I don't think this will be forgotten by the weekend but I don't think it'll have much impact in a month or two.
Cummings is too obviously out to get revenge and many people accept that mistakes were made early in the pandemic.
But the popular mood is of course quite difficult to read - I still can't understand what so many people see in hip-hop, Eurovision, organised sport, McDonald's, etc. etc. etc.
"organised sport" covers a colossal amount of stuff
Yep, and I never watch any of it, unless a friend is competing.
Disorganised sport is much more fun to watch. It can be quite the roller-coaster ride.
As we who support England know.
Like the medieval "football" games between two villages that were basically rules-free homoerotic warfare?
That's our Pandemic Preparedness Strategy. Remember that we were supposed to be one of the best prepared countries in the world for this?
But take a closer look at it.
The Influenza Pandemic Preparedness Strategy
Everything in it is targeted at influenza.
So the takeaway is:
- Maybe don't do all your pandemic planning and preparation around one single disease?
Things like:
- This influenza outbreak will all be over in 1-3 months (Coronavirus: Big Nope)
- We judge face masks in the wider population are of limited use against influenza (Fine, but they're pretty useful against coronavirus)
- We'll use the existing seasonal influenza testing and surveillance system for the outbreak (Umm, no, that doesn't help with testing for coronavirus)
- People are infectious for about 2-4 days and not very infectious prior to symptoms (Not for coronavirus: 5-10 days, and up to 14 days, and the pre-symptomatic period is crucial)
- The disease isn't very airborne; compulsively washing hands to avoid fomites is crucial (Coronavirus is primarily airborne/aerosol; fomite transmission appears negligible)
- There is minimal effect from stopping mass gatherings (For coronavirus, stopping mass gatherings is the single biggest low hanging fruit)
- There is little point in closing the borders (Australia and New Zealand bend over laughing; we then wait for ages even stopping flights from places where new Variants of Concern originate)
... etc, etc. We can STILL see hangovers from this plan - which looks to have been very well researched and planned to deal with an influenza epidemic, but somewhere between minimal use and actively detrimental to a different viral pandemic - coming out in things like the reluctance to stop travel.
The one thing we got very right was the vaccine programme, which did have useful small sections in there.
And following the plan was 'following the science' when following common sense - border control and isolating the sick from the vulnerable - would have been better.
March last year, the government issued mandatory guidance regarding discharge from hospitals. I'd link to it, but the document is no longer available on the government website.
...Every patient on every general ward should be reviewed on a twice daily board round to determine the following. If the answer to each question is ‘no’, active consideration for discharge to a less acute setting must be made...
Irrespective of infected status, if patients were not at a minimum on oxygen, they had to be considered for discharge.
For Hancock to claim that care homes were protected at the time was simply untrue.
It should be a resignation offence - telling lies as a minister used to be the red line. However with Twice-Sacked Liar as PM and sacked liar as Home Secretary and sacked liar as Education Secretary we know Hancock is safe.
So what that he lied and broke the ministerial code and killed 20,000 people. The arbiter for what is a lie is Liar. So even when Patel gets found in breach of the code He simply overturns it and says "no she isn't". As he will with the findings of his own financial transgressions.
Whats more, the Cult will cheer it on! Its Good that they lie!
You'll be hard pressed to find anyone on here cheering on the release of patients from hospitals back to residential homes. Many of us - myself included - have said that clearing beds to cater for the mass influx of Covid patients was a self-fulfilling prophecy when those coming in for treatment were those recently released - with the folks they had also infected in their homes.
There had to be a half-way house for them. Given how little the Nightingale hospitals ended up being used, they should have been better configured so these patients were moved there instead. Perhaps if Starmer weren't so useless, he could have had a big political win on this.
March last year, the government issued mandatory guidance regarding discharge from hospitals. I'd link to it, but the document is no longer available on the government website.
...Every patient on every general ward should be reviewed on a twice daily board round to determine the following. If the answer to each question is ‘no’, active consideration for discharge to a less acute setting must be made...
Irrespective of infected status, if patients were not at a minimum on oxygen, they had to be considered for discharge.
For Hancock to claim that care homes were protected at the time was simply untrue.
It should be a resignation offence - telling lies as a minister used to be the red line. However with Twice-Sacked Liar as PM and sacked liar as Home Secretary and sacked liar as Education Secretary we know Hancock is safe.
So what that he lied and broke the ministerial code and killed 20,000 people. The arbiter for what is a lie is Liar. So even when Patel gets found in breach of the code He simply overturns it and says "no she isn't". As he will with the findings of his own financial transgressions.
Whats more, the Cult will cheer it on! Its Good that they lie!
And what does that all tell you?
It tells me to top up on Raab next party leader. Which I have duly done.
That's our Pandemic Preparedness Strategy. Remember that we were supposed to be one of the best prepared countries in the world for this?
But take a closer look at it.
The Influenza Pandemic Preparedness Strategy
Everything in it is targeted at influenza.
So the takeaway is:
- Maybe don't do all your pandemic planning and preparation around one single disease?
Things like:
- This influenza outbreak will all be over in 1-3 months (Coronavirus: Big Nope)
- We judge face masks in the wider population are of limited use against influenza (Fine, but they're pretty useful against coronavirus)
- We'll use the existing seasonal influenza testing and surveillance system for the outbreak (Umm, no, that doesn't help with testing for coronavirus)
- People are infectious for about 2-4 days and not very infectious prior to symptoms (Not for coronavirus: 5-10 days, and up to 14 days, and the pre-symptomatic period is crucial)
- The disease isn't very airborne; compulsively washing hands to avoid fomites is crucial (Coronavirus is primarily airborne/aerosol; fomite transmission appears negligible)
- There is minimal effect from stopping mass gatherings (For coronavirus, stopping mass gatherings is the single biggest low hanging fruit)
- There is little point in closing the borders (Australia and New Zealand bend over laughing; we then wait for ages even stopping flights from places where new Variants of Concern originate)
... etc, etc. We can STILL see hangovers from this plan - which looks to have been very well researched and planned to deal with an influenza epidemic, but somewhere between minimal use and actively detrimental to a different viral pandemic - coming out in things like the reluctance to stop travel.
The one thing we got very right was the vaccine programme, which did have useful small sections in there.
And following the plan was 'following the science' when following common sense - border control and isolating the sick from the vulnerable - would have been better.
The government are cowards. They "follow the science" when it suits them to hide behind Whitty and Vallance. When they decide to ignore Whitty and Vallance then they make clear that they make the decisions and not unelected scientists. Then when as a direct result of their fuck science laxness they need to lock down again (late) they say "we follow the science, Whitty and Vallance made us do it".
Its pathetic really. Little children instead of grown ups. Grow a pair, take ownership of your brief and the decisions you made.
That's our Pandemic Preparedness Strategy. Remember that we were supposed to be one of the best prepared countries in the world for this?
But take a closer look at it.
The Influenza Pandemic Preparedness Strategy
Everything in it is targeted at influenza.
So the takeaway is:
- Maybe don't do all your pandemic planning and preparation around one single disease?
Things like:
- This influenza outbreak will all be over in 1-3 months (Coronavirus: Big Nope)
- We judge face masks in the wider population are of limited use against influenza (Fine, but they're pretty useful against coronavirus)
- We'll use the existing seasonal influenza testing and surveillance system for the outbreak (Umm, no, that doesn't help with testing for coronavirus)
- People are infectious for about 2-4 days and not very infectious prior to symptoms (Not for coronavirus: 5-10 days, and up to 14 days, and the pre-symptomatic period is crucial)
- The disease isn't very airborne; compulsively washing hands to avoid fomites is crucial (Coronavirus is primarily airborne/aerosol; fomite transmission appears negligible)
- There is minimal effect from stopping mass gatherings (For coronavirus, stopping mass gatherings is the single biggest low hanging fruit)
- There is little point in closing the borders (Australia and New Zealand bend over laughing; we then wait for ages even stopping flights from places where new Variants of Concern originate)
... etc, etc. We can STILL see hangovers from this plan - which looks to have been very well researched and planned to deal with an influenza epidemic, but somewhere between minimal use and actively detrimental to a different viral pandemic - coming out in things like the reluctance to stop travel.
The one thing we got very right was the vaccine programme, which did have useful small sections in there.
And following the plan was 'following the science' when following common sense - border control and isolating the sick from the vulnerable - would have been better.
Cleaning, ventilation, isolating the infectious, border controls, quarantine for travellers. All excellent public health measures (c) F. Nightingale & Co., not to mention plenty of Royal Navy medics in Nelson's time, ansd mediaeval Venetians, off the top of my head.
March last year, the government issued mandatory guidance regarding discharge from hospitals. I'd link to it, but the document is no longer available on the government website.
...Every patient on every general ward should be reviewed on a twice daily board round to determine the following. If the answer to each question is ‘no’, active consideration for discharge to a less acute setting must be made...
Irrespective of infected status, if patients were not at a minimum on oxygen, they had to be considered for discharge.
For Hancock to claim that care homes were protected at the time was simply untrue.
It should be a resignation offence - telling lies as a minister used to be the red line. However with Twice-Sacked Liar as PM and sacked liar as Home Secretary and sacked liar as Education Secretary we know Hancock is safe.
So what that he lied and broke the ministerial code and killed 20,000 people. The arbiter for what is a lie is Liar. So even when Patel gets found in breach of the code He simply overturns it and says "no she isn't". As he will with the findings of his own financial transgressions.
Whats more, the Cult will cheer it on! Its Good that they lie!
And what does that all tell you?
It tells me to top up on Raab next party leader. Which I have duly done.
Christ. Did you remember when he did the stand in role as Boris was ill ?
That's our Pandemic Preparedness Strategy. Remember that we were supposed to be one of the best prepared countries in the world for this?
But take a closer look at it.
The Influenza Pandemic Preparedness Strategy
Everything in it is targeted at influenza.
So the takeaway is:
- Maybe don't do all your pandemic planning and preparation around one single disease?
Things like:
- This influenza outbreak will all be over in 1-3 months (Coronavirus: Big Nope)
- We judge face masks in the wider population are of limited use against influenza (Fine, but they're pretty useful against coronavirus)
- We'll use the existing seasonal influenza testing and surveillance system for the outbreak (Umm, no, that doesn't help with testing for coronavirus)
- People are infectious for about 2-4 days and not very infectious prior to symptoms (Not for coronavirus: 5-10 days, and up to 14 days, and the pre-symptomatic period is crucial)
- The disease isn't very airborne; compulsively washing hands to avoid fomites is crucial (Coronavirus is primarily airborne/aerosol; fomite transmission appears negligible)
- There is minimal effect from stopping mass gatherings (For coronavirus, stopping mass gatherings is the single biggest low hanging fruit)
- There is little point in closing the borders (Australia and New Zealand bend over laughing; we then wait for ages even stopping flights from places where new Variants of Concern originate)
... etc, etc. We can STILL see hangovers from this plan - which looks to have been very well researched and planned to deal with an influenza epidemic, but somewhere between minimal use and actively detrimental to a different viral pandemic - coming out in things like the reluctance to stop travel.
The one thing we got very right was the vaccine programme, which did have useful small sections in there.
Don't worry, we'll be ready for the Corona next time around...
Guidance published by the government in spring last year regarding admission to care homes, post discharge from hospitals.
1. Admission of residents The care sector looks after many of the most vulnerable people in our society. In this pandemic, we appreciate that care home providers are first and foremost looking after the people in their care, and doing so while some of their staff are absent due to sickness or isolation requirements. As part of the national effort, the care sector also plays a vital role in accepting patients as they are discharged from hospital – both because recuperation is better in non-acute settings, and because hospitals need to have enough beds to treat acutely sick patients. Residents may also be admitted to a care home from a home setting. Some of these patients may have COVID-19, whether symptomatic or asymptomatic. All of these patients can be safely cared for in a care home if this guidance is followed. If an individual has no COVID-19 symptoms or has tested positive for COVID-19 but is no longer showing symptoms and has completed their isolation period, then care should be provided as normal. The Hospital Discharge Service and staff will clarify with care homes the COVID-19 status of an individual and any COVID-19 symptoms, during the process of transfer from a hospital to the care home. Tests will primarily be given to: ! all patients in critical care for pneumonia, acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) or flu like illness ! all other patients requiring admission to hospital for pneumonia, ARDS or flu like illness ! where an outbreak has occurred in a residential or care setting, for example long-term care facility or prisons.1 Negative tests are not required prior to transfers / admissions into the care home.
But who wrote that ?
That's clearly based on the then scientific view that the asymptomatic do not infect others.
Certainly a major mistake but the key question was when was it rectified.
The word 'asymptomatic' does not appear in the guidance, so there is no 'clearly' about it. And if you look at the hospital discharge requirements, this included symptomatic individuals, if they were no actually in critical care on oxygen.
The precautions taken were considerably below those with regard to norovirus.
The hospital discharge requirements were published mid March. The care home admission guidance was published the first week in April.
March last year, the government issued mandatory guidance regarding discharge from hospitals. I'd link to it, but the document is no longer available on the government website.
...Every patient on every general ward should be reviewed on a twice daily board round to determine the following. If the answer to each question is ‘no’, active consideration for discharge to a less acute setting must be made...
Irrespective of infected status, if patients were not at a minimum on oxygen, they had to be considered for discharge.
For Hancock to claim that care homes were protected at the time was simply untrue.
It should be a resignation offence - telling lies as a minister used to be the red line. However with Twice-Sacked Liar as PM and sacked liar as Home Secretary and sacked liar as Education Secretary we know Hancock is safe.
So what that he lied and broke the ministerial code and killed 20,000 people. The arbiter for what is a lie is Liar. So even when Patel gets found in breach of the code He simply overturns it and says "no she isn't". As he will with the findings of his own financial transgressions.
Whats more, the Cult will cheer it on! Its Good that they lie!
And what does that all tell you?
It tells me to top up on Raab next party leader. Which I have duly done.
Raab looked like a rabbit in the headlights when he was propelled into the top chair. But in the circumstances that is understandable. With so many of the other contenders with either serious enemies or battle damage I take your point about Raab being a decent bet.
If the Tories aren’t hurt in the polls by headlines like these, what headlines would it take to do it?
Excellent question. What headline would damage Johnson enough for you to reject him?
"Johnson loses his charisma!"
"Johnson loses his hair"
I suspect without that blond dishevelled mop, he would look like an ugly, fat, bald slob.
There was a picture of him in his dog-walking kit the other day. If you saw someone like that in a pub you'd move to the other end of the bar.
I have to ask, would it make a difference to you if Dilyn was with him?
I'm not one for getting too near dogs I don't know, or in a situation which may make THEM nervous. You never know when a dog is going to get a odd idea about someone being a threat.
What is interesting is that the numbers match quite well to the vaccination numbers. All the stuff about "1/3rd of the population has had it" can go in the bin.
Well, except you have to knock off essentially the last three big weeks of vaccines to get to the period covered by this study.
Wondering about that - yes, you need ~3 weeks to get to a level of reasonable protection from the vaccine, but when do antibodies get produced in sufficient quantities to be detected in a blood sample. Could be sooner?
I recently participated in the study (or a similar one), and eight weeks after the first AZN shot, did not test positive for antibodies. That doesn't mean no protection, of course.
What is interesting is that the numbers match quite well to the vaccination numbers. All the stuff about "1/3rd of the population has had it" can go in the bin.
Well, except you have to knock off essentially the last three big weeks of vaccines to get to the period covered by this study.
Wondering about that - yes, you need ~3 weeks to get to a level of reasonable protection from the vaccine, but when do antibodies get produced in sufficient quantities to be detected in a blood sample. Could be sooner?
I recently participated in the study (or a similar one), and eight weeks after the first AZN shot, did not test positive for antibodies. That doesn't mean no protection, of course.
Quasi-ineffective - Macron was right!
(I also had AZN, so I hope not)
Ten weeks after my first AZN I tested positive for long-term antibodies
That's our Pandemic Preparedness Strategy. Remember that we were supposed to be one of the best prepared countries in the world for this?
But take a closer look at it.
The Influenza Pandemic Preparedness Strategy
Everything in it is targeted at influenza.
So the takeaway is:
- Maybe don't do all your pandemic planning and preparation around one single disease?
Things like:
- This influenza outbreak will all be over in 1-3 months (Coronavirus: Big Nope)
- We judge face masks in the wider population are of limited use against influenza (Fine, but they're pretty useful against coronavirus)
- We'll use the existing seasonal influenza testing and surveillance system for the outbreak (Umm, no, that doesn't help with testing for coronavirus)
- People are infectious for about 2-4 days and not very infectious prior to symptoms (Not for coronavirus: 5-10 days, and up to 14 days, and the pre-symptomatic period is crucial)
- The disease isn't very airborne; compulsively washing hands to avoid fomites is crucial (Coronavirus is primarily airborne/aerosol; fomite transmission appears negligible)
- There is minimal effect from stopping mass gatherings (For coronavirus, stopping mass gatherings is the single biggest low hanging fruit)
- There is little point in closing the borders (Australia and New Zealand bend over laughing; we then wait for ages even stopping flights from places where new Variants of Concern originate)
... etc, etc. We can STILL see hangovers from this plan - which looks to have been very well researched and planned to deal with an influenza epidemic, but somewhere between minimal use and actively detrimental to a different viral pandemic - coming out in things like the reluctance to stop travel.
The one thing we got very right was the vaccine programme, which did have useful small sections in there.
And following the plan was 'following the science' when following common sense - border control and isolating the sick from the vulnerable - would have been better.
The government are cowards. They "follow the science" when it suits them to hide behind Whitty and Vallance. When they decide to ignore Whitty and Vallance then they make clear that they make the decisions and not unelected scientists. Then when as a direct result of their fuck science laxness they need to lock down again (late) they say "we follow the science, Whitty and Vallance made us do it".
Its pathetic really. Little children instead of grown ups. Grow a pair, take ownership of your brief and the decisions you made.
Politicians being liars and cowards is a given.
But I'd be extremely doubtful that the advice from Whitty and Vallance hasn't often been wrong as well.
What is interesting is that the numbers match quite well to the vaccination numbers. All the stuff about "1/3rd of the population has had it" can go in the bin.
Well, except you have to knock off essentially the last three big weeks of vaccines to get to the period covered by this study.
Wondering about that - yes, you need ~3 weeks to get to a level of reasonable protection from the vaccine, but when do antibodies get produced in sufficient quantities to be detected in a blood sample. Could be sooner?
I recently participated in the study (or a similar one), and eight weeks after the first AZN shot, did not test positive for antibodies. That doesn't mean no protection, of course.
Quasi-ineffective - Macron was right!
(I also had AZN, so I hope not)
Ten weeks after my first AZN I tested positive for long-term antibodies
Batley school protests: Teacher allowed back in Prophet Muhammad image row
Good to see. Incredible to think that a teacher who warned pupils that they may take offence to some parts of the lesson, and offered them the option to sit out that part had to have police protection and couldn't live in his own home.
14.4 in N Essex. Some high cloud though. And it looks like at least one of our blue-tit chicks is going to survive. Which is better than those 1/4 milk away, but someone ate the other end of town reckons all hers are going to fledge.
What is interesting is that the numbers match quite well to the vaccination numbers. All the stuff about "1/3rd of the population has had it" can go in the bin.
Well, except you have to knock off essentially the last three big weeks of vaccines to get to the period covered by this study.
Wondering about that - yes, you need ~3 weeks to get to a level of reasonable protection from the vaccine, but when do antibodies get produced in sufficient quantities to be detected in a blood sample. Could be sooner?
I recently participated in the study (or a similar one), and eight weeks after the first AZN shot, did not test positive for antibodies. That doesn't mean no protection, of course.
Quasi-ineffective - Macron was right!
(I also had AZN, so I hope not)
Ten weeks after my first AZN I tested positive for long-term antibodies
How did you get that test
Probably the Oxford/ONS background rates of infection test. They now do anti-bodies monthly.
To add data, unfortunately 9 weeks after her first Pfizer shot my mother tested negative for antibodies.
March last year, the government issued mandatory guidance regarding discharge from hospitals. I'd link to it, but the document is no longer available on the government website.
...Every patient on every general ward should be reviewed on a twice daily board round to determine the following. If the answer to each question is ‘no’, active consideration for discharge to a less acute setting must be made...
Irrespective of infected status, if patients were not at a minimum on oxygen, they had to be considered for discharge.
For Hancock to claim that care homes were protected at the time was simply untrue.
It should be a resignation offence - telling lies as a minister used to be the red line. However with Twice-Sacked Liar as PM and sacked liar as Home Secretary and sacked liar as Education Secretary we know Hancock is safe.
So what that he lied and broke the ministerial code and killed 20,000 people. The arbiter for what is a lie is Liar. So even when Patel gets found in breach of the code He simply overturns it and says "no she isn't". As he will with the findings of his own financial transgressions.
Whats more, the Cult will cheer it on! Its Good that they lie!
I can accept that Hancock (and PHE) made a serious mistake at the beginning of the pandemic. What disturbs me in that he spent the next few months obfuscating that mistake rather than rectifying it (I paid particular interest to daily briefings, interviews and Commons statements, as I had, as some will know, an interest in the matter).
The failure was not properly recognising the necessity of isolating infected (or potentially infected) individuals - a basic principle of epidemic control. What makes it unforgivable is that this persisted throughout the pandemic. We spent tens of billions on testing, and managed (on the government's own figures) to isolate less than a fifth of those identified.
What happened last spring was perhaps unavoidable given the systems we had. What happened over the winter certainly wasn't.
Guidance published by the government in spring last year regarding admission to care homes, post discharge from hospitals.
1. Admission of residents The care sector looks after many of the most vulnerable people in our society. In this pandemic, we appreciate that care home providers are first and foremost looking after the people in their care, and doing so while some of their staff are absent due to sickness or isolation requirements. As part of the national effort, the care sector also plays a vital role in accepting patients as they are discharged from hospital – both because recuperation is better in non-acute settings, and because hospitals need to have enough beds to treat acutely sick patients. Residents may also be admitted to a care home from a home setting. Some of these patients may have COVID-19, whether symptomatic or asymptomatic. All of these patients can be safely cared for in a care home if this guidance is followed. If an individual has no COVID-19 symptoms or has tested positive for COVID-19 but is no longer showing symptoms and has completed their isolation period, then care should be provided as normal. The Hospital Discharge Service and staff will clarify with care homes the COVID-19 status of an individual and any COVID-19 symptoms, during the process of transfer from a hospital to the care home. Tests will primarily be given to: ! all patients in critical care for pneumonia, acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) or flu like illness ! all other patients requiring admission to hospital for pneumonia, ARDS or flu like illness ! where an outbreak has occurred in a residential or care setting, for example long-term care facility or prisons.1 Negative tests are not required prior to transfers / admissions into the care home.
It was on the govt website but came from Public Health England.
(((Dan Hodges))) @DPJHodges · 5m BTW, that’s another thing that’s been weirdly overlooked. Dom’s central charge was that people in government were too slow to appreciate the need for lockdowns. The person in Government who has lobbied longest and hardest for lockdowns is Matt Hancock.
Guidance published by the government in spring last year regarding admission to care homes, post discharge from hospitals.
1. Admission of residents The care sector looks after many of the most vulnerable people in our society. In this pandemic, we appreciate that care home providers are first and foremost looking after the people in their care, and doing so while some of their staff are absent due to sickness or isolation requirements. As part of the national effort, the care sector also plays a vital role in accepting patients as they are discharged from hospital – both because recuperation is better in non-acute settings, and because hospitals need to have enough beds to treat acutely sick patients. Residents may also be admitted to a care home from a home setting. Some of these patients may have COVID-19, whether symptomatic or asymptomatic. All of these patients can be safely cared for in a care home if this guidance is followed. If an individual has no COVID-19 symptoms or has tested positive for COVID-19 but is no longer showing symptoms and has completed their isolation period, then care should be provided as normal. The Hospital Discharge Service and staff will clarify with care homes the COVID-19 status of an individual and any COVID-19 symptoms, during the process of transfer from a hospital to the care home. Tests will primarily be given to: ! all patients in critical care for pneumonia, acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) or flu like illness ! all other patients requiring admission to hospital for pneumonia, ARDS or flu like illness ! where an outbreak has occurred in a residential or care setting, for example long-term care facility or prisons.1 Negative tests are not required prior to transfers / admissions into the care home.
But who wrote that ?
That's clearly based on the then scientific view that the asymptomatic do not infect others.
Certainly a major mistake but the key question was when was it rectified.
The word 'asymptomatic' does not appear in the guidance, so there is no 'clearly' about it. And if you look at the hospital discharge requirements, this included symptomatic individuals, if they were no actually in critical care on oxygen.
The precautions taken were considerably below those with regard to norovirus.
The hospital discharge requirements were published mid March. The care home admission guidance was published the first week in April.
The word asymptomatic appears in the part you bolded.
It was clearly the wrong strategy.
But it was the scientifically agreed strategy so another example of 'following the science' behind worse than following common sense.
March last year, the government issued mandatory guidance regarding discharge from hospitals. I'd link to it, but the document is no longer available on the government website.
...Every patient on every general ward should be reviewed on a twice daily board round to determine the following. If the answer to each question is ‘no’, active consideration for discharge to a less acute setting must be made...
Irrespective of infected status, if patients were not at a minimum on oxygen, they had to be considered for discharge.
For Hancock to claim that care homes were protected at the time was simply untrue.
It should be a resignation offence - telling lies as a minister used to be the red line. However with Twice-Sacked Liar as PM and sacked liar as Home Secretary and sacked liar as Education Secretary we know Hancock is safe.
So what that he lied and broke the ministerial code and killed 20,000 people. The arbiter for what is a lie is Liar. So even when Patel gets found in breach of the code He simply overturns it and says "no she isn't". As he will with the findings of his own financial transgressions.
Whats more, the Cult will cheer it on! Its Good that they lie!
And what does that all tell you?
It tells me to top up on Raab next party leader. Which I have duly done.
Christ. Did you remember when he did the stand in role as Boris was ill ?
If the Tories aren’t hurt in the polls by headlines like these, what headlines would it take to do it?
“Inflation hits 10%”
As @Philip_Thompson keeps telling me an increase in money supply is no longer inflationary, and if we do get some inflation it is "good". I can't recall why.
So no, Boris just keeps rolling along.
I have never said that!
I have said that it is inflationary but it doesn't automatically mean inflation because we also have deflationary pressures to take into account.
If the inflationary pressures and deflationary ones cancel each other out then the net result is no inflation. As we've seen for the past decade.
What part of that are you struggling with? Do you need smaller words? 🤦♂️
I can't be arsed to find your response but you stated that an increase in M3 is no longer guaranteed to be inflationary. You said the 1980s notion that there was a correlation between an increase in money supply and inflation had been debunked 20 years ago. It is 40 years since I studied economics, so I am taking you at your word.
That's not what I said.
What I said is that an increase in M3 is no longer guaranteed to result in inflation because there is greater awareness of deflationary pressures now. And I provided the data to back that up.
Like Japan in 1990 the west now is now very heavily indebted which can mean that people's available cash to spend can be contracting due to credit issues etc even when the money supply is officially increasing.
Increasing money supply is still inflationary but inflationary pressures alone are not sufficient to cause inflation if deflationary pressures exist too.
One way to think about it is how uniquitous credit cards are used nowadays compared to 40 years ago. Having £1000 available to spend in your bank account and having nothing in your bank account but a £1000 credit limit are not the same thing, even if they both permit expenditure.
Credit cards terrify me. Especially as I am now on a fixed income. I haven’t had one for a very long time. They are a way of telling future you to go fuck yourself.
Precisely! They're great if you're conscientious to pay them off in full every month so you just get an extra 50 days to pay but its paid in full.
But fail to pay in full, pay interest only, and you're f***ed. And there's far more people in that situation today than there were in the 70s or 80s and it doesn't show properly in money supply which is why the textbooks from the 70s and 80s aren't suitable for today.
There are at least three significant structural deflationary pressures that didn't exist in the 1980s:
Labour is much less organised into unions in heavy mass industries. Instead a significant proportion of the working class compete against each other to deliver services as cheaply as possible.
Mass migration from eastern Europe introduced a cohort of workers with the requisite industrial skills to displace the British-born workforce.
Third ... people who've done well out of the pandemic sitting on their bank balances, having forgotten how to spend money. I'd include myself in this category.
Guidance published by the government in spring last year regarding admission to care homes, post discharge from hospitals.
1. Admission of residents The care sector looks after many of the most vulnerable people in our society. In this pandemic, we appreciate that care home providers are first and foremost looking after the people in their care, and doing so while some of their staff are absent due to sickness or isolation requirements. As part of the national effort, the care sector also plays a vital role in accepting patients as they are discharged from hospital – both because recuperation is better in non-acute settings, and because hospitals need to have enough beds to treat acutely sick patients. Residents may also be admitted to a care home from a home setting. Some of these patients may have COVID-19, whether symptomatic or asymptomatic. All of these patients can be safely cared for in a care home if this guidance is followed. If an individual has no COVID-19 symptoms or has tested positive for COVID-19 but is no longer showing symptoms and has completed their isolation period, then care should be provided as normal. The Hospital Discharge Service and staff will clarify with care homes the COVID-19 status of an individual and any COVID-19 symptoms, during the process of transfer from a hospital to the care home. Tests will primarily be given to: ! all patients in critical care for pneumonia, acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) or flu like illness ! all other patients requiring admission to hospital for pneumonia, ARDS or flu like illness ! where an outbreak has occurred in a residential or care setting, for example long-term care facility or prisons.1 Negative tests are not required prior to transfers / admissions into the care home.
But who wrote that ?
That's clearly based on the then scientific view that the asymptomatic do not infect others.
Certainly a major mistake but the key question was when was it rectified.
Pretty sure it was Public Health England, an organisation more concerned about lifestyle management it would seem.
(((Dan Hodges))) @DPJHodges · 5m BTW, that’s another thing that’s been weirdly overlooked. Dom’s central charge was that people in government were too slow to appreciate the need for lockdowns. The person in Government who has lobbied longest and hardest for lockdowns is Matt Hancock.
Lots of Big Doms comments were cherry picking...he basically argued well if I was in charge we would have closed the borders, had a South Korean trace system and a far more targeted testing.
#1) that's fine, that was doable....#2 and #3, basically screams well I looked at what has worked best and claimed we could / should have done them.
#2 was just a total non-starter, both from perspective of what the public would accept, but also, the South Koreans spent nearly 10 years building their system....if we could just do this, do you think the intelligence services would struggle to keep track of a few 1000s Islamist nutters? The technology just doesn't exist in the UK to flick a switch and track every persons movements.
It isn't that it can't be done, its a matter that it isn't legal to do so and requires massive surveillance systems to be put in place.
Big dom was arguing as if it was just a matter of a government minister giving the order and we could have been doing this.
#3 - Well PHE spent a month saying it was impossible. It was only after Hancock blew his top and said screw you guys, I'm going to get the universities and the private sector to do this, was their any progress...and Big Dom seems to argue well that was wrong, it was clearly trivial to have much better targeted testing, when PHE couldn't even do 10k tests a day, and are / were inputting the results into Excel.
Guidance published by the government in spring last year regarding admission to care homes, post discharge from hospitals.
1. Admission of residents The care sector looks after many of the most vulnerable people in our society. In this pandemic, we appreciate that care home providers are first and foremost looking after the people in their care, and doing so while some of their staff are absent due to sickness or isolation requirements. As part of the national effort, the care sector also plays a vital role in accepting patients as they are discharged from hospital – both because recuperation is better in non-acute settings, and because hospitals need to have enough beds to treat acutely sick patients. Residents may also be admitted to a care home from a home setting. Some of these patients may have COVID-19, whether symptomatic or asymptomatic. All of these patients can be safely cared for in a care home if this guidance is followed. If an individual has no COVID-19 symptoms or has tested positive for COVID-19 but is no longer showing symptoms and has completed their isolation period, then care should be provided as normal. The Hospital Discharge Service and staff will clarify with care homes the COVID-19 status of an individual and any COVID-19 symptoms, during the process of transfer from a hospital to the care home. Tests will primarily be given to: ! all patients in critical care for pneumonia, acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) or flu like illness ! all other patients requiring admission to hospital for pneumonia, ARDS or flu like illness ! where an outbreak has occurred in a residential or care setting, for example long-term care facility or prisons.1 Negative tests are not required prior to transfers / admissions into the care home.
But who wrote that ?
That's clearly based on the then scientific view that the asymptomatic do not infect others.
Certainly a major mistake but the key question was when was it rectified.
The word 'asymptomatic' does not appear in the guidance, so there is no 'clearly' about it. And if you look at the hospital discharge requirements, this included symptomatic individuals, if they were no actually in critical care on oxygen.
The precautions taken were considerably below those with regard to norovirus.
The hospital discharge requirements were published mid March. The care home admission guidance was published the first week in April.
The word asymptomatic appears in the part you bolded.
It was clearly the wrong strategy.
But it was the scientifically agreed strategy so another example of 'following the science' behind worse than following common sense.
There's likely a problem with the scientist <-> politician/civil servant communication here:
Politician: Are people without symptoms infectious? Scientist: There's no evidence of that Politician: Cool, send them to the care homes
The scientist thinks he/she has said "I don't know"; the politician hears "no".
The scientist, of course, needs to be clear and speak in real English. And/or the politician/civil servant needs to understand science a bit more.
If the Tories aren’t hurt in the polls by headlines like these, what headlines would it take to do it?
Excellent question. What headline would damage Johnson enough for you to reject him?
"Johnson loses his charisma!"
"Johnson loses his hair"
I suspect without that blond dishevelled mop, he would look like an ugly, fat, bald slob.
There was a picture of him in his dog-walking kit the other day. If you saw someone like that in a pub you'd move to the other end of the bar.
I have to ask, would it make a difference to you if Dilyn was with him?
I'm not one for getting too near dogs I don't know, or in a situation which may make THEM nervous. You never know when a dog is going to get a odd idea about someone being a threat.
Quite. PLus one never knows what position the owner will take.
Though this reminds me that Mr Cummings did reportedly complain that the hound in question was, erm, rather too affectionate to him, or at least his leg.
What is interesting is that the numbers match quite well to the vaccination numbers. All the stuff about "1/3rd of the population has had it" can go in the bin.
Well, except you have to knock off essentially the last three big weeks of vaccines to get to the period covered by this study.
Wondering about that - yes, you need ~3 weeks to get to a level of reasonable protection from the vaccine, but when do antibodies get produced in sufficient quantities to be detected in a blood sample. Could be sooner?
I recently participated in the study (or a similar one), and eight weeks after the first AZN shot, did not test positive for antibodies. That doesn't mean no protection, of course.
Quasi-ineffective - Macron was right!
(I also had AZN, so I hope not)
Ten weeks after my first AZN I tested positive for long-term antibodies
How did you get that test
In my case, signing up for NHS Covid trials/studies last year, which you can do online. Got asked (for the first time) last week.
If the Tories aren’t hurt in the polls by headlines like these, what headlines would it take to do it?
“Inflation hits 10%”
As @Philip_Thompson keeps telling me an increase in money supply is no longer inflationary, and if we do get some inflation it is "good". I can't recall why.
So no, Boris just keeps rolling along.
I have never said that!
I have said that it is inflationary but it doesn't automatically mean inflation because we also have deflationary pressures to take into account.
If the inflationary pressures and deflationary ones cancel each other out then the net result is no inflation. As we've seen for the past decade.
What part of that are you struggling with? Do you need smaller words? 🤦♂️
I can't be arsed to find your response but you stated that an increase in M3 is no longer guaranteed to be inflationary. You said the 1980s notion that there was a correlation between an increase in money supply and inflation had been debunked 20 years ago. It is 40 years since I studied economics, so I am taking you at your word.
That's not what I said.
What I said is that an increase in M3 is no longer guaranteed to result in inflation because there is greater awareness of deflationary pressures now. And I provided the data to back that up.
Like Japan in 1990 the west now is now very heavily indebted which can mean that people's available cash to spend can be contracting due to credit issues etc even when the money supply is officially increasing.
Increasing money supply is still inflationary but inflationary pressures alone are not sufficient to cause inflation if deflationary pressures exist too.
One way to think about it is how uniquitous credit cards are used nowadays compared to 40 years ago. Having £1000 available to spend in your bank account and having nothing in your bank account but a £1000 credit limit are not the same thing, even if they both permit expenditure.
Credit cards terrify me. Especially as I am now on a fixed income. I haven’t had one for a very long time. They are a way of telling future you to go fuck yourself.
Precisely! They're great if you're conscientious to pay them off in full every month so you just get an extra 50 days to pay but its paid in full.
But fail to pay in full, pay interest only, and you're f***ed. And there's far more people in that situation today than there were in the 70s or 80s and it doesn't show properly in money supply which is why the textbooks from the 70s and 80s aren't suitable for today.
There are at least three significant structural deflationary pressures that didn't exist in the 1980s:
Labour is much less organised into unions in heavy mass industries. Instead a significant proportion of the working class compete against each other to deliver services as cheaply as possible.
Mass migration from eastern Europe introduced a cohort of workers with the requisite industrial skills to displace the British-born workforce.
Third ... people who've done well out of the pandemic sitting on their bank balances, having forgotten how to spend money. I'd include myself in this category.
The last one is quite significant. People who obsess over money supply tend to forget that money supply is very divorced from consumer expenditure nowadays, which is why Central Banks no longer use things like M3 nowadays for policy making anymore. M3 does not include credit cards which makes it bloody useless in 2021.
The textbooks of 40 years ago would have said that the increase in money supply in the past 12 months should have seen a major increase in expenditure. The reality of course was the opposite, there's been a major decrease in expenditure.
If people are spending based on credit (or repaying credit) and not based on money itself, then money supply and inflation become divorced from each other.
Mr. Selebian, at university I was practically the only person on a course of 100 that didn't have an A-level in psychology (the subject of the course). I did, however, have a (bad) A-level in maths, unlike almost everyone else. It proved far more useful than I expected.
Guidance published by the government in spring last year regarding admission to care homes, post discharge from hospitals.
1. Admission of residents The care sector looks after many of the most vulnerable people in our society. In this pandemic, we appreciate that care home providers are first and foremost looking after the people in their care, and doing so while some of their staff are absent due to sickness or isolation requirements. As part of the national effort, the care sector also plays a vital role in accepting patients as they are discharged from hospital – both because recuperation is better in non-acute settings, and because hospitals need to have enough beds to treat acutely sick patients. Residents may also be admitted to a care home from a home setting. Some of these patients may have COVID-19, whether symptomatic or asymptomatic. All of these patients can be safely cared for in a care home if this guidance is followed. If an individual has no COVID-19 symptoms or has tested positive for COVID-19 but is no longer showing symptoms and has completed their isolation period, then care should be provided as normal. The Hospital Discharge Service and staff will clarify with care homes the COVID-19 status of an individual and any COVID-19 symptoms, during the process of transfer from a hospital to the care home. Tests will primarily be given to: ! all patients in critical care for pneumonia, acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) or flu like illness ! all other patients requiring admission to hospital for pneumonia, ARDS or flu like illness ! where an outbreak has occurred in a residential or care setting, for example long-term care facility or prisons.1 Negative tests are not required prior to transfers / admissions into the care home.
But who wrote that ?
That's clearly based on the then scientific view that the asymptomatic do not infect others.
Certainly a major mistake but the key question was when was it rectified.
The word 'asymptomatic' does not appear in the guidance, so there is no 'clearly' about it. And if you look at the hospital discharge requirements, this included symptomatic individuals, if they were no actually in critical care on oxygen.
The precautions taken were considerably below those with regard to norovirus.
The hospital discharge requirements were published mid March. The care home admission guidance was published the first week in April.
The word asymptomatic appears in the part you bolded.
It was clearly the wrong strategy.
But it was the scientifically agreed strategy so another example of 'following the science' behind worse than following common sense.
The revelation that Covid is infectious before being symptomatic was a game-changer. Decisions made beforehand turned out to be wrong. Such is the glory of hindsight.
Batley school protests: Teacher allowed back in Prophet Muhammad image row
Good to see. Incredible to think that a teacher who warned pupils that they may take offence to some parts of the lesson, and offered them the option to sit out that part had to have police protection and couldn't live in his own home.
This news may be slightly helpful to Labour in the Batley & Spen byelection, if the teacher's return is smooth. If the issue had been ongoing, it may have been damaging to Labour.
Guidance published by the government in spring last year regarding admission to care homes, post discharge from hospitals.
1. Admission of residents The care sector looks after many of the most vulnerable people in our society. In this pandemic, we appreciate that care home providers are first and foremost looking after the people in their care, and doing so while some of their staff are absent due to sickness or isolation requirements. As part of the national effort, the care sector also plays a vital role in accepting patients as they are discharged from hospital – both because recuperation is better in non-acute settings, and because hospitals need to have enough beds to treat acutely sick patients. Residents may also be admitted to a care home from a home setting. Some of these patients may have COVID-19, whether symptomatic or asymptomatic. All of these patients can be safely cared for in a care home if this guidance is followed. If an individual has no COVID-19 symptoms or has tested positive for COVID-19 but is no longer showing symptoms and has completed their isolation period, then care should be provided as normal. The Hospital Discharge Service and staff will clarify with care homes the COVID-19 status of an individual and any COVID-19 symptoms, during the process of transfer from a hospital to the care home. Tests will primarily be given to: ! all patients in critical care for pneumonia, acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) or flu like illness ! all other patients requiring admission to hospital for pneumonia, ARDS or flu like illness ! where an outbreak has occurred in a residential or care setting, for example long-term care facility or prisons.1 Negative tests are not required prior to transfers / admissions into the care home.
But who wrote that ?
That's clearly based on the then scientific view that the asymptomatic do not infect others.
Certainly a major mistake but the key question was when was it rectified.
The word 'asymptomatic' does not appear in the guidance, so there is no 'clearly' about it. And if you look at the hospital discharge requirements, this included symptomatic individuals, if they were no actually in critical care on oxygen.
The precautions taken were considerably below those with regard to norovirus.
The hospital discharge requirements were published mid March. The care home admission guidance was published the first week in April.
The word asymptomatic appears in the part you bolded.
It was clearly the wrong strategy.
But it was the scientifically agreed strategy so another example of 'following the science' behind worse than following common sense.
Sorry - was thinking of the hospital discharge instructions. But your conclusions are clearly wrong, as the guidance states "...whether symptomatic or asymptomatic. All of these patients can be safely cared for in a care home..."
The good news is that there's no news around so this thing is going to run and run. There are some very angry people on the radio 5 phone-in and as is normal the anger will just get stronger as the media chase it and it takes on a life of its own.
The good news is that there's no news around so this thing is going to run and run. There are some very angry people on the radio 5 phone-in and as is normal the anger will just get stronger as the media chase it and it takes on a life of its own.
What is interesting is that the numbers match quite well to the vaccination numbers. All the stuff about "1/3rd of the population has had it" can go in the bin.
Well, except you have to knock off essentially the last three big weeks of vaccines to get to the period covered by this study.
Wondering about that - yes, you need ~3 weeks to get to a level of reasonable protection from the vaccine, but when do antibodies get produced in sufficient quantities to be detected in a blood sample. Could be sooner?
I recently participated in the study (or a similar one), and eight weeks after the first AZN shot, did not test positive for antibodies. That doesn't mean no protection, of course.
Quasi-ineffective - Macron was right!
(I also had AZN, so I hope not)
Ten weeks after my first AZN I tested positive for long-term antibodies
How did you get that test
In my case, signing up for NHS Covid trials/studies last year, which you can do online. Got asked (for the first time) last week.
REACT for me (Imperial study) which is via random address selection.
The good news is that there's no news around so this thing is going to run and run. There are some very angry people on the radio 5 phone-in and as is normal the anger will just get stronger as the media chase it and it takes on a life of its own.
I listened to 5 live this morning with Rachel Burden and Nicky Campbell and it was not as you portray with a lot of anger directed towards Cummings
If any of the vaccines ever become privately available in the UK it might be worth doing an antibody test, particularly if the vaccine available isn't one you weren't given in the NHS rollout. Lloyds pharmacy do a private antibody test for £50. Am 5 weeks post 1st and 2 weeks post 2nd Pfizer now, so I'd hope I'd have antibodies..
Guidance published by the government in spring last year regarding admission to care homes, post discharge from hospitals.
1. Admission of residents The care sector looks after many of the most vulnerable people in our society. In this pandemic, we appreciate that care home providers are first and foremost looking after the people in their care, and doing so while some of their staff are absent due to sickness or isolation requirements. As part of the national effort, the care sector also plays a vital role in accepting patients as they are discharged from hospital – both because recuperation is better in non-acute settings, and because hospitals need to have enough beds to treat acutely sick patients. Residents may also be admitted to a care home from a home setting. Some of these patients may have COVID-19, whether symptomatic or asymptomatic. All of these patients can be safely cared for in a care home if this guidance is followed. If an individual has no COVID-19 symptoms or has tested positive for COVID-19 but is no longer showing symptoms and has completed their isolation period, then care should be provided as normal. The Hospital Discharge Service and staff will clarify with care homes the COVID-19 status of an individual and any COVID-19 symptoms, during the process of transfer from a hospital to the care home. Tests will primarily be given to: ! all patients in critical care for pneumonia, acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) or flu like illness ! all other patients requiring admission to hospital for pneumonia, ARDS or flu like illness ! where an outbreak has occurred in a residential or care setting, for example long-term care facility or prisons.1 Negative tests are not required prior to transfers / admissions into the care home.
But who wrote that ?
That's clearly based on the then scientific view that the asymptomatic do not infect others.
Certainly a major mistake but the key question was when was it rectified.
The word 'asymptomatic' does not appear in the guidance, so there is no 'clearly' about it. And if you look at the hospital discharge requirements, this included symptomatic individuals, if they were no actually in critical care on oxygen.
The precautions taken were considerably below those with regard to norovirus.
The hospital discharge requirements were published mid March. The care home admission guidance was published the first week in April.
The word asymptomatic appears in the part you bolded.
It was clearly the wrong strategy.
But it was the scientifically agreed strategy so another example of 'following the science' behind worse than following common sense.
Sorry - was thinking of the hospital discharge instructions. But your conclusions are clearly wrong, as the guidance states "...whether symptomatic or asymptomatic. All of these patients can be safely cared for in a care home..."
That strategy was clearly wrong.
But it was the scientific strategy which was followed not the common sense strategy.
Can you not accept that 'following the science' can lead to disaster if the assumptions that science is based upon are wrong ?
Guidance published by the government in spring last year regarding admission to care homes, post discharge from hospitals.
1. Admission of residents The care sector looks after many of the most vulnerable people in our society. In this pandemic, we appreciate that care home providers are first and foremost looking after the people in their care, and doing so while some of their staff are absent due to sickness or isolation requirements. As part of the national effort, the care sector also plays a vital role in accepting patients as they are discharged from hospital – both because recuperation is better in non-acute settings, and because hospitals need to have enough beds to treat acutely sick patients. Residents may also be admitted to a care home from a home setting. Some of these patients may have COVID-19, whether symptomatic or asymptomatic. All of these patients can be safely cared for in a care home if this guidance is followed. If an individual has no COVID-19 symptoms or has tested positive for COVID-19 but is no longer showing symptoms and has completed their isolation period, then care should be provided as normal. The Hospital Discharge Service and staff will clarify with care homes the COVID-19 status of an individual and any COVID-19 symptoms, during the process of transfer from a hospital to the care home. Tests will primarily be given to: ! all patients in critical care for pneumonia, acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) or flu like illness ! all other patients requiring admission to hospital for pneumonia, ARDS or flu like illness ! where an outbreak has occurred in a residential or care setting, for example long-term care facility or prisons.1 Negative tests are not required prior to transfers / admissions into the care home.
But who wrote that ?
That's clearly based on the then scientific view that the asymptomatic do not infect others.
Certainly a major mistake but the key question was when was it rectified.
The word 'asymptomatic' does not appear in the guidance, so there is no 'clearly' about it. And if you look at the hospital discharge requirements, this included symptomatic individuals, if they were no actually in critical care on oxygen.
The precautions taken were considerably below those with regard to norovirus.
The hospital discharge requirements were published mid March. The care home admission guidance was published the first week in April.
The word asymptomatic appears in the part you bolded.
It was clearly the wrong strategy.
But it was the scientifically agreed strategy so another example of 'following the science' behind worse than following common sense.
Sorry - was thinking of the hospital discharge instructions. But your conclusions are clearly wrong, as the guidance states "...whether symptomatic or asymptomatic. All of these patients can be safely cared for in a care home..."
That strategy was clearly wrong.
But it was the scientific strategy which was followed not the common sense strategy.
Can you not accept that 'following the science' can lead to disaster if the assumptions that science is based upon are wrong ?
And it was a real problem in Scotland which of course was directly under the control of Sturgeon
What is interesting is that the numbers match quite well to the vaccination numbers. All the stuff about "1/3rd of the population has had it" can go in the bin.
Well, except you have to knock off essentially the last three big weeks of vaccines to get to the period covered by this study.
Wondering about that - yes, you need ~3 weeks to get to a level of reasonable protection from the vaccine, but when do antibodies get produced in sufficient quantities to be detected in a blood sample. Could be sooner?
I recently participated in the study (or a similar one), and eight weeks after the first AZN shot, did not test positive for antibodies. That doesn't mean no protection, of course.
Quasi-ineffective - Macron was right!
(I also had AZN, so I hope not)
Ten weeks after my first AZN I tested positive for long-term antibodies
How did you get that test
picked out by chance as part of the ongoing national random testing programme
Paul Waugh @paulwaugh · 2h PM is going to do 'a clip' (short, pooled TV comment) to respond to Cummings. Yet another example of his unwillingness to open up to real scrutiny. If your former chief adviser had accused you of being unfit for office, wouldn't you lead tonight's No.10 press conf, not MHancock?
Batley school protests: Teacher allowed back in Prophet Muhammad image row
Good to see. Incredible to think that a teacher who warned pupils that they may take offence to some parts of the lesson, and offered them the option to sit out that part had to have police protection and couldn't live in his own home.
This could be quite the local story in the context of the by-election, it wouldn’t be surprising if there were continuing protests outside the school.
Do we know what Kim Leadbetter thinks of the situation?
I will repeat again for good measure. I used to do this for a living — I did feasibility studies, tenders, and project designs for solar installations, amongst other renewable technologies.
They are objectively not a good investment in the UK. They simply do not output enough.
Without the high Gen Tariffs you're looking at a 20-25 year payback. Much more with an expensive Tesla battery. The panels themselves only have a lifespan for around 25 years.
Crap investment.
The panel lifespan is more than 25 years. It's more accurate to say that panels lose approximately 0.8% to 1% of the power they generate each year. (Mostly, IIRC, via surface oxidation, but I could be wrong.)
Most solar panels output about 105-110% of rated power in year one.
Aye but you're tailing off at that point, and in a country where it's already cloudy and overcast most the time, you're going to have a dribble of generation.
Tailing off? That means you're still getting 80+% of rated capacity at the end of the period.
Let's assume you don't take the FIT, and electricity prices rise 2% per year for the period. You'll be getting more each year - in cash terms - than in the previous one.
80% of very little is very little.
Of course that doesn't factor in your inverter failing, which is another expense (you're supposed to have them serviced every year, most don't), failing to wash the panels properly (most people don't do this either), etc etc.
Listen I did these calculations day in and day out. I know all the tricks solar zealots use. They assume zero shading, they assume perfect orientation with south, they assume a perfect 30 degree pitched roof.
It simply isn't a good investment. The figures don't lie.
A lot of people don't know that most panels are wired in series and therefore if one panel is shaded, for example by a cloud, either your whole array is generating nothing, or only half of the array is generating.
Etc.
They were fantastic under the ridiculously generous FIT. Otherwise I wouldn't touch them with a bargepole.
Let's assume that you put panels on your roof and they cost you £1,000 and they give you £50/electricity a year. (I'm making up numbers here.)
Does that sound like a good investment or a bad investment?
Here's two things to remember:
(1) A cost (electricity) avoided is like getting after tax income. If I receive £50 in interest from the bank, I'm paying £25 of that back to the government in tax. On the other hand, if I cut my electricity bill by £50. That means the real yield - for higher rate tax payers - is more than it looks.
(2) The cost of electricity rises. So you're getting an asset generating a real return, not a nominal one. If you buy indexed linked government bonds you take a guaranteed loss. Even before you take into account the tax you'll be paying on the pitiful amount of income you get.
Look, if you have £1,000 will you do better in SpaceX or solar panels? Well, SpaceX, duh.
And if you are at the beginning of your career, then long dated low return assets are a bloody stupid idea.
But if the choice is between solar panels and government bonds... Or solar panels versus sitting in the bank earning the amazing 0.2% that Lloyds will offer you if you're willing to lock the money up for two years?
Well, in that case solar panels are the better financial investment. It all depends on where you are in your personal financial journey.
0.2% sure. But "great investment"?
Well said gallow. And while they're not a great investment economically, people tend to forget they're not a great one environmentally either.
Supply and demand don't intersect with solar panels.
We are a cold, overcast, northern island that relies upon heating in the winter not air conditioning in the summer. The panels generate less supply in the winter. Already today much more electricity is consumed in the winter and that's before gas boilers are discontinued and replaced with electric powered heating too!
The environment needs electricity supply most in the winter not the summer. Environmentally Solar Panels in place of coal was a great idea, but if we can get through winter with electric heating without much solar generation then what is the point of extra solar generation in the summer when the electric heating is turned off?
Hang on.
In a world where most of our generation is natural gas CCGTs that can be turned on and off at will, then if it's cheaper for an individual to generate power via the sun great. And if it's not, then people won't buy them.
My point is that for a young person (like you) solar panels are a terrible investment relative to (say) paying down your mortgage. For someone in their mid 50s, on the other hand, they are likely a pretty good investment relative to government bonds or leaving money in the bank.
Simply, you get a 5-6% real after tax return, which is shit compared to SpaceX, but fantastic compared to other low-risk assets.
That's the problem though, we aren't going to have most of our generation from gas CCGTs by 2030, let alone by 2040 or 2050.
Net zero entails removing CCGT surely and having sufficient clean energy to power electronic heating through the winter.
In which case what environmental purpose do solar panels serve.
This is a completely different to somewhere like California that relies upon air conditioning in the summer.
That's a minority of gas and it's falling fast. If you're looking at a 25 year lifespan then how many of those years do you think that will be true for?
In 2010 coal was about 80% of electricity. It's now about 0% most if the time. The same thing will happen now to gas within the next decade, not the next 25 years.
The future of greenery is surely in this country more stuff like wind and tidal etc than solar.
I agree with all of that except the last line. Solar has improved in efficiency so much that it will be an important part of the mix as well, even in this gloomy overcast country. It still occasionally startles me when I am out for a walk how many houses in the village now have solar panels. The increase in the last 3 years has been marked and I do not think that trend has petered out at all yet.
The trouble with solar panels is that they are so ugly. I would not put them on my old house. It would ruin the beauty of it.
They don't have to be, if done well. You just need to be competent and thoughtful, and know when to use and not.
(Side note: solar tiles are waaaayyyy behind solar panels in efficiency and more connections so GENERALLY less reliable).
Here's one example. This is an account of a friend who built next to a listed building:
The Conservation Officer strongly objected to fit solar panels in the roof elevation facing the listed building. The post script to this tale is that just before the house was completed our BCO asked if I could give a short Continuing Professional Development session at the house for some planners, building inspectors and the Conservation Officer. The first to arrive, on a rather wet day, was the Conservation Officer. The first thing he said as he came in was "I'm so glad that I insisted that you not fit solar panels to the roof". I asked him if he'd like to step outside and have another look, when he was decent enough to smile and say that if he'd known they could be as discreet as that he would never have objected....
This is known as an "in-roof" system.
This is a (very cropped) piccie:
In my case, the majority of mine are on the side, and shortly to move to the shallow roof of a veranda where they cannot be seen.
Clear blue sky no clouds anywhere. Bloody deer have eaten all our hollyhocks...
The weather yesterday was superb. Walked on the beach with our dog who is now getting arthritis and so needs short walks rather than the long ones he is used to and loves.
The moon last night was, late into the night, suffused with orange, like a crystallised orange shining against the dark sky. Dawn started at 3:45 am.
I am posting this from my sunny terrace, staring out at the estuary. The birds are singing, the sun is on my face and the roses are in bud and about to burst into flower. Bliss.
Jenrick's got the short straw and is doing the media rounds this morning; every time he is asked about whether Hancock lied to Cabinet, his answer is that Hancock works very hard...
He certainly did get the short straw. I thought that was Grant S's job. Normally I don't sympathize with politicians who evade questions, but on BBC1 this morning he was asked some questions that were just impossible for him to answer and therefore unreasonable.
Quite amusing that it is Jenrick, of all people, who is put up to defend Hancock's honour.
The good news is that there's no news around so this thing is going to run and run. There are some very angry people on the radio 5 phone-in and as is normal the anger will just get stronger as the media chase it and it takes on a life of its own.
I listened to 5 live this morning with Rachel Burden and Nicky Campbell and it was not as you portray with a lot of anger directed towards Cummings
Wrong program. Emma Barnett....
Incidentally why would people be angry with Cummings unless they are Tory stooges? People don't usually waste their time brooding about the messenger.
The good news is that there's no news around so this thing is going to run and run. There are some very angry people on the radio 5 phone-in and as is normal the anger will just get stronger as the media chase it and it takes on a life of its own.
I listened to 5 live this morning with Rachel Burden and Nicky Campbell and it was not as you portray with a lot of anger directed towards Cummings
Wrong program. Emma Barnett....
Incidentally why would people be angry with Cummings unless they are Tory stooges? People don't usually waste their time brooding about the messenger.
If the Tories aren’t hurt in the polls by headlines like these, what headlines would it take to do it?
“Inflation hits 10%”
As @Philip_Thompson keeps telling me an increase in money supply is no longer inflationary, and if we do get some inflation it is "good". I can't recall why.
So no, Boris just keeps rolling along.
I have never said that!
I have said that it is inflationary but it doesn't automatically mean inflation because we also have deflationary pressures to take into account.
If the inflationary pressures and deflationary ones cancel each other out then the net result is no inflation. As we've seen for the past decade.
What part of that are you struggling with? Do you need smaller words? 🤦♂️
I can't be arsed to find your response but you stated that an increase in M3 is no longer guaranteed to be inflationary. You said the 1980s notion that there was a correlation between an increase in money supply and inflation had been debunked 20 years ago. It is 40 years since I studied economics, so I am taking you at your word.
That's not what I said.
What I said is that an increase in M3 is no longer guaranteed to result in inflation because there is greater awareness of deflationary pressures now. And I provided the data to back that up.
Like Japan in 1990 the west now is now very heavily indebted which can mean that people's available cash to spend can be contracting due to credit issues etc even when the money supply is officially increasing.
Increasing money supply is still inflationary but inflationary pressures alone are not sufficient to cause inflation if deflationary pressures exist too.
One way to think about it is how uniquitous credit cards are used nowadays compared to 40 years ago. Having £1000 available to spend in your bank account and having nothing in your bank account but a £1000 credit limit are not the same thing, even if they both permit expenditure.
Credit cards terrify me. Especially as I am now on a fixed income. I haven’t had one for a very long time. They are a way of telling future you to go fuck yourself.
Precisely! They're great if you're conscientious to pay them off in full every month so you just get an extra 50 days to pay but its paid in full.
But fail to pay in full, pay interest only, and you're f***ed. And there's far more people in that situation today than there were in the 70s or 80s and it doesn't show properly in money supply which is why the textbooks from the 70s and 80s aren't suitable for today.
There are at least three significant structural deflationary pressures that didn't exist in the 1980s:
Labour is much less organised into unions in heavy mass industries. Instead a significant proportion of the working class compete against each other to deliver services as cheaply as possible.
Mass migration from eastern Europe introduced a cohort of workers with the requisite industrial skills to displace the British-born workforce.
Third ... people who've done well out of the pandemic sitting on their bank balances, having forgotten how to spend money. I'd include myself in this category.
The last one is quite significant. People who obsess over money supply tend to forget that money supply is very divorced from consumer expenditure nowadays, which is why Central Banks no longer use things like M3 nowadays for policy making anymore. M3 does not include credit cards which makes it bloody useless in 2021.
The textbooks of 40 years ago would have said that the increase in money supply in the past 12 months should have seen a major increase in expenditure. The reality of course was the opposite, there's been a major decrease in expenditure.
If people are spending based on credit (or repaying credit) and not based on money itself, then money supply and inflation become divorced from each other.
Yes, we live in a credit money system these days - the vast majority of expenditure is credit of one form or another, not base money & so the change in the money supply is defined by the ability & willingness of the banks to offer credit & individuals + companies to want to take it.
Destroy either one of those & the velocity of money drops like the proverbial rock. Hence the famous “pushing on a string” quote about the Federal Reserve - you can drop interest rates as low as you like, but if people don’t want to borrow then it will make no difference whatsoever.
The good news is that there's no news around so this thing is going to run and run. There are some very angry people on the radio 5 phone-in and as is normal the anger will just get stronger as the media chase it and it takes on a life of its own.
20% Tory lead incoming...Rog called it
Roger believes twitter and phone ins...nuff said....
If the Tories aren’t hurt in the polls by headlines like these, what headlines would it take to do it?
Excellent question. What headline would damage Johnson enough for you to reject him?
You probably won’t believe it, and think that I’m just spoiling what you consider a really clever jibe, but I am by no means a definite voter of his next time. I voted Tory for the first time in my life in 2019 and that was because, as someone who had campaigned for UKIP and Leave, I couldn’t not vote for the only option promising to honour the vote. I didn’t vote for him as London Mayor on either occasion.
Show me where I have praised him? I just think he has the better of Sir Keir, and back up what I say with the polls. The fact that his haters cling on to any desperate bit of fluff in order to predict his demise isn’t my fault
'You do know it would take most of the year to organise and a few years to report'
Angela Rayner
'We need it now'
And some wonder why Labour are not benefitting from HMG chaos
On R4 "You said last year you couldn't believe a word Cummings said - now you do, what's changed?"
A question many on here could do with answering too.
With Big Dom, you have to try and cut through what is untrue, what is revisionism (something he is excellent at), and what is true.....its very difficult thing to do.
Matt Hancock casts serious doubt on Step 4 happening on June 21 for the first time. A big change in the Govt line which has been increasingly optimistic it will until now. "It's too early to say yet whether we can take the fourth step on June 21. We will be guided by the data".
c.90% of those in hospital in the hotspot areas have not had both jabs - Hancock.
Not had both jabs or not had a jab?
Very big difference. I thought he said they'd not been vaccinated yet.
Yes it's a hgue difference
Metro: Matt Hancock says 90% of people in hospital with Covid haven’t had a vaccine
CarlottaVance said:
c.90% of those in hospital in the hotspot areas have not had both jabs - Hancock.
Also, always missing in these statements...how long ago....its all well and good saying both jabs, but if you went and partied like its 1999 on the day of your second jab, well you have no extra protection from it.
Guidance published by the government in spring last year regarding admission to care homes, post discharge from hospitals.
1. Admission of residents The care sector looks after many of the most vulnerable people in our society. In this pandemic, we appreciate that care home providers are first and foremost looking after the people in their care, and doing so while some of their staff are absent due to sickness or isolation requirements. As part of the national effort, the care sector also plays a vital role in accepting patients as they are discharged from hospital – both because recuperation is better in non-acute settings, and because hospitals need to have enough beds to treat acutely sick patients. Residents may also be admitted to a care home from a home setting. Some of these patients may have COVID-19, whether symptomatic or asymptomatic. All of these patients can be safely cared for in a care home if this guidance is followed. If an individual has no COVID-19 symptoms or has tested positive for COVID-19 but is no longer showing symptoms and has completed their isolation period, then care should be provided as normal. The Hospital Discharge Service and staff will clarify with care homes the COVID-19 status of an individual and any COVID-19 symptoms, during the process of transfer from a hospital to the care home. Tests will primarily be given to: ! all patients in critical care for pneumonia, acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) or flu like illness ! all other patients requiring admission to hospital for pneumonia, ARDS or flu like illness ! where an outbreak has occurred in a residential or care setting, for example long-term care facility or prisons.1 Negative tests are not required prior to transfers / admissions into the care home.
But who wrote that ?
That's clearly based on the then scientific view that the asymptomatic do not infect others.
Certainly a major mistake but the key question was when was it rectified.
The word 'asymptomatic' does not appear in the guidance, so there is no 'clearly' about it. And if you look at the hospital discharge requirements, this included symptomatic individuals, if they were no actually in critical care on oxygen.
The precautions taken were considerably below those with regard to norovirus.
The hospital discharge requirements were published mid March. The care home admission guidance was published the first week in April.
The word asymptomatic appears in the part you bolded.
It was clearly the wrong strategy.
But it was the scientifically agreed strategy so another example of 'following the science' behind worse than following common sense.
Sorry - was thinking of the hospital discharge instructions. But your conclusions are clearly wrong, as the guidance states "...whether symptomatic or asymptomatic. All of these patients can be safely cared for in a care home..."
That strategy was clearly wrong.
But it was the scientific strategy which was followed not the common sense strategy.
Can you not accept that 'following the science' can lead to disaster if the assumptions that science is based upon are wrong ?
The science (here epidemiology, virology, some behavoural stuff) is normally based on a careful process of: - define the question - design the study - put it through review (generally - most of it at least goes to an ethics committee, steering board etc) - do the study - get it through peer review (yes, that can be a joke, but is also often good) - gathering evidence from multiple independent studies in a systematic review In normal times, that works well and the complete snafus are pretty rare nowadays (see how the Wakefield stuff was pretty rapidly and thoroughly discredited, for example, despite clearly failing some of the above steps).
Where 'the science' has failed here is that there hasn't been time, always, to do the above and there has been poor understanding and handling of uncertainty (over-)extapolation from related evidence (such as flu) and an unwillingness to accept contrary evidence (from the aerosol scientists, for example). This needs to be addressed for the future, with methods for assessing evidence and applicability (these methods already exist for e.g. systematic reviews) and perhaps more of an engineering-type approach of margins of safety to deal with uncetainties.
SAGE - or perhaps more effectively the processes above SAGE - would probably benefit from a group of scientificly literate but non-specialists for an outside view - for example, bring in some physicists, engineers etc to sense check what the epidemiologists etc are saying and how the politicians/civil servants etc are understanding that. Much like how the vaccine task force was not headed by a career civil servant with vast experience of government procurement.
Here in Denmark we are generally seen as having handled the pandemic well and our deaths per million is evidence of that - but...
our PM breached the Constitution and she overruled the lawyers telling her she was doing so; there is a now a case going through the courts that will end up costing the government even more than the 18 billion kroner they spaffed on compo to mink farmers.
They killed all the mink and then just dumped them in the ground so they are now having to dig them all up and burn them in accordance with the law,
The police apologised for arresting farmers who objected that people coming on the property and killing their animals without any sort of court order was illegal. They too will now face legal action - their explanation that they knew what they were doing was illegal but the minister told them too so they did it is a bit chilling.
our health authorities have banned two vaccines for no genuine reason and are now having to explain why other medications with far higher risks are still be given to other patients (long term, banning something with a risk of death at the 1:1000,000 level will come back and bite the ministry hard as other medications come up for approval). - Our hospitality sector was promised all sorts of help but most are waiting still for any cash after 15 months or so.ngs
My point is, I see no real differences in how we handled things compared to the UK - it was error strewn, panicked, acting on little info and trying to get things right and often failing- we had the exact same problem with care homes for example. The big difference is we closed the border early and hard. We got told off by the EU but for once we ignored them. Closing the border however is easy here, we aren't a great global centre - we are a boring little land with pretty but unspectacular scenery and a lot of rain - not many people realised the border was shut so totally different from the UK.
So yes we have done quite well, but the same level of shitshow here as in the UK but we got a bit luckier and benefited from relative remoteness. If you doubt the luck part, we were very very slow on masks and changed position very reluctantly - got lucky that that didn't lead to a Kent variant style spread.
Paul Waugh @paulwaugh · 2h PM is going to do 'a clip' (short, pooled TV comment) to respond to Cummings. Yet another example of his unwillingness to open up to real scrutiny. If your former chief adviser had accused you of being unfit for office, wouldn't you lead tonight's No.10 press conf, not MHancock?
I do like these sorts of lines. Allows you to pirouette whichever way you wish.
If Boris did stand up and address it all head on, Waugh would be there going "look! he's taking it very seriously! there is some truth to it"
The best response is to treat it with cool, calm contempt and not to give them the oxygen. The public forget the details, the press move on to their next feeding frenzy.
Listening to Hancock he does seem understandably nervous but in the circumstances is coming over well and the opposition do not seem to be gaining traction
My point is, I see no real differences in how we handled things compared to the UK - it was error strewn, panicked, acting on little info and trying to get things right and often failing- we had the exact same problem with care homes for example. The big difference is we closed the border early and hard. We got told off by the EU but for once we ignored them. Closing the border however is easy here, we aren't a great global centre - we are a boring little land with pretty but unspectacular scenery and a lot of rain - not many people realised the border was shut so totally different from the UK.
What we have to remember, we are 15+ months into this....the scientists still don't know loads about COVID. How does it really spread? What does it actually do to your body? What's with all these failures of vital organs? etc etc etc.
The thoughts about this have changed every few months e.g. initially it was thought it was a respiratory illness, now not so sure.
And that's before you throw in all the new variants.
'You do know it would take most of the year to organise and a few years to report'
Angela Rayner
'We need it now'
And some wonder why Labour are not benefitting from HMG chaos
On R4 "You said last year you couldn't believe a word Cummings said - now you do, what's changed?"
A question many on here could do with answering too.
With Big Dom, you have to try and cut through what is untrue, what is revisionism (something he is excellent at), and what is true.....its very difficult thing to do.
There always elements of the 3 in things he says.
Yet apparently he was able to persuade 52% of the population to vote for Brexit using Johnson as his front man.
A cynic might question the veracity of both of them
April 1st 53.3 / 6.6 May 1st 57.6 / 23.3 May 25th 69.1 / 40.9
So the 90% figure is a bit misleading as you'd expect ~ 70% of adults (Looking at the above and bearing in mind data lag) to not be double vaxxed in hospital if the vaccinations were 100% placebo.
14.4 in N Essex. Some high cloud though. And it looks like at least one of our blue-tit chicks is going to survive. Which is better than those 1/4 milk away, but someone ate the other end of town reckons all hers are going to fledge.
Thoughts and prayers with Leon as the sun blazes down through cornflower blue skies.
Comments
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-south-scotland-51658789
There had to be a half-way house for them. Given how little the Nightingale hospitals ended up being used, they should have been better configured so these patients were moved there instead. Perhaps if Starmer weren't so useless, he could have had a big political win on this.
It tells me to top up on Raab next party leader. Which I have duly done.
Its pathetic really. Little children instead of grown ups. Grow a pair, take ownership of your brief and the decisions you made.
The precautions taken were considerably below those with regard to norovirus.
The hospital discharge requirements were published mid March. The care home admission guidance was published the first week in April.
(I also had AZN, so I hope not)
But I'd be extremely doubtful that the advice from Whitty and Vallance hasn't often been wrong as well.
Batley school protests: Teacher allowed back in Prophet Muhammad image row
Good to see. Incredible to think that a teacher who warned pupils that they may take offence to some parts of the lesson, and offered them the option to sit out that part had to have police protection and couldn't live in his own home.
To add data, unfortunately 9 weeks after her first Pfizer shot my mother tested negative for antibodies.
The failure was not properly recognising the necessity of isolating infected (or potentially infected) individuals - a basic principle of epidemic control.
What makes it unforgivable is that this persisted throughout the pandemic. We spent tens of billions on testing, and managed (on the government's own figures) to isolate less than a fifth of those identified.
What happened last spring was perhaps unavoidable given the systems we had. What happened over the winter certainly wasn't.
@DPJHodges
·
5m
BTW, that’s another thing that’s been weirdly overlooked. Dom’s central charge was that people in government were too slow to appreciate the need for lockdowns. The person in Government who has lobbied longest and hardest for lockdowns is Matt Hancock.
It was clearly the wrong strategy.
But it was the scientifically agreed strategy so another example of 'following the science' behind worse than following common sense.
'We need the enquiry now'
Stephen Dixon of Sky
'You do know it would take most of the year to organise and a few years to report'
Angela Rayner
'We need it now'
And some wonder why Labour are not benefitting from HMG chaos
Labour is much less organised into unions in heavy mass industries. Instead a significant proportion of the working class compete against each other to deliver services as cheaply as possible.
Mass migration from eastern Europe introduced a cohort of workers with the requisite industrial skills to displace the British-born workforce.
Third ... people who've done well out of the pandemic sitting on their bank balances, having forgotten how to spend money. I'd include myself in this category.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_HbVWm7wdmE
#1) that's fine, that was doable....#2 and #3, basically screams well I looked at what has worked best and claimed we could / should have done them.
#2 was just a total non-starter, both from perspective of what the public would accept, but also, the South Koreans spent nearly 10 years building their system....if we could just do this, do you think the intelligence services would struggle to keep track of a few 1000s Islamist nutters? The technology just doesn't exist in the UK to flick a switch and track every persons movements.
It isn't that it can't be done, its a matter that it isn't legal to do so and requires massive surveillance systems to be put in place.
Big dom was arguing as if it was just a matter of a government minister giving the order and we could have been doing this.
#3 - Well PHE spent a month saying it was impossible. It was only after Hancock blew his top and said screw you guys, I'm going to get the universities and the private sector to do this, was their any progress...and Big Dom seems to argue well that was wrong, it was clearly trivial to have much better targeted testing, when PHE couldn't even do 10k tests a day, and are / were inputting the results into Excel.
https://twitter.com/breeallegretti/status/1397834038631710720
Politician: Are people without symptoms infectious?
Scientist: There's no evidence of that
Politician: Cool, send them to the care homes
The scientist thinks he/she has said "I don't know"; the politician hears "no".
The scientist, of course, needs to be clear and speak in real English. And/or the politician/civil servant needs to understand science a bit more.
Though this reminds me that Mr Cummings did reportedly complain that the hound in question was, erm, rather too affectionate to him, or at least his leg.
The textbooks of 40 years ago would have said that the increase in money supply in the past 12 months should have seen a major increase in expenditure. The reality of course was the opposite, there's been a major decrease in expenditure.
The nation's outstanding card balances have fallen by 22% in the past 12 months. That's probably a good thing for people's wellbeing but its not inflationary. https://www.ukfinance.org.uk/data-and-research/data/cards/card-spending
If people are spending based on credit (or repaying credit) and not based on money itself, then money supply and inflation become divorced from each other.
But your conclusions are clearly wrong, as the guidance states "...whether symptomatic or asymptomatic. All of these patients can be safely cared for in a care home..."
Lloyds pharmacy do a private antibody test for £50.
Am 5 weeks post 1st and 2 weeks post 2nd Pfizer now, so I'd hope I'd have antibodies..
"Vaccines, vaccines, vaccines, vaccines, vaccines, vaccines.
Vaccines.
Vaccines.
Oh and did I say vaccines yet?"
But it was the scientific strategy which was followed not the common sense strategy.
Can you not accept that 'following the science' can lead to disaster if the assumptions that science is based upon are wrong ?
I'd been afraid I was going to lose the PB vaccine pool...
Paul Waugh
@paulwaugh
·
2h
PM is going to do 'a clip' (short, pooled TV comment) to respond to Cummings. Yet another example of his unwillingness to open up to real scrutiny.
If your former chief adviser had accused you of being unfit for office, wouldn't you lead tonight's No.10 press conf, not MHancock?
Do we know what Kim Leadbetter thinks of the situation?
(Side note: solar tiles are waaaayyyy behind solar panels in efficiency and more connections so GENERALLY less reliable).
Here's one example. This is an account of a friend who built next to a listed building:
The Conservation Officer strongly objected to fit solar panels in the roof elevation facing the listed building. The post script to this tale is that just before the house was completed our BCO asked if I could give a short Continuing Professional Development session at the house for some planners, building inspectors and the Conservation Officer. The first to arrive, on a rather wet day, was the Conservation Officer. The first thing he said as he came in was "I'm so glad that I insisted that you not fit solar panels to the roof". I asked him if he'd like to step outside and have another look, when he was decent enough to smile and say that if he'd known they could be as discreet as that he would never have objected....
This is known as an "in-roof" system.
This is a (very cropped) piccie:
In my case, the majority of mine are on the side, and shortly to move to the shallow roof of a veranda where they cannot be seen.
The moon The weather yesterday was superb. Walked on the beach with our dog who is now getting arthritis and so needs short walks rather than the long ones he is used to and loves.
The moon last night was, late into the night, suffused with orange, like a crystallised orange shining against the dark sky. Dawn started at 3:45 am.
I am posting this from my sunny terrace, staring out at the estuary. The birds are singing, the sun is on my face and the roses are in bud and about to burst into flower. Bliss.
Incidentally why would people be angry with Cummings unless they are Tory stooges? People don't usually waste their time brooding about the messenger.
Destroy either one of those & the velocity of money drops like the proverbial rock. Hence the famous “pushing on a string” quote about the Federal Reserve - you can drop interest rates as low as you like, but if people don’t want to borrow then it will make no difference whatsoever.
Very big difference. I thought he said they'd not been vaccinated yet.
Boris, Hancock and the rest of the Government doing their best to deal with the pandemic.
LAB just want to play politics.
Show me where I have praised him? I just think he has the better of Sir Keir, and back up what I say with the polls. The fact that his haters cling on to any desperate bit of fluff in order to predict his demise isn’t my fault
https://twitter.com/DarrenGBNews/status/1397850003150880771?s=20
Metro: Matt Hancock says 90% of people in hospital with Covid haven’t had a vaccine
CarlottaVance said:
c.90% of those in hospital in the hotspot areas have not had both jabs - Hancock.
There always elements of the 3 in things he says.
https://twitter.com/tnewtondunn/status/1397852895949864966?s=20
- define the question
- design the study
- put it through review (generally - most of it at least goes to an ethics committee, steering board etc)
- do the study
- get it through peer review (yes, that can be a joke, but is also often good)
- gathering evidence from multiple independent studies in a systematic review
In normal times, that works well and the complete snafus are pretty rare nowadays (see how the Wakefield stuff was pretty rapidly and thoroughly discredited, for example, despite clearly failing some of the above steps).
Where 'the science' has failed here is that there hasn't been time, always, to do the above and there has been poor understanding and handling of uncertainty (over-)extapolation from related evidence (such as flu) and an unwillingness to accept contrary evidence (from the aerosol scientists, for example). This needs to be addressed for the future, with methods for assessing evidence and applicability (these methods already exist for e.g. systematic reviews) and perhaps more of an engineering-type approach of margins of safety to deal with uncetainties.
SAGE - or perhaps more effectively the processes above SAGE - would probably benefit from a group of scientificly literate but non-specialists for an outside view - for example, bring in some physicists, engineers etc to sense check what the epidemiologists etc are saying and how the politicians/civil servants etc are understanding that. Much like how the vaccine task force was not headed by a career civil servant with vast experience of government procurement.
our PM breached the Constitution and she overruled the lawyers telling her she was doing so; there is a now a case going through the courts that will end up costing the government even more than the 18 billion kroner they spaffed on compo to mink farmers.
They killed all the mink and then just dumped them in the ground so they are now having to dig them all up and burn them in accordance with the law,
The police apologised for arresting farmers who objected that people coming on the property and killing their animals without any sort of court order was illegal. They too will now face legal action - their explanation that they knew what they were doing was illegal but the minister told them too so they did it is a bit chilling.
our health authorities have banned two vaccines for no genuine reason and are now having to explain why other medications with far higher risks are still be given to other patients (long term, banning something with a risk of death at the 1:1000,000 level will come back and bite the ministry hard as other medications come up for approval).
-
Our hospitality sector was promised all sorts of help but most are waiting still for any cash after 15 months or so.ngs
My point is, I see no real differences in how we handled things compared to the UK - it was error strewn, panicked, acting on little info and trying to get things right and often failing- we had the exact same problem with care homes for example. The big difference is we closed the border early and hard. We got told off by the EU but for once we ignored them. Closing the border however is easy here, we aren't a great global centre - we are a boring little land with pretty but unspectacular scenery and a lot of rain - not many people realised the border was shut so totally different from the UK.
So yes we have done quite well, but the same level of shitshow here as in the UK but we got a bit luckier and benefited from relative remoteness. If you doubt the luck part, we were very very slow on masks and changed position very reluctantly - got lucky that that didn't lead to a Kent variant style spread.
If Boris did stand up and address it all head on, Waugh would be there going "look! he's taking it very seriously! there is some truth to it"
The best response is to treat it with cool, calm contempt and not to give them the oxygen. The public forget the details, the press move on to their next feeding frenzy.
The thoughts about this have changed every few months e.g. initially it was thought it was a respiratory illness, now not so sure.
And that's before you throw in all the new variants.
A cynic might question the veracity of both of them
Single vaccinated / Double
By
April 1st 53.3 / 6.6
May 1st 57.6 / 23.3
May 25th 69.1 / 40.9
So the 90% figure is a bit misleading as you'd expect ~ 70% of adults (Looking at the above and bearing in mind data lag) to not be double vaxxed in hospital if the vaccinations were 100% placebo.
Feel free to chuck in a "desperately" too.....
Thoughts and prayers.