that their actual case numbers may be significantly higher than the number reported as positive. I think at the moment we are in a very good place, especially as we are close to first dosing almost everyone most at risk of death. I do still support the slow removal of restrictions - lets get this right and make this the last time.
UK Is currently testing at an.... interesting level. Which is about to go berserk when the 2 tests a week for secondary schools kick in...
These countries aren't vaccinating at anything like our rate. What was the point of all the work done on vaccine and ultra rapid clinical trial and emergency speed delivery, if Whitty then starts saying 'look at countries which haven't done that - their case numbers are warning'?
A warning of what?
We have about 22 million first vaccinations out of a population of 67 million. Of whom 54 million are over 16 and eligible for vaccination.
So we are about 20% through the job of vaccinating the eligible population.
Until that is done, a relaxation of measures *will* lead to an increase in cases.
The question is how bad that will be. Once everyone down to 40 (say) is given a first vaccination, the resulting hospital load may be manageable. But it will still result in a lot of damage.
I think that misses the role of having a large percentage with a degree of immunity. If we reach 70-80 % having vaccine and/or recovered Covid immunity, then the virus will find it a lot harder to spread. Not saying we won't still see cases and outbreaks, but the chance of the 3 day doubling from March 2020 will not be there.
Why is Whitty not challenged with evidence from America that the link between covid and lockdown is not what he and the rest of the SAGE committee manifestly assume it is? ie a thermostatic central heating link?
Or on the models. Why did they get Sweden so utterly wrong if the model is an accurate reflection of real life?
The models are (if correctly specified) an accurate (within predictable uncertainty) reflection of what happens if the assumptions underlying the model are true.
The models from early on set out predictions on what would happen if various actions were taken/not taken. They assumed, largely, that in the absence of legal restrictions, people would behave as normal. Sweden diverged from the models because although few restrictions were put in early on the government did ask people to reduce doing certain things and the Swedes, being Swedes, did so (the model may still have been wrong in many ways, but results in Sweden being less bad than a modelled scenario of life as usual is not evidence for the model being wrong when life and actions were far from usual.
Early on, that's more or less what you can do - model what happens if you mostly stop certain activities and what happens in you carry on. You could of course model assuming that you ban nothing, but levels of x decrease by 40% anyway due to people taking precautions, but there's no real evidence base to get that 40%.
What we've seen so far will probably help to fine tune "worst case" models in future as we'll have a better idea of how bad things can get before people self-impose restrictions and avert the naive worst case.
@rcs1000 is always saying, when discussing formal lockdowns, that, and I paraphrase: "the people will do it anyway". And he says it to prove that one way or another there will be lockdown, whether legislatively or voluntarily.
But this is to miss the point. Given the huge restriction of our freedoms imposed upon us by the government, I would be much happier with a voluntary one. Would it work? Not sure. That is the crux of the govt action. They don't trust us. Not in a conspiracy theory kind of way, just that they don't trust us to do the "right" thing.
"Many states are fully open because well it's the States and freedom trumps everything else."
I don't know if he realised the irony of his post because it could be read as disparaging - but that's the thing - freedom trumps if not everything then a hell of a lot.
Totally agree.
1) I'm not sure the criminalisation of human behaviour was a sensible one ethically. 2) If it is necessary in extremis, which I'd argue it was last Spring, and probably was for the first 8 weeks of this year, to prevent health service overload, then it needs to be rolled back relatively quickly. We can't be legislating for the most nervous amongst us.
And as Phil T pointed out earlier, this second point is especially valid since the truly vulnerable are pretty much now all in receipt of at least one jab.
Someone drew a graph of the maximum number of potential deaths remaining assuming a particular vaccine efficacy, which I thought was quite a good way to present the figures. I'll see if I can find it (or even draw one myself if I can find the time).
There are definitely enough vulnerable people out there if this continues to spread in the unvaccinated, under 18s, and the unlucky 10% whose vaccine didn't work well enough.
To be fair, I don't think Whitty was saying we should lock down again, he was saying that it was likely to happen and that the government will have to decide what to do about it (if anything).
The either he (possible) or the media (probable) have presented his views in a mangled fashion. The only substance to his intervention seems to be: "well look at continental Europe, this is what happens when your vax programme is a pile of shite, see!"
Well yes, Chris, but we knew that already old chap.
You would have to be a genius of stupidity to think that Whitty wasn't talking about the UK, and that he isn't expecting a third wave. And expecting deaths among the unvaccinated and - sadly - among some of the vaccinated too. I'm not sure how he could have made that any clearer, without tattooing it on the inside of the eyelids of the terminally stupid.
Who was suggesting otherwise? Your post was waspish in the extreme, without cause. What I am asking is, what value did Whitty's intervention add? We already know there will be a rise in cases when restrictions ease, and we know we are going to have to live with covid and that zero covid is a fantasy, and we also know that the Europeans are seeing case rises because their vax programme is incredibly slow.
So what is new about Whitty's intervention? What are it's implications? Are there any at all, or is it just yet more clickbait panicky stuff without any new evidence whatsoever?
I hope it`s not hinting at the missing of the June date for removing legal restrictions entirely...
"It`s the possibility of variants you see".
It's perfectly possible that @Malmesbury is right and he was just sounding a warning against the tiny group people who say "let's unlock right now and abandon the roadmap entirely", and that this is yet another nothing burger, served up by the media for clicks.
Possible. But not certain!
I think you are right. But from our bunkers it is difficult to not come over @contrarian from time to time. (Pardon the expression.)
Its interesting - we are doing huge numbers of tests, so presumably are finding most of the cases. This is also apparent in the similarity of the ZOE ap vs cases, which is pretty close. With a lot of the European countries, the testing rate is way lower, and the suspicion must be that their actual case numbers may be significantly higher than the number reported as positive. I think at the moment we are in a very good place, especially as we are close to first dosing almost everyone most at risk of death. I do still support the slow removal of restrictions - lets get this right and make this the last time.
UK Is currently testing at an.... interesting level. Which is about to go berserk when the 2 tests a week for secondary schools kick in...
I don't think the school LTF tests are counted are they? In either tests done, or positives found figures.
Instead positives are referred to a PCR test which will count instead surely?
These countries aren't vaccinating at anything like our rate. What was the point of all the work done on vaccine and ultra rapid clinical trial and emergency speed delivery, if Whitty then starts saying 'look at countries which haven't done that - their case numbers are warning'?
A warning of what?
We would very much like to hear right now from the very many posters on here who have defended the medics and SAGE to the hilt
As Whitty tries to completely stymie and even reverse their aspirations towards a quicker release from lockdown, will they still leap to his defence?
Its all gone a bit quiet.
This isn't rocket science. We still have a large adult population under 60 who are almost entirely unvaccinated. The evidence we have suggests that if we open up too quickly (ie before some (presumably large) proportion of them are protected), the case rate will skyrocket, again, and enough of them will end up in hospital to overwhelm the health services. Therefore, we stay as we are for a few more months until we're confident. Then, open things up as per the roadmap.
There is no hard evidence of that whatsoever. None. That is supposition.
There is, however, plenty of evidence that a policy of targeted protections, trusting your citizens and keeping one's economy open does a similar job of controlling spread, but f8cks your economy and your citizens much less. Hard evidence. from areas of different climates. Carried out over winter.
The UK locked down last March/April, and deaths plummeted (after a few weeks delay).
Then we opened up in the autumn, and cases/deaths skyrocketed.
Then we locked down again, and they decreased again.
Except for one blip over Christmas, where mixed messaging was directly linked to a spike in cases, and subsequently deaths.
How much more evidence do you need? Do NOT mention South Dakota, or I will be very cross.
We opened up in June and cases did not sky rocket until mid November.
Sure they did. Why do you think we got a lockdown in the North East from September?
Isn't that the nature of exponential growth? It starts low and then BOOM. But you can't discredit the slow initial rise as meaningless.
And that is what we have seen in various bits of Europe. Slow rise and then boom....
A sensible plan would be to balance the withdrawal of lockdown measures with the increasing levels of vaccination. Until the vaccination program is complete...
Strangely.....
The interesting thing will be to see how much, like last year, improvement across Europe coincides with the arrival of warmer weather.
Not that our immediate weather outlook is going to help any, with the storm from hell about to descend tomorrow through Saturday.
Why is Whitty not challenged with evidence from America that the link between covid and lockdown is not what he and the rest of the SAGE committee manifestly assume it is? ie a thermostatic central heating link?
Or on the models. Why did they get Sweden so utterly wrong if the model is an accurate reflection of real life?
The models are (if correctly specified) an accurate (within predictable uncertainty) reflection of what happens if the assumptions underlying the model are true.
The models from early on set out predictions on what would happen if various actions were taken/not taken. They assumed, largely, that in the absence of legal restrictions, people would behave as normal. Sweden diverged from the models because although few restrictions were put in early on the government did ask people to reduce doing certain things and the Swedes, being Swedes, did so (the model may still have been wrong in many ways, but results in Sweden being less bad than a modelled scenario of life as usual is not evidence for the model being wrong when life and actions were far from usual.
Early on, that's more or less what you can do - model what happens if you mostly stop certain activities and what happens in you carry on. You could of course model assuming that you ban nothing, but levels of x decrease by 40% anyway due to people taking precautions, but there's no real evidence base to get that 40%.
What we've seen so far will probably help to fine tune "worst case" models in future as we'll have a better idea of how bad things can get before people self-impose restrictions and avert the naive worst case.
@rcs1000 is always saying, when discussing formal lockdowns, that, and I paraphrase: "the people will do it anyway". And he says it to prove that one way or another there will be lockdown, whether legislatively or voluntarily.
But this is to miss the point. Given the huge restriction of our freedoms imposed upon us by the government, I would be much happier with a voluntary one. Would it work? Not sure. That is the crux of the govt action. They don't trust us. Not in a conspiracy theory kind of way, just that they don't trust us to do the "right" thing.
"Many states are fully open because well it's the States and freedom trumps everything else."
I don't know if he realised the irony of his post because it could be read as disparaging - but that's the thing - freedom trumps if not everything then a hell of a lot.
The difference between an official lock down and an unofficial one is that the government can be reasonably expected make some effort to compensate businesses and workers affected by the former while in the latter case many more will just go bust.
These countries aren't vaccinating at anything like our rate. What was the point of all the work done on vaccine and ultra rapid clinical trial and emergency speed delivery, if Whitty then starts saying 'look at countries which haven't done that - their case numbers are warning'?
A warning of what?
We would very much like to hear right now from the very many posters on here who have defended the medics and SAGE to the hilt
As Whitty tries to completely stymie and even reverse their aspirations towards a quicker release from lockdown, will they still leap to his defence?
Its all gone a bit quiet.
This isn't rocket science. We still have a large adult population under 60 who are almost entirely unvaccinated. The evidence we have suggests that if we open up too quickly (ie before some (presumably large) proportion of them are protected), the case rate will skyrocket, again, and enough of them will end up in hospital to overwhelm the health services. Therefore, we stay as we are for a few more months until we're confident. Then, open things up as per the roadmap.
There is no hard evidence of that whatsoever. None. That is supposition.
There is, however, plenty of evidence that a policy of targeted protections, trusting your citizens and keeping one's economy open does a similar job of controlling spread, but f8cks your economy and your citizens much less. Hard evidence. from areas of different climates. Carried out over winter.
The UK locked down last March/April, and deaths plummeted (after a few weeks delay).
Then we opened up in the autumn, and cases/deaths skyrocketed.
Then we locked down again, and they decreased again.
Except for one blip over Christmas, where mixed messaging was directly linked to a spike in cases, and subsequently deaths.
How much more evidence do you need? Do NOT mention South Dakota, or I will be very cross.
We opened up in June and cases did not sky rocket until mid November.
Sure they did. Why do you think we got a lockdown in the North East from September?
Isn't that the nature of exponential growth? It starts low and then BOOM. But you can't discredit the slow initial rise as meaningless.
And that is what we have seen in various bits of Europe. Slow rise and then boom....
A sensible plan would be to balance the withdrawal of lockdown measures with the increasing levels of vaccination. Until the vaccination program is complete...
Strangely.....
But that would suggest the frankly unbelievable idea that the government had come up with a sensible plan.
"...when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth?"
Even Gavin Williamson will forget to make a mistake, once in a while.
Why is Whitty not challenged with evidence from America that the link between covid and lockdown is not what he and the rest of the SAGE committee manifestly assume it is? ie a thermostatic central heating link?
Or on the models. Why did they get Sweden so utterly wrong if the model is an accurate reflection of real life?
The models are (if correctly specified) an accurate (within predictable uncertainty) reflection of what happens if the assumptions underlying the model are true.
The models from early on set out predictions on what would happen if various actions were taken/not taken. They assumed, largely, that in the absence of legal restrictions, people would behave as normal. Sweden diverged from the models because although few restrictions were put in early on the government did ask people to reduce doing certain things and the Swedes, being Swedes, did so (the model may still have been wrong in many ways, but results in Sweden being less bad than a modelled scenario of life as usual is not evidence for the model being wrong when life and actions were far from usual.
Early on, that's more or less what you can do - model what happens if you mostly stop certain activities and what happens in you carry on. You could of course model assuming that you ban nothing, but levels of x decrease by 40% anyway due to people taking precautions, but there's no real evidence base to get that 40%.
What we've seen so far will probably help to fine tune "worst case" models in future as we'll have a better idea of how bad things can get before people self-impose restrictions and avert the naive worst case.
And depending on processing power, you can build in Monte Carlo simulations for all the key assumptions of the model (or even Game Theory for those parts of the model dealing with people's decisions) to understand what range of outcomes are possible given stated uncertainties, and by playing with the settings, to what inputs the outputs are most sensitive.
I thoroughly approve of this type of modeling - I hate those who build a model and then believe it is unerringly accurate. Unfortunately, there seem to be a lot of people in the latter group.
If Labour do poorly in the locals surely a leadership challenge could be expected from the left of the party. After all Corbyn faced one after less than a year of his leadership reign. Could the left muster 20% of Lab MPs? possibly just about. Could they win the membership vote? - Harder to say, but with Starmer having been a big disapointment so far who is to say the centrist membership along with those on the left who hoped they backed a future election winner in 2020 would support him again?
In this scenario, those MPs critical of Starmer with a bit of punch, those who hate the Tories and have a fair bit of popular support amongst Momentum could oust him in the right conditions.
Clive Lewis at 33/1 and John Mcdonnell at 100/1 seem like petty good outside shouts of becoming next leader IMO and repesent far better odds than the likes of Khan and Burnham with no obvious route into parliament.
The issue of next labour leader is fascinating and depressing. If a glance at Oddschecker is right, it is a proper Grand National field, being huge, with no-one shorter than about 6 or 7/1 (Rayner), and by the time you get to the 5th and 8th favourite they are people no-one at all in the normal (non PB) world has heard of.
Non MP stars like David Miliband are out of sight, while non MP Burnham is 2nd favourite. (Has anyone any idea how badly Burnham would go down among Labours new middle class outside the north? Rayner would be the same).
It stands out a mile that Labour lack a top five or so heavy hitter stellar contest either now or the foreseeable future. The second favourite isn't even a MP. The mind boggles.
I think the general mood of the membership is disappointment that the polls are poor and that Starmer hasn't set out a detailed agenda yet, but a degree of acceptance of solid reasons for both. I know literally nobody who is arguing for a leadership challenge, and I have friends ranging from solidly Blairite to super-Corbynite. I'll be surprised if there's a challenge before 2023.
If we did eventually change, I think Burnham would be in with a shot if he'd found his way back to Parliament, but Rayner would be favourite at the moment. Ashworth has a reasonably high profile, as does Clive Lewis and of course John McDonnell (but he doesn't want it). It's a mistake to think that middle-class Labour voters dislike feisty northerners - we don't vote Labour in the hope of only electing people like us.
Yes, that's my take as well. There is absolutely no appetite for a leadership contest from any faction, and Starmer is safe for at least 18 months, regardless of the local election results. It's only the Tories on here who see any real threat to Starmer, isn't it? Plus maybe a couple of Corbynites.
If/when Starmer does go, his replacement will be female I think. You don't mention Nandy - I think she has a better chance than Rayner. A long-term shot is Bridget Phillipson: north-east MP, Shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury, rather able and could, I think, go down well with the public if given the opportunity.
Interesting that BBC news is reporting the Palace is getting Downing St. involved in their response to H&M
Have a feeling the response is going to be "robust" when it comes?
Campbell had it right on R4 lunchtime programme. There’s nothing they can say now that will do anything other than keep the story alive. They simply need to keep their heads down for a bit and work on how, down the road, they can demonstrate by actions rather than words that they have changed (and/or that many of the accusations were false).
Interesting that BBC news is reporting the Palace is getting Downing St. involved in their response to H&M
Have a feeling the response is going to be "robust" when it comes?
Campbell had it right on R4 lunchtime programme. There’s nothing they can say now that will do anything other than keep the story alive. They simply need to keep their heads down for a bit and work on how, down the road, they can demonstrate by actions rather than words that they have changed (and/or that many of the accusations were false).
Absolutely... say nothing... treat with the contempt it deserves. Nothing to be gained by a line by line rebuttal. Give nothing to the Tabloids .
SLAB deciding that they don’t want the votes of ex SLAB voters thinking of switching back from the SNP.
Given that those voters were happy to vote for a unionist party before, is it a certainty that they will never be so again? Seems like the wish might be father to the thought there.
Someone drew a graph of the maximum number of potential deaths remaining assuming a particular vaccine efficacy, which I thought was quite a good way to present the figures. I'll see if I can find it (or even draw one myself if I can find the time).
There are definitely enough vulnerable people out there if this continues to spread in the unvaccinated, under 18s, and the unlucky 10% whose vaccine didn't work well enough.
To be fair, I don't think Whitty was saying we should lock down again, he was saying that it was likely to happen and that the government will have to decide what to do about it (if anything).
The either he (possible) or the media (probable) have presented his views in a mangled fashion. The only substance to his intervention seems to be: "well look at continental Europe, this is what happens when your vax programme is a pile of shite, see!"
Well yes, Chris, but we knew that already old chap.
You would have to be a genius of stupidity to think that Whitty wasn't talking about the UK, and that he isn't expecting a third wave. And expecting deaths among the unvaccinated and - sadly - among some of the vaccinated too. I'm not sure how he could have made that any clearer, without tattooing it on the inside of the eyelids of the terminally stupid.
Who was suggesting otherwise? Your post was waspish in the extreme, without cause. What I am asking is, what value did Whitty's intervention add? We already know there will be a rise in cases when restrictions ease, and we know we are going to have to live with covid and that zero covid is a fantasy, and we also know that the Europeans are seeing case rises because their vax programme is incredibly slow.
So what is new about Whitty's intervention? What are it's implications? Are there any at all, or is it just yet more clickbait panicky stuff without any new evidence whatsoever?
I hope it`s not hinting at the missing of the June date for removing legal restrictions entirely...
"It`s the possibility of variants you see".
It's perfectly possible that @Malmesbury is right and he was just sounding a warning against the tiny group people who say "let's unlock right now and abandon the roadmap entirely", and that this is yet another nothing burger, served up by the media for clicks.
Possible. But not certain!
He said nothing new - and was comprehensive in demolishing the 'zero covid' idea.
Doesn't stop Chicken Licken contrarian.
Without wishing to do another set of posts on behalf of contrarian, as per last Friday, I think his (contrarian's) point is that to an extent the sky has already fallen on our heads via the economic, social, physiological, and psychological effects of lockdown.
The first two stories on the Beeb website (I appreciate you don't read it) are: "Don't think pandemic is over, Whitty warns", and "Whitty warns of further surge as society opens up".
How many people will scroll down to hear him say that the ratio of cases to deaths will go right down as a result of vaccinations? They will see "Whitty warns of surge" and they have seen so far how the government reacts to surges of the virus. (Clue: it's not good for the continued socialisation of your children.)
Claims of outliers on pb.com are very much more common than actual outliers, which should be very rare.
How many polls are there in a non-election year? Maybe one a week, or so.
Then assuming a Gaussian distribution with a σ of say 2 %, we can expect to be out by 3 σ or +/- 6 % about once every 7 years.
That is how unlikely an outlier of this magnitude is.
It feels right to me, I'm afraid. And tbh no shock at all. Landslide quite recently. The one key pledge - Leave - implemented. Pandemic beaten before anyone else due to vaccine triumph. EU screwing up big time and making Brexit look wise. "Boris" colonizing everyone's head space and altering the template of what a PM should look and feel like. And nobody with the remotest interest in hearing anything from Labour, who are thus reduced to trying not to irritate. The only surprise is that the Con lead is not bigger.
I hope to see the polls tighten once things have normalized in a few months.
What if what you've just described is the 'new normal'?
Afterall it was the prepandemic normal too.
That would be unfortunate. But I doubt it is. Just before the pandemic was right after the "BBC" election - the one won on a Boris, Brexit, Corbyn basis. Two of those will not be a factor next time and the one left - Johnson - will be starting to irritate many who voted for him in the likely absence of any tangible benefits from his period in office.
All 3 will still be factors.
Boris if popular will still be leader, if unpopular looks likely to be replaced with a popular alternative.
Brexit will still be a factor, though changed, in that it will have been delivered and the government will have clear and popular outcomes like vaccine success to trumpet as a result. While the Opposition has yet to tackle the issue, they either pledge to go back in to the EEA and adopt free movement and give up control of many things which will alienate some, or they don't and get outflanked by the Lib Dems who do and alienate others. Labour seem determined to avoid the issue today but that dilemma will need facing eventually.
Corbyn may be gone but Corbynism was about more than just one man. The left and the toxic legacies he leaves behind are still there - as are the fact that Labourites are still in denial. Pre Corbyn you had Miliband who was laughed at when he claimed against all reality that Labour didn't overspend. Getting rid of Corbyn doesn't get rid of what made Labour unpopular, it was not just the man - instead the man represented some of what is wrong with Labour. Like Brexit, Starmer has done little to address non-antisemitism reasons why Corbyn and Labour and the Shadow Cabinet Starmer was a part of was so unpopular.
No, that's not a good take. Too much wishful thinking from your perspective. The Corbyn problem WAS Corbyn. GE17 (before he became toxic) showed that a clear left manifestation of the party is not necessarily a mass turn off. And Johnson will stay, regardless of ratings (within reason). I'm more sure of this than ever and the betting has now caught up with me. He's there for the next GE.
Where you do have a point is Brexit. The Cons love that as a wedge issue and will be seeking to pick fights with Brussels for the foreseeable future in order to keep the pot boiling. This will be a challenge for Labour. But then again the voters might start to wise up a little. All Leavers are gullible but some are less gullible than others.
Why is Whitty not challenged with evidence from America that the link between covid and lockdown is not what he and the rest of the SAGE committee manifestly assume it is? ie a thermostatic central heating link?
Or on the models. Why did they get Sweden so utterly wrong if the model is an accurate reflection of real life?
The models are (if correctly specified) an accurate (within predictable uncertainty) reflection of what happens if the assumptions underlying the model are true.
The models from early on set out predictions on what would happen if various actions were taken/not taken. They assumed, largely, that in the absence of legal restrictions, people would behave as normal. Sweden diverged from the models because although few restrictions were put in early on the government did ask people to reduce doing certain things and the Swedes, being Swedes, did so (the model may still have been wrong in many ways, but results in Sweden being less bad than a modelled scenario of life as usual is not evidence for the model being wrong when life and actions were far from usual.
Early on, that's more or less what you can do - model what happens if you mostly stop certain activities and what happens in you carry on. You could of course model assuming that you ban nothing, but levels of x decrease by 40% anyway due to people taking precautions, but there's no real evidence base to get that 40%.
What we've seen so far will probably help to fine tune "worst case" models in future as we'll have a better idea of how bad things can get before people self-impose restrictions and avert the naive worst case.
And depending on processing power, you can build in Monte Carlo simulations for all the key assumptions of the model (or even Game Theory for those parts of the model dealing with people's decisions) to understand what range of outcomes are possible given stated uncertainties, and by playing with the settings, to what inputs the outputs are most sensitive.
I thoroughly approve of this type of modeling - I hate those who build a model and then believe it is unerringly accurate. Unfortunately, there seem to be a lot of people in the latter group.
I once built a portfolio optimisation model for GPU that optimised by using a gradient descent algorithm. You start from multiple random spots, and then see which way the "terrain" of the surface takes you.
I then added a layer which modified some of the assumptions behind the model. Using gradient descent, again.
Finally, for performance, it was using gradient descent to optimise the parameters of how it was running on the GPU.
So it was optimising the running of the optimisation of the assumptions it was optimising on.
It looks like excess death figures should be 0 this week already, though that won't be reported for a few more weeks. Certainly by Easter we should be reporting no excess deaths at all.
At that point it should be time to reopen hospitality - indoors as well as outdoors. Hold off for reopening nightclubs etc for a bit longer perhaps, but being back to 4 July 2020 restrictions.
If Whitty has his way, your wish list is just that.
Why is Whitty not challenged with evidence from America that the link between covid and lockdown is not what he and the rest of the SAGE committee manifestly assume it is? ie a thermostatic central heating link?
Or on the models. Why did they get Sweden so utterly wrong if the model is an accurate reflection of real life?
The models are (if correctly specified) an accurate (within predictable uncertainty) reflection of what happens if the assumptions underlying the model are true.
The models from early on set out predictions on what would happen if various actions were taken/not taken. They assumed, largely, that in the absence of legal restrictions, people would behave as normal. Sweden diverged from the models because although few restrictions were put in early on the government did ask people to reduce doing certain things and the Swedes, being Swedes, did so (the model may still have been wrong in many ways, but results in Sweden being less bad than a modelled scenario of life as usual is not evidence for the model being wrong when life and actions were far from usual.
Early on, that's more or less what you can do - model what happens if you mostly stop certain activities and what happens in you carry on. You could of course model assuming that you ban nothing, but levels of x decrease by 40% anyway due to people taking precautions, but there's no real evidence base to get that 40%.
What we've seen so far will probably help to fine tune "worst case" models in future as we'll have a better idea of how bad things can get before people self-impose restrictions and avert the naive worst case.
@rcs1000 is always saying, when discussing formal lockdowns, that, and I paraphrase: "the people will do it anyway". And he says it to prove that one way or another there will be lockdown, whether legislatively or voluntarily.
But this is to miss the point. Given the huge restriction of our freedoms imposed upon us by the government, I would be much happier with a voluntary one. Would it work? Not sure. That is the crux of the govt action. They don't trust us. Not in a conspiracy theory kind of way, just that they don't trust us to do the "right" thing.
"Many states are fully open because well it's the States and freedom trumps everything else."
I don't know if he realised the irony of his post because it could be read as disparaging - but that's the thing - freedom trumps if not everything then a hell of a lot.
The difference between an official lock down and an unofficial one is that the government can be reasonably expected make some effort to compensate businesses and workers affected by the former while in the latter case many more will just go bust.
That is very true. Plus being bloody-minded Brits we are as likely as not to ignore it.
But there is something that sits very uneasily with legislative restrictions on behaviour.
Why is Whitty not challenged with evidence from America that the link between covid and lockdown is not what he and the rest of the SAGE committee manifestly assume it is? ie a thermostatic central heating link?
Or on the models. Why did they get Sweden so utterly wrong if the model is an accurate reflection of real life?
The models are (if correctly specified) an accurate (within predictable uncertainty) reflection of what happens if the assumptions underlying the model are true.
The models from early on set out predictions on what would happen if various actions were taken/not taken. They assumed, largely, that in the absence of legal restrictions, people would behave as normal. Sweden diverged from the models because although few restrictions were put in early on the government did ask people to reduce doing certain things and the Swedes, being Swedes, did so (the model may still have been wrong in many ways, but results in Sweden being less bad than a modelled scenario of life as usual is not evidence for the model being wrong when life and actions were far from usual.
Early on, that's more or less what you can do - model what happens if you mostly stop certain activities and what happens in you carry on. You could of course model assuming that you ban nothing, but levels of x decrease by 40% anyway due to people taking precautions, but there's no real evidence base to get that 40%.
What we've seen so far will probably help to fine tune "worst case" models in future as we'll have a better idea of how bad things can get before people self-impose restrictions and avert the naive worst case.
@rcs1000 is always saying, when discussing formal lockdowns, that, and I paraphrase: "the people will do it anyway". And he says it to prove that one way or another there will be lockdown, whether legislatively or voluntarily.
But this is to miss the point. Given the huge restriction of our freedoms imposed upon us by the government, I would be much happier with a voluntary one. Would it work? Not sure. That is the crux of the govt action. They don't trust us. Not in a conspiracy theory kind of way, just that they don't trust us to do the "right" thing.
"Many states are fully open because well it's the States and freedom trumps everything else."
I don't know if he realised the irony of his post because it could be read as disparaging - but that's the thing - freedom trumps if not everything then a hell of a lot.
The problem with this debate is how exactly do you properly test the non-intervention strategy in a democracy? In most countries - certainly in this one - the press and the public were screaming for government intervention from early on, and it would be a brave government indeed that said no to the electorate on that kind of issue, same as if it refused to take defensive measures if we were being hit by missiles launched by an aggressor.
How many democracies worldwide left dealing with the pandemic up to the citizens? Sweden did to some extent, and that didn't work out too well. Ditto the USA. One could perhaps make a case for Japan, but even there various emergency powers were used, and they have a very particular type of society.
Why is Whitty not challenged with evidence from America that the link between covid and lockdown is not what he and the rest of the SAGE committee manifestly assume it is? ie a thermostatic central heating link?
Or on the models. Why did they get Sweden so utterly wrong if the model is an accurate reflection of real life?
The models are (if correctly specified) an accurate (within predictable uncertainty) reflection of what happens if the assumptions underlying the model are true.
The models from early on set out predictions on what would happen if various actions were taken/not taken. They assumed, largely, that in the absence of legal restrictions, people would behave as normal. Sweden diverged from the models because although few restrictions were put in early on the government did ask people to reduce doing certain things and the Swedes, being Swedes, did so (the model may still have been wrong in many ways, but results in Sweden being less bad than a modelled scenario of life as usual is not evidence for the model being wrong when life and actions were far from usual.
Early on, that's more or less what you can do - model what happens if you mostly stop certain activities and what happens in you carry on. You could of course model assuming that you ban nothing, but levels of x decrease by 40% anyway due to people taking precautions, but there's no real evidence base to get that 40%.
What we've seen so far will probably help to fine tune "worst case" models in future as we'll have a better idea of how bad things can get before people self-impose restrictions and avert the naive worst case.
And depending on processing power, you can build in Monte Carlo simulations for all the key assumptions of the model (or even Game Theory for those parts of the model dealing with people's decisions) to understand what range of outcomes are possible given stated uncertainties, and by playing with the settings, to what inputs the outputs are most sensitive.
I thoroughly approve of this type of modeling - I hate those who build a model and then believe it is unerringly accurate. Unfortunately, there seem to be a lot of people in the latter group.
I once built a portfolio optimisation model for GPU that optimised by using a gradient descent algorithm. You start from multiple random spots, and then see which way the "terrain" of the surface takes you.
I then added a layer which modified some of the assumptions behind the model. Using gradient descent, again.
Finally, for performance, it was using gradient descent to optimise the parameters of how it was running on the GPU.
So it was optimising the running of the optimisation of the assumptions it was optimising on.
LOL. I did something akin to that in a negotiating game at business school. Unfortunately, I ran at about 7 iterations of the modeling off the prior iteration of the model, when 3 iterations would have been optimal.
Interesting that BBC news is reporting the Palace is getting Downing St. involved in their response to H&M
Have a feeling the response is going to be "robust" when it comes?
I think discretion would be the better part of valour here but if they are getting involved that's because these allegations, and the way in which they were made, are so serious that this has now become political which necessitates a political response.
Why is Whitty not challenged with evidence from America that the link between covid and lockdown is not what he and the rest of the SAGE committee manifestly assume it is? ie a thermostatic central heating link?
Or on the models. Why did they get Sweden so utterly wrong if the model is an accurate reflection of real life?
The models are (if correctly specified) an accurate (within predictable uncertainty) reflection of what happens if the assumptions underlying the model are true.
The models from early on set out predictions on what would happen if various actions were taken/not taken. They assumed, largely, that in the absence of legal restrictions, people would behave as normal. Sweden diverged from the models because although few restrictions were put in early on the government did ask people to reduce doing certain things and the Swedes, being Swedes, did so (the model may still have been wrong in many ways, but results in Sweden being less bad than a modelled scenario of life as usual is not evidence for the model being wrong when life and actions were far from usual.
Early on, that's more or less what you can do - model what happens if you mostly stop certain activities and what happens in you carry on. You could of course model assuming that you ban nothing, but levels of x decrease by 40% anyway due to people taking precautions, but there's no real evidence base to get that 40%.
What we've seen so far will probably help to fine tune "worst case" models in future as we'll have a better idea of how bad things can get before people self-impose restrictions and avert the naive worst case.
@rcs1000 is always saying, when discussing formal lockdowns, that, and I paraphrase: "the people will do it anyway". And he says it to prove that one way or another there will be lockdown, whether legislatively or voluntarily.
But this is to miss the point. Given the huge restriction of our freedoms imposed upon us by the government, I would be much happier with a voluntary one. Would it work? Not sure. That is the crux of the govt action. They don't trust us. Not in a conspiracy theory kind of way, just that they don't trust us to do the "right" thing.
"Many states are fully open because well it's the States and freedom trumps everything else."
I don't know if he realised the irony of his post because it could be read as disparaging - but that's the thing - freedom trumps if not everything then a hell of a lot.
The problem with this debate is how exactly do you properly test the non-intervention strategy in a democracy? In most countries - certainly in this one - the press and the public were screaming for government intervention from early on, and it would be a brave government indeed that said no to the electorate on that kind of issue, same as if it refused to take defensive measures if we were being hit by missiles launched by an aggressor.
How many democracies worldwide left dealing with the pandemic up to the citizens? Sweden did to some extent, and that didn't work out well. Ditto the USA. One could perhaps make a case for Japan, but even there various emergency powers were used, and they have a very particular type of society.
I agree. It's a life and death call. They can't go back and say "ah well I see that didn't work so we'll try this other way now".
So I suppose it's a question of principles both for the government and for each person concerned. It has been interesting to see that when it came down to it, the fabled free market liberal Conservative government didn't trust its citizens to do the right thing.
Not saying they were right or wrong - and in the blitz, air raid wardens ensured that everyone's blackouts were up - but the totality of the restrictions of our freedoms has been mind-boggling. Equally mind-boggling has been the instant acceptance of this by so many so quickly, not least here on PB.
FURTHER EDIT - "From 11 March, vaccine supply will increase substantially and be sustained at a higher level for several weeks. Therefore, from the week of 15 March we are now asking systems to plan and support all vaccination centres and local vaccination services to deliver around twice the level of vaccine available in the week of 1 March."
I think we can all agree that width of their watermelon smiles is more important than the shade of picaninnies’ skin.
Given that Boris Johnson's use of the phrase 'watermelon smiles' and 'picaninnies' was also satirical (as I imagine you intend your post to be), can you highlight the difference between his usage of them and yours? It's not immediately apparent.
in fairness thats not 'Americans' but some millenial antifa bot on twitter. I suspect most Americans care less than most Brits about Harry and Meghan. 17m viewers is pretty weak for a nation of 330m people.
Another very poor day of vaccination numbers. This bumper March thing hasn't got off to a very good start.
It is at least ahead of last week. The arrival of the bumper March seems to keep being delayed.
Thought they were saying deliveries from Wednesday? In which case bumper numbers not showing through until the weekend. Second half of March should be much, much better.
Interesting that BBC news is reporting the Palace is getting Downing St. involved in their response to H&M
Have a feeling the response is going to be "robust" when it comes?
I think discretion would be the better part of valour here but if they are getting involved that's because these allegations, and the way in which they were made, are so serious that this has now become political which necessitates a political response.
Yes, I wonder if we'll see a statement to parliament by Boris on behalf of HMQ similar to the one John Major gave when Charles and Diana announced their divorce?
Why is Whitty not challenged with evidence from America that the link between covid and lockdown is not what he and the rest of the SAGE committee manifestly assume it is? ie a thermostatic central heating link?
Or on the models. Why did they get Sweden so utterly wrong if the model is an accurate reflection of real life?
The models are (if correctly specified) an accurate (within predictable uncertainty) reflection of what happens if the assumptions underlying the model are true.
The models from early on set out predictions on what would happen if various actions were taken/not taken. They assumed, largely, that in the absence of legal restrictions, people would behave as normal. Sweden diverged from the models because although few restrictions were put in early on the government did ask people to reduce doing certain things and the Swedes, being Swedes, did so (the model may still have been wrong in many ways, but results in Sweden being less bad than a modelled scenario of life as usual is not evidence for the model being wrong when life and actions were far from usual.
Early on, that's more or less what you can do - model what happens if you mostly stop certain activities and what happens in you carry on. You could of course model assuming that you ban nothing, but levels of x decrease by 40% anyway due to people taking precautions, but there's no real evidence base to get that 40%.
What we've seen so far will probably help to fine tune "worst case" models in future as we'll have a better idea of how bad things can get before people self-impose restrictions and avert the naive worst case.
@rcs1000 is always saying, when discussing formal lockdowns, that, and I paraphrase: "the people will do it anyway". And he says it to prove that one way or another there will be lockdown, whether legislatively or voluntarily.
But this is to miss the point. Given the huge restriction of our freedoms imposed upon us by the government, I would be much happier with a voluntary one. Would it work? Not sure. That is the crux of the govt action. They don't trust us. Not in a conspiracy theory kind of way, just that they don't trust us to do the "right" thing.
"Many states are fully open because well it's the States and freedom trumps everything else."
I don't know if he realised the irony of his post because it could be read as disparaging - but that's the thing - freedom trumps if not everything then a hell of a lot.
The difference between an official lock down and an unofficial one is that the government can be reasonably expected make some effort to compensate businesses and workers affected by the former while in the latter case many more will just go bust.
Exactly. Contrarian's logic would lead to a situation where you open nightclubs, ostensibly to help the economy, while trusting people not to go to them.
If Labour do poorly in the locals surely a leadership challenge could be expected from the left of the party. After all Corbyn faced one after less than a year of his leadership reign. Could the left muster 20% of Lab MPs? possibly just about. Could they win the membership vote? - Harder to say, but with Starmer having been a big disapointment so far who is to say the centrist membership along with those on the left who hoped they backed a future election winner in 2020 would support him again?
In this scenario, those MPs critical of Starmer with a bit of punch, those who hate the Tories and have a fair bit of popular support amongst Momentum could oust him in the right conditions.
Clive Lewis at 33/1 and John Mcdonnell at 100/1 seem like petty good outside shouts of becoming next leader IMO and repesent far better odds than the likes of Khan and Burnham with no obvious route into parliament.
The issue of next labour leader is fascinating and depressing. If a glance at Oddschecker is right, it is a proper Grand National field, being huge, with no-one shorter than about 6 or 7/1 (Rayner), and by the time you get to the 5th and 8th favourite they are people no-one at all in the normal (non PB) world has heard of.
Non MP stars like David Miliband are out of sight, while non MP Burnham is 2nd favourite. (Has anyone any idea how badly Burnham would go down among Labours new middle class outside the north? Rayner would be the same).
It stands out a mile that Labour lack a top five or so heavy hitter stellar contest either now or the foreseeable future. The second favourite isn't even a MP. The mind boggles.
I think the general mood of the membership is disappointment that the polls are poor and that Starmer hasn't set out a detailed agenda yet, but a degree of acceptance of solid reasons for both. I know literally nobody who is arguing for a leadership challenge, and I have friends ranging from solidly Blairite to super-Corbynite. I'll be surprised if there's a challenge before 2023.
If we did eventually change, I think Burnham would be in with a shot if he'd found his way back to Parliament, but Rayner would be favourite at the moment. Ashworth has a reasonably high profile, as does Clive Lewis and of course John McDonnell (but he doesn't want it). It's a mistake to think that middle-class Labour voters dislike feisty northerners - we don't vote Labour in the hope of only electing people like us.
Yes, that's my take as well. There is absolutely no appetite for a leadership contest from any faction, and Starmer is safe for at least 18 months, regardless of the local election results. It's only the Tories on here who see any real threat to Starmer, isn't it? Plus maybe a couple of Corbynites.
If/when Starmer does go, his replacement will be female I think. You don't mention Nandy - I think she has a better chance than Rayner. A long-term shot is Bridget Phillipson: north-east MP, Shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury, rather able and could, I think, go down well with the public if given the opportunity.
Thomas-Symonds strikes me as by far the most competent and capable and intelligent Shadow Cabinet member and could be in with a shout eventually.
He is also Welsh born and raised rather than coming from North London
I don't particularly disagree, but as I said in my post I'm of the strong view that Labour's next leader will be female.
Yes, it is getting a little bit embarrassing that the Woke Party could equally well be termed the Sausage Party. Or perhaps the Patriparty?
Sadly, another example of your juvenile, banal persona winning hands down over your much more interesting and worth-reading erudite, thoughtful persona. The former seems to be winning even more often these days.
You do seem to take it a bit personally if I don't go out of my way to stimulate your higher brain functions at all times, but really whether I'm juvenile or cerebral on here at any given moment I can't help but please my most important and indispensable audience - myself.
Why is Whitty not challenged with evidence from America that the link between covid and lockdown is not what he and the rest of the SAGE committee manifestly assume it is? ie a thermostatic central heating link?
Or on the models. Why did they get Sweden so utterly wrong if the model is an accurate reflection of real life?
The models are (if correctly specified) an accurate (within predictable uncertainty) reflection of what happens if the assumptions underlying the model are true.
The models from early on set out predictions on what would happen if various actions were taken/not taken. They assumed, largely, that in the absence of legal restrictions, people would behave as normal. Sweden diverged from the models because although few restrictions were put in early on the government did ask people to reduce doing certain things and the Swedes, being Swedes, did so (the model may still have been wrong in many ways, but results in Sweden being less bad than a modelled scenario of life as usual is not evidence for the model being wrong when life and actions were far from usual.
Early on, that's more or less what you can do - model what happens if you mostly stop certain activities and what happens in you carry on. You could of course model assuming that you ban nothing, but levels of x decrease by 40% anyway due to people taking precautions, but there's no real evidence base to get that 40%.
What we've seen so far will probably help to fine tune "worst case" models in future as we'll have a better idea of how bad things can get before people self-impose restrictions and avert the naive worst case.
@rcs1000 is always saying, when discussing formal lockdowns, that, and I paraphrase: "the people will do it anyway". And he says it to prove that one way or another there will be lockdown, whether legislatively or voluntarily.
But this is to miss the point. Given the huge restriction of our freedoms imposed upon us by the government, I would be much happier with a voluntary one. Would it work? Not sure. That is the crux of the govt action. They don't trust us. Not in a conspiracy theory kind of way, just that they don't trust us to do the "right" thing.
"Many states are fully open because well it's the States and freedom trumps everything else."
I don't know if he realised the irony of his post because it could be read as disparaging - but that's the thing - freedom trumps if not everything then a hell of a lot.
Yep, there's a legitimate debate to be had about that. I've not criticised the Swedish approach - it leads to more cases and deaths, but it has other benefits. I prefer the harder lockdown, but 'better' depends on how you value different things.
The practical problem with self-imposed lockdown as RCS mentions is that it comes later. 'Science led' lockdowns can look at the cases, R etc and apply a lockdown before the severe sickness and deaths get horrific. People largely only get scared enough to greatly change their behaviour when they can see locally/nationally a lot of people getting sick. That delay costs potentially a lot of lives while the extra 2-3 weeks of 'freedom' have limited utility
in fairness thats not 'Americans' but some millenial antifa bot on twitter. I suspect most Americans care less than most Brits about Harry and Meghan. 17m viewers is pretty weak for a nation of 330m people.
You say millenial as if its a bad thing.
As for 17m views that's not weak, that's extremely high for live overnight figures for non sporting events. Don't forget it doesn't include on demand viewing figures, which of course is how millenials consume TV since you brought them up.
Why is Whitty not challenged with evidence from America that the link between covid and lockdown is not what he and the rest of the SAGE committee manifestly assume it is? ie a thermostatic central heating link?
Or on the models. Why did they get Sweden so utterly wrong if the model is an accurate reflection of real life?
The models are (if correctly specified) an accurate (within predictable uncertainty) reflection of what happens if the assumptions underlying the model are true.
The models from early on set out predictions on what would happen if various actions were taken/not taken. They assumed, largely, that in the absence of legal restrictions, people would behave as normal. Sweden diverged from the models because although few restrictions were put in early on the government did ask people to reduce doing certain things and the Swedes, being Swedes, did so (the model may still have been wrong in many ways, but results in Sweden being less bad than a modelled scenario of life as usual is not evidence for the model being wrong when life and actions were far from usual.
Early on, that's more or less what you can do - model what happens if you mostly stop certain activities and what happens in you carry on. You could of course model assuming that you ban nothing, but levels of x decrease by 40% anyway due to people taking precautions, but there's no real evidence base to get that 40%.
What we've seen so far will probably help to fine tune "worst case" models in future as we'll have a better idea of how bad things can get before people self-impose restrictions and avert the naive worst case.
@rcs1000 is always saying, when discussing formal lockdowns, that, and I paraphrase: "the people will do it anyway". And he says it to prove that one way or another there will be lockdown, whether legislatively or voluntarily.
But this is to miss the point. Given the huge restriction of our freedoms imposed upon us by the government, I would be much happier with a voluntary one. Would it work? Not sure. That is the crux of the govt action. They don't trust us. Not in a conspiracy theory kind of way, just that they don't trust us to do the "right" thing.
"Many states are fully open because well it's the States and freedom trumps everything else."
I don't know if he realised the irony of his post because it could be read as disparaging - but that's the thing - freedom trumps if not everything then a hell of a lot.
The difference between an official lock down and an unofficial one is that the government can be reasonably expected make some effort to compensate businesses and workers affected by the former while in the latter case many more will just go bust.
That is very true. Plus being bloody-minded Brits we are as likely as not to ignore it.
But there is something that sits very uneasily with legislative restrictions on behaviour.
Another very poor day of vaccination numbers. This bumper March thing hasn't got off to a very good start.
It is at least ahead of last week. The arrival of the bumper March seems to keep being delayed.
Thought they were saying deliveries from Wednesday? In which case bumper numbers not showing through until the weekend. Second half of March should be much, much better.
Even with today's figures, considering its the weekend figures, its worth bearing in mind that will be about a third of all people of a particular age.
If the numbers do double then we could be talking next week potentially doing eg the equivalent of all 54 year olds in a single day.
These countries aren't vaccinating at anything like our rate. What was the point of all the work done on vaccine and ultra rapid clinical trial and emergency speed delivery, if Whitty then starts saying 'look at countries which haven't done that - their case numbers are warning'?
A warning of what?
We would very much like to hear right now from the very many posters on here who have defended the medics and SAGE to the hilt
As Whitty tries to completely stymie and even reverse their aspirations towards a quicker release from lockdown, will they still leap to his defence?
Its all gone a bit quiet.
This isn't rocket science. We still have a large adult population under 60 who are almost entirely unvaccinated. The evidence we have suggests that if we open up too quickly (ie before some (presumably large) proportion of them are protected), the case rate will skyrocket, again, and enough of them will end up in hospital to overwhelm the health services. Therefore, we stay as we are for a few more months until we're confident. Then, open things up as per the roadmap.
There is no hard evidence of that whatsoever. None. That is supposition.
There is, however, plenty of evidence that a policy of targeted protections, trusting your citizens and keeping one's economy open does a similar job of controlling spread, but f8cks your economy and your citizens much less. Hard evidence. from areas of different climates. Carried out over winter.
The UK locked down last March/April, and deaths plummeted (after a few weeks delay).
Then we opened up in the autumn, and cases/deaths skyrocketed.
Then we locked down again, and they decreased again.
Except for one blip over Christmas, where mixed messaging was directly linked to a spike in cases, and subsequently deaths.
How much more evidence do you need? Do NOT mention South Dakota, or I will be very cross.
Although I agree with everything you have just said, I want to know what happens if you get very cross, so it is very tempting to be, well Contrarian.
My posts get even more bizarre and unreadable. I hope that is a sufficient deterrent.
Do you then start posting under a different alias? Not naming any names, but I can think of a few posters whose contributions match what you'd apparently be like when very cross
Corbyn may be gone but Corbynism was about more than just one man. The left and the toxic legacies he leaves behind are still there - as are the fact that Labourites are still in denial. Pre Corbyn you had Miliband who was laughed at when he claimed against all reality that Labour didn't overspend. Getting rid of Corbyn doesn't get rid of what made Labour unpopular, it was not just the man - instead the man represented some of what is wrong with Labour. Like Brexit, Starmer has done little to address non-antisemitism reasons why Corbyn and Labour and the Shadow Cabinet Starmer was a part of was so unpopular.
As one wag quipped earlier, Labour economic policies always leave the economy broken unless its the Tories delivering them in which case they are sound and sensible.
The Labour government <2010 didn't overspend according to the Tory opposition of <2010 who both planned to match Labour's spending "pound for pound" and then accelerate the economic bubble even faster so that they could share in the proceeds of growth on top.
That they and their parrots have chosen to forget this doesn't mean that it didn't happen. Nor were we "bankrupt" as claimed - not when the <2020 government doubled out national debt and this government is printing cash by the zillion to throw into the Covid pit.
Regardless. What the nation needs is an economic plan that lasts longer than the next election. We are woefully invested into strategic infrastructure like Broadband, Roads, Rails, Education, Green Energy, front line health services. We need to deficit spend like crazy just to catch up. And when so much of our "debt" is owned by the Bank of England and thus isn't debt, we can do so.
A radical approach I know for the people where "investment" has been corrupted into "subsidy". Borrow money. Invest it. Deliver growth. Make a return on that investment...
Why is Whitty not challenged with evidence from America that the link between covid and lockdown is not what he and the rest of the SAGE committee manifestly assume it is? ie a thermostatic central heating link?
Or on the models. Why did they get Sweden so utterly wrong if the model is an accurate reflection of real life?
The models are (if correctly specified) an accurate (within predictable uncertainty) reflection of what happens if the assumptions underlying the model are true.
The models from early on set out predictions on what would happen if various actions were taken/not taken. They assumed, largely, that in the absence of legal restrictions, people would behave as normal. Sweden diverged from the models because although few restrictions were put in early on the government did ask people to reduce doing certain things and the Swedes, being Swedes, did so (the model may still have been wrong in many ways, but results in Sweden being less bad than a modelled scenario of life as usual is not evidence for the model being wrong when life and actions were far from usual.
Early on, that's more or less what you can do - model what happens if you mostly stop certain activities and what happens in you carry on. You could of course model assuming that you ban nothing, but levels of x decrease by 40% anyway due to people taking precautions, but there's no real evidence base to get that 40%.
What we've seen so far will probably help to fine tune "worst case" models in future as we'll have a better idea of how bad things can get before people self-impose restrictions and avert the naive worst case.
@rcs1000 is always saying, when discussing formal lockdowns, that, and I paraphrase: "the people will do it anyway". And he says it to prove that one way or another there will be lockdown, whether legislatively or voluntarily.
But this is to miss the point. Given the huge restriction of our freedoms imposed upon us by the government, I would be much happier with a voluntary one. Would it work? Not sure. That is the crux of the govt action. They don't trust us. Not in a conspiracy theory kind of way, just that they don't trust us to do the "right" thing.
"Many states are fully open because well it's the States and freedom trumps everything else."
I don't know if he realised the irony of his post because it could be read as disparaging - but that's the thing - freedom trumps if not everything then a hell of a lot.
The difference between an official lock down and an unofficial one is that the government can be reasonably expected make some effort to compensate businesses and workers affected by the former while in the latter case many more will just go bust.
That's a good point and an angle I tend to overlook.
Why is Whitty not challenged with evidence from America that the link between covid and lockdown is not what he and the rest of the SAGE committee manifestly assume it is? ie a thermostatic central heating link?
Or on the models. Why did they get Sweden so utterly wrong if the model is an accurate reflection of real life?
The models are (if correctly specified) an accurate (within predictable uncertainty) reflection of what happens if the assumptions underlying the model are true.
The models from early on set out predictions on what would happen if various actions were taken/not taken. They assumed, largely, that in the absence of legal restrictions, people would behave as normal. Sweden diverged from the models because although few restrictions were put in early on the government did ask people to reduce doing certain things and the Swedes, being Swedes, did so (the model may still have been wrong in many ways, but results in Sweden being less bad than a modelled scenario of life as usual is not evidence for the model being wrong when life and actions were far from usual.
Early on, that's more or less what you can do - model what happens if you mostly stop certain activities and what happens in you carry on. You could of course model assuming that you ban nothing, but levels of x decrease by 40% anyway due to people taking precautions, but there's no real evidence base to get that 40%.
What we've seen so far will probably help to fine tune "worst case" models in future as we'll have a better idea of how bad things can get before people self-impose restrictions and avert the naive worst case.
@rcs1000 is always saying, when discussing formal lockdowns, that, and I paraphrase: "the people will do it anyway". And he says it to prove that one way or another there will be lockdown, whether legislatively or voluntarily.
But this is to miss the point. Given the huge restriction of our freedoms imposed upon us by the government, I would be much happier with a voluntary one. Would it work? Not sure. That is the crux of the govt action. They don't trust us. Not in a conspiracy theory kind of way, just that they don't trust us to do the "right" thing.
"Many states are fully open because well it's the States and freedom trumps everything else."
I don't know if he realised the irony of his post because it could be read as disparaging - but that's the thing - freedom trumps if not everything then a hell of a lot.
The difference between an official lock down and an unofficial one is that the government can be reasonably expected make some effort to compensate businesses and workers affected by the former while in the latter case many more will just go bust.
That is very true. Plus being bloody-minded Brits we are as likely as not to ignore it.
But there is something that sits very uneasily with legislative restrictions on behaviour.
Says a bloody-minded Brit!
Trouble is we all think we're invincible. Perhaps not on PB, where the median age is I reckon around 45, but generally.
You mean he's not a socialist nutjob? Yes, that helps quite a bit with the whole 'getting votes' thing.
No, I mean that in a country where integrity is valued anyone who has been sacked as a journalist on the grounds of fabrication would not be in the running.
Perhaps it was his stellar performance as foreign secretary that won you over.
Comments
There is hard evidence a completely different, less onerous and toxic policy works just as well. In winter, not summer. Without vaccine carpet bombing.
Nobody in Britain wants to face the truth, because the truth is very frightening. We have destroyed our economy, our mental health and our children's futures for very little. That's I guess that's why you won't hear about the American experience here.
You have to be over 18 not over 16 to be eligible AIUI.
Makes a difference of only about a million or so I think. I make the vax cohort 52-53 million.
Where is Peston FRS (DipSHit) ? I have an idea....
Boris if popular will still be leader, if unpopular looks likely to be replaced with a popular alternative.
Brexit will still be a factor, though changed, in that it will have been delivered and the government will have clear and popular outcomes like vaccine success to trumpet as a result. While the Opposition has yet to tackle the issue, they either pledge to go back in to the EEA and adopt free movement and give up control of many things which will alienate some, or they don't and get outflanked by the Lib Dems who do and alienate others. Labour seem determined to avoid the issue today but that dilemma will need facing eventually.
Corbyn may be gone but Corbynism was about more than just one man. The left and the toxic legacies he leaves behind are still there - as are the fact that Labourites are still in denial. Pre Corbyn you had Miliband who was laughed at when he claimed against all reality that Labour didn't overspend. Getting rid of Corbyn doesn't get rid of what made Labour unpopular, it was not just the man - instead the man represented some of what is wrong with Labour. Like Brexit, Starmer has done little to address non-antisemitism reasons why Corbyn and Labour and the Shadow Cabinet Starmer was a part of was so unpopular.
So what is new about Whitty's intervention? What are it's implications? Are there any at all, or is it just yet more clickbait panicky stuff without any new evidence whatsoever?
The models from early on set out predictions on what would happen if various actions were taken/not taken. They assumed, largely, that in the absence of legal restrictions, people would behave as normal. Sweden diverged from the models because although few restrictions were put in early on the government did ask people to reduce doing certain things and the Swedes, being Swedes, did so (the model may still have been wrong in many ways, but results in Sweden being less bad than a modelled scenario of life as usual is not evidence for the model being wrong when life and actions were far from usual.
Early on, that's more or less what you can do - model what happens if you mostly stop certain activities and what happens in you carry on. You could of course model assuming that you ban nothing, but levels of x decrease by 40% anyway due to people taking precautions, but there's no real evidence base to get that 40%.
What we've seen so far will probably help to fine tune "worst case" models in future as we'll have a better idea of how bad things can get before people self-impose restrictions and avert the naive worst case.
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/conditionsanddiseases/bulletins/coronaviruscovid19infectionsurveypilot/march2021
A sensible plan would be to balance the withdrawal of lockdown measures with the increasing levels of vaccination. Until the vaccination program is complete...
Strangely.....
https://twitter.com/PoliticsForAlI/status/1369256778098212865
https://twitter.com/PoliticsForAlI/status/1369276269133770756
(By the way, how do I embed twits properly?)
"It`s the possibility of variants you see".
Have a feeling the response is going to be "robust" when it comes?
The reality is we do not know if he can speed up the end of restrictions yet but will know much more each week as new data on the vaccination comes in. Yet despite the mantra of the govt being data not dates, and us getting significant new information each week, we are only allowed to draw conclusions from the data once every five weeks, and then it is limited to an arbitrary set of restrictions being lifted.
But this is to miss the point. Given the huge restriction of our freedoms imposed upon us by the government, I would be much happier with a voluntary one. Would it work? Not sure. That is the crux of the govt action. They don't trust us. Not in a conspiracy theory kind of way, just that they don't trust us to do the "right" thing.
As @eek said, upthread:
"Many states are fully open because well it's the States and freedom trumps everything else."
I don't know if he realised the irony of his post because it could be read as disparaging - but that's the thing - freedom trumps if not everything then a hell of a lot.
I think at the moment we are in a very good place, especially as we are close to first dosing almost everyone most at risk of death.
I do still support the slow removal of restrictions - lets get this right and make this the last time.
Possible. But not certain!
At that point it should be time to reopen hospitality - indoors as well as outdoors. Hold off for reopening nightclubs etc for a bit longer perhaps, but being back to 4 July 2020 restrictions.
Doesn't stop Chicken Licken contrarian.
1) I'm not sure the criminalisation of human behaviour was a sensible one ethically.
2) If it is necessary in extremis, which I'd argue it was last Spring, and probably was for the first 8 weeks of this year, to prevent health service overload, then it needs to be rolled back relatively quickly. We can't be legislating for the most nervous amongst us.
And as Phil T pointed out earlier, this second point is especially valid since the truly vulnerable are pretty much now all in receipt of at least one jab.
Instead positives are referred to a PCR test which will count instead surely?
Not that our immediate weather outlook is going to help any, with the storm from hell about to descend tomorrow through Saturday.
Even Gavin Williamson will forget to make a mistake, once in a while.
Not sure about Von der Lying, though.
I thoroughly approve of this type of modeling - I hate those who build a model and then believe it is unerringly accurate. Unfortunately, there seem to be a lot of people in the latter group.
The first two stories on the Beeb website (I appreciate you don't read it) are: "Don't think pandemic is over, Whitty warns", and "Whitty warns of further surge as society opens up".
How many people will scroll down to hear him say that the ratio of cases to deaths will go right down as a result of vaccinations? They will see "Whitty warns of surge" and they have seen so far how the government reacts to surges of the virus. (Clue: it's not good for the continued socialisation of your children.)
Where you do have a point is Brexit. The Cons love that as a wedge issue and will be seeking to pick fights with Brussels for the foreseeable future in order to keep the pot boiling. This will be a challenge for Labour. But then again the voters might start to wise up a little. All Leavers are gullible but some are less gullible than others.
I then added a layer which modified some of the assumptions behind the model. Using gradient descent, again.
Finally, for performance, it was using gradient descent to optimise the parameters of how it was running on the GPU.
So it was optimising the running of the optimisation of the assumptions it was optimising on.
But there is something that sits very uneasily with legislative restrictions on behaviour.
How many democracies worldwide left dealing with the pandemic up to the citizens? Sweden did to some extent, and that didn't work out too well. Ditto the USA. One could perhaps make a case for Japan, but even there various emergency powers were used, and they have a very particular type of society.
So I suppose it's a question of principles both for the government and for each person concerned. It has been interesting to see that when it came down to it, the fabled free market liberal Conservative government didn't trust its citizens to do the right thing.
Not saying they were right or wrong - and in the blitz, air raid wardens ensured that everyone's blackouts were up - but the totality of the restrictions of our freedoms has been mind-boggling. Equally mind-boggling has been the instant acceptance of this by so many so quickly, not least here on PB.
'Scottish independence: Alister Jack says SNP could win indyref2 mandate in 2021'
https://tinyurl.com/rh48yeue
'Alister Jack says UK Government will take court action to stop Scottish independence referendum'
https://tinyurl.com/ueb233fs
https://twitter.com/Psyche1226/status/1368961686166704128
It was quite specific that supplies would be poor for the week starting the 8th - this week.
EDIT - https://www.england.nhs.uk/coronavirus/wp-content/uploads/sites/52/2021/03/C1165-COVID-19-vaccination-deployment-next-steps-and-plans-for-weeks-of-8-and-15-March.pdf
FURTHER EDIT - "From 11 March, vaccine supply will increase substantially and be sustained at a higher level for several weeks. Therefore, from the week of 15 March we are now asking systems to plan and support all vaccination centres and local vaccination services to deliver around twice the level of vaccine available in the week of 1 March."
Up to this week, his GP group has been restricted to 500 doses per week.
Next week they have been allocated 4,000.
https://twitter.com/stgoldst/status/1369066744145276928
The practical problem with self-imposed lockdown as RCS mentions is that it comes later. 'Science led' lockdowns can look at the cases, R etc and apply a lockdown before the severe sickness and deaths get horrific. People largely only get scared enough to greatly change their behaviour when they can see locally/nationally a lot of people getting sick. That delay costs potentially a lot of lives while the extra 2-3 weeks of 'freedom' have limited utility
As for 17m views that's not weak, that's extremely high for live overnight figures for non sporting events. Don't forget it doesn't include on demand viewing figures, which of course is how millenials consume TV since you brought them up.
If the numbers do double then we could be talking next week potentially doing eg the equivalent of all 54 year olds in a single day.
The Labour government <2010 didn't overspend according to the Tory opposition of <2010 who both planned to match Labour's spending "pound for pound" and then accelerate the economic bubble even faster so that they could share in the proceeds of growth on top.
That they and their parrots have chosen to forget this doesn't mean that it didn't happen. Nor were we "bankrupt" as claimed - not when the <2020 government doubled out national debt and this government is printing cash by the zillion to throw into the Covid pit.
Regardless. What the nation needs is an economic plan that lasts longer than the next election. We are woefully invested into strategic infrastructure like Broadband, Roads, Rails, Education, Green Energy, front line health services. We need to deficit spend like crazy just to catch up. And when so much of our "debt" is owned by the Bank of England and thus isn't debt, we can do so.
A radical approach I know for the people where "investment" has been corrupted into "subsidy". Borrow money. Invest it. Deliver growth. Make a return on that investment...
Perhaps it was his stellar performance as foreign secretary that won you over.
Good luck to Nazanin this week.