For the "it was an emergency! the pandemic justifies taking risks!" crowd I have one, to me, very obvious question: the successful pandemic projects have been those where money was given to groups with expertise (vaccine development most obviously) and they were told to do whatever it takes. Why was the T&T money not given (even in part) to the existing public health infrastructure, which already had experience in this area on a smaller scale?
Smaller scale is really underplaying it. The existing public health system has nothing like the capability required to deal with COVID-19. We are doing an absolutely incredible amount of testing now, and not any old rubbish but gold-standard PCR tests. So even if you used the public health teams, you would still need to spend a fortune on testing, and still need to recruit tens of thousands of people to expand the existing services.
Could you do Test & Trace cheaper and better? For sure. How about much cheaper and much better? Probably not. If you wanted a much cheaper and better Test & Trace you would have had to start from a completely different position to the one we were in.
In fact, the reason that they went outside the existing infrastructure for testing was that the people running the existing test infrastructure said they couldn't expand to mass testing - it would take multiple years.
Sure, but then they appear to have ignored the existing expertise when it came to the "trace" part of the T&T system. It’s no accident that local authorities, with no money, managed to vastly outperform the national T&T system; eventually the disparity became so obvious that the government allocated funding directly to local authorities for the purpose.
It’s also not clear (as others have rightly pointed out) that all that testing infrastructure was necessary - what’s the point in testing 100,000s of people daily if you can’t act on the results? None.
The justification for T&T was that it would come into it’s own after the initial lock down & prevent another surge. It utterly failed at this, at vast expense. People defending this baffle me.
Test and trace is pointless without effective isolation. The hotel industry is on it’s knees with thousands of empty rooms. People have been trusted to self isolate. Case numbers prove that many haven’t. It’s still not too late to ensure secure isolation in hotels for confirmed cases and all travellers from overseas. An earlier end to lockdown, so that we are back in business before the rest of Europe would pay for it. But it’s probably a different budget, so can’t be done.
Testing is not pointless. Tracing without more coercive isolation might be. The alternative, for a free liberal society, is of course encouraging people to isolate by other means but that was clearly deemed to be unworkable.
Pay them 3-5x their salary or a lump sum.
£1k per week and GPS tracking bracelets. Boom.
The cobra effect. Give someone £1000 pw and folk will be out there trying to catch it or be within 2m of someone who has it.
There's also the problem that (from what I recall on a posting in PB) hotels are not designed as quarantine depots - especially the unventilated corridors. They may actually be virus farms. I wouldn't be happy at being cooped up in one of them if it meant I was likely to catch the pox. It also raises issues about the validity of testing, esp at 10 days, if the isolation within the hotel is in fact poor.
£38 billion wasted? Hmm. If the sole metric of success is 'preventing another lockdown' then, yes. But I think testing millions of people a week must be providing at least some other benefit beyond that quite narrow view.
What benefits?
We had: Probably the world's most comprehensive testing system resulting in us having more accurate information about the spread of the virus than anyone else. A database which allowed us to do the genomic sequencing and the ability to check the spread of variants in all but real time. A large number of people traced and self isolating inhibiting the further spread of the virus. We now have the capacity to do mass testing facilitating the reopening of schools as a first step.
Could some things have been done better? Undoubtedly. Was it good value for money? Very hard to say. But if it is facilitating us coming out of lockdown a few weeks earlier (given the quality of information we have) then yes, it probably was.
Well said.
Its like the penny pinching about vaccines that Europe did. Could things have been done better here? Yes, of course. But compared to the cost of the pandemic, if T&T and the vaccine ends the pandemic a quarter earlier than would have otherwise been done then they'll more than repay their cost.
This cannot possibly be true. We're in lockdown and will remain so until the vaccination program is nearing completion. How on earth do you calculate a three month reduction in end date from that as a result of T&T?
Edit: the only serious defence of T&T for me, is that it's effectively just a way of massaging the unemployment figures downwards. And that most of the cost would have otherwise gone on benefit payments of one kind or another anyway.
There's "lockdown" and there's "restrictions". On most matrices, all being well, "lockdown" will end on 12 April. All remaining well "restrictions" will end on 21 June. Optimistically all adults will have been offerd a vaccine by the end of May. which is several weeks after 12 April.
Yes. And there's a sense where I think you can say lockdown is over now. I get the strong impression that most people are taking their own decisions on household mixing and meeting up with friends and family. They are not combing through the rules and guidelines to see precisely how many people they can meet up with, and precisely where. There will be some who wait for the government to grant express permission to go and sit with a pal on a parkbench but I think that's a small minority. Could be wrong but that's my sense of it.
I appreciate that this is just one view against another, but I don't agree. My observation is that there is a little, but very little rule-bending. In terms of what most people feel the ability to do, we are at maybe 10% of February 2020 levels of sociability. I haven't been in anyone else's house since Christmas day (in fact, I think the only private houses I have been in in the perma-lockdown of GM in the past year have been my parents' and my in-laws'). And I'd say I'm more willing to bend the rules than most.
And in any case, 'just ignore the rules, everyone else does' does not in my view satisfactorily bring lockdown to a close!
Again, this is just my observation; middle class South Manchester may not be typical.
Cabinet minister Grant Shapps said fewer British people had taken up the offer of shots in the U.K. after EU figures questioned the efficacy of the AstraZeneca vaccine, a clear reference to remarks from French President Emmanuel Macron, among others.
For the "it was an emergency! the pandemic justifies taking risks!" crowd I have one, to me, very obvious question: the successful pandemic projects have been those where money was given to groups with expertise (vaccine development most obviously) and they were told to do whatever it takes. Why was the T&T money not given (even in part) to the existing public health infrastructure, which already had experience in this area on a smaller scale?
Smaller scale is really underplaying it. The existing public health system has nothing like the capability required to deal with COVID-19. We are doing an absolutely incredible amount of testing now, and not any old rubbish but gold-standard PCR tests. So even if you used the public health teams, you would still need to spend a fortune on testing, and still need to recruit tens of thousands of people to expand the existing services.
Could you do Test & Trace cheaper and better? For sure. How about much cheaper and much better? Probably not. If you wanted a much cheaper and better Test & Trace you would have had to start from a completely different position to the one we were in.
In fact, the reason that they went outside the existing infrastructure for testing was that the people running the existing test infrastructure said they couldn't expand to mass testing - it would take multiple years.
Sure, but then they appear to have ignored the existing expertise when it came to the "trace" part of the T&T system. It’s no accident that local authorities, with no money, managed to vastly outperform the national T&T system; eventually the disparity became so obvious that the government allocated funding directly to local authorities for the purpose.
It’s also not clear (as others have rightly pointed out) that all that testing infrastructure was necessary - what’s the point in testing 100,000s of people daily if you can’t act on the results? None.
The justification for T&T was that it would come into it’s own after the initial lock down & prevent another surge. It utterly failed at this, at vast expense. People defending this baffle me.
Test and trace is pointless without effective isolation. The hotel industry is on it’s knees with thousands of empty rooms. People have been trusted to self isolate. Case numbers prove that many haven’t. It’s still not too late to ensure secure isolation in hotels for confirmed cases and all travellers from overseas. An earlier end to lockdown, so that we are back in business before the rest of Europe would pay for it. But it’s probably a different budget, so can’t be done.
Testing is not pointless. Tracing without more coercive isolation might be. The alternative, for a free liberal society, is of course encouraging people to isolate by other means but that was clearly deemed to be unworkable.
Testing isn't pointless, no, but the claimed benefits so far of our system is population monitoring and variant monitoring. Both of these can be done with an improved version of the ONS study. If the benefit is limited to those two areas (and I think that's probably about right) then we should build a testing system around that as it would be about 5% of the annual cost.
Why have you defined the benefits like that? Have you had a test yourself? If so, did you feel any benefit from it?
It's what the benefits were defined as by its defenders in this thread and by Prof. Whitty in the committee.
I have had a test, it was negative and absolutely horrible.
Why did you have a test?
Whether Professor Whitty defined the benefits as soley those, I'm not sure, I can't be bothered checking.
But the benefits of a test go way beyond those things, if you think about it for a moment.
Like I said, the cost benefit analysis is complex and will be controversial. But the briefings from that committee are not worth bothering with.
For the "it was an emergency! the pandemic justifies taking risks!" crowd I have one, to me, very obvious question: the successful pandemic projects have been those where money was given to groups with expertise (vaccine development most obviously) and they were told to do whatever it takes. Why was the T&T money not given (even in part) to the existing public health infrastructure, which already had experience in this area on a smaller scale?
Smaller scale is really underplaying it. The existing public health system has nothing like the capability required to deal with COVID-19. We are doing an absolutely incredible amount of testing now, and not any old rubbish but gold-standard PCR tests. So even if you used the public health teams, you would still need to spend a fortune on testing, and still need to recruit tens of thousands of people to expand the existing services.
Could you do Test & Trace cheaper and better? For sure. How about much cheaper and much better? Probably not. If you wanted a much cheaper and better Test & Trace you would have had to start from a completely different position to the one we were in.
In fact, the reason that they went outside the existing infrastructure for testing was that the people running the existing test infrastructure said they couldn't expand to mass testing - it would take multiple years.
Sure, but then they appear to have ignored the existing expertise when it came to the "trace" part of the T&T system. It’s no accident that local authorities, with no money, managed to vastly outperform the national T&T system; eventually the disparity became so obvious that the government allocated funding directly to local authorities for the purpose.
It’s also not clear (as others have rightly pointed out) that all that testing infrastructure was necessary - what’s the point in testing 100,000s of people daily if you can’t act on the results? None.
The justification for T&T was that it would come into it’s own after the initial lock down & prevent another surge. It utterly failed at this, at vast expense. People defending this baffle me.
Test and trace is pointless without effective isolation. The hotel industry is on it’s knees with thousands of empty rooms. People have been trusted to self isolate. Case numbers prove that many haven’t. It’s still not too late to ensure secure isolation in hotels for confirmed cases and all travellers from overseas. An earlier end to lockdown, so that we are back in business before the rest of Europe would pay for it. But it’s probably a different budget, so can’t be done.
Testing is not pointless. Tracing without more coercive isolation might be. The alternative, for a free liberal society, is of course encouraging people to isolate by other means but that was clearly deemed to be unworkable.
Pay them 3-5x their salary or a lump sum.
£1k per week and GPS tracking bracelets. Boom.
The cobra effect. Give someone £1000 pw and folk will be out there trying to catch it or be within 2m of someone who has it.
There's also the problem that (from what I recall on a posting in PB) hotels are not designed as quarantine depots - especially the unventilated corridors. They may actually be virus farms. I wouldn't be happy at being cooped up in one of them if it meant I was likely to catch the pox. It also raises issues about the validity of testing, esp at 10 days, if the isolation within the hotel is in fact poor.
Then make the isolation good. Security guards. If you're isolating, what are you doing on a corridor?
£38 billion wasted? Hmm. If the sole metric of success is 'preventing another lockdown' then, yes. But I think testing millions of people a week must be providing at least some other benefit beyond that quite narrow view.
What benefits?
We had: Probably the world's most comprehensive testing system resulting in us having more accurate information about the spread of the virus than anyone else. A database which allowed us to do the genomic sequencing and the ability to check the spread of variants in all but real time. A large number of people traced and self isolating inhibiting the further spread of the virus. We now have the capacity to do mass testing facilitating the reopening of schools as a first step.
Could some things have been done better? Undoubtedly. Was it good value for money? Very hard to say. But if it is facilitating us coming out of lockdown a few weeks earlier (given the quality of information we have) then yes, it probably was.
Well said.
Its like the penny pinching about vaccines that Europe did. Could things have been done better here? Yes, of course. But compared to the cost of the pandemic, if T&T and the vaccine ends the pandemic a quarter earlier than would have otherwise been done then they'll more than repay their cost.
This cannot possibly be true. We're in lockdown and will remain so until the vaccination program is nearing completion. How on earth do you calculate a three month reduction in end date from that as a result of T&T?
Edit: the only serious defence of T&T for me, is that it's effectively just a way of massaging the unemployment figures downwards. And that most of the cost would have otherwise gone on benefit payments of one kind or another anyway.
There's "lockdown" and there's "restrictions". On most matrices, all being well, "lockdown" will end on 12 April. All remaining well "restrictions" will end on 21 June. Optimistically all adults will have been offerd a vaccine by the end of May. which is several weeks after 12 April.
Either way, all those developments are being driven by the vaccine programme, and not at all because T&T is suddenly helping.
I am perfectly willing to accept there are some benefits to having advance warning as to when and where hospital admissions are going to start rising, or picking up new variants of the virus, but I can see zero evidence that T&T is contributing to the restrictions being lifted a single day ahead of when they otherwise would be.
T&T isn't "suddenly helping" it has always been helping. The vaccine programme is building upon T&T not instead of it.
Vaccinations are reducing R by about 0.03 per week. T&T (from memory) is reducing R by 0.3
So T&T is doing the same as 10 weeks of vaccinations in reducing R. But the 10 weeks of vaccinations are building upon T&T not instead of it.
Yeah, well, you're going to need to provide a source for that 0.3 number before we can make any more progress. I just don't believe it's had any significant impact on R, for the reasons that a) the delay between exposure and testing positive is too great, b) there's no way of checking compliance with isolation orders, and c) R is almost impossible to estimate with any reasonable degree of certainty at the best of times.
I don't have the figures to hand but 0.3 was the low end of the estimate, so I've gone for the low end.
(a) Is unavoidable but its about 24-48h for a test turnaround during which time people are supposed to self-isolate while awaiting the results. Your (a) is why test and trace can't be a silver bullet on its own, but it doesn't mean it has zero impact on transmission.
(b) True again, but again not being perfect doesn't mean zero impact on transmission. Do you really believe people are having zero isolation compared to what they would have after a positive test? Seriously?
(c) That's true, but again not being perfect doesn't mean we can't have an estimate.
The overwhelming majority of this country is still unvaccinated, and we vaccinated the vulnerable shielding people first, yet we have the lowest case rate in Europe. While doing the most tests in Europe. Why is that?
Do you seriously believe that testing has had ZERO impact on transmission and the entire reason are mostly unvaccinated public has very few cases is just due to vaccine impacts?
Yes. Testing has zero impact on transmission. Why the hell would it have an impact?
The tracing bit is the bit that's supposed to matter, but for the reasons outlined previously I won't believe it's working unless you show me something that convinces me otherwise.
And we have the lowest case rate in Europe because we have restrictions in place, and because we have significant levels of immunity in the population for various reasons (vaccine, prior infections).
And yet the country in Europe with the most testing and the most vaccines has by very far the fewest Covid cases. Despite most of the public still being unvaccinated of course.
The pandemic is costing us a trillion. It is World War levels of expenditure. In a World War you don't penny pinch on munitions.
The reason we have fewest cases in Europe is because 1 - huge vaccine programme, 2 - lockdown and 3 - very high levels of natural immunity due to Kent COVID.
The testing programme isn't relevant in any of these. You're adding up 2+2 and saying the answer is a banana.
1, 2, 3 and 4 Testing are all relevant factors.
The vast majority of the public are still unvaccinated and we aren't the only country in Europe with a lockdown or restrictions. The idea testing is having zero impact on isolation, just because we don't have GPS trackers, is ridiculous.
Testing is a completely irrelevant factor in this. Lockdown and vaccines are, again I'd like to see any scientific or statistical evidence of testing being a factor because it hasn't been so far throughout the pandemic. I highly doubt it would suddenly become one at the same coincidental time as we went into lockdown and started mass vaccinations.
Agreed, but the testing does at least provide a high level of reassurance that there isn't a new surge of cases somewhere under the radar.
To some degree, I think if that's what we want testing to do for us then we could ramp up the ONS study to report twice a week and in near real time with door knocking rather than based on postal tests which have a 5 day lead time meaning the data is already a week out of date.
A system like that would allow us to model viral rates per locality very accurately and in near real time just as our current system does.
The wider value in testing has always needed to be unlocked with a proper monitored isolation system. Every country which has successfully suppressed the virus with test and isolate has got very tough monitored isolation. It seems pointless to spend £38bn on testing and little to nothing on isolation measures when the latter is where the reduction in the R value is gained.
For the "it was an emergency! the pandemic justifies taking risks!" crowd I have one, to me, very obvious question: the successful pandemic projects have been those where money was given to groups with expertise (vaccine development most obviously) and they were told to do whatever it takes. Why was the T&T money not given (even in part) to the existing public health infrastructure, which already had experience in this area on a smaller scale?
Smaller scale is really underplaying it. The existing public health system has nothing like the capability required to deal with COVID-19. We are doing an absolutely incredible amount of testing now, and not any old rubbish but gold-standard PCR tests. So even if you used the public health teams, you would still need to spend a fortune on testing, and still need to recruit tens of thousands of people to expand the existing services.
Could you do Test & Trace cheaper and better? For sure. How about much cheaper and much better? Probably not. If you wanted a much cheaper and better Test & Trace you would have had to start from a completely different position to the one we were in.
In fact, the reason that they went outside the existing infrastructure for testing was that the people running the existing test infrastructure said they couldn't expand to mass testing - it would take multiple years.
Sure, but then they appear to have ignored the existing expertise when it came to the "trace" part of the T&T system. It’s no accident that local authorities, with no money, managed to vastly outperform the national T&T system; eventually the disparity became so obvious that the government allocated funding directly to local authorities for the purpose.
It’s also not clear (as others have rightly pointed out) that all that testing infrastructure was necessary - what’s the point in testing 100,000s of people daily if you can’t act on the results? None.
The justification for T&T was that it would come into it’s own after the initial lock down & prevent another surge. It utterly failed at this, at vast expense. People defending this baffle me.
Test and trace is pointless without effective isolation. The hotel industry is on it’s knees with thousands of empty rooms. People have been trusted to self isolate. Case numbers prove that many haven’t. It’s still not too late to ensure secure isolation in hotels for confirmed cases and all travellers from overseas. An earlier end to lockdown, so that we are back in business before the rest of Europe would pay for it. But it’s probably a different budget, so can’t be done.
Testing is not pointless. Tracing without more coercive isolation might be. The alternative, for a free liberal society, is of course encouraging people to isolate by other means but that was clearly deemed to be unworkable.
Pay them 3-5x their salary or a lump sum.
£1k per week and GPS tracking bracelets. Boom.
The cobra effect. Give someone £1000 pw and folk will be out there trying to catch it or be within 2m of someone who has it.
There's also the problem that (from what I recall on a posting in PB) hotels are not designed as quarantine depots - especially the unventilated corridors. They may actually be virus farms. I wouldn't be happy at being cooped up in one of them if it meant I was likely to catch the pox. It also raises issues about the validity of testing, esp at 10 days, if the isolation within the hotel is in fact poor.
Then make the isolation good. Security guards. If you're isolating, what are you doing on a corridor?
Air venting from rooms into the corridor, I understand, is an issue. And there are the staff, the people who bring the food etc.
I don't disagree about the isolation actually - there seems to have been no serious effort in the whole business from the start.
Boris has a piece in the Telegraph trying to save the union by promising a ton of road and rail projects. Dualing the A1 etc.
"So together with Transport Secretary Grant Shapps, I have asked Sir Peter Hendy to address the problem of Union connectivity. He has just produced his interim report, before final conclusions in the summer."
Good. Our infrastructure is backwards compared to so many other developed countries. For many reasons: 1. Crap project delivery. Dates all the way back to the open corruption of Ernest Marples in the 60s 2. Idiotic "who will pay for it" stupidity where investment = subsidy = communism. 3. NIMBYism. You can't build that (anything) there (anywhere) because it will Ruin England 4. Political short-termism. Projects get announced, then by the time there's been the usual NIMBY planning enquiry it either gets cancelled or truncated. Lots of roads to nowhere where the strategic plan gets lost in a change of government and yet another review 5. Lack of capability. Rail privatisation's lengthy hiatus in spending money on anything largely killed both the train building and infrastructure industry capabilities to do anything. Which is why we seem incapable of wiring a few miles of track or upgrading the signals without vast cost vs previous and foreign assistance.
If Shagger really wants to do something big, don't just reannounce already proposed schemes. Hive strategic planning off to a politically neutral organisation. Make the ORR independent of government. Almost all of these projects deliver either very positive ROI or positive community benefits. The ability to raise revenues from a variety of sources is critical - borrow money at government (near zero long term interest) rates on a long term payback.
They should also take a serious look at Musk's Boring Company. His ideas for standardising and massively speeding up the tunnel boring process are simple in concept, but appear to have potential massive cost savings. https://www.boringcompany.com/faq
I'd be interested to know what @Casino_Royale makes of them.
The Boring Company is interesting - but not for the technology. Which is mostly standard stuff.
What is interesting is why it might be cheaper and the opposition to it.
SpaceX ripped up the launch business by not following the contracting-out-to-a-contractor-who-contracts-out-to-a-{10 iterations here} model.
What the Boring Company is looking at is a similar concept. And the opposition to contracts with them is also interesting - I've heard quotes about "This is a high value, high pay industry - we don't want it disrupted"
A lot of people feed off big public contracts. When space launch went from 500 million a launch to 50 million (and falling) a lot of people lost their rice bowls.
Agreed; it's not even rocket science...
Again, the key insight is to standardise (in this case on a single tunnel diameter), and build and iterate designs, allowing for failures along the way.
Labour ought to be spending a great deal of their time looking into where the £38bn went.
If the vaccination project has the desired effect then almost everybody will be spending the Summer partying, on holidays and generally breathing a massive, extended sigh of relief. Spending on test and trace, along with everything else to do with the Plague, will disappear into the black hole of a public inquiry which will take years to deliberate and report, and which the great mass of the public will invest no time or interest in at all.
The pandemic is going to join Brexit as a settled topic which most voters want to put behind them. If Labour is to have a future then it has to look to the future, not the past.
To get back into the game Labour needs three things: for the Conservatives to stuff up the economic recovery, to detoxify itself with small-c conservative voters, and a clear alternative vision of what it would do differently. It can't do anything about point 1, and points 2 and 3 are both big challenges that require careful thought. Devoting undue time to criticisms that the Government can easily swat away would be pointless.
I agree with your 3 points but for me 2 and 3 are closely linked. A clear and attractive answer to what they would do differently is in itself the best way to detoxify the party in the eyes of voters for whom a detoxification is both needed and possible. These are the voters who are not averse to a clear left economic message but have got the idea that Labour are not patriotic and pander to minorities. Other than with policies, the detox can only be of perception rather than reality. Labour can better explain how they are patriotic, and how promoting social justice does not equate to pandering to minorities, but they can't and shouldn't junk core values in a chase for voters who genuinely don't share them. Seems an obvious thing to say, but it's worth saying because much of the advice to Labour from those who would never in a million years vote for them boils down to exactly that.
I watched RTÉ news last night and it was notable that, when interviewed about the delays in vaccine shipments then announced by J&J, the health minister made a point of reiterating how disappointed they were by the shortfall in deliveries from Astrazeneca.
European politicians are absolutely hammering this line so that they can evade the blame.
Cabinet minister Grant Shapps said fewer British people had taken up the offer of shots in the U.K. after EU figures questioned the efficacy of the AstraZeneca vaccine, a clear reference to remarks from French President Emmanuel Macron, among others.
The data points to UK vaccine acceptance improving even after Macron's idiocy.....
Edit - I think Bloomberg may have over interpreted what Shapps actually said:
Unfortunately, there’s been a number of different statements made out of Europe, including misleading information on the effectiveness of some of these vaccines, which eventually have been unwound, but not until they’ve done damage to the number of people, the uptake on some of the vaccines, which I think is all very unfortunate,”
£38 billion wasted? Hmm. If the sole metric of success is 'preventing another lockdown' then, yes. But I think testing millions of people a week must be providing at least some other benefit beyond that quite narrow view.
What benefits?
We had: Probably the world's most comprehensive testing system resulting in us having more accurate information about the spread of the virus than anyone else. A database which allowed us to do the genomic sequencing and the ability to check the spread of variants in all but real time. A large number of people traced and self isolating inhibiting the further spread of the virus. We now have the capacity to do mass testing facilitating the reopening of schools as a first step.
Could some things have been done better? Undoubtedly. Was it good value for money? Very hard to say. But if it is facilitating us coming out of lockdown a few weeks earlier (given the quality of information we have) then yes, it probably was.
Well said.
Its like the penny pinching about vaccines that Europe did. Could things have been done better here? Yes, of course. But compared to the cost of the pandemic, if T&T and the vaccine ends the pandemic a quarter earlier than would have otherwise been done then they'll more than repay their cost.
This cannot possibly be true. We're in lockdown and will remain so until the vaccination program is nearing completion. How on earth do you calculate a three month reduction in end date from that as a result of T&T?
Edit: the only serious defence of T&T for me, is that it's effectively just a way of massaging the unemployment figures downwards. And that most of the cost would have otherwise gone on benefit payments of one kind or another anyway.
There's "lockdown" and there's "restrictions". On most matrices, all being well, "lockdown" will end on 12 April. All remaining well "restrictions" will end on 21 June. Optimistically all adults will have been offerd a vaccine by the end of May. which is several weeks after 12 April.
Either way, all those developments are being driven by the vaccine programme, and not at all because T&T is suddenly helping.
I am perfectly willing to accept there are some benefits to having advance warning as to when and where hospital admissions are going to start rising, or picking up new variants of the virus, but I can see zero evidence that T&T is contributing to the restrictions being lifted a single day ahead of when they otherwise would be.
T&T isn't "suddenly helping" it has always been helping. The vaccine programme is building upon T&T not instead of it.
Vaccinations are reducing R by about 0.03 per week. T&T (from memory) is reducing R by 0.3
So T&T is doing the same as 10 weeks of vaccinations in reducing R. But the 10 weeks of vaccinations are building upon T&T not instead of it.
Yeah, well, you're going to need to provide a source for that 0.3 number before we can make any more progress. I just don't believe it's had any significant impact on R, for the reasons that a) the delay between exposure and testing positive is too great, b) there's no way of checking compliance with isolation orders, and c) R is almost impossible to estimate with any reasonable degree of certainty at the best of times.
I don't have the figures to hand but 0.3 was the low end of the estimate, so I've gone for the low end.
(a) Is unavoidable but its about 24-48h for a test turnaround during which time people are supposed to self-isolate while awaiting the results. Your (a) is why test and trace can't be a silver bullet on its own, but it doesn't mean it has zero impact on transmission.
(b) True again, but again not being perfect doesn't mean zero impact on transmission. Do you really believe people are having zero isolation compared to what they would have after a positive test? Seriously?
(c) That's true, but again not being perfect doesn't mean we can't have an estimate.
The overwhelming majority of this country is still unvaccinated, and we vaccinated the vulnerable shielding people first, yet we have the lowest case rate in Europe. While doing the most tests in Europe. Why is that?
Do you seriously believe that testing has had ZERO impact on transmission and the entire reason are mostly unvaccinated public has very few cases is just due to vaccine impacts?
Yes. Testing has zero impact on transmission. Why the hell would it have an impact?
The tracing bit is the bit that's supposed to matter, but for the reasons outlined previously I won't believe it's working unless you show me something that convinces me otherwise.
And we have the lowest case rate in Europe because we have restrictions in place, and because we have significant levels of immunity in the population for various reasons (vaccine, prior infections).
It has an impact because people isolate after testing positive.
I mentioned here recently that my wife tested positive. We isolated for the 10 day period in full without leaving the house once. I don't believe we're unique, even if some people do go out while they're supposed to be isolating.
£38 billion wasted? Hmm. If the sole metric of success is 'preventing another lockdown' then, yes. But I think testing millions of people a week must be providing at least some other benefit beyond that quite narrow view.
What benefits?
We had: Probably the world's most comprehensive testing system resulting in us having more accurate information about the spread of the virus than anyone else. A database which allowed us to do the genomic sequencing and the ability to check the spread of variants in all but real time. A large number of people traced and self isolating inhibiting the further spread of the virus. We now have the capacity to do mass testing facilitating the reopening of schools as a first step.
Could some things have been done better? Undoubtedly. Was it good value for money? Very hard to say. But if it is facilitating us coming out of lockdown a few weeks earlier (given the quality of information we have) then yes, it probably was.
But all of those things could have been achieved with the ONS study, even the genomic sequencing and testing for variants could have been achieved at a tenth of the cost with an enhanced ONS study.
The testing system is probably the worst value for money of any recent government programme. I don't think that's a controversial point.
No that couldn't have been achieved with the ONS study. The testing for the study was nothing like the testing for test and trace.
How much did the vaccine and test and trace cost?
Yes test and trace cost a lot of money, but how much is the pandemic costing us per week? It looks like between the UK's leading test and trace program and our leading vaccine we will end the pandemic a quarter before other comparable nations will. How much will that save us?
In the case of test & trace, not very much at all. The point about these criticisms is that they are not hindsight; we (and many others) were saying all of this much earlier last year.
They ploughed on regardless, throwing money at headline numbers.
£38 billion wasted? Hmm. If the sole metric of success is 'preventing another lockdown' then, yes. But I think testing millions of people a week must be providing at least some other benefit beyond that quite narrow view.
What benefits?
We had: Probably the world's most comprehensive testing system resulting in us having more accurate information about the spread of the virus than anyone else. A database which allowed us to do the genomic sequencing and the ability to check the spread of variants in all but real time. A large number of people traced and self isolating inhibiting the further spread of the virus. We now have the capacity to do mass testing facilitating the reopening of schools as a first step.
Could some things have been done better? Undoubtedly. Was it good value for money? Very hard to say. But if it is facilitating us coming out of lockdown a few weeks earlier (given the quality of information we have) then yes, it probably was.
Well said.
Its like the penny pinching about vaccines that Europe did. Could things have been done better here? Yes, of course. But compared to the cost of the pandemic, if T&T and the vaccine ends the pandemic a quarter earlier than would have otherwise been done then they'll more than repay their cost.
This cannot possibly be true. We're in lockdown and will remain so until the vaccination program is nearing completion. How on earth do you calculate a three month reduction in end date from that as a result of T&T?
Edit: the only serious defence of T&T for me, is that it's effectively just a way of massaging the unemployment figures downwards. And that most of the cost would have otherwise gone on benefit payments of one kind or another anyway.
There's "lockdown" and there's "restrictions". On most matrices, all being well, "lockdown" will end on 12 April. All remaining well "restrictions" will end on 21 June. Optimistically all adults will have been offerd a vaccine by the end of May. which is several weeks after 12 April.
Either way, all those developments are being driven by the vaccine programme, and not at all because T&T is suddenly helping.
I am perfectly willing to accept there are some benefits to having advance warning as to when and where hospital admissions are going to start rising, or picking up new variants of the virus, but I can see zero evidence that T&T is contributing to the restrictions being lifted a single day ahead of when they otherwise would be.
T&T isn't "suddenly helping" it has always been helping. The vaccine programme is building upon T&T not instead of it.
Vaccinations are reducing R by about 0.03 per week. T&T (from memory) is reducing R by 0.3
So T&T is doing the same as 10 weeks of vaccinations in reducing R. But the 10 weeks of vaccinations are building upon T&T not instead of it.
Yeah, well, you're going to need to provide a source for that 0.3 number before we can make any more progress. I just don't believe it's had any significant impact on R, for the reasons that a) the delay between exposure and testing positive is too great, b) there's no way of checking compliance with isolation orders, and c) R is almost impossible to estimate with any reasonable degree of certainty at the best of times.
And as a data point I think it has fallen apart - because it's including the impact of people isolating. The estimate for contract tracing alone was 1.7-4.6%...
Not £38bn worth of benefits, the much cheaper ONS weekly study achieves the same thing at the fraction of the cost. Without a proper monitored isolation programme the testing system was always going to have marginal value in bringing the R value down. It's just an extremely expensive near real time version of the ONS study.
That's not the fault of Test & Trace, there was no political will at all for a draconian isolation programme. i.e. Force people to isolate under threat of a severe penalty.
There was no (or wildly insufficient) support available even to those willing to isolate voluntarily. An oversight that cost us £billions & seems incomprehensible from the outside.
And government had figures in August last year demonstrating just how few people isolated.
£38 billion wasted? Hmm. If the sole metric of success is 'preventing another lockdown' then, yes. But I think testing millions of people a week must be providing at least some other benefit beyond that quite narrow view.
What benefits?
We had: Probably the world's most comprehensive testing system resulting in us having more accurate information about the spread of the virus than anyone else. A database which allowed us to do the genomic sequencing and the ability to check the spread of variants in all but real time. A large number of people traced and self isolating inhibiting the further spread of the virus. We now have the capacity to do mass testing facilitating the reopening of schools as a first step.
Could some things have been done better? Undoubtedly. Was it good value for money? Very hard to say. But if it is facilitating us coming out of lockdown a few weeks earlier (given the quality of information we have) then yes, it probably was.
Well said.
Its like the penny pinching about vaccines that Europe did. Could things have been done better here? Yes, of course. But compared to the cost of the pandemic, if T&T and the vaccine ends the pandemic a quarter earlier than would have otherwise been done then they'll more than repay their cost.
This cannot possibly be true. We're in lockdown and will remain so until the vaccination program is nearing completion. How on earth do you calculate a three month reduction in end date from that as a result of T&T?
Edit: the only serious defence of T&T for me, is that it's effectively just a way of massaging the unemployment figures downwards. And that most of the cost would have otherwise gone on benefit payments of one kind or another anyway.
There's "lockdown" and there's "restrictions". On most matrices, all being well, "lockdown" will end on 12 April. All remaining well "restrictions" will end on 21 June. Optimistically all adults will have been offerd a vaccine by the end of May. which is several weeks after 12 April.
Either way, all those developments are being driven by the vaccine programme, and not at all because T&T is suddenly helping.
I am perfectly willing to accept there are some benefits to having advance warning as to when and where hospital admissions are going to start rising, or picking up new variants of the virus, but I can see zero evidence that T&T is contributing to the restrictions being lifted a single day ahead of when they otherwise would be.
T&T isn't "suddenly helping" it has always been helping. The vaccine programme is building upon T&T not instead of it.
Vaccinations are reducing R by about 0.03 per week. T&T (from memory) is reducing R by 0.3
So T&T is doing the same as 10 weeks of vaccinations in reducing R. But the 10 weeks of vaccinations are building upon T&T not instead of it.
Yeah, well, you're going to need to provide a source for that 0.3 number before we can make any more progress. I just don't believe it's had any significant impact on R, for the reasons that a) the delay between exposure and testing positive is too great, b) there's no way of checking compliance with isolation orders, and c) R is almost impossible to estimate with any reasonable degree of certainty at the best of times.
I don't have the figures to hand but 0.3 was the low end of the estimate, so I've gone for the low end.
(a) Is unavoidable but its about 24-48h for a test turnaround during which time people are supposed to self-isolate while awaiting the results. Your (a) is why test and trace can't be a silver bullet on its own, but it doesn't mean it has zero impact on transmission.
(b) True again, but again not being perfect doesn't mean zero impact on transmission. Do you really believe people are having zero isolation compared to what they would have after a positive test? Seriously?
(c) That's true, but again not being perfect doesn't mean we can't have an estimate.
The overwhelming majority of this country is still unvaccinated, and we vaccinated the vulnerable shielding people first, yet we have the lowest case rate in Europe. While doing the most tests in Europe. Why is that?
Do you seriously believe that testing has had ZERO impact on transmission and the entire reason are mostly unvaccinated public has very few cases is just due to vaccine impacts?
Yes. Testing has zero impact on transmission. Why the hell would it have an impact?
The tracing bit is the bit that's supposed to matter, but for the reasons outlined previously I won't believe it's working unless you show me something that convinces me otherwise.
And we have the lowest case rate in Europe because we have restrictions in place, and because we have significant levels of immunity in the population for various reasons (vaccine, prior infections).
It has an impact because people isolate after testing positive.
I mentioned here recently that my wife tested positive. We isolated for the 10 day period in full without leaving the house once. I don't believe we're unique, even if some people do go out while they're supposed to be isolating.
If people have symptoms then they're supposed to isolate regardless of the test result.
False negatives are much more prevalent than false positives because of the difficulties in acquiring a sample.
The PAC report focuses on a) whether test and trace is effective, and b) whether it provides value for money. On a), it's debatable, but clearly isolation hasn't worked well.
Having skimmed through the report (yes, people can read it rather than relying on skewed summaries), I'm most concerned by b). 70% of the value of the contracts (i.e. 70% of £7 billion) were issued under emergency measures without competition. Around 2,500 consultants are still employed, costing on average £1k per day with some earning well over £6k per day. Sorry, that's grotesque grifting. Deloitte and others are laughing all the way to the bank.
£38 billion wasted? Hmm. If the sole metric of success is 'preventing another lockdown' then, yes. But I think testing millions of people a week must be providing at least some other benefit beyond that quite narrow view.
What benefits?
We had: Probably the world's most comprehensive testing system resulting in us having more accurate information about the spread of the virus than anyone else. A database which allowed us to do the genomic sequencing and the ability to check the spread of variants in all but real time. A large number of people traced and self isolating inhibiting the further spread of the virus. We now have the capacity to do mass testing facilitating the reopening of schools as a first step.
Could some things have been done better? Undoubtedly. Was it good value for money? Very hard to say. But if it is facilitating us coming out of lockdown a few weeks earlier (given the quality of information we have) then yes, it probably was.
But all of those things could have been achieved with the ONS study, even the genomic sequencing and testing for variants could have been achieved at a tenth of the cost with an enhanced ONS study.
The testing system is probably the worst value for money of any recent government programme. I don't think that's a controversial point.
No that couldn't have been achieved with the ONS study. The testing for the study was nothing like the testing for test and trace.
How much did the vaccine and test and trace cost?
Yes test and trace cost a lot of money, but how much is the pandemic costing us per week? It looks like between the UK's leading test and trace program and our leading vaccine we will end the pandemic a quarter before other comparable nations will. How much will that save us?
In the case of test & trace, not very much at all. The point about these criticisms is that they are not hindsight; we (and many others) were saying all of this much earlier last year.
They ploughed on regardless, throwing money at headline numbers.
And they were right to do so as we now have very few cases, with test and trace finding the vast majority of them, and are now coming out of lockdown while other countries are tightening their restrictions.
The pandemic is us over a trillion. Ending the pandemic even weeks earlier is worth it.
£38 billion wasted? Hmm. If the sole metric of success is 'preventing another lockdown' then, yes. But I think testing millions of people a week must be providing at least some other benefit beyond that quite narrow view.
What benefits?
We had: Probably the world's most comprehensive testing system resulting in us having more accurate information about the spread of the virus than anyone else. A database which allowed us to do the genomic sequencing and the ability to check the spread of variants in all but real time. A large number of people traced and self isolating inhibiting the further spread of the virus. We now have the capacity to do mass testing facilitating the reopening of schools as a first step.
Could some things have been done better? Undoubtedly. Was it good value for money? Very hard to say. But if it is facilitating us coming out of lockdown a few weeks earlier (given the quality of information we have) then yes, it probably was.
Well said.
Its like the penny pinching about vaccines that Europe did. Could things have been done better here? Yes, of course. But compared to the cost of the pandemic, if T&T and the vaccine ends the pandemic a quarter earlier than would have otherwise been done then they'll more than repay their cost.
This cannot possibly be true. We're in lockdown and will remain so until the vaccination program is nearing completion. How on earth do you calculate a three month reduction in end date from that as a result of T&T?
Edit: the only serious defence of T&T for me, is that it's effectively just a way of massaging the unemployment figures downwards. And that most of the cost would have otherwise gone on benefit payments of one kind or another anyway.
There's "lockdown" and there's "restrictions". On most matrices, all being well, "lockdown" will end on 12 April. All remaining well "restrictions" will end on 21 June. Optimistically all adults will have been offerd a vaccine by the end of May. which is several weeks after 12 April.
Either way, all those developments are being driven by the vaccine programme, and not at all because T&T is suddenly helping.
I am perfectly willing to accept there are some benefits to having advance warning as to when and where hospital admissions are going to start rising, or picking up new variants of the virus, but I can see zero evidence that T&T is contributing to the restrictions being lifted a single day ahead of when they otherwise would be.
T&T isn't "suddenly helping" it has always been helping. The vaccine programme is building upon T&T not instead of it.
Vaccinations are reducing R by about 0.03 per week. T&T (from memory) is reducing R by 0.3
So T&T is doing the same as 10 weeks of vaccinations in reducing R. But the 10 weeks of vaccinations are building upon T&T not instead of it.
Yeah, well, you're going to need to provide a source for that 0.3 number before we can make any more progress. I just don't believe it's had any significant impact on R, for the reasons that a) the delay between exposure and testing positive is too great, b) there's no way of checking compliance with isolation orders, and c) R is almost impossible to estimate with any reasonable degree of certainty at the best of times.
I don't have the figures to hand but 0.3 was the low end of the estimate, so I've gone for the low end.
(a) Is unavoidable but its about 24-48h for a test turnaround during which time people are supposed to self-isolate while awaiting the results. Your (a) is why test and trace can't be a silver bullet on its own, but it doesn't mean it has zero impact on transmission.
(b) True again, but again not being perfect doesn't mean zero impact on transmission. Do you really believe people are having zero isolation compared to what they would have after a positive test? Seriously?
(c) That's true, but again not being perfect doesn't mean we can't have an estimate.
The overwhelming majority of this country is still unvaccinated, and we vaccinated the vulnerable shielding people first, yet we have the lowest case rate in Europe. While doing the most tests in Europe. Why is that?
Do you seriously believe that testing has had ZERO impact on transmission and the entire reason are mostly unvaccinated public has very few cases is just due to vaccine impacts?
Yes. Testing has zero impact on transmission. Why the hell would it have an impact?
The tracing bit is the bit that's supposed to matter, but for the reasons outlined previously I won't believe it's working unless you show me something that convinces me otherwise.
And we have the lowest case rate in Europe because we have restrictions in place, and because we have significant levels of immunity in the population for various reasons (vaccine, prior infections).
It has an impact because people isolate after testing positive.
I mentioned here recently that my wife tested positive. We isolated for the 10 day period in full without leaving the house once. I don't believe we're unique, even if some people do go out while they're supposed to be isolating.
If people have symptoms then they're supposed to isolate regardless of the test result.
False negatives are much more prevalent than false positives because of the difficulties in acquiring a sample.
My wife was asymptomatic and shocked to test positive.
She had mild symptoms after testing positive but not the headline three and would not have thought she had the bug if it wasn't for the positive.
In the case of test & trace, not very much at all. The point about these criticisms is that they are not hindsight; we (and many others) were saying all of this much earlier last year.
They ploughed on regardless, throwing money at headline numbers.
Not surprisingly. We measure all sorts of things badly in this country. We talk about health in terms of the numbers of nurses and hospital beds, crime in terms of prison places, schools in terms of classes sizes and teacher numbers. We almost always look at things in terms of the expenditure not the outcomes.
£38 billion wasted? Hmm. If the sole metric of success is 'preventing another lockdown' then, yes. But I think testing millions of people a week must be providing at least some other benefit beyond that quite narrow view.
What benefits?
We had: Probably the world's most comprehensive testing system resulting in us having more accurate information about the spread of the virus than anyone else. A database which allowed us to do the genomic sequencing and the ability to check the spread of variants in all but real time. A large number of people traced and self isolating inhibiting the further spread of the virus. We now have the capacity to do mass testing facilitating the reopening of schools as a first step.
Could some things have been done better? Undoubtedly. Was it good value for money? Very hard to say. But if it is facilitating us coming out of lockdown a few weeks earlier (given the quality of information we have) then yes, it probably was.
Well said.
Its like the penny pinching about vaccines that Europe did. Could things have been done better here? Yes, of course. But compared to the cost of the pandemic, if T&T and the vaccine ends the pandemic a quarter earlier than would have otherwise been done then they'll more than repay their cost.
This cannot possibly be true. We're in lockdown and will remain so until the vaccination program is nearing completion. How on earth do you calculate a three month reduction in end date from that as a result of T&T?
Edit: the only serious defence of T&T for me, is that it's effectively just a way of massaging the unemployment figures downwards. And that most of the cost would have otherwise gone on benefit payments of one kind or another anyway.
There's "lockdown" and there's "restrictions". On most matrices, all being well, "lockdown" will end on 12 April. All remaining well "restrictions" will end on 21 June. Optimistically all adults will have been offerd a vaccine by the end of May. which is several weeks after 12 April.
Either way, all those developments are being driven by the vaccine programme, and not at all because T&T is suddenly helping.
I am perfectly willing to accept there are some benefits to having advance warning as to when and where hospital admissions are going to start rising, or picking up new variants of the virus, but I can see zero evidence that T&T is contributing to the restrictions being lifted a single day ahead of when they otherwise would be.
T&T isn't "suddenly helping" it has always been helping. The vaccine programme is building upon T&T not instead of it.
Vaccinations are reducing R by about 0.03 per week. T&T (from memory) is reducing R by 0.3
So T&T is doing the same as 10 weeks of vaccinations in reducing R. But the 10 weeks of vaccinations are building upon T&T not instead of it.
Yeah, well, you're going to need to provide a source for that 0.3 number before we can make any more progress. I just don't believe it's had any significant impact on R, for the reasons that a) the delay between exposure and testing positive is too great, b) there's no way of checking compliance with isolation orders, and c) R is almost impossible to estimate with any reasonable degree of certainty at the best of times.
I don't have the figures to hand but 0.3 was the low end of the estimate, so I've gone for the low end.
(a) Is unavoidable but its about 24-48h for a test turnaround during which time people are supposed to self-isolate while awaiting the results. Your (a) is why test and trace can't be a silver bullet on its own, but it doesn't mean it has zero impact on transmission.
(b) True again, but again not being perfect doesn't mean zero impact on transmission. Do you really believe people are having zero isolation compared to what they would have after a positive test? Seriously?
(c) That's true, but again not being perfect doesn't mean we can't have an estimate.
The overwhelming majority of this country is still unvaccinated, and we vaccinated the vulnerable shielding people first, yet we have the lowest case rate in Europe. While doing the most tests in Europe. Why is that?
Do you seriously believe that testing has had ZERO impact on transmission and the entire reason are mostly unvaccinated public has very few cases is just due to vaccine impacts?
Yes. Testing has zero impact on transmission. Why the hell would it have an impact?
The tracing bit is the bit that's supposed to matter, but for the reasons outlined previously I won't believe it's working unless you show me something that convinces me otherwise.
And we have the lowest case rate in Europe because we have restrictions in place, and because we have significant levels of immunity in the population for various reasons (vaccine, prior infections).
It has an impact because people isolate after testing positive.
I mentioned here recently that my wife tested positive. We isolated for the 10 day period in full without leaving the house once. I don't believe we're unique, even if some people do go out while they're supposed to be isolating.
If people have symptoms then they're supposed to isolate regardless of the test result.
False negatives are much more prevalent than false positives because of the difficulties in acquiring a sample.
False negatives have barely been brought up by anyone prominent in the media during the entire pandemic, yet they are as you say likely. I'm not sure the message to isolate if you have symptons (particularly fever) even with a negative test result has been pushed enough.
One is "My Truth", as use by Oprah. To me that means "My Opinion".
Another was on R4 earlier - the idea that a personal account of a personal experience is beyond question, and must be accepted as revealed truth. To me - that's just a no; of course it must be tested, especially when not self-consistent.
I'll have a bash. I like these sort of convoluted linguistic issues.
It means my take rather than my opinion. The substitution of "truth" for "take" is a suitable innovation for where it's a person talking about how something has affected them, how it's come across, made them feel, this sort of thing. Because here it requires and deserves added weight over and above "take". And certainly "opinion" is not right.
To illustrate: Woman describes how she feels belittled herself when male colleagues talk about female celebs in an objectified and contemptuous manner.
That is not "her opinion", it is "her take". But "her take" is not quite strong enough. It makes it sound as if her offering on the matter is just one of many to be considered equally. We need something to elevate it. Her Truth. It works.
Question begged. What about the men in my example? One of them now gives his side, says it's not that often, and we talk about lots of other things, she's being a snowflake etc. So is that His Truth?
Answer: No. It isn't. That (rightly) stays at the level of "his take". Why? Because His (or Her) Truth is restricted to those who are punching up. Or not punching, just explaining in this case, but you know what I mean.
So, with the Meghan interview, I'd say there was a hotchpotch of her opinions, her takes, and her truths.
That's my take on My Truth.
That seems unnecessarily convoluted. I cant really see how comprehension or empathy is advanced by such linguistic contortions.
Especially when the opinion of people commenting on such issues is intentionally steered by participants of whatever stripe to black and white perceptions of fact.
'Truth is restricted to those who are punching up' seems like another example of something that needs to be explained that it does not mean what it looks like it means, and that never helps. And who decides what is up or down?
Some things are complicated. We don't need to make them more complicated than needed.
I'm explaining where imo "my truth" works and adds value - and the reason for that.
As a beefed up "my take" for a person relating the impact on them of societal prejudice.
So what are you saying is unnecessary - the term itself or my explanation of it?
£38 billion wasted? Hmm. If the sole metric of success is 'preventing another lockdown' then, yes. But I think testing millions of people a week must be providing at least some other benefit beyond that quite narrow view.
What benefits?
We had: Probably the world's most comprehensive testing system resulting in us having more accurate information about the spread of the virus than anyone else. A database which allowed us to do the genomic sequencing and the ability to check the spread of variants in all but real time. A large number of people traced and self isolating inhibiting the further spread of the virus. We now have the capacity to do mass testing facilitating the reopening of schools as a first step.
Could some things have been done better? Undoubtedly. Was it good value for money? Very hard to say. But if it is facilitating us coming out of lockdown a few weeks earlier (given the quality of information we have) then yes, it probably was.
But all of those things could have been achieved with the ONS study, even the genomic sequencing and testing for variants could have been achieved at a tenth of the cost with an enhanced ONS study.
The testing system is probably the worst value for money of any recent government programme. I don't think that's a controversial point.
No that couldn't have been achieved with the ONS study. The testing for the study was nothing like the testing for test and trace.
How much did the vaccine and test and trace cost?
Yes test and trace cost a lot of money, but how much is the pandemic costing us per week? It looks like between the UK's leading test and trace program and our leading vaccine we will end the pandemic a quarter before other comparable nations will. How much will that save us?
In the case of test & trace, not very much at all. The point about these criticisms is that they are not hindsight; we (and many others) were saying all of this much earlier last year.
They ploughed on regardless, throwing money at headline numbers.
And they were right to do so as we now have very few cases, with test and trace finding the vast majority of them, and are now coming out of lockdown while other countries are tightening their restrictions.
The pandemic is us over a trillion. Ending the pandemic even weeks earlier is worth it.
But the pandemic being over is because of the vaccine programme. If that didn't exist do you really think any number of tests would allow for the unlocking schedule we have in place?
£38 billion wasted? Hmm. If the sole metric of success is 'preventing another lockdown' then, yes. But I think testing millions of people a week must be providing at least some other benefit beyond that quite narrow view.
What benefits?
We had: Probably the world's most comprehensive testing system resulting in us having more accurate information about the spread of the virus than anyone else. A database which allowed us to do the genomic sequencing and the ability to check the spread of variants in all but real time. A large number of people traced and self isolating inhibiting the further spread of the virus. We now have the capacity to do mass testing facilitating the reopening of schools as a first step.
Could some things have been done better? Undoubtedly. Was it good value for money? Very hard to say. But if it is facilitating us coming out of lockdown a few weeks earlier (given the quality of information we have) then yes, it probably was.
Well said.
Its like the penny pinching about vaccines that Europe did. Could things have been done better here? Yes, of course. But compared to the cost of the pandemic, if T&T and the vaccine ends the pandemic a quarter earlier than would have otherwise been done then they'll more than repay their cost.
This cannot possibly be true. We're in lockdown and will remain so until the vaccination program is nearing completion. How on earth do you calculate a three month reduction in end date from that as a result of T&T?
Edit: the only serious defence of T&T for me, is that it's effectively just a way of massaging the unemployment figures downwards. And that most of the cost would have otherwise gone on benefit payments of one kind or another anyway.
There's "lockdown" and there's "restrictions". On most matrices, all being well, "lockdown" will end on 12 April. All remaining well "restrictions" will end on 21 June. Optimistically all adults will have been offerd a vaccine by the end of May. which is several weeks after 12 April.
Either way, all those developments are being driven by the vaccine programme, and not at all because T&T is suddenly helping.
I am perfectly willing to accept there are some benefits to having advance warning as to when and where hospital admissions are going to start rising, or picking up new variants of the virus, but I can see zero evidence that T&T is contributing to the restrictions being lifted a single day ahead of when they otherwise would be.
T&T isn't "suddenly helping" it has always been helping. The vaccine programme is building upon T&T not instead of it.
Vaccinations are reducing R by about 0.03 per week. T&T (from memory) is reducing R by 0.3...
Also from memory, the "0.3" is what was claimed by those running test and trace. I don't have time to respond at length, or to search for links, but I remember those figures being deeply suspect, and an alternate figure of 0.05 being put forward.
Given the delay between becoming infectious and displaying symptoms, and the further delay involved in getting a test and being reported positive - followed by only about a fifth to a quarter of those testing positive actually isolating - the lower figure might be more credible.
Labour ought to be spending a great deal of their time looking into where the £38bn went.
If the vaccination project has the desired effect then almost everybody will be spending the Summer partying, on holidays and generally breathing a massive, extended sigh of relief. Spending on test and trace, along with everything else to do with the Plague, will disappear into the black hole of a public inquiry which will take years to deliberate and report, and which the great mass of the public will invest no time or interest in at all.
The pandemic is going to join Brexit as a settled topic which most voters want to put behind them. If Labour is to have a future then it has to look to the future, not the past.
To get back into the game Labour needs three things: for the Conservatives to stuff up the economic recovery, to detoxify itself with small-c conservative voters, and a clear alternative vision of what it would do differently. It can't do anything about point 1, and points 2 and 3 are both big challenges that require careful thought. Devoting undue time to criticisms that the Government can easily swat away would be pointless.
I agree with your 3 points but for me 2 and 3 are closely linked. A clear and attractive answer to what they would do differently is in itself the best way to detoxify the party in the eyes of voters for whom a detoxification is both needed and possible. These are the voters who are not averse to a clear left economic message but have got the idea that Labour are not patriotic and pander to minorities. Other than with policies, the detox can only be of perception rather than reality. Labour can better explain how they are patriotic, and how promoting social justice does not equate to pandering to minorities, but they can't and shouldn't junk core values in a chase for voters who genuinely don't share them. Seems an obvious thing to say, but it's worth saying because much of the advice to Labour from those who would never in a million years vote for them boils down to exactly that.
What was your view of the Rochdale Pioneers thread from the other day as an answer to 2 and 3? I thought it was quite an attractive vision (or pre-vision, perhaps). But I probably fall outside the sweet spot of the electorate to whom Labour is pitching its offer.
Here's a question - are ALL vaccines for respiratory diseases in actual fact extremely effective prophylatics. I mean if someone coughs over you with covid, a cold, flu then some viral particles WILL head your nose/throat surely ? But your body can kill it off very quickly thereafter, perhaps to the point that you'll never know you caught the virus ever.
£38 billion wasted? Hmm. If the sole metric of success is 'preventing another lockdown' then, yes. But I think testing millions of people a week must be providing at least some other benefit beyond that quite narrow view.
What benefits?
We had: Probably the world's most comprehensive testing system resulting in us having more accurate information about the spread of the virus than anyone else. A database which allowed us to do the genomic sequencing and the ability to check the spread of variants in all but real time. A large number of people traced and self isolating inhibiting the further spread of the virus. We now have the capacity to do mass testing facilitating the reopening of schools as a first step.
Could some things have been done better? Undoubtedly. Was it good value for money? Very hard to say. But if it is facilitating us coming out of lockdown a few weeks earlier (given the quality of information we have) then yes, it probably was.
But all of those things could have been achieved with the ONS study, even the genomic sequencing and testing for variants could have been achieved at a tenth of the cost with an enhanced ONS study.
The testing system is probably the worst value for money of any recent government programme. I don't think that's a controversial point.
No that couldn't have been achieved with the ONS study. The testing for the study was nothing like the testing for test and trace.
How much did the vaccine and test and trace cost?
Yes test and trace cost a lot of money, but how much is the pandemic costing us per week? It looks like between the UK's leading test and trace program and our leading vaccine we will end the pandemic a quarter before other comparable nations will. How much will that save us?
In the case of test & trace, not very much at all. The point about these criticisms is that they are not hindsight; we (and many others) were saying all of this much earlier last year.
They ploughed on regardless, throwing money at headline numbers.
And they were right to do so as we now have very few cases, with test and trace finding the vast majority of them, and are now coming out of lockdown while other countries are tightening their restrictions.
The pandemic is us over a trillion. Ending the pandemic even weeks earlier is worth it.
But the pandemic being over is because of the vaccine programme. If that didn't exist do you really think any number of tests would allow for the unlocking schedule we have in place?
No it is because of both.
A clear majority of the British public is still unvaccinated. The vaccine is fantastic, but its another arrow in our national quiver not the only one.
Boris has a piece in the Telegraph trying to save the union by promising a ton of road and rail projects. Dualing the A1 etc.
"So together with Transport Secretary Grant Shapps, I have asked Sir Peter Hendy to address the problem of Union connectivity. He has just produced his interim report, before final conclusions in the summer."
Good. Our infrastructure is backwards compared to so many other developed countries. For many reasons: 1. Crap project delivery. Dates all the way back to the open corruption of Ernest Marples in the 60s 2. Idiotic "who will pay for it" stupidity where investment = subsidy = communism. 3. NIMBYism. You can't build that (anything) there (anywhere) because it will Ruin England 4. Political short-termism. Projects get announced, then by the time there's been the usual NIMBY planning enquiry it either gets cancelled or truncated. Lots of roads to nowhere where the strategic plan gets lost in a change of government and yet another review 5. Lack of capability. Rail privatisation's lengthy hiatus in spending money on anything largely killed both the train building and infrastructure industry capabilities to do anything. Which is why we seem incapable of wiring a few miles of track or upgrading the signals without vast cost vs previous and foreign assistance.
If Shagger really wants to do something big, don't just reannounce already proposed schemes. Hive strategic planning off to a politically neutral organisation. Make the ORR independent of government. Almost all of these projects deliver either very positive ROI or positive community benefits. The ability to raise revenues from a variety of sources is critical - borrow money at government (near zero long term interest) rates on a long term payback.
They should also take a serious look at Musk's Boring Company. His ideas for standardising and massively speeding up the tunnel boring process are simple in concept, but appear to have potential massive cost savings. https://www.boringcompany.com/faq
I'd be interested to know what @Casino_Royale makes of them.
The Boring Company is interesting - but not for the technology. Which is mostly standard stuff.
What is interesting is why it might be cheaper and the opposition to it.
SpaceX ripped up the launch business by not following the contracting-out-to-a-contractor-who-contracts-out-to-a-{10 iterations here} model.
What the Boring Company is looking at is a similar concept. And the opposition to contracts with them is also interesting - I've heard quotes about "This is a high value, high pay industry - we don't want it disrupted"
A lot of people feed off big public contracts. When space launch went from 500 million a launch to 50 million (and falling) a lot of people lost their rice bowls.
Agreed; it's not even rocket science...
Again, the key insight is to standardise (in this case on a single tunnel diameter), and build and iterate designs, allowing for failures along the way.
Is the Boring Company's standard 12ft diameter tunnel big enough? I guess it is compatible with small personal transport / car shuttles, but not with cargo containers, lorries or rail.
One is "My Truth", as use by Oprah. To me that means "My Opinion".
Another was on R4 earlier - the idea that a personal account of a personal experience is beyond question, and must be accepted as revealed truth. To me - that's just a no; of course it must be tested, especially when not self-consistent.
I'll have a bash. I like these sort of convoluted linguistic issues.
It means my take rather than my opinion. The substitution of "truth" for "take" is a suitable innovation for where it's a person talking about how something has affected them, how it's come across, made them feel, this sort of thing. Because here it requires and deserves added weight over and above "take". And certainly "opinion" is not right.
To illustrate: Woman describes how she feels belittled herself when male colleagues talk about female celebs in an objectified and contemptuous manner.
That is not "her opinion", it is "her take". But "her take" is not quite strong enough. It makes it sound as if her offering on the matter is just one of many to be considered equally. We need something to elevate it. Her Truth. It works.
Question begged. What about the men in my example? One of them now gives his side, says it's not that often, and we talk about lots of other things, she's being a snowflake etc. So is that His Truth?
Answer: No. It isn't. That (rightly) stays at the level of "his take". Why? Because His (or Her) Truth is restricted to those who are punching up. Or not punching, just explaining in this case, but you know what I mean.
So, with the Meghan interview, I'd say there was a hotchpotch of her opinions, her takes, and her truths.
That's my take on My Truth.
That seems unnecessarily convoluted. I cant really see how comprehension or empathy is advanced by such linguistic contortions.
Especially when the opinion of people commenting on such issues is intentionally steered by participants of whatever stripe to black and white perceptions of fact.
'Truth is restricted to those who are punching up' seems like another example of something that needs to be explained that it does not mean what it looks like it means, and that never helps. And who decides what is up or down?
Some things are complicated. We don't need to make them more complicated than needed.
I'm explaining where imo "my truth" works and adds value - and the reason for that.
As a beefed up "my take" for a person relating the impact on them of societal prejudice.
So what are you saying is unnecessary - the term itself or my explanation of it?
If the term means what you have explained it to mean. And I didn't say unnecessary, I said unnecessarily convoluted.
I just cannot see how understanding or, as I said, empathy, of matters such as societal prejudice is aided by overcomplicating things with what seems like complex epistemological arguments on the nature of relative truth.
£38 billion wasted? Hmm. If the sole metric of success is 'preventing another lockdown' then, yes. But I think testing millions of people a week must be providing at least some other benefit beyond that quite narrow view.
What benefits?
We had: Probably the world's most comprehensive testing system resulting in us having more accurate information about the spread of the virus than anyone else. A database which allowed us to do the genomic sequencing and the ability to check the spread of variants in all but real time. A large number of people traced and self isolating inhibiting the further spread of the virus. We now have the capacity to do mass testing facilitating the reopening of schools as a first step.
Could some things have been done better? Undoubtedly. Was it good value for money? Very hard to say. But if it is facilitating us coming out of lockdown a few weeks earlier (given the quality of information we have) then yes, it probably was.
Well said.
Its like the penny pinching about vaccines that Europe did. Could things have been done better here? Yes, of course. But compared to the cost of the pandemic, if T&T and the vaccine ends the pandemic a quarter earlier than would have otherwise been done then they'll more than repay their cost.
This cannot possibly be true. We're in lockdown and will remain so until the vaccination program is nearing completion. How on earth do you calculate a three month reduction in end date from that as a result of T&T?
Edit: the only serious defence of T&T for me, is that it's effectively just a way of massaging the unemployment figures downwards. And that most of the cost would have otherwise gone on benefit payments of one kind or another anyway.
There's "lockdown" and there's "restrictions". On most matrices, all being well, "lockdown" will end on 12 April. All remaining well "restrictions" will end on 21 June. Optimistically all adults will have been offerd a vaccine by the end of May. which is several weeks after 12 April.
Either way, all those developments are being driven by the vaccine programme, and not at all because T&T is suddenly helping.
I am perfectly willing to accept there are some benefits to having advance warning as to when and where hospital admissions are going to start rising, or picking up new variants of the virus, but I can see zero evidence that T&T is contributing to the restrictions being lifted a single day ahead of when they otherwise would be.
T&T isn't "suddenly helping" it has always been helping. The vaccine programme is building upon T&T not instead of it.
Vaccinations are reducing R by about 0.03 per week. T&T (from memory) is reducing R by 0.3...
Also from memory, the "0.3" is what was claimed by those running test and trace. I don't have time to respond at length, or to search for links, but I remember those figures being deeply suspect, and an alternate figure of 0.05 being put forward.
Given the delay between becoming infectious and displaying symptoms, and the further delay involved in getting a test and being reported positive - followed by only about a fifth to a quarter of those testing positive actually isolating - the lower figure might be more credible.
Yes the 0.05 number makes a lot more sense, it's probably actually close to zero given how low isolation adherence actually is - only 2/10 isolate after a positive test.
We could test the whole population everyday and it would still be worthless because 80% of people with positive tests would still go out and infect everyone.
£38 billion wasted? Hmm. If the sole metric of success is 'preventing another lockdown' then, yes. But I think testing millions of people a week must be providing at least some other benefit beyond that quite narrow view.
What benefits?
We had: Probably the world's most comprehensive testing system resulting in us having more accurate information about the spread of the virus than anyone else. A database which allowed us to do the genomic sequencing and the ability to check the spread of variants in all but real time. A large number of people traced and self isolating inhibiting the further spread of the virus. We now have the capacity to do mass testing facilitating the reopening of schools as a first step.
Could some things have been done better? Undoubtedly. Was it good value for money? Very hard to say. But if it is facilitating us coming out of lockdown a few weeks earlier (given the quality of information we have) then yes, it probably was.
But all of those things could have been achieved with the ONS study, even the genomic sequencing and testing for variants could have been achieved at a tenth of the cost with an enhanced ONS study.
The testing system is probably the worst value for money of any recent government programme. I don't think that's a controversial point.
No that couldn't have been achieved with the ONS study. The testing for the study was nothing like the testing for test and trace.
How much did the vaccine and test and trace cost?
Yes test and trace cost a lot of money, but how much is the pandemic costing us per week? It looks like between the UK's leading test and trace program and our leading vaccine we will end the pandemic a quarter before other comparable nations will. How much will that save us?
In the case of test & trace, not very much at all. The point about these criticisms is that they are not hindsight; we (and many others) were saying all of this much earlier last year.
They ploughed on regardless, throwing money at headline numbers.
And they were right to do so as we now have very few cases, with test and trace finding the vast majority of them, and are now coming out of lockdown while other countries are tightening their restrictions.
The pandemic is us over a trillion. Ending the pandemic even weeks earlier is worth it.
But the pandemic being over is because of the vaccine programme. If that didn't exist do you really think any number of tests would allow for the unlocking schedule we have in place?
I take it you aren't going to answer the question regarding why you took a test.
Here's another simple one, what would we have done if the vaccines didn't work?
£38 billion wasted? Hmm. If the sole metric of success is 'preventing another lockdown' then, yes. But I think testing millions of people a week must be providing at least some other benefit beyond that quite narrow view.
What benefits?
We had: Probably the world's most comprehensive testing system resulting in us having more accurate information about the spread of the virus than anyone else. A database which allowed us to do the genomic sequencing and the ability to check the spread of variants in all but real time. A large number of people traced and self isolating inhibiting the further spread of the virus. We now have the capacity to do mass testing facilitating the reopening of schools as a first step.
Could some things have been done better? Undoubtedly. Was it good value for money? Very hard to say. But if it is facilitating us coming out of lockdown a few weeks earlier (given the quality of information we have) then yes, it probably was.
Well said.
Its like the penny pinching about vaccines that Europe did. Could things have been done better here? Yes, of course. But compared to the cost of the pandemic, if T&T and the vaccine ends the pandemic a quarter earlier than would have otherwise been done then they'll more than repay their cost.
This cannot possibly be true. We're in lockdown and will remain so until the vaccination program is nearing completion. How on earth do you calculate a three month reduction in end date from that as a result of T&T?
Edit: the only serious defence of T&T for me, is that it's effectively just a way of massaging the unemployment figures downwards. And that most of the cost would have otherwise gone on benefit payments of one kind or another anyway.
There's "lockdown" and there's "restrictions". On most matrices, all being well, "lockdown" will end on 12 April. All remaining well "restrictions" will end on 21 June. Optimistically all adults will have been offerd a vaccine by the end of May. which is several weeks after 12 April.
Either way, all those developments are being driven by the vaccine programme, and not at all because T&T is suddenly helping.
I am perfectly willing to accept there are some benefits to having advance warning as to when and where hospital admissions are going to start rising, or picking up new variants of the virus, but I can see zero evidence that T&T is contributing to the restrictions being lifted a single day ahead of when they otherwise would be.
T&T isn't "suddenly helping" it has always been helping. The vaccine programme is building upon T&T not instead of it.
Vaccinations are reducing R by about 0.03 per week. T&T (from memory) is reducing R by 0.3...
Also from memory, the "0.3" is what was claimed by those running test and trace. I don't have time to respond at length, or to search for links, but I remember those figures being deeply suspect, and an alternate figure of 0.05 being put forward.
Given the delay between becoming infectious and displaying symptoms, and the further delay involved in getting a test and being reported positive - followed by only about a fifth to a quarter of those testing positive actually isolating - the lower figure might be more credible.
Yes the 0.05 number makes a lot more sense, it's probably actually close to zero given how low isolation adherence actually is - only 2/10 isolate after a positive test.
We could test the whole population everyday and it would still be worthless because 80% of people with positive tests would still go out and infect everyone.
I know you're annoyed about the lack of isolation enforcement but do you agree with the principle that if the pandemic ends weeks or months sooner thanks to T&T then that dwarfs any costs of the programme?
I know that's a big if and you may dispute the if, but if that is true do you agree that i tis worthwhile?
£38 billion wasted? Hmm. If the sole metric of success is 'preventing another lockdown' then, yes. But I think testing millions of people a week must be providing at least some other benefit beyond that quite narrow view.
What benefits?
We had: Probably the world's most comprehensive testing system resulting in us having more accurate information about the spread of the virus than anyone else. A database which allowed us to do the genomic sequencing and the ability to check the spread of variants in all but real time. A large number of people traced and self isolating inhibiting the further spread of the virus. We now have the capacity to do mass testing facilitating the reopening of schools as a first step.
Could some things have been done better? Undoubtedly. Was it good value for money? Very hard to say. But if it is facilitating us coming out of lockdown a few weeks earlier (given the quality of information we have) then yes, it probably was.
Well said.
Its like the penny pinching about vaccines that Europe did. Could things have been done better here? Yes, of course. But compared to the cost of the pandemic, if T&T and the vaccine ends the pandemic a quarter earlier than would have otherwise been done then they'll more than repay their cost.
This cannot possibly be true. We're in lockdown and will remain so until the vaccination program is nearing completion. How on earth do you calculate a three month reduction in end date from that as a result of T&T?
Edit: the only serious defence of T&T for me, is that it's effectively just a way of massaging the unemployment figures downwards. And that most of the cost would have otherwise gone on benefit payments of one kind or another anyway.
There's "lockdown" and there's "restrictions". On most matrices, all being well, "lockdown" will end on 12 April. All remaining well "restrictions" will end on 21 June. Optimistically all adults will have been offerd a vaccine by the end of May. which is several weeks after 12 April.
Either way, all those developments are being driven by the vaccine programme, and not at all because T&T is suddenly helping.
I am perfectly willing to accept there are some benefits to having advance warning as to when and where hospital admissions are going to start rising, or picking up new variants of the virus, but I can see zero evidence that T&T is contributing to the restrictions being lifted a single day ahead of when they otherwise would be.
T&T isn't "suddenly helping" it has always been helping. The vaccine programme is building upon T&T not instead of it.
Vaccinations are reducing R by about 0.03 per week. T&T (from memory) is reducing R by 0.3...
Also from memory, the "0.3" is what was claimed by those running test and trace. I don't have time to respond at length, or to search for links, but I remember those figures being deeply suspect, and an alternate figure of 0.05 being put forward.
Given the delay between becoming infectious and displaying symptoms, and the further delay involved in getting a test and being reported positive - followed by only about a fifth to a quarter of those testing positive actually isolating - the lower figure might be more credible.
Yes the 0.05 number makes a lot more sense, it's probably actually close to zero given how low isolation adherence actually is - only 2/10 isolate after a positive test.
We could test the whole population everyday and it would still be worthless because 80% of people with positive tests would still go out and infect everyone.
Lol No wonder the general rules for everyone have to be as they are with that horrendous level of compliance.
From the time of Philippe Egalite onwards, there's always been something a bit pathetic about rich, entitled people, denouncing other peoples' privilege.
One is "My Truth", as use by Oprah. To me that means "My Opinion".
Another was on R4 earlier - the idea that a personal account of a personal experience is beyond question, and must be accepted as revealed truth. To me - that's just a no; of course it must be tested, especially when not self-consistent.
I'll have a bash. I like these sort of convoluted linguistic issues.
It means my take rather than my opinion. The substitution of "truth" for "take" is a suitable innovation for where it's a person talking about how something has affected them, how it's come across, made them feel, this sort of thing. Because here it requires and deserves added weight over and above "take". And certainly "opinion" is not right.
To illustrate: Woman describes how she feels belittled herself when male colleagues talk about female celebs in an objectified and contemptuous manner.
That is not "her opinion", it is "her take". But "her take" is not quite strong enough. It makes it sound as if her offering on the matter is just one of many to be considered equally. We need something to elevate it. Her Truth. It works.
Question begged. What about the men in my example? One of them now gives his side, says it's not that often, and we talk about lots of other things, she's being a snowflake etc. So is that His Truth?
Answer: No. It isn't. That (rightly) stays at the level of "his take". Why? Because His (or Her) Truth is restricted to those who are punching up. Or not punching, just explaining in this case, but you know what I mean.
So, with the Meghan interview, I'd say there was a hotchpotch of her opinions, her takes, and her truths.
That's my take on My Truth.
That seems unnecessarily convoluted. I cant really see how comprehension or empathy is advanced by such linguistic contortions.
Especially when the opinion of people commenting on such issues is intentionally steered by participants of whatever stripe to black and white perceptions of fact.
'Truth is restricted to those who are punching up' seems like another example of something that needs to be explained that it does not mean what it looks like it means, and that never helps. And who decides what is up or down?
Some things are complicated. We don't need to make them more complicated than needed.
In a society where we claim to believe that people are equal no-one should be - or should think themselves - immune from criticism, regardless of where they are in any hierarchy.
Of course not. And in practice even if they think they are - they aren't. For example, Meghan Markle is for sure not immune to criticism. Quite the opposite! And on the language point, "my truth" in the sense of a person describing how something impacted them doesn't to me imply a right to be above reproach. It just gives added weight to the personal testimony about certain things in certain circumstances.
Boris has a piece in the Telegraph trying to save the union by promising a ton of road and rail projects. Dualing the A1 etc.
"So together with Transport Secretary Grant Shapps, I have asked Sir Peter Hendy to address the problem of Union connectivity. He has just produced his interim report, before final conclusions in the summer."
Good. Our infrastructure is backwards compared to so many other developed countries. For many reasons: 1. Crap project delivery. Dates all the way back to the open corruption of Ernest Marples in the 60s 2. Idiotic "who will pay for it" stupidity where investment = subsidy = communism. 3. NIMBYism. You can't build that (anything) there (anywhere) because it will Ruin England 4. Political short-termism. Projects get announced, then by the time there's been the usual NIMBY planning enquiry it either gets cancelled or truncated. Lots of roads to nowhere where the strategic plan gets lost in a change of government and yet another review 5. Lack of capability. Rail privatisation's lengthy hiatus in spending money on anything largely killed both the train building and infrastructure industry capabilities to do anything. Which is why we seem incapable of wiring a few miles of track or upgrading the signals without vast cost vs previous and foreign assistance.
If Shagger really wants to do something big, don't just reannounce already proposed schemes. Hive strategic planning off to a politically neutral organisation. Make the ORR independent of government. Almost all of these projects deliver either very positive ROI or positive community benefits. The ability to raise revenues from a variety of sources is critical - borrow money at government (near zero long term interest) rates on a long term payback.
They should also take a serious look at Musk's Boring Company. His ideas for standardising and massively speeding up the tunnel boring process are simple in concept, but appear to have potential massive cost savings. https://www.boringcompany.com/faq
I'd be interested to know what @Casino_Royale makes of them.
The Boring Company is interesting - but not for the technology. Which is mostly standard stuff.
What is interesting is why it might be cheaper and the opposition to it.
SpaceX ripped up the launch business by not following the contracting-out-to-a-contractor-who-contracts-out-to-a-{10 iterations here} model.
What the Boring Company is looking at is a similar concept. And the opposition to contracts with them is also interesting - I've heard quotes about "This is a high value, high pay industry - we don't want it disrupted"
A lot of people feed off big public contracts. When space launch went from 500 million a launch to 50 million (and falling) a lot of people lost their rice bowls.
Agreed; it's not even rocket science...
Again, the key insight is to standardise (in this case on a single tunnel diameter), and build and iterate designs, allowing for failures along the way.
Is the Boring Company's standard 12ft diameter tunnel big enough? I guess it is compatible with small personal transport / car shuttles, but not with cargo containers, lorries or rail.
Boring Co will have to use bigger TBMs for rail. But I assume they still have useful advancements in using battery electric rather than diesel drivetrains for TBMs and support vehicles, as well as the concept of turning spoil to bricks for lining the tunnel.
What would be rather have for an Irish tunnel though? High speed rail? Or road (fully electric and autonomous by the time it’s built). Is building one of each double the price?
£38 billion wasted? Hmm. If the sole metric of success is 'preventing another lockdown' then, yes. But I think testing millions of people a week must be providing at least some other benefit beyond that quite narrow view.
What benefits?
We had: Probably the world's most comprehensive testing system resulting in us having more accurate information about the spread of the virus than anyone else. A database which allowed us to do the genomic sequencing and the ability to check the spread of variants in all but real time. A large number of people traced and self isolating inhibiting the further spread of the virus. We now have the capacity to do mass testing facilitating the reopening of schools as a first step.
Could some things have been done better? Undoubtedly. Was it good value for money? Very hard to say. But if it is facilitating us coming out of lockdown a few weeks earlier (given the quality of information we have) then yes, it probably was.
But all of those things could have been achieved with the ONS study, even the genomic sequencing and testing for variants could have been achieved at a tenth of the cost with an enhanced ONS study.
The testing system is probably the worst value for money of any recent government programme. I don't think that's a controversial point.
No that couldn't have been achieved with the ONS study. The testing for the study was nothing like the testing for test and trace.
How much did the vaccine and test and trace cost?
Yes test and trace cost a lot of money, but how much is the pandemic costing us per week? It looks like between the UK's leading test and trace program and our leading vaccine we will end the pandemic a quarter before other comparable nations will. How much will that save us?
In the case of test & trace, not very much at all. The point about these criticisms is that they are not hindsight; we (and many others) were saying all of this much earlier last year.
They ploughed on regardless, throwing money at headline numbers.
And they were right to do so as we now have very few cases, with test and trace finding the vast majority of them, and are now coming out of lockdown while other countries are tightening their restrictions.
The pandemic is us over a trillion. Ending the pandemic even weeks earlier is worth it.
But the pandemic being over is because of the vaccine programme. If that didn't exist do you really think any number of tests would allow for the unlocking schedule we have in place?
No it is because of both.
A clear majority of the British public is still unvaccinated. The vaccine is fantastic, but its another arrow in our national quiver not the only one.
Look at the timeframe, by the time we reach May, which is the significant unlock step, around 40m over 18s will have had their first dose and be through the 3 week waiting time to reach efficacy and all of groups 1-5 will have reached full efficacy with two doses. The testing system has got precisely zero to do with unlockdown. You've got yourself into this weird position of supporting a position that even the government and its scientific advisors don't support wrt testing. You're making an argument that not even they are trying to make becuase it simply isn't true. Our whole unlockdown is based on the vaccine timetable, every single minister and scientist involved has made that abundantly clear. Testing doesn't even register.
£38 billion wasted? Hmm. If the sole metric of success is 'preventing another lockdown' then, yes. But I think testing millions of people a week must be providing at least some other benefit beyond that quite narrow view.
What benefits?
We had: Probably the world's most comprehensive testing system resulting in us having more accurate information about the spread of the virus than anyone else. A database which allowed us to do the genomic sequencing and the ability to check the spread of variants in all but real time. A large number of people traced and self isolating inhibiting the further spread of the virus. We now have the capacity to do mass testing facilitating the reopening of schools as a first step.
Could some things have been done better? Undoubtedly. Was it good value for money? Very hard to say. But if it is facilitating us coming out of lockdown a few weeks earlier (given the quality of information we have) then yes, it probably was.
But all of those things could have been achieved with the ONS study, even the genomic sequencing and testing for variants could have been achieved at a tenth of the cost with an enhanced ONS study.
The testing system is probably the worst value for money of any recent government programme. I don't think that's a controversial point.
No that couldn't have been achieved with the ONS study. The testing for the study was nothing like the testing for test and trace.
How much did the vaccine and test and trace cost?
Yes test and trace cost a lot of money, but how much is the pandemic costing us per week? It looks like between the UK's leading test and trace program and our leading vaccine we will end the pandemic a quarter before other comparable nations will. How much will that save us?
In the case of test & trace, not very much at all. The point about these criticisms is that they are not hindsight; we (and many others) were saying all of this much earlier last year.
They ploughed on regardless, throwing money at headline numbers.
And they were right to do so as we now have very few cases, with test and trace finding the vast majority of them, and are now coming out of lockdown while other countries are tightening their restrictions.
The pandemic is us over a trillion. Ending the pandemic even weeks earlier is worth it.
But the pandemic being over is because of the vaccine programme. If that didn't exist do you really think any number of tests would allow for the unlocking schedule we have in place?
No it is because of both.
A clear majority of the British public is still unvaccinated. The vaccine is fantastic, but its another arrow in our national quiver not the only one.
Look at the timeframe, by the time we reach May, which is the significant unlock step, around 40m over 18s will have had their first dose and be through the 3 week waiting time to reach efficacy and all of groups 1-5 will have reached full efficacy with two doses. The testing system has got precisely zero to do with unlockdown. You've got yourself into this weird position of supporting a position that even the government and its scientific advisors don't support wrt testing. You're making an argument that not even they are trying to make becuase it simply isn't true. Our whole unlockdown is based on the vaccine timetable, every single minister and scientist involved has made that abundantly clear. Testing doesn't even register.
I believe May is too late and it should be escalated after Easter.
If testing combined with vaccines has helped get us out of this by Easter I see no reason to dick around until May. If it does get escalated then that would be good, wouldn't it?
Boris has a piece in the Telegraph trying to save the union by promising a ton of road and rail projects. Dualing the A1 etc.
"So together with Transport Secretary Grant Shapps, I have asked Sir Peter Hendy to address the problem of Union connectivity. He has just produced his interim report, before final conclusions in the summer."
Good. Our infrastructure is backwards compared to so many other developed countries. For many reasons: 1. Crap project delivery. Dates all the way back to the open corruption of Ernest Marples in the 60s 2. Idiotic "who will pay for it" stupidity where investment = subsidy = communism. 3. NIMBYism. You can't build that (anything) there (anywhere) because it will Ruin England 4. Political short-termism. Projects get announced, then by the time there's been the usual NIMBY planning enquiry it either gets cancelled or truncated. Lots of roads to nowhere where the strategic plan gets lost in a change of government and yet another review 5. Lack of capability. Rail privatisation's lengthy hiatus in spending money on anything largely killed both the train building and infrastructure industry capabilities to do anything. Which is why we seem incapable of wiring a few miles of track or upgrading the signals without vast cost vs previous and foreign assistance.
If Shagger really wants to do something big, don't just reannounce already proposed schemes. Hive strategic planning off to a politically neutral organisation. Make the ORR independent of government. Almost all of these projects deliver either very positive ROI or positive community benefits. The ability to raise revenues from a variety of sources is critical - borrow money at government (near zero long term interest) rates on a long term payback.
They should also take a serious look at Musk's Boring Company. His ideas for standardising and massively speeding up the tunnel boring process are simple in concept, but appear to have potential massive cost savings. https://www.boringcompany.com/faq
I'd be interested to know what @Casino_Royale makes of them.
The Boring Company is interesting - but not for the technology. Which is mostly standard stuff.
What is interesting is why it might be cheaper and the opposition to it.
SpaceX ripped up the launch business by not following the contracting-out-to-a-contractor-who-contracts-out-to-a-{10 iterations here} model.
What the Boring Company is looking at is a similar concept. And the opposition to contracts with them is also interesting - I've heard quotes about "This is a high value, high pay industry - we don't want it disrupted"
A lot of people feed off big public contracts. When space launch went from 500 million a launch to 50 million (and falling) a lot of people lost their rice bowls.
Agreed; it's not even rocket science...
Again, the key insight is to standardise (in this case on a single tunnel diameter), and build and iterate designs, allowing for failures along the way.
Is the Boring Company's standard 12ft diameter tunnel big enough? I guess it is compatible with small personal transport / car shuttles, but not with cargo containers, lorries or rail.
This is the one criticism of the Boring Company I’ve seen that makes sense - that most of the claimed savings come simply from boring a tunnel that’s a fraction of the standard diameter & it’s not clear that such a tunnel is much use outside projects that only work for a tiny fraction of transport demand. (eg allowing Elon and his friends to drive their Teslas from one company to another in SV.)
Maybe it’s a deliberately semi-false claim to distract competitors from bothering to up their game? Musk has historically been reasonably effective in identifying a sub-market that can be tackled at relatively lower cost & can be used as a proving ground for a technology before moving in on the larger market. “Oh, we’re only going to build 12ft tunnels” fits that pattern.
£38 billion wasted? Hmm. If the sole metric of success is 'preventing another lockdown' then, yes. But I think testing millions of people a week must be providing at least some other benefit beyond that quite narrow view.
What benefits?
We had: Probably the world's most comprehensive testing system resulting in us having more accurate information about the spread of the virus than anyone else. A database which allowed us to do the genomic sequencing and the ability to check the spread of variants in all but real time. A large number of people traced and self isolating inhibiting the further spread of the virus. We now have the capacity to do mass testing facilitating the reopening of schools as a first step.
Could some things have been done better? Undoubtedly. Was it good value for money? Very hard to say. But if it is facilitating us coming out of lockdown a few weeks earlier (given the quality of information we have) then yes, it probably was.
Well said.
Its like the penny pinching about vaccines that Europe did. Could things have been done better here? Yes, of course. But compared to the cost of the pandemic, if T&T and the vaccine ends the pandemic a quarter earlier than would have otherwise been done then they'll more than repay their cost.
This cannot possibly be true. We're in lockdown and will remain so until the vaccination program is nearing completion. How on earth do you calculate a three month reduction in end date from that as a result of T&T?
Edit: the only serious defence of T&T for me, is that it's effectively just a way of massaging the unemployment figures downwards. And that most of the cost would have otherwise gone on benefit payments of one kind or another anyway.
There's "lockdown" and there's "restrictions". On most matrices, all being well, "lockdown" will end on 12 April. All remaining well "restrictions" will end on 21 June. Optimistically all adults will have been offerd a vaccine by the end of May. which is several weeks after 12 April.
Either way, all those developments are being driven by the vaccine programme, and not at all because T&T is suddenly helping.
I am perfectly willing to accept there are some benefits to having advance warning as to when and where hospital admissions are going to start rising, or picking up new variants of the virus, but I can see zero evidence that T&T is contributing to the restrictions being lifted a single day ahead of when they otherwise would be.
T&T isn't "suddenly helping" it has always been helping. The vaccine programme is building upon T&T not instead of it.
Vaccinations are reducing R by about 0.03 per week. T&T (from memory) is reducing R by 0.3...
Also from memory, the "0.3" is what was claimed by those running test and trace. I don't have time to respond at length, or to search for links, but I remember those figures being deeply suspect, and an alternate figure of 0.05 being put forward.
Given the delay between becoming infectious and displaying symptoms, and the further delay involved in getting a test and being reported positive - followed by only about a fifth to a quarter of those testing positive actually isolating - the lower figure might be more credible.
Yes the 0.05 number makes a lot more sense, it's probably actually close to zero given how low isolation adherence actually is - only 2/10 isolate after a positive test.
We could test the whole population everyday and it would still be worthless because 80% of people with positive tests would still go out and infect everyone.
I know you're annoyed about the lack of isolation enforcement but do you agree with the principle that if the pandemic ends weeks or months sooner thanks to T&T then that dwarfs any costs of the programme?
I know that's a big if and you may dispute the if, but if that is true do you agree that i tis worthwhile?
I mean anyhings possible but it's unlikely in the extreme as we know from successful systems that the value in R reduction from "test and isolate" comes from the "isolate" bit of it. We don't have a functional isolation system.
Surely exporting vaccines is not something nations can claim credit for when it is a company meeting its contractual obligations, that is unless they are giving up some of their supply (which may well be the case) they are not doing anyone any favours?
Whereas if a nation, EU or otherwise, blocks an export, that is their responsibility?
£38 billion wasted? Hmm. If the sole metric of success is 'preventing another lockdown' then, yes. But I think testing millions of people a week must be providing at least some other benefit beyond that quite narrow view.
What benefits?
We had: Probably the world's most comprehensive testing system resulting in us having more accurate information about the spread of the virus than anyone else. A database which allowed us to do the genomic sequencing and the ability to check the spread of variants in all but real time. A large number of people traced and self isolating inhibiting the further spread of the virus. We now have the capacity to do mass testing facilitating the reopening of schools as a first step.
Could some things have been done better? Undoubtedly. Was it good value for money? Very hard to say. But if it is facilitating us coming out of lockdown a few weeks earlier (given the quality of information we have) then yes, it probably was.
But all of those things could have been achieved with the ONS study, even the genomic sequencing and testing for variants could have been achieved at a tenth of the cost with an enhanced ONS study.
The testing system is probably the worst value for money of any recent government programme. I don't think that's a controversial point.
No that couldn't have been achieved with the ONS study. The testing for the study was nothing like the testing for test and trace.
How much did the vaccine and test and trace cost?
Yes test and trace cost a lot of money, but how much is the pandemic costing us per week? It looks like between the UK's leading test and trace program and our leading vaccine we will end the pandemic a quarter before other comparable nations will. How much will that save us?
In the case of test & trace, not very much at all. The point about these criticisms is that they are not hindsight; we (and many others) were saying all of this much earlier last year.
They ploughed on regardless, throwing money at headline numbers.
And they were right to do so as we now have very few cases, with test and trace finding the vast majority of them, and are now coming out of lockdown while other countries are tightening their restrictions.
The pandemic is us over a trillion. Ending the pandemic even weeks earlier is worth it.
But the pandemic being over is because of the vaccine programme. If that didn't exist do you really think any number of tests would allow for the unlocking schedule we have in place?
I take it you aren't going to answer the question regarding why you took a test.
Here's another simple one, what would we have done if the vaccines didn't work?
Why do you need to know? Fwiw I had mild symptoms so decided to get a test, it was negative.
If the vaccines didn't work we'd have to actually come up with the isolate part of "test and isolate" or just go down the America route of herd immunity through infection. I don't think lockdowns are the answer if there's no vaccine endgame.
£38 billion wasted? Hmm. If the sole metric of success is 'preventing another lockdown' then, yes. But I think testing millions of people a week must be providing at least some other benefit beyond that quite narrow view.
What benefits?
We had: Probably the world's most comprehensive testing system resulting in us having more accurate information about the spread of the virus than anyone else. A database which allowed us to do the genomic sequencing and the ability to check the spread of variants in all but real time. A large number of people traced and self isolating inhibiting the further spread of the virus. We now have the capacity to do mass testing facilitating the reopening of schools as a first step.
Could some things have been done better? Undoubtedly. Was it good value for money? Very hard to say. But if it is facilitating us coming out of lockdown a few weeks earlier (given the quality of information we have) then yes, it probably was.
Well said.
Its like the penny pinching about vaccines that Europe did. Could things have been done better here? Yes, of course. But compared to the cost of the pandemic, if T&T and the vaccine ends the pandemic a quarter earlier than would have otherwise been done then they'll more than repay their cost.
This cannot possibly be true. We're in lockdown and will remain so until the vaccination program is nearing completion. How on earth do you calculate a three month reduction in end date from that as a result of T&T?
Edit: the only serious defence of T&T for me, is that it's effectively just a way of massaging the unemployment figures downwards. And that most of the cost would have otherwise gone on benefit payments of one kind or another anyway.
There's "lockdown" and there's "restrictions". On most matrices, all being well, "lockdown" will end on 12 April. All remaining well "restrictions" will end on 21 June. Optimistically all adults will have been offerd a vaccine by the end of May. which is several weeks after 12 April.
Either way, all those developments are being driven by the vaccine programme, and not at all because T&T is suddenly helping.
I am perfectly willing to accept there are some benefits to having advance warning as to when and where hospital admissions are going to start rising, or picking up new variants of the virus, but I can see zero evidence that T&T is contributing to the restrictions being lifted a single day ahead of when they otherwise would be.
T&T isn't "suddenly helping" it has always been helping. The vaccine programme is building upon T&T not instead of it.
Vaccinations are reducing R by about 0.03 per week. T&T (from memory) is reducing R by 0.3...
Also from memory, the "0.3" is what was claimed by those running test and trace. I don't have time to respond at length, or to search for links, but I remember those figures being deeply suspect, and an alternate figure of 0.05 being put forward.
Given the delay between becoming infectious and displaying symptoms, and the further delay involved in getting a test and being reported positive - followed by only about a fifth to a quarter of those testing positive actually isolating - the lower figure might be more credible.
Yes the 0.05 number makes a lot more sense, it's probably actually close to zero given how low isolation adherence actually is - only 2/10 isolate after a positive test.
We could test the whole population everyday and it would still be worthless because 80% of people with positive tests would still go out and infect everyone.
I know you're annoyed about the lack of isolation enforcement but do you agree with the principle that if the pandemic ends weeks or months sooner thanks to T&T then that dwarfs any costs of the programme?
I know that's a big if and you may dispute the if, but if that is true do you agree that i tis worthwhile?
I mean anyhings possible but it's unlikely in the extreme as we know from successful systems that the value in R reduction from "test and isolate" comes from the "isolate" bit of it. We don't have a functional isolation system.
I think people are more responsible than you give them credit for. Telling them to isolate makes a big difference by itself, even if its not perfect.
Boris has a piece in the Telegraph trying to save the union by promising a ton of road and rail projects. Dualing the A1 etc.
"So together with Transport Secretary Grant Shapps, I have asked Sir Peter Hendy to address the problem of Union connectivity. He has just produced his interim report, before final conclusions in the summer."
Good. Our infrastructure is backwards compared to so many other developed countries. For many reasons: 1. Crap project delivery. Dates all the way back to the open corruption of Ernest Marples in the 60s 2. Idiotic "who will pay for it" stupidity where investment = subsidy = communism. 3. NIMBYism. You can't build that (anything) there (anywhere) because it will Ruin England 4. Political short-termism. Projects get announced, then by the time there's been the usual NIMBY planning enquiry it either gets cancelled or truncated. Lots of roads to nowhere where the strategic plan gets lost in a change of government and yet another review 5. Lack of capability. Rail privatisation's lengthy hiatus in spending money on anything largely killed both the train building and infrastructure industry capabilities to do anything. Which is why we seem incapable of wiring a few miles of track or upgrading the signals without vast cost vs previous and foreign assistance.
If Shagger really wants to do something big, don't just reannounce already proposed schemes. Hive strategic planning off to a politically neutral organisation. Make the ORR independent of government. Almost all of these projects deliver either very positive ROI or positive community benefits. The ability to raise revenues from a variety of sources is critical - borrow money at government (near zero long term interest) rates on a long term payback.
They should also take a serious look at Musk's Boring Company. His ideas for standardising and massively speeding up the tunnel boring process are simple in concept, but appear to have potential massive cost savings. https://www.boringcompany.com/faq
I'd be interested to know what @Casino_Royale makes of them.
I don't have time to go into it in detail just now, as work beckons, but.. there's no such thing as a perfect delivery model. There are only models with different pros and cons, and you have to pick the right one for the situation you are in.
The vaccine taskforce certainly had some good ideas (get all the experts in the room, give them the authority - i.e. don't take all their decisions through layers and layers of civil service governance, where they are second or third guessed, and which takes months as there are lots of people who can say "no" - and let them get on with it) but money was no object and the Government was willing to take a lot of risk. Why? Because the country was in its worst recession for 300 years and tens of thousands of people were dying, so no cost or risk in getting an effective vaccine seemed unreasonable next to that.
Projects take a long time in the UK because they take a long time to start. Just look at all the fannying around with the Heathrow 3rd runway, or the Palace of Westminster refurbishment. That's because we are worried about the cost, the environmental impact, the disruption, and people aren't sure if they'll bear all the costs without the benefits, so it's politically divisive. Resolving that takes time. So that's one thing.
Once you're in delivery it becomes about cost, time, and quality control, with safety paramount. You can trade-off the first three but, in the UK and most Western countries, you can't on the last. The reason China gets things done quickly is they have no politics to delay the start (we do), money isn't a real issue and they don't give too much of a shit about safety. They get it done quick, people who are inconvenienced or die in the process are just collateral damage, or otherwise silenced, and they don't have to maintain audit trails or records.
When politicians talk about Project SPEED what they mean is they want projects delivered to world-class quality, very cheaply, very quickly and with no risk. Well, that world doesn't exist.
What I suspect will happen is that some projects will start quickly (accepting more risk on scope and price to do it) and then they will end up being delivered fairly quickly but not doing quite what everyone expected, or costing more than anticipated. Then, the politicians will start getting critiqued for cost and quality and the whole circus about delivery models will start again!
This is disorientating. I agree with 7 of the last 8 things @RochdalePioneers has said.
The problem I'd point to here is the ever-expanding zoo of statutory consultees in planning applications.
Unfortunately, some of things Rochdale said are unfounded and speculative. The truth is more complicated.
We have lots more rules now around environment, air quality, conservation, preservation, equality and safety, because we live in a democracy and that's what people want, and it's on the statue book.
Surely exporting vaccines is not something nations can claim credit for when it is a company meeting its contractual obligations, that is unless they are giving up some of their supply (which may well be the case) they are not doing anyone any favours?
Whereas if a nation, EU or otherwise, blocks an export, that is their responsibility?
Your problem is applying logic to the behaviour of idiots. The EC is acting like a customer in a restaurant complaining of being denied service, whilst the chef is still cooking someone else's dinner. If they wanted to eat first they needed to arrive earlier.
£38 billion wasted? Hmm. If the sole metric of success is 'preventing another lockdown' then, yes. But I think testing millions of people a week must be providing at least some other benefit beyond that quite narrow view.
What benefits?
We had: Probably the world's most comprehensive testing system resulting in us having more accurate information about the spread of the virus than anyone else. A database which allowed us to do the genomic sequencing and the ability to check the spread of variants in all but real time. A large number of people traced and self isolating inhibiting the further spread of the virus. We now have the capacity to do mass testing facilitating the reopening of schools as a first step.
Could some things have been done better? Undoubtedly. Was it good value for money? Very hard to say. But if it is facilitating us coming out of lockdown a few weeks earlier (given the quality of information we have) then yes, it probably was.
But all of those things could have been achieved with the ONS study, even the genomic sequencing and testing for variants could have been achieved at a tenth of the cost with an enhanced ONS study.
The testing system is probably the worst value for money of any recent government programme. I don't think that's a controversial point.
No that couldn't have been achieved with the ONS study. The testing for the study was nothing like the testing for test and trace.
How much did the vaccine and test and trace cost?
Yes test and trace cost a lot of money, but how much is the pandemic costing us per week? It looks like between the UK's leading test and trace program and our leading vaccine we will end the pandemic a quarter before other comparable nations will. How much will that save us?
In the case of test & trace, not very much at all. The point about these criticisms is that they are not hindsight; we (and many others) were saying all of this much earlier last year.
They ploughed on regardless, throwing money at headline numbers.
And they were right to do so as we now have very few cases, with test and trace finding the vast majority of them, and are now coming out of lockdown while other countries are tightening their restrictions.
The pandemic is us over a trillion. Ending the pandemic even weeks earlier is worth it.
But the pandemic being over is because of the vaccine programme. If that didn't exist do you really think any number of tests would allow for the unlocking schedule we have in place?
No it is because of both.
A clear majority of the British public is still unvaccinated. The vaccine is fantastic, but its another arrow in our national quiver not the only one.
Look at the timeframe, by the time we reach May, which is the significant unlock step, around 40m over 18s will have had their first dose and be through the 3 week waiting time to reach efficacy and all of groups 1-5 will have reached full efficacy with two doses. The testing system has got precisely zero to do with unlockdown. You've got yourself into this weird position of supporting a position that even the government and its scientific advisors don't support wrt testing. You're making an argument that not even they are trying to make becuase it simply isn't true. Our whole unlockdown is based on the vaccine timetable, every single minister and scientist involved has made that abundantly clear. Testing doesn't even register.
I believe May is too late and it should be escalated after Easter.
If testing combined with vaccines has helped get us out of this by Easter I see no reason to dick around until May. If it does get escalated then that would be good, wouldn't it?
But you're not outlining how the current testing system will allow for that. 8/10 people don't isolate after getting a positive result. It's now been confirmed by multiple studies that this is the level of non-compliance we're dealing with. Test and isolate. Test and *isolate*. We're not doing the latter and have no concrete plans to implement one and given that we're at the tail end of the pandemic it's probably not worth bothering.
Boris has a piece in the Telegraph trying to save the union by promising a ton of road and rail projects. Dualing the A1 etc.
"So together with Transport Secretary Grant Shapps, I have asked Sir Peter Hendy to address the problem of Union connectivity. He has just produced his interim report, before final conclusions in the summer."
Good. Our infrastructure is backwards compared to so many other developed countries. For many reasons: 1. Crap project delivery. Dates all the way back to the open corruption of Ernest Marples in the 60s 2. Idiotic "who will pay for it" stupidity where investment = subsidy = communism. 3. NIMBYism. You can't build that (anything) there (anywhere) because it will Ruin England 4. Political short-termism. Projects get announced, then by the time there's been the usual NIMBY planning enquiry it either gets cancelled or truncated. Lots of roads to nowhere where the strategic plan gets lost in a change of government and yet another review 5. Lack of capability. Rail privatisation's lengthy hiatus in spending money on anything largely killed both the train building and infrastructure industry capabilities to do anything. Which is why we seem incapable of wiring a few miles of track or upgrading the signals without vast cost vs previous and foreign assistance.
If Shagger really wants to do something big, don't just reannounce already proposed schemes. Hive strategic planning off to a politically neutral organisation. Make the ORR independent of government. Almost all of these projects deliver either very positive ROI or positive community benefits. The ability to raise revenues from a variety of sources is critical - borrow money at government (near zero long term interest) rates on a long term payback.
They should also take a serious look at Musk's Boring Company. His ideas for standardising and massively speeding up the tunnel boring process are simple in concept, but appear to have potential massive cost savings. https://www.boringcompany.com/faq
I'd be interested to know what @Casino_Royale makes of them.
The Boring Company is interesting - but not for the technology. Which is mostly standard stuff.
What is interesting is why it might be cheaper and the opposition to it.
SpaceX ripped up the launch business by not following the contracting-out-to-a-contractor-who-contracts-out-to-a-{10 iterations here} model.
What the Boring Company is looking at is a similar concept. And the opposition to contracts with them is also interesting - I've heard quotes about "This is a high value, high pay industry - we don't want it disrupted"
A lot of people feed off big public contracts. When space launch went from 500 million a launch to 50 million (and falling) a lot of people lost their rice bowls.
Agreed; it's not even rocket science...
Again, the key insight is to standardise (in this case on a single tunnel diameter), and build and iterate designs, allowing for failures along the way.
Is the Boring Company's standard 12ft diameter tunnel big enough? I guess it is compatible with small personal transport / car shuttles, but not with cargo containers, lorries or rail.
Boring Co will have to use bigger TBMs for rail. But I assume they still have useful advancements in using battery electric rather than diesel drivetrains for TBMs and support vehicles, as well as the concept of turning spoil to bricks for lining the tunnel.
What would be rather have for an Irish tunnel though? High speed rail? Or road (fully electric and autonomous by the time it’s built). Is building one of each double the price?
There's some economies of scale to be had (removal of spoil being a big one) but the cost of TBMs is so expensive compared to all other costs that the short answer is: pretty much, yes. Though on second thoughts if TBMs can be made significantly cheaper then the economies of scale for doing two at once become more significant.
Surely exporting vaccines is not something nations can claim credit for when it is a company meeting its contractual obligations, that is unless they are giving up some of their supply (which may well be the case) they are not doing anyone any favours?
Whereas if a nation, EU or otherwise, blocks an export, that is their responsibility?
Go back to mid 2020 and try and make the argument that "there's no real point to mass testing". Nobody would even dare to have made that argument.
We decided as a country, with across the board support, that everybody who wants a test should get one, that the tests should be the best possible, and that the person tested should get their results as soon as possible. We built a system to do that, at enormous expense.
Now if there had only been the same collective will to make people isolate we might have made better use of the testing, but there was essentially no support for forcing people to isolate. We decided to trust people to follow the rules, and surveys say that most of them did not follow the rules. That's the failing, not enough carrot and stick, the testing system itself is doing what we asked of it.
Remember when we had 1 week in September where testing capacity didn't meet demand with schools returning and lots of people deciding well I will try to get one just to make sure, the media had a meltdown.
£38 billion wasted? Hmm. If the sole metric of success is 'preventing another lockdown' then, yes. But I think testing millions of people a week must be providing at least some other benefit beyond that quite narrow view.
What benefits?
We had: Probably the world's most comprehensive testing system resulting in us having more accurate information about the spread of the virus than anyone else. A database which allowed us to do the genomic sequencing and the ability to check the spread of variants in all but real time. A large number of people traced and self isolating inhibiting the further spread of the virus. We now have the capacity to do mass testing facilitating the reopening of schools as a first step.
Could some things have been done better? Undoubtedly. Was it good value for money? Very hard to say. But if it is facilitating us coming out of lockdown a few weeks earlier (given the quality of information we have) then yes, it probably was.
But all of those things could have been achieved with the ONS study, even the genomic sequencing and testing for variants could have been achieved at a tenth of the cost with an enhanced ONS study.
The testing system is probably the worst value for money of any recent government programme. I don't think that's a controversial point.
No that couldn't have been achieved with the ONS study. The testing for the study was nothing like the testing for test and trace.
How much did the vaccine and test and trace cost?
Yes test and trace cost a lot of money, but how much is the pandemic costing us per week? It looks like between the UK's leading test and trace program and our leading vaccine we will end the pandemic a quarter before other comparable nations will. How much will that save us?
In the case of test & trace, not very much at all. The point about these criticisms is that they are not hindsight; we (and many others) were saying all of this much earlier last year.
They ploughed on regardless, throwing money at headline numbers.
And they were right to do so as we now have very few cases, with test and trace finding the vast majority of them, and are now coming out of lockdown while other countries are tightening their restrictions.
The pandemic is us over a trillion. Ending the pandemic even weeks earlier is worth it.
But the pandemic being over is because of the vaccine programme. If that didn't exist do you really think any number of tests would allow for the unlocking schedule we have in place?
No it is because of both.
A clear majority of the British public is still unvaccinated. The vaccine is fantastic, but its another arrow in our national quiver not the only one.
Look at the timeframe, by the time we reach May, which is the significant unlock step, around 40m over 18s will have had their first dose and be through the 3 week waiting time to reach efficacy and all of groups 1-5 will have reached full efficacy with two doses. The testing system has got precisely zero to do with unlockdown. You've got yourself into this weird position of supporting a position that even the government and its scientific advisors don't support wrt testing. You're making an argument that not even they are trying to make becuase it simply isn't true. Our whole unlockdown is based on the vaccine timetable, every single minister and scientist involved has made that abundantly clear. Testing doesn't even register.
I believe May is too late and it should be escalated after Easter.
If testing combined with vaccines has helped get us out of this by Easter I see no reason to dick around until May. If it does get escalated then that would be good, wouldn't it?
But you're not outlining how the current testing system will allow for that. 8/10 people don't isolate after getting a positive result. It's now been confirmed by multiple studies that this is the level of non-compliance we're dealing with. Test and isolate. Test and *isolate*. We're not doing the latter and have no concrete plans to implement one and given that we're at the tail end of the pandemic it's probably not worth bothering.
Is that 8/10 take no efforts to isolate at all? Or 8/10 break their isolation at all, even if its going to the shops just once - which shouldn't happen but isn't as if they're living normally through the whole isolation period.
Even imperfect isolation is better than no isolation at all.
Labour should be miles clear after the year the Government has had. SKS was a terrible choice as leader. OGH is celebrating a poll where Labour are 6 points behind.
£38 billion wasted? Hmm. If the sole metric of success is 'preventing another lockdown' then, yes. But I think testing millions of people a week must be providing at least some other benefit beyond that quite narrow view.
What benefits?
We had: Probably the world's most comprehensive testing system resulting in us having more accurate information about the spread of the virus than anyone else. A database which allowed us to do the genomic sequencing and the ability to check the spread of variants in all but real time. A large number of people traced and self isolating inhibiting the further spread of the virus. We now have the capacity to do mass testing facilitating the reopening of schools as a first step.
Could some things have been done better? Undoubtedly. Was it good value for money? Very hard to say. But if it is facilitating us coming out of lockdown a few weeks earlier (given the quality of information we have) then yes, it probably was.
Well said.
Its like the penny pinching about vaccines that Europe did. Could things have been done better here? Yes, of course. But compared to the cost of the pandemic, if T&T and the vaccine ends the pandemic a quarter earlier than would have otherwise been done then they'll more than repay their cost.
This cannot possibly be true. We're in lockdown and will remain so until the vaccination program is nearing completion. How on earth do you calculate a three month reduction in end date from that as a result of T&T?
Edit: the only serious defence of T&T for me, is that it's effectively just a way of massaging the unemployment figures downwards. And that most of the cost would have otherwise gone on benefit payments of one kind or another anyway.
There's "lockdown" and there's "restrictions". On most matrices, all being well, "lockdown" will end on 12 April. All remaining well "restrictions" will end on 21 June. Optimistically all adults will have been offerd a vaccine by the end of May. which is several weeks after 12 April.
Either way, all those developments are being driven by the vaccine programme, and not at all because T&T is suddenly helping.
I am perfectly willing to accept there are some benefits to having advance warning as to when and where hospital admissions are going to start rising, or picking up new variants of the virus, but I can see zero evidence that T&T is contributing to the restrictions being lifted a single day ahead of when they otherwise would be.
T&T isn't "suddenly helping" it has always been helping. The vaccine programme is building upon T&T not instead of it.
Vaccinations are reducing R by about 0.03 per week. T&T (from memory) is reducing R by 0.3...
Also from memory, the "0.3" is what was claimed by those running test and trace. I don't have time to respond at length, or to search for links, but I remember those figures being deeply suspect, and an alternate figure of 0.05 being put forward.
Given the delay between becoming infectious and displaying symptoms, and the further delay involved in getting a test and being reported positive - followed by only about a fifth to a quarter of those testing positive actually isolating - the lower figure might be more credible.
Yes the 0.05 number makes a lot more sense, it's probably actually close to zero given how low isolation adherence actually is - only 2/10 isolate after a positive test.
We could test the whole population everyday and it would still be worthless because 80% of people with positive tests would still go out and infect everyone.
I know you're annoyed about the lack of isolation enforcement but do you agree with the principle that if the pandemic ends weeks or months sooner thanks to T&T then that dwarfs any costs of the programme?
I know that's a big if and you may dispute the if, but if that is true do you agree that i tis worthwhile?
I mean anyhings possible but it's unlikely in the extreme as we know from successful systems that the value in R reduction from "test and isolate" comes from the "isolate" bit of it. We don't have a functional isolation system.
I think people are more responsible than you give them credit for. Telling them to isolate makes a big difference by itself, even if its not perfect.
No it doesn't. People aren't responsible and in many circumstances don't have the ability to be responsible becuase they can't afford to take unpaid leave and the government's isolation help is pitiful.
Honestly, you are projecting your own attitude to isolation onto the wider population. Just because you don't think it's a good idea to go out and live normally after a positive test it doesn't mean the rest of the country doesn't think it is. 8/10 people fail to properly isolate *after* they get a positive result. That's why the testing system is worthless and until you understand that this conversation is completely pointless.
Remember when we had 1 week in September where testing capacity didn't meet demand with schools returning and lots of people deciding well I will try to get one just to make sure, the media had a meltdown.
The number of tests barely gets any mention now, the numbers are colossal and simply pass over the heads of most people. Does it cost a lot? Yeah, doing gazillions of state of the art tests ain't cheap!
£38 billion wasted? Hmm. If the sole metric of success is 'preventing another lockdown' then, yes. But I think testing millions of people a week must be providing at least some other benefit beyond that quite narrow view.
What benefits?
We had: Probably the world's most comprehensive testing system resulting in us having more accurate information about the spread of the virus than anyone else. A database which allowed us to do the genomic sequencing and the ability to check the spread of variants in all but real time. A large number of people traced and self isolating inhibiting the further spread of the virus. We now have the capacity to do mass testing facilitating the reopening of schools as a first step.
Could some things have been done better? Undoubtedly. Was it good value for money? Very hard to say. But if it is facilitating us coming out of lockdown a few weeks earlier (given the quality of information we have) then yes, it probably was.
Well said.
Its like the penny pinching about vaccines that Europe did. Could things have been done better here? Yes, of course. But compared to the cost of the pandemic, if T&T and the vaccine ends the pandemic a quarter earlier than would have otherwise been done then they'll more than repay their cost.
This cannot possibly be true. We're in lockdown and will remain so until the vaccination program is nearing completion. How on earth do you calculate a three month reduction in end date from that as a result of T&T?
Edit: the only serious defence of T&T for me, is that it's effectively just a way of massaging the unemployment figures downwards. And that most of the cost would have otherwise gone on benefit payments of one kind or another anyway.
There's "lockdown" and there's "restrictions". On most matrices, all being well, "lockdown" will end on 12 April. All remaining well "restrictions" will end on 21 June. Optimistically all adults will have been offerd a vaccine by the end of May. which is several weeks after 12 April.
Either way, all those developments are being driven by the vaccine programme, and not at all because T&T is suddenly helping.
I am perfectly willing to accept there are some benefits to having advance warning as to when and where hospital admissions are going to start rising, or picking up new variants of the virus, but I can see zero evidence that T&T is contributing to the restrictions being lifted a single day ahead of when they otherwise would be.
T&T isn't "suddenly helping" it has always been helping. The vaccine programme is building upon T&T not instead of it.
Vaccinations are reducing R by about 0.03 per week. T&T (from memory) is reducing R by 0.3...
Also from memory, the "0.3" is what was claimed by those running test and trace. I don't have time to respond at length, or to search for links, but I remember those figures being deeply suspect, and an alternate figure of 0.05 being put forward.
Given the delay between becoming infectious and displaying symptoms, and the further delay involved in getting a test and being reported positive - followed by only about a fifth to a quarter of those testing positive actually isolating - the lower figure might be more credible.
Yes the 0.05 number makes a lot more sense, it's probably actually close to zero given how low isolation adherence actually is - only 2/10 isolate after a positive test.
We could test the whole population everyday and it would still be worthless because 80% of people with positive tests would still go out and infect everyone.
I know you're annoyed about the lack of isolation enforcement but do you agree with the principle that if the pandemic ends weeks or months sooner thanks to T&T then that dwarfs any costs of the programme?
I know that's a big if and you may dispute the if, but if that is true do you agree that i tis worthwhile?
I mean anyhings possible but it's unlikely in the extreme as we know from successful systems that the value in R reduction from "test and isolate" comes from the "isolate" bit of it. We don't have a functional isolation system.
I think people are more responsible than you give them credit for. Telling them to isolate makes a big difference by itself, even if its not perfect.
No it doesn't. People aren't responsible and in many circumstances don't have the ability to be responsible becuase they can't afford to take unpaid leave and the government's isolation help is pitiful.
Honestly, you are projecting your own attitude to isolation onto the wider population. Just because you don't think it's a good idea to go out and live normally after a positive test it doesn't mean the rest of the country doesn't think it is. 8/10 people fail to properly isolate *after* they get a positive result. That's why the testing system is worthless and until you understand that this conversation is completely pointless.
Again "properly" isolating isn't the same thing as "not isolating at all".
What proportion of people don't isolate at all after a positive result?
Remember when we had 1 week in September where testing capacity didn't meet demand with schools returning and lots of people deciding well I will try to get one just to make sure, the media had a meltdown.
The number of tests barely gets any mention now, the numbers are colossal and simply pass over the heads of most people. Does it cost a lot? Yeah, doing gazillions of state of the art tests ain't cheap!
The government literally can't win on this. Don't do a gazillion tests, its all we should be like Germany, do more tests than Germany, well thats a waste of money.
The bit that many of us have said from the beginning, the idea you can track and trace very many people, especially via an voluntary anonymous app, is for the birds.
It is why should have closed the border sooner and enforced quarantine, etc. Pro-active, rather than reactive.
Comments
https://twitter.com/JordanSchachtel/status/1369488647028871174
https://twitter.com/i/status/1369351043885174784
My observation is that there is a little, but very little rule-bending. In terms of what most people feel the ability to do, we are at maybe 10% of February 2020 levels of sociability. I haven't been in anyone else's house since Christmas day (in fact, I think the only private houses I have been in in the perma-lockdown of GM in the past year have been my parents' and my in-laws').
And I'd say I'm more willing to bend the rules than most.
And in any case, 'just ignore the rules, everyone else does' does not in my view satisfactorily bring lockdown to a close!
Again, this is just my observation; middle class South Manchester may not be typical.
https://twitter.com/DaveKeating/status/1369604538395680771
https://twitter.com/DaveKeating/status/1369604542694834177
Cabinet minister Grant Shapps said fewer British people had taken up the offer of shots in the U.K. after EU figures questioned the efficacy of the AstraZeneca vaccine, a clear reference to remarks from French President Emmanuel Macron, among others.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-03-10/u-k-accuses-eu-of-harming-britons-health-as-vaccine-row-grows
Or is Mr Green winging it again?
The data points to UK vaccine acceptance improving even after Macron's idiocy.....
Whether Professor Whitty defined the benefits as soley those, I'm not sure, I can't be bothered checking.
But the benefits of a test go way beyond those things, if you think about it for a moment.
Like I said, the cost benefit analysis is complex and will be controversial. But the briefings from that committee are not worth bothering with.
The tracing bit is the bit that's supposed to matter, but for the reasons outlined previously I won't believe it's working unless you show me something that convinces me otherwise.
And we have the lowest case rate in Europe because we have restrictions in place, and because we have significant levels of immunity in the population for various reasons (vaccine, prior infections).
A system like that would allow us to model viral rates per locality very accurately and in near real time just as our current system does.
The wider value in testing has always needed to be unlocked with a proper monitored isolation system. Every country which has successfully suppressed the virus with test and isolate has got very tough monitored isolation. It seems pointless to spend £38bn on testing and little to nothing on isolation measures when the latter is where the reduction in the R value is gained.
I don't disagree about the isolation actually - there seems to have been no serious effort in the whole business from the start.
Again, the key insight is to standardise (in this case on a single tunnel diameter), and build and iterate designs, allowing for failures along the way.
European politicians are absolutely hammering this line so that they can evade the blame.
Unfortunately, there’s been a number of different statements made out of Europe, including misleading information on the effectiveness of some of these vaccines, which eventually have been unwound, but not until they’ve done damage to the number of people, the uptake on some of the vaccines, which I think is all very unfortunate,”
Which is true of EU vaccine uptake, but not UK.
https://twitter.com/i/status/1369604562139705347
I mentioned here recently that my wife tested positive. We isolated for the 10 day period in full without leaving the house once. I don't believe we're unique, even if some people do go out while they're supposed to be isolating.
https://twitter.com/jamesfraney/status/1369615193194569732?s=20
The point about these criticisms is that they are not hindsight; we (and many others) were saying all of this much earlier last year.
They ploughed on regardless, throwing money at headline numbers.
And as a data point I think it has fallen apart - because it's including the impact of people isolating.
The estimate for contract tracing alone was 1.7-4.6%...
https://twitter.com/Barnes_Joe/status/1369375392298074114?s=20
False negatives are much more prevalent than false positives because of the difficulties in acquiring a sample.
Having skimmed through the report (yes, people can read it rather than relying on skewed summaries), I'm most concerned by b). 70% of the value of the contracts (i.e. 70% of £7 billion) were issued under emergency measures without competition. Around 2,500 consultants are still employed, costing on average £1k per day with some earning well over £6k per day. Sorry, that's grotesque grifting. Deloitte and others are laughing all the way to the bank.
The pandemic is us over a trillion. Ending the pandemic even weeks earlier is worth it.
She had mild symptoms after testing positive but not the headline three and would not have thought she had the bug if it wasn't for the positive.
We've all see 'Politician X tells Politician Y to Z' distraction headlines before.
https://twitter.com/WalkerMarcus/status/1369421700698345482?s=20
As a beefed up "my take" for a person relating the impact on them of societal prejudice.
So what are you saying is unnecessary - the term itself or my explanation of it?
I don't have time to respond at length, or to search for links, but I remember those figures being deeply suspect, and an alternate figure of 0.05 being put forward.
Given the delay between becoming infectious and displaying symptoms, and the further delay involved in getting a test and being reported positive - followed by only about a fifth to a quarter of those testing positive actually isolating - the lower figure might be more credible.
I mean if someone coughs over you with covid, a cold, flu then some viral particles WILL head your nose/throat surely ?
But your body can kill it off very quickly thereafter, perhaps to the point that you'll never know you caught the virus ever.
A clear majority of the British public is still unvaccinated. The vaccine is fantastic, but its another arrow in our national quiver not the only one.
I just cannot see how understanding or, as I said, empathy, of matters such as societal prejudice is aided by overcomplicating things with what seems like complex epistemological arguments on the nature of relative truth.
We could test the whole population everyday and it would still be worthless because 80% of people with positive tests would still go out and infect everyone.
Here's another simple one, what would we have done if the vaccines didn't work?
Repetitive, no impact, no value.
Good news he won't be PM anytime soon!
Something like that.
I know that's a big if and you may dispute the if, but if that is true do you agree that i tis worthwhile?
What would be rather have for an Irish tunnel though? High speed rail? Or road (fully electric and autonomous by the time it’s built). Is building one of each double the price?
If testing combined with vaccines has helped get us out of this by Easter I see no reason to dick around until May. If it does get escalated then that would be good, wouldn't it?
Maybe it’s a deliberately semi-false claim to distract competitors from bothering to up their game? Musk has historically been reasonably effective in identifying a sub-market that can be tackled at relatively lower cost & can be used as a proving ground for a technology before moving in on the larger market. “Oh, we’re only going to build 12ft tunnels” fits that pattern.
Whereas if a nation, EU or otherwise, blocks an export, that is their responsibility?
If the vaccines didn't work we'd have to actually come up with the isolate part of "test and isolate" or just go down the America route of herd immunity through infection. I don't think lockdowns are the answer if there's no vaccine endgame.
We have lots more rules now around environment, air quality, conservation, preservation, equality and safety, because we live in a democracy and that's what people want, and it's on the statue book.
https://twitter.com/MSmithsonPB/status/1369623921339871233
Though on second thoughts if TBMs can be made significantly cheaper then the economies of scale for doing two at once become more significant.
I wonder if they feel that is the case for anyone who has signed deals after them?
Though in fact I believe their current argument is that the UK signed a deal very close to theirs, so it is all just AZ lies.
1st dose 11,819
2nd dose 14,364
Even imperfect isolation is better than no isolation at all.
Honestly, you are projecting your own attitude to isolation onto the wider population. Just because you don't think it's a good idea to go out and live normally after a positive test it doesn't mean the rest of the country doesn't think it is. 8/10 people fail to properly isolate *after* they get a positive result. That's why the testing system is worthless and until you understand that this conversation is completely pointless.
Anyway, why did you cut off two words from my reply?
What proportion of people don't isolate at all after a positive result?
The bit that many of us have said from the beginning, the idea you can track and trace very many people, especially via an voluntary anonymous app, is for the birds.
It is why should have closed the border sooner and enforced quarantine, etc. Pro-active, rather than reactive.