Saint George was born in Cappadocia which is in modern day Turkey.
I’m perfectly comfortable cheering on Wales.
I spent 4 years of my life in Aber. I can even spell Welsh words like “ambiwlans”
Years of disgusting and unprovoked abuse from Welsh rugby fans have left me anyone but Wales.
Ditto. I also laughed when Scotland lost for similar reason. To be fair though to the Welsh, I have often sat next to them at rugby games and they have been very pleasant, and I certainly have never experienced "abuse". Not so the Scots, sadly, some of their supporters are absolute w*******
I absolutely love the Scots and the fans of their national teams.
Both association football and rugby football, plus cricket.
You obviously haven't encountered some of the ones I have. I was at Twickenham when they pulled off a draw. Anyone would think they had won the world cup!
Looking at the data as it is, it’s tempting to conclude that Sage and Boris might have just made a weapons-grade cock up.
We’ll see.
All it would show is that in following the scientific advice and with the clear support of the public as opposed to twitter, PB, etc, their caution had paid off. If they can move forward with relaxing after the 2 week review so much the better.
Looking at the data as it is, it’s tempting to conclude that Sage and Boris might have just made a weapons-grade cock up.
We’ll see.
Yup by the end of this week we'll know for sure but every day 300-400k people are joining the fully vaccinated cohort looking at vaccine numbers from two weeks ago. The virus is simply running out of road and I don't understand why the data models have simply ignored this. No one is asking exactly who it is that will get struck down by the virus and which cohort is going to topple the NHS. 100k cases per day, 40k deaths in this wave. It's laughable but this is the kind of data that is driving our decision making process. If it wasn't such a disaster it would be funny.
Looking at the data as it is, it’s tempting to conclude that Sage and Boris might have just made a weapons-grade cock up.
We’ll see.
Yup by the end of this week we'll know for sure but every day 300-400k people are joining the fully vaccinated cohort looking at vaccine numbers from two weeks ago. The virus is simply running out of road and I don't understand why the data models have simply ignored this. No one is asking exactly who it is that will get struck down by the virus and which cohort is going to topple the NHS. 100k cases per day, 40k deaths in this wave. It's laughable but this is the kind of data that is driving our decision making process. If it wasn't such a disaster it would be funny.
What I find astonishing is that This Isn't Rocket Surgery.
How is it that this board (with the exception of a few crazies) has called this broadly right in aggregate, while both SAGEs have been... poor.
Looking at the data as it is, it’s tempting to conclude that Sage and Boris might have just made a weapons-grade cock up.
We’ll see.
Yup by the end of this week we'll know for sure but every day 300-400k people are joining the fully vaccinated cohort looking at vaccine numbers from two weeks ago. The virus is simply running out of road and I don't understand why the data models have simply ignored this. No one is asking exactly who it is that will get struck down by the virus and which cohort is going to topple the NHS. 100k cases per day, 40k deaths in this wave. It's laughable but this is the kind of data that is driving our decision making process. If it wasn't such a disaster it would be funny.
What I find astonishing is that This Isn't Rocket Surgery.
How is it that this board (with the exception of a few crazies) has called this broadly right in aggregate, while both SAGEs have been... poor.
Or Brain Science! The govt must surely just say in two weeks "its ok, off you jolly well go, we were just checking"
More ex scientists and engineers un parliament would be a good start. More fundamentally the whole area of policy based on scientific advice needs a big reset. Unconscious biases, group-think, ideological influences, noble cause corruption, desperation for publication and gaining grants, ineffective and biased peer review. Much more openness for models and data when policy is involved and automatic use of red teams would be a start.
Good point. I have long been an advocate for diversity in teams, and this doesn't just refer to ethnicity gender etc., it also refers to people's training and background. I know there has been some change but it is still the case that the majority of Whitehall civil servants are Oxbridge, oft educated (like our Glorious Leader) in subjects like Classics and rarely in science. As for the cabinet:
You ignored Therese Coffey the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions who has a Chemistry degree from Oxford and a PhD in Chemistry from UCL.
In any case most scientists and engineers are more likely to contribute in business and industry and research than in lawmaking and policymaking in which you would expect lawyers and historians and politics and PPE graduates to dominate in the Cabinet, Westminster and Whitehall.
Plus most STEM graduates can earn more in business and the City or as GPs and surgeons than they can in politics so you will not attract more of them unless you pay MPs and Cabinet Ministers more and that is unlikely to go down that well with the public at the moment
Thank you for the correction. I didn't intentionally miss out Theresa, but really, only one scientist in the whole cabinet? Considering the importance, and not just at the current time, of science and engineering it is ridiculous that the cabinet is stuffed full of people with "humanities" graduates.
They have to "follow the science" because barring one (who is Work and Pensions) they don't fecking understand it! You could tell that lot that the moon is made of blue cheese and if you had a PhD in physics they would have to believe you.
How are we going to cope with this level of exponential growth?
If you are already seeing exponential growth in deaths it is already way, way too late.
The point is that we're well past the stage where the additional delta variant cases would be feeding into the death rate. It isn't, not even a little bit. That 66 number includes people who tested positive for COVID but died for other reasons within 28 days and for older people the list of other reasons is pretty big.
I really hope that the mens team is being forced to watch this performance by the women. Valuing their wickets, grinding out the runs when things were a bit tricky and then cashing in on some tiring bowling at the end of the day. It has been an almost flawless performance.
Looking at the data as it is, it’s tempting to conclude that Sage and Boris might have just made a weapons-grade cock up.
We’ll see.
Yup by the end of this week we'll know for sure but every day 300-400k people are joining the fully vaccinated cohort looking at vaccine numbers from two weeks ago. The virus is simply running out of road and I don't understand why the data models have simply ignored this. No one is asking exactly who it is that will get struck down by the virus and which cohort is going to topple the NHS. 100k cases per day, 40k deaths in this wave. It's laughable but this is the kind of data that is driving our decision making process. If it wasn't such a disaster it would be funny.
What I find astonishing is that This Isn't Rocket Surgery.
How is it that this board (with the exception of a few crazies) has called this broadly right in aggregate, while both SAGEs have been... poor.
I noted the flattening on Saturday and I don’t even have maths a-level!!
How are we going to cope with this level of exponential growth?
If you are already seeing exponential growth in deaths it is already way, way too late.
It depends how exponential it is and for how long.
The fundamental misconception some have is that exponentials can go on forever, rather than running out of road, peaking and going back down. Flu deaths at the beginning of each winter start going up exponentially but we don't lose our minds over that - we give out the vaccinations to the vulnerable but then live our lives as standard.
That's where we should be with Covid. In fact we've gone further than we do with the flu by giving the vaccine to those who aren't even vulnerable, which we don't normally do with the flu (albeit we're not giving it to kids so swings and roundabouts there).
Looking at the data as it is, it’s tempting to conclude that Sage and Boris might have just made a weapons-grade cock up.
We’ll see.
Yup by the end of this week we'll know for sure but every day 300-400k people are joining the fully vaccinated cohort looking at vaccine numbers from two weeks ago. The virus is simply running out of road and I don't understand why the data models have simply ignored this. No one is asking exactly who it is that will get struck down by the virus and which cohort is going to topple the NHS. 100k cases per day, 40k deaths in this wave. It's laughable but this is the kind of data that is driving our decision making process. If it wasn't such a disaster it would be funny.
What I find astonishing is that This Isn't Rocket Surgery.
How is it that this board (with the exception of a few crazies) has called this broadly right in aggregate, while both SAGEs have been... poor.
People here have got real world experience. We've got jobs where people rely on us to provide accurate and timely data/information. Academics are, IMO, pretty second rate when it comes to data modelling vs the private sector of banking and tech. I remember the best early model was just a guy who plugged in various daily statistics into a logistic regression model and published the results unaltered. It outdid all of the academic models by some distance and that's just a simple logistic regression.
We're talking about a really tiny and not random at all dataset, modelling it is a piece of piss.
9k cases today, up 20% on last week after a full week of c. 7.6k
Absolutely no sign of the 60% exponential death loop we were promised Monday night.
The week-on-week seven-day rate has fallen very sharply again – down seven points or so on yesterday.
Noise?....
I think it could have been written off as noise had today come in at 11k+ and backfilled a lot of weekend data and Monday with a bigger number. It wasn't and came in at almost exactly what was expected. The WoW increase has slowed down to just 24% when looking at the single day data for the 14th.
I think if we look at the PCR positive rate it's even better it's only about 10% and this is measuring symptomatic COVID cases rather than LFTs which mostly pick up asymptomatic ones. By the end of this week we might actually start seeing the symptomatic COVID case rate tip into contraction but it will be hidden by LFTs for another week.
Boris got bounced into this by scientists claiming 60% WoW case growth indefinitely but the actual real world data is showing a slowdown in case growth already and it won't be long until cases are falling again. There's no accountability with them and MPs need to hammer Boris and the scientists for this unnecessary 4 week extension. We're all paying the price for their zero COVID agenda and fake news data models.
The WoW increase of 60% didn't really happen, at lest not last week, the appearance of a 60% WoW increase was to a large degree a function of more testing last week than the week before, because the week before was half term and therefor much less 'mass testing' in schools collages and university's, There was most likely a much larger increases in the half term week, than the 30% WoW incres recorded, and has been falling since.
The true WoW incres will have peaked, so to speak when the Delta variant became supper dominant, probably in the halftime week and will be dropping from that point, as the size of the unvaccinated population drops. when it crosses drops below o%, cases will peek obviously and that's not that far away.
As I have sead a few times, a delay in reopening by 48 or 72 hours and a reassessment on the 21st would have allowed 2 weeks data with out the half term effect and there for much more accurate projections.
To be honest todays numbers are a little worse than 'my back of an envelope modal' But I am sticking with my prediction and pledge:
Cases, as messed by mid point of the 7 day average and for specimen date, will peak on or before 21 June. and if this does not come to pass I will 1) apologies hear on PB, 2) give £100 to OGH towards the running cost and buy everybody who terns up and the next PB get together a drink.
Looking at the data as it is, it’s tempting to conclude that Sage and Boris might have just made a weapons-grade cock up.
We’ll see.
Yup by the end of this week we'll know for sure but every day 300-400k people are joining the fully vaccinated cohort looking at vaccine numbers from two weeks ago. The virus is simply running out of road and I don't understand why the data models have simply ignored this. No one is asking exactly who it is that will get struck down by the virus and which cohort is going to topple the NHS. 100k cases per day, 40k deaths in this wave. It's laughable but this is the kind of data that is driving our decision making process. If it wasn't such a disaster it would be funny.
What I find astonishing is that This Isn't Rocket Surgery.
How is it that this board (with the exception of a few crazies) has called this broadly right in aggregate, while both SAGEs have been... poor.
I think there are a lot more numerate people on this board, than there are among those who are making the political decisions. Therefore those who are making the political decisions, Johnson and his inner circle, are overly reliant on their advice. The advisers aren't there to make the political decisions, to balance one thing against another. Johnson isn't able to look at the uncertainty range he is given and see that the upper end is based on unrealistic assumptions - he just doesn't have the experience in critical numerical thinking.
How are we going to cope with this level of exponential growth?
If you are already seeing exponential growth in deaths it is already way, way too late.
It depends how exponential it is and for how long.
The fundamental misconception some have is that exponentials can go on forever, rather than running out of road, peaking and going back down. Flu deaths at the beginning of each winter start going up exponentially but we don't lose our minds over that - we give out the vaccinations to the vulnerable but then live our lives as standard.
That's where we should be with Covid. In fact we've gone further than we do with the flu by giving the vaccine to those who aren't even vulnerable, which we don't normally do with the flu (albeit we're not giving it to kids so swings and roundabouts there).
Boris has FOMOed in on the top of a shitcoin chart because he's convinced himself it's going up forever. We've all been there.
This is the first experience of exponential growth many non-degenerates have ever had.
The average gap moves up to 80 days. Rather than bringing jabs forward, some people are binning off their second !
On the plus side we're over 79% of adults for firsts and 45% of the whole pop is fully vaxxed.
The vaccine rollout is done. Now we're catching up with stragglers and waiting for second doses to be ready to go. Yet another reason we shouldn't be extending lockdown.
Despite already being vaccinated I got yet another text today advising me that Pfizer is available at a walk-in clinic near me for anyone over 18 "no appointment necessary". Been getting these texts from the NHS almost daily lately. They're not finding people to vaccinate anymore, so why should we still be locked down?
I don’t understand why we aren’t having large numbers of first doses for 20-somethings.
Worrying.
First doses are all Pfizer or Moderna, so they're not going to get up above 1.5m a week. Even at that rate they're covering 3 years of age cohort a week so it doesn't make much difference unless we see a bigger demand in the group who simply haven't bothered.
I haven't seen an evidence that people aren't bothering. Wales will be going above 90% of adults, fairly soon, for example.
The supply of vaccinations is limited.
I have heard it said that 83% of the total population need to have immunity for herd effects to kick in. Can’t be far off now, given maybe 30-40% of the unvaccinated already have some level fo acquired immunity.
30-40% of the unvaccinated haven't had COVID.
The antibody surveys show that antibody levels are only running at a few percent above the vaccination rate.
83% is so precise a number as to be nonsense - It is highly dependent on the R number, which people are still guessing
No country has got near 83% of population vaccinated. I believe that Canada is currently in the lead with 65%
The UK is on 61% - remember that the headline figures you see are for adults (18+) only.
I hope vaccinations are opened to 12 - 17. Parents and the adolescent should be presented the risks and benefits of vaccination (A tiny chance of myocarditis vs a highish chance of long covid) and unlike adults I don't see it nearly the same "duty" wise for teenagers to get jabbed - but I'd hope they'd be offered it, and allowed to take their own decisions on the matter.
Not sure how informed a 13-yr old would be to take a vaccine.
Anyway didn't I see on bbc news that children weren't going to be taking it?
Why should they in any case? A minute risk from Covid (one in a million as described on the radio this morning) to keep their vaccinated grandparents...er, safe.
My 13 year old son has made a point of trying to understand the ramifications of vaccinating vs not vaccinating and seems quite enthusiastically in favour. But of course much of the information he gets comes from his parents who are pro vaccine and his school which is also pro vaccine.
It is certainly the case that 13 year olds are easily swayed by peers and by authority figures of various kinds but in the end I don't think this is an issue. If a 13 year old is not considered old enough to make a decision themselves then that decision devolves to the parents. If there is a difference of opinion then I would suggest that the wishes of the child should be the final arbiter but I would be making clear to my own son in that instance that I thought he was a bloody idiot.
Looking at the data as it is, it’s tempting to conclude that Sage and Boris might have just made a weapons-grade cock up.
We’ll see.
Yup by the end of this week we'll know for sure but every day 300-400k people are joining the fully vaccinated cohort looking at vaccine numbers from two weeks ago. The virus is simply running out of road and I don't understand why the data models have simply ignored this. No one is asking exactly who it is that will get struck down by the virus and which cohort is going to topple the NHS. 100k cases per day, 40k deaths in this wave. It's laughable but this is the kind of data that is driving our decision making process. If it wasn't such a disaster it would be funny.
What I find astonishing is that This Isn't Rocket Surgery.
How is it that this board (with the exception of a few crazies) has called this broadly right in aggregate, while both SAGEs have been... poor.
I think there are a lot more numerate people on this board, than there are among those who are making the political decisions. Therefore those who are making the political decisions, Johnson and his inner circle, are overly reliant on their advice. The advisers aren't there to make the political decisions, to balance one thing against another. Johnson isn't able to look at the uncertainty range he is given and see that the upper end is based on unrealistic assumptions - he just doesn't have the experience in critical numerical thinking.
I love that on this website, if anyone makes an innumerate point it gets quickly pointed out (saving me the effort of doing so!).
If we'd had similarly numerate journalists asking the questions at the press conferences, I expect the government would have been rather more shown up and the nation would have been much better informed.
Looking at the data as it is, it’s tempting to conclude that Sage and Boris might have just made a weapons-grade cock up.
We’ll see.
Yup by the end of this week we'll know for sure but every day 300-400k people are joining the fully vaccinated cohort looking at vaccine numbers from two weeks ago. The virus is simply running out of road and I don't understand why the data models have simply ignored this. No one is asking exactly who it is that will get struck down by the virus and which cohort is going to topple the NHS. 100k cases per day, 40k deaths in this wave. It's laughable but this is the kind of data that is driving our decision making process. If it wasn't such a disaster it would be funny.
What I find astonishing is that This Isn't Rocket Surgery.
How is it that this board (with the exception of a few crazies) has called this broadly right in aggregate, while both SAGEs have been... poor.
People here have got real world experience. We've got jobs where people rely on us to provide accurate and timely data/information. Academics are, IMO, pretty second rate when it comes to data modelling vs the private sector of banking and tech. I remember the best early model was just a guy who plugged in various daily statistics into a logistic regression model and published the results unaltered. It outdid all of the academic models by some distance and that's just a simple logistic regression.
We're talking about a really tiny and not random at all dataset, modelling it is a piece of piss.
"Advisors advise, ministers decide" used to be the dictum. Except in the case of the numpties we have in the cabinet now where it is "scientific advisers advise and ministers say "er er er, we follow the science (gosh I wish I'd jolly well listened in those science lessons at Eton)"
Looking at the data as it is, it’s tempting to conclude that Sage and Boris might have just made a weapons-grade cock up.
We’ll see.
Yup by the end of this week we'll know for sure but every day 300-400k people are joining the fully vaccinated cohort looking at vaccine numbers from two weeks ago. The virus is simply running out of road and I don't understand why the data models have simply ignored this. No one is asking exactly who it is that will get struck down by the virus and which cohort is going to topple the NHS. 100k cases per day, 40k deaths in this wave. It's laughable but this is the kind of data that is driving our decision making process. If it wasn't such a disaster it would be funny.
What I find astonishing is that This Isn't Rocket Surgery.
How is it that this board (with the exception of a few crazies) has called this broadly right in aggregate, while both SAGEs have been... poor.
People here have got real world experience. We've got jobs where people rely on us to provide accurate and timely data/information. Academics are, IMO, pretty second rate when it comes to data modelling vs the private sector of banking and tech. I remember the best early model was just a guy who plugged in various daily statistics into a logistic regression model and published the results unaltered. It outdid all of the academic models by some distance and that's just a simple logistic regression.
We're talking about a really tiny and not random at all dataset, modelling it is a piece of piss.
I think the other difference is in the banking sector is people are prepared to challenge the models, and the person who created the model doesn't get upset.
This is a clear insult to Wales, and the Presidents of Azerbaijan and Turkey are missing out on Drakeford's brilliance, he could teach them a few things about how to deal with a pandemic/vaccine rollout and general governance.
More ex scientists and engineers un parliament would be a good start. More fundamentally the whole area of policy based on scientific advice needs a big reset. Unconscious biases, group-think, ideological influences, noble cause corruption, desperation for publication and gaining grants, ineffective and biased peer review. Much more openness for models and data when policy is involved and automatic use of red teams would be a start.
Good point. I have long been an advocate for diversity in teams, and this doesn't just refer to ethnicity gender etc., it also refers to people's training and background. I know there has been some change but it is still the case that the majority of Whitehall civil servants are Oxbridge, oft educated (like our Glorious Leader) in subjects like Classics and rarely in science. As for the cabinet:
You ignored Therese Coffey the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions who has a Chemistry degree from Oxford and a PhD in Chemistry from UCL.
In any case most scientists and engineers are more likely to contribute in business and industry and research than in lawmaking and policymaking in which you would expect lawyers and historians and politics and PPE graduates to dominate in the Cabinet, Westminster and Whitehall.
Plus most STEM graduates can earn more in business and the City or as GPs and surgeons than they can in politics so you will not attract more of them unless you pay MPs and Cabinet Ministers more and that is unlikely to go down that well with the public at the moment
Thank you for the correction. I didn't intentionally miss out Theresa, but really, only one scientist in the whole cabinet? Considering the importance, and not just at the current time, of science and engineering it is ridiculous that the cabinet is stuffed full of people with "humanities" graduates.
They have to "follow the science" because barring one (who is Work and Pensions) they don't fecking understand it! You could tell that lot that the moon is made of blue cheese and if you had a PhD in physics they would have to believe you.
Alok Sharma who was Business Secretary but now still attends Cabinet as President for COP26 also has a STEM degree in Physics and Electronics from Salford University.
However you don't need a STEM degree to make policy on science and technology issues necessarily as long as you have a range of top rank scientists and engineers to get advice from.
As I also said most top STEM graduates earn more in industry and the City than they ever would in politics so have no wish to make the move
Be careful. R tends to oscillate naturally as the infection balance between mature and emergent waves constantly shifts.
So, for instance infection rates in SW England could come to influence overall R more and push the value up if they increase at the same or even a slightly lesser rate. (current SW England figures, 2356 COVID cases (+1414, +150%, R approx. 1.7).
And we have a cooler spell coming.
There will be no disaster, I think, but a peak of 4-5000 in hospital and a few dozen deaths a day seems very possible to me under current conditions with the easing postponed.
The average gap moves up to 80 days. Rather than bringing jabs forward, some people are binning off their second !
On the plus side we're over 79% of adults for firsts and 45% of the whole pop is fully vaxxed.
The vaccine rollout is done. Now we're catching up with stragglers and waiting for second doses to be ready to go. Yet another reason we shouldn't be extending lockdown.
Despite already being vaccinated I got yet another text today advising me that Pfizer is available at a walk-in clinic near me for anyone over 18 "no appointment necessary". Been getting these texts from the NHS almost daily lately. They're not finding people to vaccinate anymore, so why should we still be locked down?
I don’t understand why we aren’t having large numbers of first doses for 20-somethings.
Worrying.
First doses are all Pfizer or Moderna, so they're not going to get up above 1.5m a week. Even at that rate they're covering 3 years of age cohort a week so it doesn't make much difference unless we see a bigger demand in the group who simply haven't bothered.
I haven't seen an evidence that people aren't bothering. Wales will be going above 90% of adults, fairly soon, for example.
The supply of vaccinations is limited.
I have heard it said that 83% of the total population need to have immunity for herd effects to kick in. Can’t be far off now, given maybe 30-40% of the unvaccinated already have some level fo acquired immunity.
30-40% of the unvaccinated haven't had COVID.
The antibody surveys show that antibody levels are only running at a few percent above the vaccination rate.
83% is so precise a number as to be nonsense - It is highly dependent on the R number, which people are still guessing
No country has got near 83% of population vaccinated. I believe that Canada is currently in the lead with 65%
The UK is on 61% - remember that the headline figures you see are for adults (18+) only.
I hope vaccinations are opened to 12 - 17. Parents and the adolescent should be presented the risks and benefits of vaccination (A tiny chance of myocarditis vs a highish chance of long covid) and unlike adults I don't see it nearly the same "duty" wise for teenagers to get jabbed - but I'd hope they'd be offered it, and allowed to take their own decisions on the matter.
Not sure how informed a 13-yr old would be to take a vaccine.
Anyway didn't I see on bbc news that children weren't going to be taking it?
Why should they in any case? A minute risk from Covid (one in a million as described on the radio this morning) to keep their vaccinated grandparents...er, safe.
My 13 year old son has made a point of trying to understand the ramifications of vaccinating vs not vaccinating and seems quite enthusiastically in favour. But of course much of the information he gets comes from his parents who are pro vaccine and his school which is also pro vaccine.
It is certainly the case that 13 year olds are easily swayed by peers and by authority figures of various kinds but in the end I don't think this is an issue. If a 13 year old is not considered old enough to make a decision themselves then that decision devolves to the parents. If there is a difference of opinion then I would suggest that the wishes of the child should be the final arbiter but I would be making clear to my own son in that instance that I thought he was a bloody idiot.
Both my daughter want the vaccine -and they are very informed on the subject of vaccinations. As are their peers.
Looking at the data as it is, it’s tempting to conclude that Sage and Boris might have just made a weapons-grade cock up.
We’ll see.
Yup by the end of this week we'll know for sure but every day 300-400k people are joining the fully vaccinated cohort looking at vaccine numbers from two weeks ago. The virus is simply running out of road and I don't understand why the data models have simply ignored this. No one is asking exactly who it is that will get struck down by the virus and which cohort is going to topple the NHS. 100k cases per day, 40k deaths in this wave. It's laughable but this is the kind of data that is driving our decision making process. If it wasn't such a disaster it would be funny.
What I find astonishing is that This Isn't Rocket Surgery.
How is it that this board (with the exception of a few crazies) has called this broadly right in aggregate, while both SAGEs have been... poor.
People here have got real world experience. We've got jobs where people rely on us to provide accurate and timely data/information. Academics are, IMO, pretty second rate when it comes to data modelling vs the private sector of banking and tech. I remember the best early model was just a guy who plugged in various daily statistics into a logistic regression model and published the results unaltered. It outdid all of the academic models by some distance and that's just a simple logistic regression.
We're talking about a really tiny and not random at all dataset, modelling it is a piece of piss.
I think the other difference is in the banking sector is people are prepared to challenge the models, and the person who created the model doesn't get upset.
I have been away all PM and on catching up the thread can someone provide the actual position we are now in and confirm that Sage has got this all wrong
And if so when does it become indisputable and can Boris open early
Looking at the data as it is, it’s tempting to conclude that Sage and Boris might have just made a weapons-grade cock up.
We’ll see.
Yup by the end of this week we'll know for sure but every day 300-400k people are joining the fully vaccinated cohort looking at vaccine numbers from two weeks ago. The virus is simply running out of road and I don't understand why the data models have simply ignored this. No one is asking exactly who it is that will get struck down by the virus and which cohort is going to topple the NHS. 100k cases per day, 40k deaths in this wave. It's laughable but this is the kind of data that is driving our decision making process. If it wasn't such a disaster it would be funny.
What I find astonishing is that This Isn't Rocket Surgery.
How is it that this board (with the exception of a few crazies) has called this broadly right in aggregate, while both SAGEs have been... poor.
Is it a blame culture thing? We have nothing at stake except a few kudos. If they forecast 100 deaths and there is a thousand a select committee investigation awaits. So you forecast a thousand. And a politician who doesn't understand the assumptions or the probabilities sufficiently to challenge them accepts this and fixes policy accordingly.
Blame culture to me pushes scientists away from their best guess to worst case and it has horribly distorted policy as, increasingly, does the desperation of politicians not to be found at fault for failing to do enough to protect the vulnerable and elderly regardless of the consequences for everybody else.
How are we going to cope with this level of exponential growth?
If you are already seeing exponential growth in deaths it is already way, way too late.
The point is that we're well past the stage where the additional delta variant cases would be feeding into the death rate. It isn't, not even a little bit. That 66 number includes people who tested positive for COVID but died for other reasons within 28 days and for older people the list of other reasons is pretty big.
Yeah, at this point the focus should be on hospital admissions. It isn't surprising the death figure are static.
Looking at the data as it is, it’s tempting to conclude that Sage and Boris might have just made a weapons-grade cock up.
We’ll see.
Yup by the end of this week we'll know for sure but every day 300-400k people are joining the fully vaccinated cohort looking at vaccine numbers from two weeks ago. The virus is simply running out of road and I don't understand why the data models have simply ignored this. No one is asking exactly who it is that will get struck down by the virus and which cohort is going to topple the NHS. 100k cases per day, 40k deaths in this wave. It's laughable but this is the kind of data that is driving our decision making process. If it wasn't such a disaster it would be funny.
What I find astonishing is that This Isn't Rocket Surgery.
How is it that this board (with the exception of a few crazies) has called this broadly right in aggregate, while both SAGEs have been... poor.
People here have got real world experience. We've got jobs where people rely on us to provide accurate and timely data/information. Academics are, IMO, pretty second rate when it comes to data modelling vs the private sector of banking and tech. I remember the best early model was just a guy who plugged in various daily statistics into a logistic regression model and published the results unaltered. It outdid all of the academic models by some distance and that's just a simple logistic regression.
We're talking about a really tiny and not random at all dataset, modelling it is a piece of piss.
I think the other difference is in the banking sector is people are prepared to challenge the models, and the person who created the model doesn't get upset.
Doesn't get upset... chortle...
Well doesn't get outwardly upset, they realise it is a part of the job.
Looking at the data as it is, it’s tempting to conclude that Sage and Boris might have just made a weapons-grade cock up.
We’ll see.
Yup by the end of this week we'll know for sure but every day 300-400k people are joining the fully vaccinated cohort looking at vaccine numbers from two weeks ago. The virus is simply running out of road and I don't understand why the data models have simply ignored this. No one is asking exactly who it is that will get struck down by the virus and which cohort is going to topple the NHS. 100k cases per day, 40k deaths in this wave. It's laughable but this is the kind of data that is driving our decision making process. If it wasn't such a disaster it would be funny.
What I find astonishing is that This Isn't Rocket Surgery.
How is it that this board (with the exception of a few crazies) has called this broadly right in aggregate, while both SAGEs have been... poor.
People here have got real world experience. We've got jobs where people rely on us to provide accurate and timely data/information. Academics are, IMO, pretty second rate when it comes to data modelling vs the private sector of banking and tech. I remember the best early model was just a guy who plugged in various daily statistics into a logistic regression model and published the results unaltered. It outdid all of the academic models by some distance and that's just a simple logistic regression.
We're talking about a really tiny and not random at all dataset, modelling it is a piece of piss.
Modelling generally isn't the right tool for this kind of policy decision, where all kinds of non-quantative inputs and outputs are involved. It lends a spurious level of precision to the results and gives policy makers much too much confidence in their decisions. Models can help, but should never determine policy.
Looking at the data as it is, it’s tempting to conclude that Sage and Boris might have just made a weapons-grade cock up.
We’ll see.
Yup by the end of this week we'll know for sure but every day 300-400k people are joining the fully vaccinated cohort looking at vaccine numbers from two weeks ago. The virus is simply running out of road and I don't understand why the data models have simply ignored this. No one is asking exactly who it is that will get struck down by the virus and which cohort is going to topple the NHS. 100k cases per day, 40k deaths in this wave. It's laughable but this is the kind of data that is driving our decision making process. If it wasn't such a disaster it would be funny.
What I find astonishing is that This Isn't Rocket Surgery.
How is it that this board (with the exception of a few crazies) has called this broadly right in aggregate, while both SAGEs have been... poor.
People here have got real world experience. We've got jobs where people rely on us to provide accurate and timely data/information. Academics are, IMO, pretty second rate when it comes to data modelling vs the private sector of banking and tech. I remember the best early model was just a guy who plugged in various daily statistics into a logistic regression model and published the results unaltered. It outdid all of the academic models by some distance and that's just a simple logistic regression.
We're talking about a really tiny and not random at all dataset, modelling it is a piece of piss.
I think the other difference is in the banking sector is people are prepared to challenge the models, and the person who created the model doesn't get upset.
Doesn't get upset... chortle...
Reminds me of Richard Dawkins saying 'Scientists don't get upset when their hypotheses are blown to bits, they celebrate it!'
I reckon the better Wales do at football, the fewer of their kids will choose to play rugby - improving our all important long term prospects against them.
More ex scientists and engineers un parliament would be a good start. More fundamentally the whole area of policy based on scientific advice needs a big reset. Unconscious biases, group-think, ideological influences, noble cause corruption, desperation for publication and gaining grants, ineffective and biased peer review. Much more openness for models and data when policy is involved and automatic use of red teams would be a start.
Good point. I have long been an advocate for diversity in teams, and this doesn't just refer to ethnicity gender etc., it also refers to people's training and background. I know there has been some change but it is still the case that the majority of Whitehall civil servants are Oxbridge, oft educated (like our Glorious Leader) in subjects like Classics and rarely in science. As for the cabinet:
You ignored Therese Coffey the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions who has a Chemistry degree from Oxford and a PhD in Chemistry from UCL.
In any case most scientists and engineers are more likely to contribute in business and industry and research than in lawmaking and policymaking in which you would expect lawyers and historians and politics and PPE graduates to dominate in the Cabinet, Westminster and Whitehall.
Plus most STEM graduates can earn more in business and the City or as GPs and surgeons than they can in politics so you will not attract more of them unless you pay MPs and Cabinet Ministers more and that is unlikely to go down that well with the public at the moment
Thank you for the correction. I didn't intentionally miss out Theresa, but really, only one scientist in the whole cabinet? Considering the importance, and not just at the current time, of science and engineering it is ridiculous that the cabinet is stuffed full of people with "humanities" graduates.
They have to "follow the science" because barring one (who is Work and Pensions) they don't fecking understand it! You could tell that lot that the moon is made of blue cheese and if you had a PhD in physics they would have to believe you.
Alok Sharma who was Business Secretary but now still attends Cabinet as President for COP26 also has a STEM degree in Physics and Electronics from Salford University.
However you don't need a STEM degree to make policy on science and technology issues necessarily as long as you have a range of top rank scientists and engineers to get advice from.
As I also said most top STEM graduates earn more in industry and the City than they ever would in politics so have no wish to make the move
I think you are possibly deliberately missing the point out of allegiance to the government. Diverse teams work because people who have a range of experience ask different questions of the advisors. My observation is that aside form the Oxbridge bias (which I don't have a big problem with, although it isn't that healthy) there is an absence of people at the top table who have had at least some training in subjects that require significant numeracy, and sorry I do not put PPE into that category!
I can't be the first with this observation but the absolute cheek of Boris Johnson calling someone ELSE totally fucking hopeless. It's like a pot calling a kettle totally fucking black. 😞
More ex scientists and engineers un parliament would be a good start. More fundamentally the whole area of policy based on scientific advice needs a big reset. Unconscious biases, group-think, ideological influences, noble cause corruption, desperation for publication and gaining grants, ineffective and biased peer review. Much more openness for models and data when policy is involved and automatic use of red teams would be a start.
Good point. I have long been an advocate for diversity in teams, and this doesn't just refer to ethnicity gender etc., it also refers to people's training and background. I know there has been some change but it is still the case that the majority of Whitehall civil servants are Oxbridge, oft educated (like our Glorious Leader) in subjects like Classics and rarely in science. As for the cabinet:
You ignored Therese Coffey the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions who has a Chemistry degree from Oxford and a PhD in Chemistry from UCL.
In any case most scientists and engineers are more likely to contribute in business and industry and research than in lawmaking and policymaking in which you would expect lawyers and historians and politics and PPE graduates to dominate in the Cabinet, Westminster and Whitehall.
Plus most STEM graduates can earn more in business and the City or as GPs and surgeons than they can in politics so you will not attract more of them unless you pay MPs and Cabinet Ministers more and that is unlikely to go down that well with the public at the moment
Thank you for the correction. I didn't intentionally miss out Theresa, but really, only one scientist in the whole cabinet? Considering the importance, and not just at the current time, of science and engineering it is ridiculous that the cabinet is stuffed full of people with "humanities" graduates.
They have to "follow the science" because barring one (who is Work and Pensions) they don't fecking understand it! You could tell that lot that the moon is made of blue cheese and if you had a PhD in physics they would have to believe you.
Alok Sharma who was Business Secretary but now still attends Cabinet as President for COP26 also has a STEM degree in Physics and Electronics from Salford University.
However you don't need a STEM degree to make policy on science and technology issues necessarily as long as you have a range of top rank scientists and engineers to get advice from.
As I also said most top STEM graduates earn more in industry and the City than they ever would in politics so have no wish to make the move
I think you are possibly deliberately missing the point out of allegiance to the government. Diverse teams work because people who have a range of experience ask different questions of the advisors. My observation is that aside form the Oxbridge bias (which I don't have a big problem with, although it isn't that healthy) there is an absence of people at the top table who have had at least some training in subjects that require significant numeracy, and sorry I do not put PPE into that category!
PS, a cabinet that was 90% science grads wouldn't be good either!
Looking at the data as it is, it’s tempting to conclude that Sage and Boris might have just made a weapons-grade cock up.
We’ll see.
Yup by the end of this week we'll know for sure but every day 300-400k people are joining the fully vaccinated cohort looking at vaccine numbers from two weeks ago. The virus is simply running out of road and I don't understand why the data models have simply ignored this. No one is asking exactly who it is that will get struck down by the virus and which cohort is going to topple the NHS. 100k cases per day, 40k deaths in this wave. It's laughable but this is the kind of data that is driving our decision making process. If it wasn't such a disaster it would be funny.
What I find astonishing is that This Isn't Rocket Surgery.
How is it that this board (with the exception of a few crazies) has called this broadly right in aggregate, while both SAGEs have been... poor.
Is it a blame culture thing? We have nothing at stake except a few kudos. If they forecast 100 deaths and there is a thousand a select committee investigation awaits. So you forecast a thousand. And a politician who doesn't understand the assumptions or the probabilities sufficiently to challenge them accepts this and fixes policy accordingly.
Blame culture to me pushes scientists away from their best guess to worst case and it has horribly distorted policy as, increasingly, does the desperation of politicians not to be found at fault for failing to do enough to protect the vulnerable and elderly regardless of the consequences for everybody else.
If it was just that they'd present a sensible base case with a scary confidence interval.
As it is they publish insane base cases with a top of confidence interval which seems to involve more people catching Covid than there are in the country.
I can't be the first with this observation but the absolute cheek of Boris Johnson calling someone ELSE totally fucking hopeless. It's like a pot calling a kettle totally fucking black. 😞
To be fair, we know know that Johnson is not without hope(s). Indeed he is confidently expecting to win the next election and quit after a couple of year to "make money and have fun".
Looking at the data as it is, it’s tempting to conclude that Sage and Boris might have just made a weapons-grade cock up.
We’ll see.
Yup by the end of this week we'll know for sure but every day 300-400k people are joining the fully vaccinated cohort looking at vaccine numbers from two weeks ago. The virus is simply running out of road and I don't understand why the data models have simply ignored this. No one is asking exactly who it is that will get struck down by the virus and which cohort is going to topple the NHS. 100k cases per day, 40k deaths in this wave. It's laughable but this is the kind of data that is driving our decision making process. If it wasn't such a disaster it would be funny.
What I find astonishing is that This Isn't Rocket Surgery.
How is it that this board (with the exception of a few crazies) has called this broadly right in aggregate, while both SAGEs have been... poor.
People here have got real world experience. We've got jobs where people rely on us to provide accurate and timely data/information. Academics are, IMO, pretty second rate when it comes to data modelling vs the private sector of banking and tech. I remember the best early model was just a guy who plugged in various daily statistics into a logistic regression model and published the results unaltered. It outdid all of the academic models by some distance and that's just a simple logistic regression.
We're talking about a really tiny and not random at all dataset, modelling it is a piece of piss.
I think the other difference is in the banking sector is people are prepared to challenge the models, and the person who created the model doesn't get upset.
Doesn't get upset... chortle...
Reminds me of Richard Dawkins saying 'Scientists don't get upset when their hypotheses are blown to bits, they celebrate it!'
As brilliantly expounded in Meet the Robinsons. You learn from failure. Success not so much.
I have learned so much in my career, sometimes I fear almost too much 😉
More ex scientists and engineers un parliament would be a good start. More fundamentally the whole area of policy based on scientific advice needs a big reset. Unconscious biases, group-think, ideological influences, noble cause corruption, desperation for publication and gaining grants, ineffective and biased peer review. Much more openness for models and data when policy is involved and automatic use of red teams would be a start.
Good point. I have long been an advocate for diversity in teams, and this doesn't just refer to ethnicity gender etc., it also refers to people's training and background. I know there has been some change but it is still the case that the majority of Whitehall civil servants are Oxbridge, oft educated (like our Glorious Leader) in subjects like Classics and rarely in science. As for the cabinet:
You ignored Therese Coffey the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions who has a Chemistry degree from Oxford and a PhD in Chemistry from UCL.
In any case most scientists and engineers are more likely to contribute in business and industry and research than in lawmaking and policymaking in which you would expect lawyers and historians and politics and PPE graduates to dominate in the Cabinet, Westminster and Whitehall.
Plus most STEM graduates can earn more in business and the City or as GPs and surgeons than they can in politics so you will not attract more of them unless you pay MPs and Cabinet Ministers more and that is unlikely to go down that well with the public at the moment
Thank you for the correction. I didn't intentionally miss out Theresa, but really, only one scientist in the whole cabinet? Considering the importance, and not just at the current time, of science and engineering it is ridiculous that the cabinet is stuffed full of people with "humanities" graduates.
They have to "follow the science" because barring one (who is Work and Pensions) they don't fecking understand it! You could tell that lot that the moon is made of blue cheese and if you had a PhD in physics they would have to believe you.
Alok Sharma who was Business Secretary but now still attends Cabinet as President for COP26 also has a STEM degree in Physics and Electronics from Salford University.
However you don't need a STEM degree to make policy on science and technology issues necessarily as long as you have a range of top rank scientists and engineers to get advice from.
As I also said most top STEM graduates earn more in industry and the City than they ever would in politics so have no wish to make the move
I think you are possibly deliberately missing the point out of allegiance to the government. Diverse teams work because people who have a range of experience ask different questions of the advisors. My observation is that aside form the Oxbridge bias (which I don't have a big problem with, although it isn't that healthy) there is an absence of people at the top table who have had at least some training in subjects that require significant numeracy, and sorry I do not put PPE into that category!
Yes but people with a high degree of numeracy can earn far more as investment bankers or accountants or executives in top companies than they ever could at Westminster or Whitehall, so why would they want to make the move?
You can't force people to stand for Parliament, nor party members and voters to pick the best and most competent parliamentary candidates and PMs, nor will taxpayers want to fork out the sort of very high wage to MPs and Cabinet Ministers that really would attract the absolute best ie a million pounds a year for the PM and Cabinet and a hundred thousand pounds a year for MPs
How are we going to cope with this level of exponential growth?
If you are already seeing exponential growth in deaths it is already way, way too late.
It depends how exponential it is and for how long.
The fundamental misconception some have is that exponentials can go on forever, rather than running out of road, peaking and going back down. Flu deaths at the beginning of each winter start going up exponentially but we don't lose our minds over that - we give out the vaccinations to the vulnerable but then live our lives as standard.
That's where we should be with Covid. In fact we've gone further than we do with the flu by giving the vaccine to those who aren't even vulnerable, which we don't normally do with the flu (albeit we're not giving it to kids so swings and roundabouts there).
It's something I was also thinking about today. The way we extrapolate trends and assume they will continue forever, whether exponential or not. There are plenty of examples of otherwise very intelligent and qualified people making this mistake in their planning, when there is already a scientific and evidence base to show the trend will stop and reverse. To take a few examples: global population growth, crime rates, obesity, inflation, possibly globalisation.
There are of course a few examples of the opposite too: ones where the policy assumption is variation around a flat line when the reality, because of additions to the system that will not reverse, is inevitable growth or shrinkage. The greenhouse effect being one such example, technological advances another.
More ex scientists and engineers un parliament would be a good start. More fundamentally the whole area of policy based on scientific advice needs a big reset. Unconscious biases, group-think, ideological influences, noble cause corruption, desperation for publication and gaining grants, ineffective and biased peer review. Much more openness for models and data when policy is involved and automatic use of red teams would be a start.
Good point. I have long been an advocate for diversity in teams, and this doesn't just refer to ethnicity gender etc., it also refers to people's training and background. I know there has been some change but it is still the case that the majority of Whitehall civil servants are Oxbridge, oft educated (like our Glorious Leader) in subjects like Classics and rarely in science. As for the cabinet:
You ignored Therese Coffey the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions who has a Chemistry degree from Oxford and a PhD in Chemistry from UCL.
In any case most scientists and engineers are more likely to contribute in business and industry and research than in lawmaking and policymaking in which you would expect lawyers and historians and politics and PPE graduates to dominate in the Cabinet, Westminster and Whitehall.
Plus most STEM graduates can earn more in business and the City or as GPs and surgeons than they can in politics so you will not attract more of them unless you pay MPs and Cabinet Ministers more and that is unlikely to go down that well with the public at the moment
Thank you for the correction. I didn't intentionally miss out Theresa, but really, only one scientist in the whole cabinet? Considering the importance, and not just at the current time, of science and engineering it is ridiculous that the cabinet is stuffed full of people with "humanities" graduates.
They have to "follow the science" because barring one (who is Work and Pensions) they don't fecking understand it! You could tell that lot that the moon is made of blue cheese and if you had a PhD in physics they would have to believe you.
Alok Sharma who was Business Secretary but now still attends Cabinet as President for COP26 also has a STEM degree in Physics and Electronics from Salford University.
However you don't need a STEM degree to make policy on science and technology issues necessarily as long as you have a range of top rank scientists and engineers to get advice from.
As I also said most top STEM graduates earn more in industry and the City than they ever would in politics so have no wish to make the move
A Chartered Engineer with a degree in PPE would be the ideal person to run the country...
But it sounds like too much hard work, so I'll pass.
Looking at the data as it is, it’s tempting to conclude that Sage and Boris might have just made a weapons-grade cock up.
We’ll see.
Yup by the end of this week we'll know for sure but every day 300-400k people are joining the fully vaccinated cohort looking at vaccine numbers from two weeks ago. The virus is simply running out of road and I don't understand why the data models have simply ignored this. No one is asking exactly who it is that will get struck down by the virus and which cohort is going to topple the NHS. 100k cases per day, 40k deaths in this wave. It's laughable but this is the kind of data that is driving our decision making process. If it wasn't such a disaster it would be funny.
What I find astonishing is that This Isn't Rocket Surgery.
How is it that this board (with the exception of a few crazies) has called this broadly right in aggregate, while both SAGEs have been... poor.
Is it a blame culture thing? We have nothing at stake except a few kudos. If they forecast 100 deaths and there is a thousand a select committee investigation awaits. So you forecast a thousand. And a politician who doesn't understand the assumptions or the probabilities sufficiently to challenge them accepts this and fixes policy accordingly.
Blame culture to me pushes scientists away from their best guess to worst case and it has horribly distorted policy as, increasingly, does the desperation of politicians not to be found at fault for failing to do enough to protect the vulnerable and elderly regardless of the consequences for everybody else.
If it was just that they'd present a sensible base case with a scary confidence interval.
As it is they publish insane base cases with a top of confidence interval which seems to involve more people catching Covid than there are in the country.
I don't think they've done that. There are still around 30 million people that aren't vaccinated fully, 12 million of those have some protection but not complete. Now, I haven't seen any models that predict 30 million infections.
Looking at the data as it is, it’s tempting to conclude that Sage and Boris might have just made a weapons-grade cock up.
We’ll see.
Yup by the end of this week we'll know for sure but every day 300-400k people are joining the fully vaccinated cohort looking at vaccine numbers from two weeks ago. The virus is simply running out of road and I don't understand why the data models have simply ignored this. No one is asking exactly who it is that will get struck down by the virus and which cohort is going to topple the NHS. 100k cases per day, 40k deaths in this wave. It's laughable but this is the kind of data that is driving our decision making process. If it wasn't such a disaster it would be funny.
What I find astonishing is that This Isn't Rocket Surgery.
How is it that this board (with the exception of a few crazies) has called this broadly right in aggregate, while both SAGEs have been... poor.
People here have got real world experience. We've got jobs where people rely on us to provide accurate and timely data/information. Academics are, IMO, pretty second rate when it comes to data modelling vs the private sector of banking and tech. I remember the best early model was just a guy who plugged in various daily statistics into a logistic regression model and published the results unaltered. It outdid all of the academic models by some distance and that's just a simple logistic regression.
We're talking about a really tiny and not random at all dataset, modelling it is a piece of piss.
"Advisors advise, ministers decide" used to be the dictum. Except in the case of the numpties we have in the cabinet now where it is "scientific advisers advise and ministers say "er er er, we follow the science (gosh I wish I'd jolly well listened in those science lessons at Eton)"
It is simple cowardice. Using scientists as a shield against future criticism. Unlike most on here I don't blame the scientists at all and certainly not people like Witty and Vallance. They would reasonably expect that they would give scientific advice based on the best of their knowledge and that that advice would generally look at worst case scenarios but with the statistical chances of these scenarios explained as well. A proper leader would take that information and balance it against all the other factors - economy, individual freedoms, adverse effects etc - and make a balanced decision.
But our politicians have chosen to take a line that it is all the scientists doing. That they cannot and will not do anything against the scientific advise. I suspect that for every scientific advisor there who is enjoying the sense of power there are three or four more who are quietly horrified that they are being taken at face value in this way and who can see that they are being lined up for the fall if and when things don't match the worst predictions.
But as a scientific or medical advisor what do you do? If you treat the politicians like children and temper your advise by excluding worst case scenarios then you are taking on political decision making that is not yours to take. And if that worst case scenario does develop then you are guilty of having misled the politicians by hiding possible outcomes.
So you have to keep making the estimates and hope the politicians are adult enough to make some informed decisions based on them. Not likely in the case of most of our politicians I am afraid.
Looking at the data as it is, it’s tempting to conclude that Sage and Boris might have just made a weapons-grade cock up.
We’ll see.
Yup by the end of this week we'll know for sure but every day 300-400k people are joining the fully vaccinated cohort looking at vaccine numbers from two weeks ago. The virus is simply running out of road and I don't understand why the data models have simply ignored this. No one is asking exactly who it is that will get struck down by the virus and which cohort is going to topple the NHS. 100k cases per day, 40k deaths in this wave. It's laughable but this is the kind of data that is driving our decision making process. If it wasn't such a disaster it would be funny.
What I find astonishing is that This Isn't Rocket Surgery.
How is it that this board (with the exception of a few crazies) has called this broadly right in aggregate, while both SAGEs have been... poor.
People here have got real world experience. We've got jobs where people rely on us to provide accurate and timely data/information. Academics are, IMO, pretty second rate when it comes to data modelling vs the private sector of banking and tech. I remember the best early model was just a guy who plugged in various daily statistics into a logistic regression model and published the results unaltered. It outdid all of the academic models by some distance and that's just a simple logistic regression.
We're talking about a really tiny and not random at all dataset, modelling it is a piece of piss.
I think the other difference is in the banking sector is people are prepared to challenge the models, and the person who created the model doesn't get upset.
Yeah I think this is a really important factor. The attitude I always see in banking is criticism is a pre-cursor to improvements. In academia it seems as though criticism is seen as a personal insult and the scientists have extremely fragile egos and don't tolerate being questioned very well.
Looking at the data as it is, it’s tempting to conclude that Sage and Boris might have just made a weapons-grade cock up.
We’ll see.
Yup by the end of this week we'll know for sure but every day 300-400k people are joining the fully vaccinated cohort looking at vaccine numbers from two weeks ago. The virus is simply running out of road and I don't understand why the data models have simply ignored this. No one is asking exactly who it is that will get struck down by the virus and which cohort is going to topple the NHS. 100k cases per day, 40k deaths in this wave. It's laughable but this is the kind of data that is driving our decision making process. If it wasn't such a disaster it would be funny.
What I find astonishing is that This Isn't Rocket Surgery.
How is it that this board (with the exception of a few crazies) has called this broadly right in aggregate, while both SAGEs have been... poor.
Is it a blame culture thing? We have nothing at stake except a few kudos. If they forecast 100 deaths and there is a thousand a select committee investigation awaits. So you forecast a thousand. And a politician who doesn't understand the assumptions or the probabilities sufficiently to challenge them accepts this and fixes policy accordingly.
Blame culture to me pushes scientists away from their best guess to worst case and it has horribly distorted policy as, increasingly, does the desperation of politicians not to be found at fault for failing to do enough to protect the vulnerable and elderly regardless of the consequences for everybody else.
If it was just that they'd present a sensible base case with a scary confidence interval.
As it is they publish insane base cases with a top of confidence interval which seems to involve more people catching Covid than there are in the country.
Yes, I remember the earlier Imperial models which seemed to predict that exponential growth would continue beyond the population of the planet. And I don't think that they were relying upon @moonshine's explanation.
Looking at the data as it is, it’s tempting to conclude that Sage and Boris might have just made a weapons-grade cock up.
We’ll see.
Yup by the end of this week we'll know for sure but every day 300-400k people are joining the fully vaccinated cohort looking at vaccine numbers from two weeks ago. The virus is simply running out of road and I don't understand why the data models have simply ignored this. No one is asking exactly who it is that will get struck down by the virus and which cohort is going to topple the NHS. 100k cases per day, 40k deaths in this wave. It's laughable but this is the kind of data that is driving our decision making process. If it wasn't such a disaster it would be funny.
What I find astonishing is that This Isn't Rocket Surgery.
How is it that this board (with the exception of a few crazies) has called this broadly right in aggregate, while both SAGEs have been... poor.
People here have got real world experience. We've got jobs where people rely on us to provide accurate and timely data/information. Academics are, IMO, pretty second rate when it comes to data modelling vs the private sector of banking and tech. I remember the best early model was just a guy who plugged in various daily statistics into a logistic regression model and published the results unaltered. It outdid all of the academic models by some distance and that's just a simple logistic regression.
We're talking about a really tiny and not random at all dataset, modelling it is a piece of piss.
I think the other difference is in the banking sector is people are prepared to challenge the models, and the person who created the model doesn't get upset.
Doesn't get upset... chortle...
Speaking from direct experience of this as it is my job (building rather than challenging), they don't get upset when the people challenging the models make sensible and legitimate critiques, rather than getting hung up on clearly irrelevant or immaterial points, which is all too often the case.
A lot of the time an awful lot of the "challenge" is often them reading the parts where you call out the difficulties or assumptions and then them parroting that back at you as if they've discovered it out for themselves.
Well, the "wave" seems to be spreading as it slows. Which will make the next couple of weeks interesting....
A mixed bag, really. Good news is that the hardest hit areas seem to have topped out and are declining. Bad news is that it is increasing everywhere else.
I don't think most places will get as bad as Bolton and Blackburn. But it suggests that this wave won't get very high but will roll on for a long time.
Of course, if we ever get released from lockdown, this will all change again.
And of course, it won't matter, because vaccines, hospitalisations and deaths,
More ex scientists and engineers un parliament would be a good start. More fundamentally the whole area of policy based on scientific advice needs a big reset. Unconscious biases, group-think, ideological influences, noble cause corruption, desperation for publication and gaining grants, ineffective and biased peer review. Much more openness for models and data when policy is involved and automatic use of red teams would be a start.
Good point. I have long been an advocate for diversity in teams, and this doesn't just refer to ethnicity gender etc., it also refers to people's training and background. I know there has been some change but it is still the case that the majority of Whitehall civil servants are Oxbridge, oft educated (like our Glorious Leader) in subjects like Classics and rarely in science. As for the cabinet:
You ignored Therese Coffey the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions who has a Chemistry degree from Oxford and a PhD in Chemistry from UCL.
In any case most scientists and engineers are more likely to contribute in business and industry and research than in lawmaking and policymaking in which you would expect lawyers and historians and politics and PPE graduates to dominate in the Cabinet, Westminster and Whitehall.
Plus most STEM graduates can earn more in business and the City or as GPs and surgeons than they can in politics so you will not attract more of them unless you pay MPs and Cabinet Ministers more and that is unlikely to go down that well with the public at the moment
Thank you for the correction. I didn't intentionally miss out Theresa, but really, only one scientist in the whole cabinet? Considering the importance, and not just at the current time, of science and engineering it is ridiculous that the cabinet is stuffed full of people with "humanities" graduates.
They have to "follow the science" because barring one (who is Work and Pensions) they don't fecking understand it! You could tell that lot that the moon is made of blue cheese and if you had a PhD in physics they would have to believe you.
Alok Sharma who was Business Secretary but now still attends Cabinet as President for COP26 also has a STEM degree in Physics and Electronics from Salford University.
However you don't need a STEM degree to make policy on science and technology issues necessarily as long as you have a range of top rank scientists and engineers to get advice from.
As I also said most top STEM graduates earn more in industry and the City than they ever would in politics so have no wish to make the move
A Chartered Engineer with a degree in PPE would be the ideal person to run the country...
But it sounds like too much hard work, so I'll pass.
Chemistry and law was a pretty good mix for a certain Lady.
Looking at the data as it is, it’s tempting to conclude that Sage and Boris might have just made a weapons-grade cock up.
We’ll see.
Yup by the end of this week we'll know for sure but every day 300-400k people are joining the fully vaccinated cohort looking at vaccine numbers from two weeks ago. The virus is simply running out of road and I don't understand why the data models have simply ignored this. No one is asking exactly who it is that will get struck down by the virus and which cohort is going to topple the NHS. 100k cases per day, 40k deaths in this wave. It's laughable but this is the kind of data that is driving our decision making process. If it wasn't such a disaster it would be funny.
What I find astonishing is that This Isn't Rocket Surgery.
How is it that this board (with the exception of a few crazies) has called this broadly right in aggregate, while both SAGEs have been... poor.
People here have got real world experience. We've got jobs where people rely on us to provide accurate and timely data/information. Academics are, IMO, pretty second rate when it comes to data modelling vs the private sector of banking and tech. I remember the best early model was just a guy who plugged in various daily statistics into a logistic regression model and published the results unaltered. It outdid all of the academic models by some distance and that's just a simple logistic regression.
We're talking about a really tiny and not random at all dataset, modelling it is a piece of piss.
I think the other difference is in the banking sector is people are prepared to challenge the models, and the person who created the model doesn't get upset.
Hmm. Try that one when you are bringing a company to market and writing the info memo.
Looking at the data as it is, it’s tempting to conclude that Sage and Boris might have just made a weapons-grade cock up.
We’ll see.
Yup by the end of this week we'll know for sure but every day 300-400k people are joining the fully vaccinated cohort looking at vaccine numbers from two weeks ago. The virus is simply running out of road and I don't understand why the data models have simply ignored this. No one is asking exactly who it is that will get struck down by the virus and which cohort is going to topple the NHS. 100k cases per day, 40k deaths in this wave. It's laughable but this is the kind of data that is driving our decision making process. If it wasn't such a disaster it would be funny.
What I find astonishing is that This Isn't Rocket Surgery.
How is it that this board (with the exception of a few crazies) has called this broadly right in aggregate, while both SAGEs have been... poor.
People here have got real world experience. We've got jobs where people rely on us to provide accurate and timely data/information. Academics are, IMO, pretty second rate when it comes to data modelling vs the private sector of banking and tech. I remember the best early model was just a guy who plugged in various daily statistics into a logistic regression model and published the results unaltered. It outdid all of the academic models by some distance and that's just a simple logistic regression.
We're talking about a really tiny and not random at all dataset, modelling it is a piece of piss.
Modelling generally isn't the right tool for this kind of policy decision, where all kinds of non-quantative inputs and outputs are involved. It lends a spurious level of precision to the results and gives policy makers much too much confidence in their decisions. Models can help, but should never determine policy.
A bit like political betting, perhaps?
Yes, completely agree that they should be part of the process but you can't use them as evidence in policy making, ultimately modelled data doesn't exist. As I've explained to our sales team, our data modelling on client health is a good conversation starter, don't live and die by the score. The politicians are destroying the country based on something that isn't real and has got basically zero validation against real world data.
That's the other part of our process, we make sure that all of our models are validated and if they perform poorly we go back and make changes or just junk them as a poor idea. The rubbish models from Warwick have been proved wrong time and again and yet they still put out the same garbage predictions using the same low predictive value models. I've said it before, I'd be genuinely embarrassed to produce anything that performed so poorly against real world data.
I can't be the first with this observation but the absolute cheek of Boris Johnson calling someone ELSE totally fucking hopeless. It's like a pot calling a kettle totally fucking black. 😞
To be fair, we know know that Johnson is not without hope(s). Indeed he is confidently expecting to win the next election and quit after a couple of year to "make money and have fun".
Looking at the data as it is, it’s tempting to conclude that Sage and Boris might have just made a weapons-grade cock up.
We’ll see.
Yup by the end of this week we'll know for sure but every day 300-400k people are joining the fully vaccinated cohort looking at vaccine numbers from two weeks ago. The virus is simply running out of road and I don't understand why the data models have simply ignored this. No one is asking exactly who it is that will get struck down by the virus and which cohort is going to topple the NHS. 100k cases per day, 40k deaths in this wave. It's laughable but this is the kind of data that is driving our decision making process. If it wasn't such a disaster it would be funny.
What I find astonishing is that This Isn't Rocket Surgery.
How is it that this board (with the exception of a few crazies) has called this broadly right in aggregate, while both SAGEs have been... poor.
People here have got real world experience. We've got jobs where people rely on us to provide accurate and timely data/information. Academics are, IMO, pretty second rate when it comes to data modelling vs the private sector of banking and tech. I remember the best early model was just a guy who plugged in various daily statistics into a logistic regression model and published the results unaltered. It outdid all of the academic models by some distance and that's just a simple logistic regression.
We're talking about a really tiny and not random at all dataset, modelling it is a piece of piss.
I think the other difference is in the banking sector is people are prepared to challenge the models, and the person who created the model doesn't get upset.
Hmm. Try that one when you are bringing a company to market and writing the info memo.
True, I suppose I have the ultimate deterrent because I can say 'Get this wrong and you'll end up in prison', that usually gets the attention of people.
Looking at the data as it is, it’s tempting to conclude that Sage and Boris might have just made a weapons-grade cock up.
We’ll see.
Yup by the end of this week we'll know for sure but every day 300-400k people are joining the fully vaccinated cohort looking at vaccine numbers from two weeks ago. The virus is simply running out of road and I don't understand why the data models have simply ignored this. No one is asking exactly who it is that will get struck down by the virus and which cohort is going to topple the NHS. 100k cases per day, 40k deaths in this wave. It's laughable but this is the kind of data that is driving our decision making process. If it wasn't such a disaster it would be funny.
What I find astonishing is that This Isn't Rocket Surgery.
How is it that this board (with the exception of a few crazies) has called this broadly right in aggregate, while both SAGEs have been... poor.
People here have got real world experience. We've got jobs where people rely on us to provide accurate and timely data/information. Academics are, IMO, pretty second rate when it comes to data modelling vs the private sector of banking and tech. I remember the best early model was just a guy who plugged in various daily statistics into a logistic regression model and published the results unaltered. It outdid all of the academic models by some distance and that's just a simple logistic regression.
We're talking about a really tiny and not random at all dataset, modelling it is a piece of piss.
I think the other difference is in the banking sector is people are prepared to challenge the models, and the person who created the model doesn't get upset.
Doesn't get upset... chortle...
Reminds me of Richard Dawkins saying 'Scientists don't get upset when their hypotheses are blown to bits, they celebrate it!'
As brilliantly expounded in Meet the Robinsons. You learn from failure. Success not so much.
I have learned so much in my career, sometimes I fear almost too much 😉
Looking at the data as it is, it’s tempting to conclude that Sage and Boris might have just made a weapons-grade cock up.
We’ll see.
Yup by the end of this week we'll know for sure but every day 300-400k people are joining the fully vaccinated cohort looking at vaccine numbers from two weeks ago. The virus is simply running out of road and I don't understand why the data models have simply ignored this. No one is asking exactly who it is that will get struck down by the virus and which cohort is going to topple the NHS. 100k cases per day, 40k deaths in this wave. It's laughable but this is the kind of data that is driving our decision making process. If it wasn't such a disaster it would be funny.
What I find astonishing is that This Isn't Rocket Surgery.
How is it that this board (with the exception of a few crazies) has called this broadly right in aggregate, while both SAGEs have been... poor.
People here have got real world experience. We've got jobs where people rely on us to provide accurate and timely data/information. Academics are, IMO, pretty second rate when it comes to data modelling vs the private sector of banking and tech. I remember the best early model was just a guy who plugged in various daily statistics into a logistic regression model and published the results unaltered. It outdid all of the academic models by some distance and that's just a simple logistic regression.
We're talking about a really tiny and not random at all dataset, modelling it is a piece of piss.
"Advisors advise, ministers decide" used to be the dictum. Except in the case of the numpties we have in the cabinet now where it is "scientific advisers advise and ministers say "er er er, we follow the science (gosh I wish I'd jolly well listened in those science lessons at Eton)"
It is simple cowardice. Using scientists as a shield against future criticism. Unlike most on here I don't blame the scientists at all and certainly not people like Witty and Vallance. They would reasonably expect that they would give scientific advice based on the best of their knowledge and that that advice would generally look at worst case scenarios but with the statistical chances of these scenarios explained as well. A proper leader would take that information and balance it against all the other factors - economy, individual freedoms, adverse effects etc - and make a balanced decision.
But our politicians have chosen to take a line that it is all the scientists doing. That they cannot and will not do anything against the scientific advise. I suspect that for every scientific advisor there who is enjoying the sense of power there are three or four more who are quietly horrified that they are being taken at face value in this way and who can see that they are being lined up for the fall if and when things don't match the worst predictions.
But as a scientific or medical advisor what do you do? If you treat the politicians like children and temper your advise by excluding worst case scenarios then you are taking on political decision making that is not yours to take. And if that worst case scenario does develop then you are guilty of having misled the politicians by hiding possible outcomes.
So you have to keep making the estimates and hope the politicians are adult enough to make some informed decisions based on them. Not likely in the case of most of our politicians I am afraid.
Politicians are, rightly, afraid of not being seen to take scientific advice, but at the end of the day the politicians are the decision makers and at a point things can cross over, as you say, into being a shield. Poor advice may make a cock up by ministers more understandable during any enquiry, but they cannot claim there was no choice at all.
GB News is under investigation by Ofcom after 373 viewers complained to the broadcasting watchdog about one of its first programmes.
The regulator said that the complaints related to Dan Wootton’s first broadcast on Sunday, June 13, when the presenter began with a monologue about the government’s continued lockdown measures because of the spread of the Indian variant of Covid.
Looking at the data as it is, it’s tempting to conclude that Sage and Boris might have just made a weapons-grade cock up.
We’ll see.
Yup by the end of this week we'll know for sure but every day 300-400k people are joining the fully vaccinated cohort looking at vaccine numbers from two weeks ago. The virus is simply running out of road and I don't understand why the data models have simply ignored this. No one is asking exactly who it is that will get struck down by the virus and which cohort is going to topple the NHS. 100k cases per day, 40k deaths in this wave. It's laughable but this is the kind of data that is driving our decision making process. If it wasn't such a disaster it would be funny.
What I find astonishing is that This Isn't Rocket Surgery.
How is it that this board (with the exception of a few crazies) has called this broadly right in aggregate, while both SAGEs have been... poor.
People here have got real world experience. We've got jobs where people rely on us to provide accurate and timely data/information. Academics are, IMO, pretty second rate when it comes to data modelling vs the private sector of banking and tech. I remember the best early model was just a guy who plugged in various daily statistics into a logistic regression model and published the results unaltered. It outdid all of the academic models by some distance and that's just a simple logistic regression.
We're talking about a really tiny and not random at all dataset, modelling it is a piece of piss.
I think the other difference is in the banking sector is people are prepared to challenge the models, and the person who created the model doesn't get upset.
Hmm. Try that one when you are bringing a company to market and writing the info memo.
True, I suppose I have the ultimate deterrent because I can say 'Get this wrong and you'll end up in prison', that usually gets the attention of people.
Yes. Tends to focus the mind the old personal responsibility thing.
Looking at the data as it is, it’s tempting to conclude that Sage and Boris might have just made a weapons-grade cock up.
We’ll see.
Yup by the end of this week we'll know for sure but every day 300-400k people are joining the fully vaccinated cohort looking at vaccine numbers from two weeks ago. The virus is simply running out of road and I don't understand why the data models have simply ignored this. No one is asking exactly who it is that will get struck down by the virus and which cohort is going to topple the NHS. 100k cases per day, 40k deaths in this wave. It's laughable but this is the kind of data that is driving our decision making process. If it wasn't such a disaster it would be funny.
What I find astonishing is that This Isn't Rocket Surgery.
How is it that this board (with the exception of a few crazies) has called this broadly right in aggregate, while both SAGEs have been... poor.
People here have got real world experience. We've got jobs where people rely on us to provide accurate and timely data/information. Academics are, IMO, pretty second rate when it comes to data modelling vs the private sector of banking and tech. I remember the best early model was just a guy who plugged in various daily statistics into a logistic regression model and published the results unaltered. It outdid all of the academic models by some distance and that's just a simple logistic regression.
We're talking about a really tiny and not random at all dataset, modelling it is a piece of piss.
I think the other difference is in the banking sector is people are prepared to challenge the models, and the person who created the model doesn't get upset.
Doesn't get upset... chortle...
Well doesn't get outwardly upset, they realise it is a part of the job.
Looking at the data as it is, it’s tempting to conclude that Sage and Boris might have just made a weapons-grade cock up.
We’ll see.
Yup by the end of this week we'll know for sure but every day 300-400k people are joining the fully vaccinated cohort looking at vaccine numbers from two weeks ago. The virus is simply running out of road and I don't understand why the data models have simply ignored this. No one is asking exactly who it is that will get struck down by the virus and which cohort is going to topple the NHS. 100k cases per day, 40k deaths in this wave. It's laughable but this is the kind of data that is driving our decision making process. If it wasn't such a disaster it would be funny.
What I find astonishing is that This Isn't Rocket Surgery.
How is it that this board (with the exception of a few crazies) has called this broadly right in aggregate, while both SAGEs have been... poor.
People here have got real world experience. We've got jobs where people rely on us to provide accurate and timely data/information. Academics are, IMO, pretty second rate when it comes to data modelling vs the private sector of banking and tech. I remember the best early model was just a guy who plugged in various daily statistics into a logistic regression model and published the results unaltered. It outdid all of the academic models by some distance and that's just a simple logistic regression.
We're talking about a really tiny and not random at all dataset, modelling it is a piece of piss.
I think the other difference is in the banking sector is people are prepared to challenge the models, and the person who created the model doesn't get upset.
Doesn't get upset... chortle...
Speaking from direct experience of this as it is my job (building rather than challenging), they don't get upset when the people challenging the models make sensible and legitimate critiques, rather than getting hung up on clearly irrelevant or immaterial points, which is all too often the case.
A lot of the time an awful lot of the "challenge" is often them reading the parts where you call out the difficulties or assumptions and then them parroting that back at you as if they've discovered it out for themselves.
I used to love tearing other people's Excel models to shreds. But then I'm a sadist who likes nothing more than inflicting pain on others.
GB News is under investigation by Ofcom after 373 viewers complained to the broadcasting watchdog about one of its first programmes.
The regulator said that the complaints related to Dan Wootton’s first broadcast on Sunday, June 13, when the presenter began with a monologue about the government’s continued lockdown measures because of the spread of the Indian variant of Covid.
Looking at the data as it is, it’s tempting to conclude that Sage and Boris might have just made a weapons-grade cock up.
We’ll see.
Yup by the end of this week we'll know for sure but every day 300-400k people are joining the fully vaccinated cohort looking at vaccine numbers from two weeks ago. The virus is simply running out of road and I don't understand why the data models have simply ignored this. No one is asking exactly who it is that will get struck down by the virus and which cohort is going to topple the NHS. 100k cases per day, 40k deaths in this wave. It's laughable but this is the kind of data that is driving our decision making process. If it wasn't such a disaster it would be funny.
What I find astonishing is that This Isn't Rocket Surgery.
How is it that this board (with the exception of a few crazies) has called this broadly right in aggregate, while both SAGEs have been... poor.
People here have got real world experience. We've got jobs where people rely on us to provide accurate and timely data/information. Academics are, IMO, pretty second rate when it comes to data modelling vs the private sector of banking and tech. I remember the best early model was just a guy who plugged in various daily statistics into a logistic regression model and published the results unaltered. It outdid all of the academic models by some distance and that's just a simple logistic regression.
We're talking about a really tiny and not random at all dataset, modelling it is a piece of piss.
I think the other difference is in the banking sector is people are prepared to challenge the models, and the person who created the model doesn't get upset.
Hmm. Try that one when you are bringing a company to market and writing the info memo.
True, I suppose I have the ultimate deterrent because I can say 'Get this wrong and you'll end up in prison', that usually gets the attention of people.
I say the same thing to my gang of dickensian cutpurses. Little urchins know what's what then.
If anyone needed proof that this new station was going to be a pile of horseshit read this. Every line makes you feel queasy. A bit like Peter Lilley singing to the Tory Party conference
I really hope that the mens team is being forced to watch this performance by the women. Valuing their wickets, grinding out the runs when things were a bit tricky and then cashing in on some tiring bowling at the end of the day. It has been an almost flawless performance.
In defence of the men's team, I guess a lot of the women don't have the option of smashing sixes, so aren't tempted to take it
If anyone needed proof that this new station was going to be a pile of horseshit read this. Every line makes you feel queasy. A bit like Peter Lilley singing to the Tory Party conference
Comments
How are we going to cope with this level of exponential growth?
How is it that this board (with the exception of a few crazies) has called this broadly right in aggregate, while both SAGEs have been... poor.
They have to "follow the science" because barring one (who is Work and Pensions) they don't fecking understand it! You could tell that lot that the moon is made of blue cheese and if you had a PhD in physics they would have to believe you.
The fundamental misconception some have is that exponentials can go on forever, rather than running out of road, peaking and going back down. Flu deaths at the beginning of each winter start going up exponentially but we don't lose our minds over that - we give out the vaccinations to the vulnerable but then live our lives as standard.
That's where we should be with Covid. In fact we've gone further than we do with the flu by giving the vaccine to those who aren't even vulnerable, which we don't normally do with the flu (albeit we're not giving it to kids so swings and roundabouts there).
We're talking about a really tiny and not random at all dataset, modelling it is a piece of piss.
The true WoW incres will have peaked, so to speak when the Delta variant became supper dominant, probably in the halftime week and will be dropping from that point, as the size of the unvaccinated population drops. when it crosses drops below o%, cases will peek obviously and that's not that far away.
As I have sead a few times, a delay in reopening by 48 or 72 hours and a reassessment on the 21st would have allowed 2 weeks data with out the half term effect and there for much more accurate projections.
To be honest todays numbers are a little worse than 'my back of an envelope modal' But I am sticking with my prediction and pledge:
Cases, as messed by mid point of the 7 day average and for specimen date, will peak on or before 21 June. and if this does not come to pass I will 1) apologies hear on PB, 2) give £100 to OGH towards the running cost and buy everybody who terns up and the next PB get together a drink.
This is the first experience of exponential growth many non-degenerates have ever had.
It is certainly the case that 13 year olds are easily swayed by peers and by authority figures of various kinds but in the end I don't think this is an issue. If a 13 year old is not considered old enough to make a decision themselves then that decision devolves to the parents. If there is a difference of opinion then I would suggest that the wishes of the child should be the final arbiter but I would be making clear to my own son in that instance that I thought he was a bloody idiot.
If we'd had similarly numerate journalists asking the questions at the press conferences, I expect the government would have been rather more shown up and the nation would have been much better informed.
This is a clear insult to Wales, and the Presidents of Azerbaijan and Turkey are missing out on Drakeford's brilliance, he could teach them a few things about how to deal with a pandemic/vaccine rollout and general governance.
However you don't need a STEM degree to make policy on science and technology issues necessarily as long as you have a range of top rank scientists and engineers to get advice from.
As I also said most top STEM graduates earn more in industry and the City than they ever would in politics so have no wish to make the move
So, for instance infection rates in SW England could come to influence overall R more and push the value up if they increase at the same or even a slightly lesser rate. (current SW England figures, 2356 COVID cases (+1414, +150%, R approx. 1.7).
And we have a cooler spell coming.
There will be no disaster, I think, but a peak of 4-5000 in hospital and a few dozen deaths a day seems very possible to me under current conditions with the easing postponed.
I have been away all PM and on catching up the thread can someone provide the actual position we are now in and confirm that Sage has got this all wrong
And if so when does it become indisputable and can Boris open early
Thank you
Blame culture to me pushes scientists away from their best guess to worst case and it has horribly distorted policy as, increasingly, does the desperation of politicians not to be found at fault for failing to do enough to protect the vulnerable and elderly regardless of the consequences for everybody else.
A bit like political betting, perhaps?
Sorry. I’ll stop spamming the board!
This isn't rugby.
I reckon the better Wales do at football, the fewer of their kids will choose to play rugby - improving our all important long term prospects against them.
As it is they publish insane base cases with a top of confidence interval which seems to involve more people catching Covid than there are in the country.
Indeed he is confidently expecting to win the next election and quit after a couple of year to "make money and have fun".
I have learned so much in my career, sometimes I fear almost too much 😉
You can't force people to stand for Parliament, nor party members and voters to pick the best and most competent parliamentary candidates and PMs, nor will taxpayers want to fork out the sort of very high wage to MPs and Cabinet Ministers that really would attract the absolute best ie a million pounds a year for the PM and Cabinet and a hundred thousand pounds a year for MPs
There are of course a few examples of the opposite too: ones where the policy assumption is variation around a flat line when the reality, because of additions to the system that will not reverse, is inevitable growth or shrinkage. The greenhouse effect being one such example, technological advances another.
But it sounds like too much hard work, so I'll pass.
But our politicians have chosen to take a line that it is all the scientists doing. That they cannot and will not do anything against the scientific advise. I suspect that for every scientific advisor there who is enjoying the sense of power there are three or four more who are quietly horrified that they are being taken at face value in this way and who can see that they are being lined up for the fall if and when things don't match the worst predictions.
But as a scientific or medical advisor what do you do? If you treat the politicians like children and temper your advise by excluding worst case scenarios then you are taking on political decision making that is not yours to take. And if that worst case scenario does develop then you are guilty of having misled the politicians by hiding possible outcomes.
So you have to keep making the estimates and hope the politicians are adult enough to make some informed decisions based on them. Not likely in the case of most of our politicians I am afraid.
A lot of the time an awful lot of the "challenge" is often them reading the parts where you call out the difficulties or assumptions and then them parroting that back at you as if they've discovered it out for themselves.
Good news is that the hardest hit areas seem to have topped out and are declining.
Bad news is that it is increasing everywhere else.
I don't think most places will get as bad as Bolton and Blackburn. But it suggests that this wave won't get very high but will roll on for a long time.
Of course, if we ever get released from lockdown, this will all change again.
And of course, it won't matter, because vaccines, hospitalisations and deaths,
That's the other part of our process, we make sure that all of our models are validated and if they perform poorly we go back and make changes or just junk them as a poor idea. The rubbish models from Warwick have been proved wrong time and again and yet they still put out the same garbage predictions using the same low predictive value models. I've said it before, I'd be genuinely embarrassed to produce anything that performed so poorly against real world data.
Stay Out 38%
Rejoin 31%
https://twitter.com/GoodwinMJ/status/1405192202603614208?s=20
The regulator said that the complaints related to Dan Wootton’s first broadcast on Sunday, June 13, when the presenter began with a monologue about the government’s continued lockdown measures because of the spread of the Indian variant of Covid.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/gb-news-viewers-complain-to-ofcom-about-anti-lockdown-diatribe-s6m3v5kdp
They’re gonna win this I recon.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/newsbeat-57483907
Same for others?