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Ministers on mask-wearing: Don’t do as we do but as we say – politicalbetting.com

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Comments

  • Apple iCrap 13....still with that f##king horrible notch.

    Just working out what colour to get.

    Gold or baby blue.

    Definitely need that 1 TB storage space.
    I am shocked i tell you, shocked, that you are rushing to get one.
    It is my one indulgence each year.

    I'm so deep in the Apple ecosystem.

    I just worked out I have fourteen Apple devices in my name.
    Tim Apple thanks you for your dedication to the cause....
    They give me special discounts.

    I broke a laptop two days after Apple Care ended and they still fixed as if it was still under Apple Care.
  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 76,274
    edited September 2021
    Andy_JS said:

    The year is 2071. The Apple CEO takes the stage:

    “Today, we are announcing Apple Watch Series 57, the greatest Apple Watch that we have ever done. It joins our already impressive customer offerings, including Apple Watch Series 56 and Apple Watch Series 3.” #AppleEvent

    https://twitter.com/jonyiveparody/status/1437462250995036162

    I spent most of the 1990s trying to persuade people that Apple products were far better than the Windows equivalents, with almost zero success. Haven't bought any Apples products for 5 years though ,because I thinK they've become complacent and arrogant in recent years.
    I wonder what Jony Ive has been up to the past few years since he technically left Apple. Its all very hush hush.
  • Nigelb said:

    O/T - With my work hate on ...

    Don't know if that was a typo, but I never turn mine off.
    Typo
  • Cursed ratio time.

    France, Redfield & Wilton Strategies poll:

    Run-off

    Macron (LREM-RE): 52% (-3)
    Le Pen (RN-ID): 48% (+3)

    +/- vs. 15-16 April 2021

    https://twitter.com/EuropeElects/status/1437862049963560967
  • FarooqFarooq Posts: 10,775
    isam said:

    Farooq said:

    justin124 said:

    FPT
    It is far too early to be confident about the next GE outcome here. As a statement of historical fact,however, Labour is better placed in the polls than at the same stage of the 1959 Parliament - ie Summer 1961 - when the party did go on to win the October 1964 election. Labour is also performing better than at the beginning of 1989 - under Kinnock it made 42 net gains in 1992 and reduced the Tory majority from 102 to 21.

    Also, the idea that electoral cycles are like some kind of sine wave or at all predictable. Someone wrote a short but sweet post yesterday that just said "EVENTS". Exactly that.
    The art of betting is to seperate the wheat from the chaff and make estimates - no one who knows anything about it would claim thta things are entirely predictable, but it is interesting, and I think possible, to try and work out some basics.

    What we seem to get here, when people try to make a case for Con MAJ not being a good bet, is "black swans" , "events", and "what ifs". If someone says they think Man Utd are a decent bet to beat Young Boys at 1.5 or whatever they were, someone else saying "Yeah but what if they get someone sent off and then concede a last minute goal?" isnt any kind of help, even though it happened

    Basically if there were no chance of a black swan, what if, event the Con MAJ price would be about 2/5 rather than 11/8, so its all in the price
    I agree with what you say and how you put it, but when people say things "at this point in the electoral cycle, a decent opposition should [blah]", all I hear is "I don't even know about Covid and Brexit". We're in the middle of one black swan right now, with another's shadow still visible.
  • Cookie said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    Surely the guidance was for winter if there is a big rise in cases, we are still barely in autumn let alone winter

    I'm sure that we can all agree that winter starts on December 1st.

    (Disappears into the kitchen just in case I have started WW3)
    Astronomical winter only begins on December 21st
    I just knew it!
    @HYUFD: How can we be "barely in autumn" if "Astronomical winter only begins on December 21st"? Is autumn longer than the other seasons?
    It's shorter. Don't believe the hype. All the autumnal stuff (fruit, leaf colour changes etc) starts about mid August and has happened by the end of October. It's then winter all the way to May 1.
    Indeed. I don't think in Northern Europe we have 4x 3 month seasons. Summer starts on 1 May and Winter on 1 November. Bonfire Night is that first night of the year when there is an appreciable nip in the air. Spring arguably starts in February when you get those bright winter days and they start to get longer. Autumn is probably no more than late Sept and Oct.
    Ooh, pointless, but fun:
    I'll go for:
    The start of spring is the most varied and is entirely weather dependent - because there is no big event to hang it on. The 1st of March or the 21st of March can slip by without you noticing if you're not concentrating. But you do notice the first day on which you don't have to wear a coat. And the flowers arrive gradually; but in a good year the blossom all arrives at once in one big power chord. Sometime this also coincides with daughter #1's birthday. (It certainly did the year she was born. It was as if the world had been waiting for that moment. The country of Iceland also elected to celebrate the event with a massive volcanic erruption.)
    Summer starts with the Whit holidays.
    The last day of summer is the August bank holiday. On which day I listen to 'David's Last Summer' by Pulp, and am wistful.
    There are then five or six days which aren't any season, including daughter #2's birthday; Autumn starts when the kids go back to school.
    Autumn lasts until Christmas starts. Which for most sane people is when you open tour first window on the advent calendar on December 1st. (Pedantic religious types: I don't want to hear it.) This is also a quarter day for us: daughter #3's birthday. (Christmas decorations are not allowed up until her birthday is done).

    'the first day on which you don't have to wear a coat'

    That would be January 1st in Newcastle, like.
  • Stocky said:

    pm215 said:

    Stocky said:

    Foxy said:


    Yes, that is the law on consent. It has not changed for years, and relates to the Gillick case in the Eighties.

    Yes, but I thought that this related to the 16-18 year olds? I'm surprised and somewhat troubled that 12 year olds are going to be able to get vaccinated for Covid without parental consent.
    The wikipedia page says that "Gillick competence" has always been about the under-16s. For 16-18 the assumption is that the young person has the choice to give consent or not. https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/consent-to-treatment/children/ says that can only be overruled in exceptional circumatances.

    So 11 year olds can't give consent, 16 year olds can, and Gillick is about doctors making a judgement call for the grey area in the middle. It doesn't mean "all 12 year olds can give consent themselves".
    So are we saying that a 12 year old can prove competence to their GP and get the vaccine without parents being informed? If that is so, then that is one thing, however if a 12 year old can enter a walk-in vaccination centre and get jabbed that is another.
    What difference does that make?

    The question is whether the child can show "competence" or not. I don't see how the competence required varies based upon whether its a vaccine centre or a GP that measures it. If the vaccine centre can test for competence then job done.
  • kle4kle4 Posts: 91,408

    Cursed ratio time.

    France, Redfield & Wilton Strategies poll:

    Run-off

    Macron (LREM-RE): 52% (-3)
    Le Pen (RN-ID): 48% (+3)

    +/- vs. 15-16 April 2021

    https://twitter.com/EuropeElects/status/1437862049963560967

    Perhaps her getting that close would be a wake up call for France.

    But I'm still holding out hope its Le Pen vs someone other than Macron, he'd never get over it.

  • tlg86tlg86 Posts: 25,165
    kle4 said:

    Cursed ratio time.

    France, Redfield & Wilton Strategies poll:

    Run-off

    Macron (LREM-RE): 52% (-3)
    Le Pen (RN-ID): 48% (+3)

    +/- vs. 15-16 April 2021

    https://twitter.com/EuropeElects/status/1437862049963560967

    Perhaps her getting that close would be a wake up call for France.

    But I'm still holding out hope its Le Pen vs someone other than Macron, he'd never get over it.

    Are we not at the point where Le Pen is now the moderate candidate?
  • TomsToms Posts: 2,478
    Leon said:

    Cookie said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    Surely the guidance was for winter if there is a big rise in cases, we are still barely in autumn let alone winter

    I'm sure that we can all agree that winter starts on December 1st.

    (Disappears into the kitchen just in case I have started WW3)
    Astronomical winter only begins on December 21st
    I just knew it!
    @HYUFD: How can we be "barely in autumn" if "Astronomical winter only begins on December 21st"? Is autumn longer than the other seasons?
    It's shorter. Don't believe the hype. All the autumnal stuff (fruit, leaf colour changes etc) starts about mid August and has happened by the end of October. It's then winter all the way to May 1.
    Indeed. I don't think in Northern Europe we have 4x 3 month seasons. Summer starts on 1 May and Winter on 1 November. Bonfire Night is that first night of the year when there is an appreciable nip in the air. Spring arguably starts in February when you get those bright winter days and they start to get longer. Autumn is probably no more than late Sept and Oct.
    Ooh, pointless, but fun:
    I'll go for:
    The start of spring is the most varied and is entirely weather dependent - because there is no big event to hang it on. The 1st of March or the 21st of March can slip by without you noticing if you're not concentrating. But you do notice the first day on which you don't have to wear a coat. And the flowers arrive gradually; but in a good year the blossom all arrives at once in one big power chord. Sometime this also coincides with daughter #1's birthday. (It certainly did the year she was born. It was as if the world had been waiting for that moment. The country of Iceland also elected to celebrate the event with a massive volcanic erruption.)
    Summer starts with the Whit holidays.
    The last day of summer is the August bank holiday. On which day I listen to 'David's Last Summer' by Pulp, and am wistful.
    There are then five or six days which aren't any season, including daughter #2's birthday; Autumn starts when the kids go back to school.
    Autumn lasts until Christmas starts. Which for most sane people is when you open tour first window on the advent calendar on December 1st. (Pedantic religious types: I don't want to hear it.) This is also a quarter day for us: daughter #3's birthday. (Christmas decorations are not allowed up until her birthday is done).

    I identify southern English seasons by travel, or at least I did pre-Covid


    Winter is when you GO THE FUCK AWAY. That means a large chunk of November, but then ~December 31 to about March 25. Ideally you go to Thailand. Failing that, Australia or the Caribbean, or maybe Namibia. Fuck, anywhere with warm sun

    Spring is when you COME BACK, Enjoy England in Spring (if it's a really late Spring like this year, grab the odd week in Egypt or India). Roughly, late March to end May

    Summer is when you HOVER BETWEEN THE MEDITERANEAN AND LONDON. Summer can be great in London, but if you see a crummy fortnight ahead, bug out to Portugal or Greece. Or Sicily. Roughly early June to mid September

    Autumn is the season for EXPERIMENTS, Guatemala! Two weeks in rustling London. Then.... Ethiopia! Then back to London for oysters. Rinse and repeat

    That's how it should be.

    Soon you may not need to travel to get interesting weather.
  • FarooqFarooq Posts: 10,775
    ydoethur said:

    Len McCluskey is a fraudster, nothing he says can be trusted

    Yep. The only thing that Starmer needs to say in response is "fuck off"
    I am sure if he said that it would be fairly widely replayed
    And he’d soar 10 points in the polls overnight.
    I swear to god, if Starmer told McClusky to fuck off on camera I will vote Labour in the locals next year. I really would.
  • Wowsers

    Two days after the January 6 attack on the US Capitol, President Donald Trump's top military adviser, Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Mark Milley, single-handedly took secret action to limit Trump from potentially ordering a dangerous military strike or launching nuclear weapons, according to "Peril," a new book by legendary journalist Bob Woodward and veteran Washington Post reporter Robert Costa.

    Woodward and Costa write that Milley, deeply shaken by the assault, 'was certain that Trump had gone into a serious mental decline in the aftermath of the election, with Trump now all but manic, screaming at officials and constructing his own alternate reality about endless election conspiracies.'

    Milley worried that Trump could 'go rogue,' the authors write.

    "You never know what a president's trigger point is," Milley told his senior staff, according to the book.

    In response, Milley took extraordinary action, and called a secret meeting in his Pentagon office on January 8 to review the process for military action, including launching nuclear weapons. Speaking to senior military officials in charge of the National Military Command Center, the Pentagon's war room, Milley instructed them not to take orders from anyone unless he was involved.

    "No matter what you are told, you do the procedure. You do the process. And I'm part of that procedure," Milley told the officers, according to the book. He then went around the room, looked each officer in the eye, and asked them to verbally confirm they understood.

    "Got it?" Milley asked, according to the book.

    "Yes, sir."

    'Milley considered it an oath,' the authors write.


    https://edition.cnn.com/2021/09/14/politics/woodward-book-trump-nuclear/index.html
  • Scott_xPScott_xP Posts: 32,739
    The Scottish Government are doing an amazing job of safeguarding hundreds of shipbuilding jobs. Just a pity none of them are actually in Scotland.
    https://twitter.com/livvyjohn/status/1437853468228788225

    Shipyards in Romania, Poland and Turkey have been invited to tender for the multi-million pound contract.
    https://news.stv.tv/highlands-islands/new-calmac-islay-ferries-wont-be-built-in-scotland?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Twitter#Echobox=1631647722
    https://twitter.com/STVNews/status/1437861655837396998
  • Leon said:

    Cookie said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    Surely the guidance was for winter if there is a big rise in cases, we are still barely in autumn let alone winter

    I'm sure that we can all agree that winter starts on December 1st.

    (Disappears into the kitchen just in case I have started WW3)
    Astronomical winter only begins on December 21st
    I just knew it!
    @HYUFD: How can we be "barely in autumn" if "Astronomical winter only begins on December 21st"? Is autumn longer than the other seasons?
    It's shorter. Don't believe the hype. All the autumnal stuff (fruit, leaf colour changes etc) starts about mid August and has happened by the end of October. It's then winter all the way to May 1.
    Indeed. I don't think in Northern Europe we have 4x 3 month seasons. Summer starts on 1 May and Winter on 1 November. Bonfire Night is that first night of the year when there is an appreciable nip in the air. Spring arguably starts in February when you get those bright winter days and they start to get longer. Autumn is probably no more than late Sept and Oct.
    Ooh, pointless, but fun:
    I'll go for:
    The start of spring is the most varied and is entirely weather dependent - because there is no big event to hang it on. The 1st of March or the 21st of March can slip by without you noticing if you're not concentrating. But you do notice the first day on which you don't have to wear a coat. And the flowers arrive gradually; but in a good year the blossom all arrives at once in one big power chord. Sometime this also coincides with daughter #1's birthday. (It certainly did the year she was born. It was as if the world had been waiting for that moment. The country of Iceland also elected to celebrate the event with a massive volcanic erruption.)
    Summer starts with the Whit holidays.
    The last day of summer is the August bank holiday. On which day I listen to 'David's Last Summer' by Pulp, and am wistful.
    There are then five or six days which aren't any season, including daughter #2's birthday; Autumn starts when the kids go back to school.
    Autumn lasts until Christmas starts. Which for most sane people is when you open tour first window on the advent calendar on December 1st. (Pedantic religious types: I don't want to hear it.) This is also a quarter day for us: daughter #3's birthday. (Christmas decorations are not allowed up until her birthday is done).

    I identify southern English seasons by travel, or at least I did pre-Covid


    Winter is when you GO THE FUCK AWAY. That means a large chunk of November, but then ~December 31 to about March 25. Ideally you go to Thailand. Failing that, Australia or the Caribbean, or maybe Namibia. Fuck, anywhere with warm sun

    Spring is when you COME BACK, Enjoy England in Spring (if it's a really late Spring like this year, grab the odd week in Egypt or India). Roughly, late March to end May

    Summer is when you HOVER BETWEEN THE MEDITERANEAN AND LONDON. Summer can be great in London, but if you see a crummy fortnight ahead, bug out to Portugal or Greece. Or Sicily. Roughly early June to mid September

    Autumn is the season for EXPERIMENTS, Guatemala! Two weeks in rustling London. Then.... Ethiopia! Then back to London for oysters. Rinse and repeat

    That's how it should be.

    That sounds like a good plan for my retirement.
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 66,758

    Cookie said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    Surely the guidance was for winter if there is a big rise in cases, we are still barely in autumn let alone winter

    I'm sure that we can all agree that winter starts on December 1st.

    (Disappears into the kitchen just in case I have started WW3)
    Astronomical winter only begins on December 21st
    I just knew it!
    @HYUFD: How can we be "barely in autumn" if "Astronomical winter only begins on December 21st"? Is autumn longer than the other seasons?
    It's shorter. Don't believe the hype. All the autumnal stuff (fruit, leaf colour changes etc) starts about mid August and has happened by the end of October. It's then winter all the way to May 1.
    Indeed. I don't think in Northern Europe we have 4x 3 month seasons. Summer starts on 1 May and Winter on 1 November. Bonfire Night is that first night of the year when there is an appreciable nip in the air. Spring arguably starts in February when you get those bright winter days and they start to get longer. Autumn is probably no more than late Sept and Oct.
    Ooh, pointless, but fun:
    I'll go for:
    The start of spring is the most varied and is entirely weather dependent - because there is no big event to hang it on. The 1st of March or the 21st of March can slip by without you noticing if you're not concentrating. But you do notice the first day on which you don't have to wear a coat. And the flowers arrive gradually; but in a good year the blossom all arrives at once in one big power chord. Sometime this also coincides with daughter #1's birthday. (It certainly did the year she was born. It was as if the world had been waiting for that moment. The country of Iceland also elected to celebrate the event with a massive volcanic erruption.)
    Summer starts with the Whit holidays.
    The last day of summer is the August bank holiday. On which day I listen to 'David's Last Summer' by Pulp, and am wistful.
    There are then five or six days which aren't any season, including daughter #2's birthday; Autumn starts when the kids go back to school.
    Autumn lasts until Christmas starts. Which for most sane people is when you open tour first window on the advent calendar on December 1st. (Pedantic religious types: I don't want to hear it.) This is also a quarter day for us: daughter #3's birthday. (Christmas decorations are not allowed up until her birthday is done).

    'the first day on which you don't have to wear a coat'

    That would be January 1st in Newcastle, like.
    Real Geordie be like: ‘What’s a coat?’
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 53,771
    theProle said:

    TOPPING said:

    fpt

    I can genuinely not think of a reason to vaccinate children. They a) don't get (very) ill; and b) can still get and transmit the virus. Perhaps transmission is lower if they are vaccinated but it would be lower if they are asymptomatic, which most are.

    The govt says to avoid people being off school but children can still get the virus having been vaxxed so if they do they will be off school anyway. Meanwhile, bubbles as I understand it have been abolished so whole classes won't be sent home.

    What am I missing?

    I can genuinely not think of a reason not to vaccinate children.

    They (A) don't get (very) ill from the vaccine, and (B) the benefits of the vaccine outweigh the risks. Plus transmission is lower if they are vaccinated, plus their education etc is less disrupted if they're vaccinated. Plus their risk of passing on the virus to a loved one is lower if they are vaccinated.

    There's no good reason not to vaccinate them. What am I missing?
    That some of them will get seriously ill, and a few may die from vaccination. The vaccines are good, they are pretty safe and effective, but they do come with downsides.

    It's therefore quite important that the downsides don't outweigh the upsides when deciding on whether to vaccinate a group against an illness which doesn't pose much of a risk to most of them, and which many of them have already had.

    This is also particularly relevant to kids, as they are often not in a position where they can assess the risks and benefits before consenting themselves.
    I think you are overstating the risks of vaccination by a couple of orders of magnitude.

    With the mRNA vaccines, there are essentially two risks:

    (1) Analphalxysis - which can kill, but is easily treatable and happens in the immediate aftermath of vaccination

    (2) Myocarditis and pericarditis - that is, inflammation of the heart muscle. The issue here is that this is a very common response of your body to exercise when your immune system is working. If you have a cold and go to the gym, that's when you're likely to end up with myocarditis.

    The CDC tracks the number of people who've died in the seven days following a Covid vaccine, and the number is 7,439. Which sounds scary. Except that that is actually below the expected death rate you'd expect given that's 350 million person doses were given and were tracked for seven days to see who dies. (Albeit with the proviso that the first number obviously excludes death by trauma.)

    Simply, it's far from clear the death rate for the mRNA vaccines is above the one-per-million level.

    While it is pretty obvious that Covid kills more than one-in-a-million young people who are infected.
  • PulpstarPulpstar Posts: 75,842

    Leon said:

    Andy_JS said:

    New iPhones

    Waste of money.
    I haven't changed my iphone in at least 2 years. The changes now are tiny and incremental. The hassle of upgrading isn't worth the cost of upgrade

    This must eventually be a problem for Apple (and Samsung etc). They have perfected the tech and it doesn't get much better
    There are a number of avenues for step change, but the tech isn't there yet, so we are in a holding pattern, and this stupud detour into folding phones.
    I added 512 gb of storage þo my android phone today via sd.
    Hows the storage on an iphone
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 66,758

    Wowsers

    Two days after the January 6 attack on the US Capitol, President Donald Trump's top military adviser, Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Mark Milley, single-handedly took secret action to limit Trump from potentially ordering a dangerous military strike or launching nuclear weapons, according to "Peril," a new book by legendary journalist Bob Woodward and veteran Washington Post reporter Robert Costa.

    Woodward and Costa write that Milley, deeply shaken by the assault, 'was certain that Trump had gone into a serious mental decline in the aftermath of the election, with Trump now all but manic, screaming at officials and constructing his own alternate reality about endless election conspiracies.'

    Milley worried that Trump could 'go rogue,' the authors write.

    "You never know what a president's trigger point is," Milley told his senior staff, according to the book.

    In response, Milley took extraordinary action, and called a secret meeting in his Pentagon office on January 8 to review the process for military action, including launching nuclear weapons. Speaking to senior military officials in charge of the National Military Command Center, the Pentagon's war room, Milley instructed them not to take orders from anyone unless he was involved.

    "No matter what you are told, you do the procedure. You do the process. And I'm part of that procedure," Milley told the officers, according to the book. He then went around the room, looked each officer in the eye, and asked them to verbally confirm they understood.

    "Got it?" Milley asked, according to the book.

    "Yes, sir."

    'Milley considered it an oath,' the authors write.


    https://edition.cnn.com/2021/09/14/politics/woodward-book-trump-nuclear/index.html

    Reminds me of the famous time Schlesinger ordered the military to check with him or Kissinger before launching nuclear weapons, as Nixon was so drunken and depressed.

    https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/08/11/donald-trump-nuclear-weapons-richard-nixon-215478/
  • dixiedeandixiedean Posts: 27,837

    Stocky said:

    pm215 said:

    Stocky said:

    Foxy said:


    Yes, that is the law on consent. It has not changed for years, and relates to the Gillick case in the Eighties.

    Yes, but I thought that this related to the 16-18 year olds? I'm surprised and somewhat troubled that 12 year olds are going to be able to get vaccinated for Covid without parental consent.
    The wikipedia page says that "Gillick competence" has always been about the under-16s. For 16-18 the assumption is that the young person has the choice to give consent or not. https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/consent-to-treatment/children/ says that can only be overruled in exceptional circumatances.

    So 11 year olds can't give consent, 16 year olds can, and Gillick is about doctors making a judgement call for the grey area in the middle. It doesn't mean "all 12 year olds can give consent themselves".
    So are we saying that a 12 year old can prove competence to their GP and get the vaccine without parents being informed? If that is so, then that is one thing, however if a 12 year old can enter a walk-in vaccination centre and get jabbed that is another.
    What difference does that make?

    The question is whether the child can show "competence" or not. I don't see how the competence required varies based upon whether its a vaccine centre or a GP that measures it. If the vaccine centre can test for competence then job done.
    One might think a vaccine centre might be better placed to judge competence to take a vaccine than a GP.
    Plus. You can't get to see a GP already. Do we want them using their time judging Gillicks?
  • Checks diary to see when OGH has his next holiday.

    Iran is one month away from having enough highly enriched uranium for "a single nuclear weapon," the New York Times reported Tuesday, adding that this development may increase pressure on the United States to return to the 2015 nuclear deal with Tehran and world powers.

    https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/iran-one-month-away-from-weapon-grade-uranium-for-nuke-report-says-1.10207881
  • alex_alex_ Posts: 7,518
    So as SAGE release another set of graphs allegedly predicting high numbers of people ending up in hospital over the next few weeks, we continue to hear the line that "80% are vaxxed, therefore there remain 6 million vulnerable". Does anyone ever ask them to explain the figures from ONS suggesting that high 90s% of people have antibodies - the difference presumably being made up by prior infection - and why the believed immunity to serious illness caused by this isn't reflected in the models?

    Also the need to continue to ask the question about whether, in a world where vaccines and other developed "immunity" appears to give high protection against serious illness, but less so again infection, whether the current approach to categorising Covid deaths is particularly helpful or increasingly misleading?
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 53,771
    Leon said:

    Andy_JS said:

    New iPhones

    Waste of money.
    I haven't changed my iphone in at least 2 years. The changes now are tiny and incremental. The hassle of upgrading isn't worth the cost of upgrade

    This must eventually be a problem for Apple (and Samsung etc). They have perfected the tech and it doesn't get much better
    I have the Galaxy Fold. That's a pretty good reason to upgrade (once prices come down).
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 61,575

    New iPhones

    No satellite connectivity.
  • Scott_xP said:
    Misaed opportunity with Nicki Minaj big balls....
  • alex_ said:

    So as SAGE release another set of graphs allegedly predicting high numbers of people ending up in hospital over the next few weeks, we continue to hear the line that "80% are vaxxed, therefore there remain 6 million vulnerable". Does anyone ever ask them to explain the figures from ONS suggesting that high 90s% of people have antibodies - the difference presumably being made up by prior infection - and why the believed immunity to serious illness caused by this isn't reflected in the models?

    Also the need to continue to ask the question about whether, in a world where vaccines and other developed "immunity" appears to give high protection against serious illness, but less so again infection, whether the current approach to categorising Covid deaths is particularly helpful or increasingly misleading?


    Andrew Lilico
    @andrew_lilico
    ·
    3h
    In which "7,000 hospitalisations/day" becomes the new "300k cases/day. I see there's a timescale on it: next month. Well, GLWT.


    ===

    It's another load of tosh from SAGE. Why are they still allowed to push these useless models?
  • MaxPBMaxPB Posts: 37,603
    alex_ said:

    So as SAGE release another set of graphs allegedly predicting high numbers of people ending up in hospital over the next few weeks, we continue to hear the line that "80% are vaxxed, therefore there remain 6 million vulnerable". Does anyone ever ask them to explain the figures from ONS suggesting that high 90s% of people have antibodies - the difference presumably being made up by prior infection - and why the believed immunity to serious illness caused by this isn't reflected in the models?

    Also the need to continue to ask the question about whether, in a world where vaccines and other developed "immunity" appears to give high protection against serious illness, but less so again infection, whether the current approach to categorising Covid deaths is particularly helpful or increasingly misleading?

    It's almost as if they didn't read the boy who cried wolf. They keep producing their garbage data and they've lost all of their credibility. Even today Whitty was banging on about heading into winter at a higher infection baseline than last year, however, he didn't mention that immunity levels are probably 10x higher than they were in September 2020.
  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 76,274
    edited September 2021
    MaxPB said:

    alex_ said:

    So as SAGE release another set of graphs allegedly predicting high numbers of people ending up in hospital over the next few weeks, we continue to hear the line that "80% are vaxxed, therefore there remain 6 million vulnerable". Does anyone ever ask them to explain the figures from ONS suggesting that high 90s% of people have antibodies - the difference presumably being made up by prior infection - and why the believed immunity to serious illness caused by this isn't reflected in the models?

    Also the need to continue to ask the question about whether, in a world where vaccines and other developed "immunity" appears to give high protection against serious illness, but less so again infection, whether the current approach to categorising Covid deaths is particularly helpful or increasingly misleading?

    It's almost as if they didn't read the boy who cried wolf. They keep producing their garbage data and they've lost all of their credibility. Even today Whitty was banging on about heading into winter at a higher infection baseline than last year, however, he didn't mention that immunity levels are probably 10x higher than they were in September 2020.
    The problem is on here we call them out...the wider public i don't think remember the horseshit,

    New models come, media misreport them, iSAGE all over the media screaming disaster, Starmer echoing it....and then we rinse and repeat.

    It all gets lost in the noise that the original models that kicked all this off was utter garbage.
  • AlistairAlistair Posts: 23,670
    alex_ said:

    So as SAGE release another set of graphs allegedly predicting high numbers of people ending up in hospital over the next few weeks, we continue to hear the line that "80% are vaxxed, therefore there remain 6 million vulnerable". Does anyone ever ask them to explain the figures from ONS suggesting that high 90s% of people have antibodies - the difference presumably being made up by prior infection - and why the believed immunity to serious illness caused by this isn't reflected in the models?

    Also the need to continue to ask the question about whether, in a world where vaccines and other developed "immunity" appears to give high protection against serious illness, but less so again infection, whether the current approach to categorising Covid deaths is particularly helpful or increasingly misleading?

    One thing about the ONS antibody stat is it is percentage of 16+, it doesn't measure children
  • MaxPBMaxPB Posts: 37,603
    As a side note, has anyone heard from @Black_Rook he hasn't been around these parts for a while.
  • TomsToms Posts: 2,478
    Never trust a scientist. Hell's Bells they don't even trust each other.
  • Toms said:

    Never trust a scientist. Hell's Bells they don't even trust each other.

    My maxim is ‘Never trust anybody who spells gonorrhoea correctly on the first attempt’
  • MaxPBMaxPB Posts: 37,603
    Alistair said:

    alex_ said:

    So as SAGE release another set of graphs allegedly predicting high numbers of people ending up in hospital over the next few weeks, we continue to hear the line that "80% are vaxxed, therefore there remain 6 million vulnerable". Does anyone ever ask them to explain the figures from ONS suggesting that high 90s% of people have antibodies - the difference presumably being made up by prior infection - and why the believed immunity to serious illness caused by this isn't reflected in the models?

    Also the need to continue to ask the question about whether, in a world where vaccines and other developed "immunity" appears to give high protection against serious illness, but less so again infection, whether the current approach to categorising Covid deaths is particularly helpful or increasingly misleading?

    One thing about the ONS antibody stat is it is percentage of 16+, it doesn't measure children
    Kids aren't exactly going to contribute any significant number to hospitalisation, though. 7k hospitalisations per day just seems completely ridiculous, we'd need maybe 10x our current number of cases per day which is about 2m per week. Who exactly is it they are suggesting is going to be infected?
  • turbotubbsturbotubbs Posts: 14,884
    alex_ said:

    So as SAGE release another set of graphs allegedly predicting high numbers of people ending up in hospital over the next few weeks, we continue to hear the line that "80% are vaxxed, therefore there remain 6 million vulnerable". Does anyone ever ask them to explain the figures from ONS suggesting that high 90s% of people have antibodies - the difference presumably being made up by prior infection - and why the believed immunity to serious illness caused by this isn't reflected in the models?

    Also the need to continue to ask the question about whether, in a world where vaccines and other developed "immunity" appears to give high protection against serious illness, but less so again infection, whether the current approach to categorising Covid deaths is particularly helpful or increasingly misleading?

    I missed the presser. Did anyone ask about the 100,000 cases a day?
  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 76,274
    edited September 2021

    alex_ said:

    So as SAGE release another set of graphs allegedly predicting high numbers of people ending up in hospital over the next few weeks, we continue to hear the line that "80% are vaxxed, therefore there remain 6 million vulnerable". Does anyone ever ask them to explain the figures from ONS suggesting that high 90s% of people have antibodies - the difference presumably being made up by prior infection - and why the believed immunity to serious illness caused by this isn't reflected in the models?

    Also the need to continue to ask the question about whether, in a world where vaccines and other developed "immunity" appears to give high protection against serious illness, but less so again infection, whether the current approach to categorising Covid deaths is particularly helpful or increasingly misleading?

    I missed the presser. Did anyone ask about the 100,000 cases a day?
    Couldn't fit many questions in after Prof Peston gave another lecture....
  • MaxPBMaxPB Posts: 37,603

    alex_ said:

    So as SAGE release another set of graphs allegedly predicting high numbers of people ending up in hospital over the next few weeks, we continue to hear the line that "80% are vaxxed, therefore there remain 6 million vulnerable". Does anyone ever ask them to explain the figures from ONS suggesting that high 90s% of people have antibodies - the difference presumably being made up by prior infection - and why the believed immunity to serious illness caused by this isn't reflected in the models?

    Also the need to continue to ask the question about whether, in a world where vaccines and other developed "immunity" appears to give high protection against serious illness, but less so again infection, whether the current approach to categorising Covid deaths is particularly helpful or increasingly misleading?

    I missed the presser. Did anyone ask about the 100,000 cases a day?
    Nah it wasn't presented then. I think it's been dumped out.
  • turbotubbsturbotubbs Posts: 14,884
    MaxPB said:

    alex_ said:

    So as SAGE release another set of graphs allegedly predicting high numbers of people ending up in hospital over the next few weeks, we continue to hear the line that "80% are vaxxed, therefore there remain 6 million vulnerable". Does anyone ever ask them to explain the figures from ONS suggesting that high 90s% of people have antibodies - the difference presumably being made up by prior infection - and why the believed immunity to serious illness caused by this isn't reflected in the models?

    Also the need to continue to ask the question about whether, in a world where vaccines and other developed "immunity" appears to give high protection against serious illness, but less so again infection, whether the current approach to categorising Covid deaths is particularly helpful or increasingly misleading?

    I missed the presser. Did anyone ask about the 100,000 cases a day?
    Nah it wasn't presented then. I think it's been dumped out.
    Dumped is exactly what it should be.
  • MexicanpeteMexicanpete Posts: 24,587
    .

    Wowsers

    Two days after the January 6 attack on the US Capitol, President Donald Trump's top military adviser, Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Mark Milley, single-handedly took secret action to limit Trump from potentially ordering a dangerous military strike or launching nuclear weapons, according to "Peril," a new book by legendary journalist Bob Woodward and veteran Washington Post reporter Robert Costa.

    Woodward and Costa write that Milley, deeply shaken by the assault, 'was certain that Trump had gone into a serious mental decline in the aftermath of the election, with Trump now all but manic, screaming at officials and constructing his own alternate reality about endless election conspiracies.'

    Milley worried that Trump could 'go rogue,' the authors write.

    "You never know what a president's trigger point is," Milley told his senior staff, according to the book.

    In response, Milley took extraordinary action, and called a secret meeting in his Pentagon office on January 8 to review the process for military action, including launching nuclear weapons. Speaking to senior military officials in charge of the National Military Command Center, the Pentagon's war room, Milley instructed them not to take orders from anyone unless he was involved.

    "No matter what you are told, you do the procedure. You do the process. And I'm part of that procedure," Milley told the officers, according to the book. He then went around the room, looked each officer in the eye, and asked them to verbally confirm they understood.

    "Got it?" Milley asked, according to the book.

    "Yes, sir."

    'Milley considered it an oath,' the authors write.


    https://edition.cnn.com/2021/09/14/politics/woodward-book-trump-nuclear/index.html

    That doesn't bode well for January 21, 2025.

    Is Trump even aware that his mark on world history by obliterating Planet Earth is counter productive if there is no one left to read about it?
  • tlg86tlg86 Posts: 25,165
    I know energy is something of interest on here. I received the following email from Utility Point this evening (I don't remember getting such an email the last time I had my provider fold on me):

    https://1drv.ms/w/s!Av4jQcUMVtBpj2nG2u_uoI5GmHz8?e=AnbnEW

    The bits that caught my eye were:

    You may be aware last year OFGEM announced that all suppliers where required to offer extended payment terms and be more lenient with the collection of debt due to the pandemic, something they are asking to continue into this winter. Utility Point has always supported all its members and understands the variability of vulnerability and that it is not static, supporting many of our members through hard and uncertain times. Unfortunately, this extra support has meant an increase in debt and deficit.

    ...Indeed, in most cases the only reason that suppliers end up charging more for energy than it costs is to offset the cost of debt and the collection of debt which is a major issue in the industry and one that requires a rethink as those that can, and do pay, end up paying for those that don’t pay.
  • https://twitter.com/politicsforali/status/1437874281355091971

    Can't win the London Mayoralty, it is the election system that is wrong!
  • MaxPB said:

    alex_ said:

    So as SAGE release another set of graphs allegedly predicting high numbers of people ending up in hospital over the next few weeks, we continue to hear the line that "80% are vaxxed, therefore there remain 6 million vulnerable". Does anyone ever ask them to explain the figures from ONS suggesting that high 90s% of people have antibodies - the difference presumably being made up by prior infection - and why the believed immunity to serious illness caused by this isn't reflected in the models?

    Also the need to continue to ask the question about whether, in a world where vaccines and other developed "immunity" appears to give high protection against serious illness, but less so again infection, whether the current approach to categorising Covid deaths is particularly helpful or increasingly misleading?

    It's almost as if they didn't read the boy who cried wolf. They keep producing their garbage data and they've lost all of their credibility. Even today Whitty was banging on about heading into winter at a higher infection baseline than last year, however, he didn't mention that immunity levels are probably 10x higher than they were in September 2020.
    The problem is on here we call them out...the wider public i don't think remember the horseshit,

    New models come, media misreport them, iSAGE all over the media screaming disaster, Starmer echoing it....and then we rinse and repeat.

    It all gets lost in the noise that the original models that kicked all this off was utter garbage.
    True.

    Unfortunately ministers are basing policy on things like NPIs based on this modelling garbage. And those NPIs effect all of us and knacker the economy.

    As Lilico is pointing out tonight: the latest garbage model figure of 7K hospitalisations a day by next month needs heroic increases in case #s to start happening like tomorrow. The figure dropped 25% today.

  • FarooqFarooq Posts: 10,775
    tlg86 said:

    I know energy is something of interest on here. I received the following email from Utility Point this evening (I don't remember getting such an email the last time I had my provider fold on me):

    https://1drv.ms/w/s!Av4jQcUMVtBpj2nG2u_uoI5GmHz8?e=AnbnEW

    The bits that caught my eye were:

    You may be aware last year OFGEM announced that all suppliers where required to offer extended payment terms and be more lenient with the collection of debt due to the pandemic, something they are asking to continue into this winter. Utility Point has always supported all its members and understands the variability of vulnerability and that it is not static, supporting many of our members through hard and uncertain times. Unfortunately, this extra support has meant an increase in debt and deficit.

    ...Indeed, in most cases the only reason that suppliers end up charging more for energy than it costs is to offset the cost of debt and the collection of debt which is a major issue in the industry and one that requires a rethink as those that can, and do pay, end up paying for those that don’t pay.

    I'd like to know how much that equates to in the average bill before I lose any sleep over it.
    Surely the same in any buy-now-pay-later industry, too? Banking, mobile phones, etc.
  • IanB2IanB2 Posts: 47,084
    edited September 2021
    ..
  • Pro_RataPro_Rata Posts: 4,785
    The COVID numbers today do look like the case reduction is real, but I'm still not convinced we're over the peak rather than merely having hit a col. The brief hot weather that came at the start of September will be feeding into the numbers now and August Bank Holiday shifts in when cases were tested/reported are still a factor in the figures.

    The initial LFT results for schools in England don't seem to have been a big driver - my son's college reported only 6 positives in just shy of 3k tests.

    I don't rule out that we're getting close enough to herd immunity levels that there is a noticeable brake, but even if so I'd expect with colder weather and the second or third infection cycles at schools, that a fight between opposing effects would mean no consistently sustained decrease until half term holidays.
  • alex_alex_ Posts: 7,518

    MaxPB said:

    alex_ said:

    So as SAGE release another set of graphs allegedly predicting high numbers of people ending up in hospital over the next few weeks, we continue to hear the line that "80% are vaxxed, therefore there remain 6 million vulnerable". Does anyone ever ask them to explain the figures from ONS suggesting that high 90s% of people have antibodies - the difference presumably being made up by prior infection - and why the believed immunity to serious illness caused by this isn't reflected in the models?

    Also the need to continue to ask the question about whether, in a world where vaccines and other developed "immunity" appears to give high protection against serious illness, but less so again infection, whether the current approach to categorising Covid deaths is particularly helpful or increasingly misleading?

    It's almost as if they didn't read the boy who cried wolf. They keep producing their garbage data and they've lost all of their credibility. Even today Whitty was banging on about heading into winter at a higher infection baseline than last year, however, he didn't mention that immunity levels are probably 10x higher than they were in September 2020.
    The problem is on here we call them out...the wider public i don't think remember the horseshit,

    New models come, media misreport them, iSAGE all over the media screaming disaster, Starmer echoing it....and then we rinse and repeat.

    It all gets lost in the noise that the original models that kicked all this off was utter garbage.
    True.

    Unfortunately ministers are basing policy on things like NPIs based on this modelling garbage. And those NPIs effect all of us and knacker the economy.

    As Lilico is pointing out tonight: the latest garbage model figure of 7K hospitalisations a day by next month needs heroic increases in case #s to start happening like tomorrow. The figure dropped 25% today.

    Not just that but THE major contributor towards predictions of rapidly increasing case numbers is supposed to be kids in school (and perhaps students at university). But it is not at all clear that significantly rising case numbers among these groups (if it happens) will actually do anything except reduce significantly the percentage of confirmed cases that end up in hospital.
  • tlg86tlg86 Posts: 25,165
    Farooq said:

    tlg86 said:

    I know energy is something of interest on here. I received the following email from Utility Point this evening (I don't remember getting such an email the last time I had my provider fold on me):

    https://1drv.ms/w/s!Av4jQcUMVtBpj2nG2u_uoI5GmHz8?e=AnbnEW

    The bits that caught my eye were:

    You may be aware last year OFGEM announced that all suppliers where required to offer extended payment terms and be more lenient with the collection of debt due to the pandemic, something they are asking to continue into this winter. Utility Point has always supported all its members and understands the variability of vulnerability and that it is not static, supporting many of our members through hard and uncertain times. Unfortunately, this extra support has meant an increase in debt and deficit.

    ...Indeed, in most cases the only reason that suppliers end up charging more for energy than it costs is to offset the cost of debt and the collection of debt which is a major issue in the industry and one that requires a rethink as those that can, and do pay, end up paying for those that don’t pay.

    I'd like to know how much that equates to in the average bill before I lose any sleep over it.
    Surely the same in any buy-now-pay-later industry, too? Banking, mobile phones, etc.
    I have no idea to be honest, and instinctively I'm thinking that the smaller firms would attract better customers, but who knows?

    What I suspect is the case is that the price cap - which is also mentioned in the email - will have put much more pressure on smaller firms than the Big 6 providers.
  • https://twitter.com/politicsforali/status/1437874281355091971

    Can't win the London Mayoralty, it is the election system that is wrong!

    Why is that Twitter handle called Politics for Ali? Is that Mohammed Ali? Or a girl called Ali?

    Anyway, FPTP for all elections was in the Tories manifesto in 2019 which won a landslide majority so ... 🤷‍♂️
  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 76,274
    edited September 2021
    The first piece of advice my PhD supervisor gave me back in the day when working with modeling / ML....as soon as you have run something, do a raincheck, ask yourself if the output is even possible or realistic...

    7000 hospitalisations in a month....we would have to be having 100,000s of daily infections in a couple of weeks time for that.
  • alex_alex_ Posts: 7,518
    It is also noteworthy that the "falling cases were just a consequence of reduced testing" crowd, have gone noticeably quiet as testing numbers have ramped up again in recent weeks.
  • MaxPBMaxPB Posts: 37,603

    The first piece of advice my PhD supervisor gave me back in the day when working with modeling / ML....ask yourself if the output possible or realistic...

    7000 hospitalisations in a month....we would have to be having 100,000s of daily infections in a couple of weeks time for that.

    The sniff test. The idea of 7k hospitalisations per day doesn't pass the sniff test. It's completely stupid, especially given there will be 25-30m third vaccine doses given to the most likely to be hospitalised. 7k per day from everyone else would need something like 300-400k infections per day. It isn't credible.
  • The first piece of advice my PhD supervisor gave me back in the day when working with modeling / ML....as soon as you have run something, do a raincheck, ask yourself if the output is even possible or realistic...

    7000 hospitalisations in a month....we would have to be having 100,000s of daily infections in a couple of weeks time for that.

    I don't think they care anymore. They are just being told to come up with some garbage numbers that can be used in the press to scare a few more people into staying at WFH or missing a social event and maybe getting the vax if they haven't already.

  • FarooqFarooq Posts: 10,775
    alex_ said:

    It is also noteworthy that the "falling cases were just a consequence of reduced testing" crowd, have gone noticeably quiet as testing numbers have ramped up again in recent weeks.

    Is that not true though? ONS percentage +ve tests has been pretty static over the past several months.
  • pigeonpigeon Posts: 4,088

    The first piece of advice my PhD supervisor gave me back in the day when working with modeling / ML....as soon as you have run something, do a raincheck, ask yourself if the output is even possible or realistic...

    7000 hospitalisations in a month....we would have to be having 100,000s of daily infections in a couple of weeks time for that.

    Oh Lord, the Warwick group haven't been booting up their ZX Spectrums again, have they?

  • James Melville Cherry blossom
    @JamesMelville
    ·
    13m
    Ok. I wasn’t sure whether to post this. I have had one jab. Since then I have developed myocarditis. I am a very fit and healthy man who hasn’t ever had any significant health problems until now.
  • https://twitter.com/politicsforali/status/1437874281355091971

    Can't win the London Mayoralty, it is the election system that is wrong!

    Why is that Twitter handle called Politics for Ali? Is that Mohammed Ali? Or a girl called Ali?

    Anyway, FPTP for all elections was in the Tories manifesto in 2019 which won a landslide majority so ... 🤷‍♂️
    Ironically, less than 50% of the vote is what is needed to change the electoral system but not overturn any other decisions that are made, funny how that works.

    This is entirely cynical, there is evidently nothing wrong with the London Mayoralty system, BoJo won it twice.
  • pigeon said:

    The first piece of advice my PhD supervisor gave me back in the day when working with modeling / ML....as soon as you have run something, do a raincheck, ask yourself if the output is even possible or realistic...

    7000 hospitalisations in a month....we would have to be having 100,000s of daily infections in a couple of weeks time for that.

    Oh Lord, the Warwick group haven't been booting up their ZX Spectrums again, have they?

    Andrew Lilico
    @andrew_lilico
    ·
    3h
    How much longer will the media have an appetite for "We're all gonna die this Autumn!" pieces? Presumably pretty soon it'll just get embarrassing to have ever run one?
  • CyclefreeCyclefree Posts: 25,074
    For anyone with any of the energy providers who have gone bust, I've recently signed up with Octopus Energy. Pretty impressed with their service and rates and have myself a competitive 2-year fixed rate.

    And if you get referred by an existing customer you (and they) get a bonus. Just sayin'. 😉
  • The first piece of advice my PhD supervisor gave me back in the day when working with modeling / ML....as soon as you have run something, do a raincheck, ask yourself if the output is even possible or realistic...

    7000 hospitalisations in a month....we would have to be having 100,000s of daily infections in a couple of weeks time for that.

    I don't think they care anymore. They are just being told to come up with some garbage numbers that can be used in the press to scare a few more people into staying at WFH or missing a social event and maybe getting the vax if they haven't already.

    Most folks don't need to be scared into WFH. Just given the option by their employer.

    I've done one day in the office this week. That's enough for me.
  • pigeon said:

    The first piece of advice my PhD supervisor gave me back in the day when working with modeling / ML....as soon as you have run something, do a raincheck, ask yourself if the output is even possible or realistic...

    7000 hospitalisations in a month....we would have to be having 100,000s of daily infections in a couple of weeks time for that.

    Oh Lord, the Warwick group haven't been booting up their ZX Spectrums again, have they?

    Andrew Lilico
    @andrew_lilico
    ·
    3h
    How much longer will the media have an appetite for "We're all gonna die this Autumn!" pieces? Presumably pretty soon it'll just get embarrassing to have ever run one?
    Prof Peston will give it the good old British try....
  • pigeonpigeon Posts: 4,088

    pigeon said:

    The first piece of advice my PhD supervisor gave me back in the day when working with modeling / ML....as soon as you have run something, do a raincheck, ask yourself if the output is even possible or realistic...

    7000 hospitalisations in a month....we would have to be having 100,000s of daily infections in a couple of weeks time for that.

    Oh Lord, the Warwick group haven't been booting up their ZX Spectrums again, have they?

    Andrew Lilico
    @andrew_lilico
    ·
    3h
    How much longer will the media have an appetite for "We're all gonna die this Autumn!" pieces? Presumably pretty soon it'll just get embarrassing to have ever run one?
    For as long as it generates sales/clickbait, presumably? Apart from anything else, a significant fraction of the population is still shit scared and ready to lap up this kind of coverage.
  • alex_alex_ Posts: 7,518

    The first piece of advice my PhD supervisor gave me back in the day when working with modeling / ML....as soon as you have run something, do a raincheck, ask yourself if the output is even possible or realistic...

    7000 hospitalisations in a month....we would have to be having 100,000s of daily infections in a couple of weeks time for that.

    I don't think they care anymore. They are just being told to come up with some garbage numbers that can be used in the press to scare a few more people into staying at WFH or missing a social event and maybe getting the vax if they haven't already.

    Most folks don't need to be scared into WFH. Just given the option by their employer.

    I've done one day in the office this week. That's enough for me.
    I think it's more that they make it more difficult for employers (particularly public sector employers) to insist that people spend a bit more time coming into the office.
  • SelebianSelebian Posts: 7,257
    Toms said:

    Never trust a scientist. Hell's Bells they don't even trust each other.

    The good thing is that we're required to publish methods (and, increasingly data and analysis code, which can only be a good thing). Therefore, when we're being stupid or dishonest, it's fairly easy for people to spot.

    I'm not up to date with this 7000 hospitalisations stuff or where it's come from, but it does sound far fetched (I wouldn't want to go further than that without the context). It should however be easy enough to spot the, presumably, erroneous assumptions.
  • MaxPBMaxPB Posts: 37,603
    pigeon said:

    pigeon said:

    The first piece of advice my PhD supervisor gave me back in the day when working with modeling / ML....as soon as you have run something, do a raincheck, ask yourself if the output is even possible or realistic...

    7000 hospitalisations in a month....we would have to be having 100,000s of daily infections in a couple of weeks time for that.

    Oh Lord, the Warwick group haven't been booting up their ZX Spectrums again, have they?

    Andrew Lilico
    @andrew_lilico
    ·
    3h
    How much longer will the media have an appetite for "We're all gonna die this Autumn!" pieces? Presumably pretty soon it'll just get embarrassing to have ever run one?
    For as long as it generates sales/clickbait, presumably? Apart from anything else, a significant fraction of the population is still shit scared and ready to lap up this kind of coverage.
    That proportion is definitely going down. My mum used to be a super masker, literally stepped out of the house and put her mask on then didn't take it off until she got back in, would even wear it in the car. Last week she stopped doing that, not sure what changed for her. Maybe she got bored or saw everyone else not wearing them. 🤷‍♂️
  • Cursed ratio time.

    France, Redfield & Wilton Strategies poll:

    Run-off

    Macron (LREM-RE): 52% (-3)
    Le Pen (RN-ID): 48% (+3)

    +/- vs. 15-16 April 2021

    https://twitter.com/EuropeElects/status/1437862049963560967

    Le Pen is promising to privatise state owned TV and radio and nationalise the motorways in plans called "really populist and really demagogic" by Macron's transport minister.

    https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-09-14/french-minister-slams-le-pen-s-plan-to-renationalize-highways
  • Cyclefree said:

    For anyone with any of the energy providers who have gone bust, I've recently signed up with Octopus Energy. Pretty impressed with their service and rates and have myself a competitive 2-year fixed rate.

    And if you get referred by an existing customer you (and they) get a bonus. Just sayin'. 😉

    We are also with Octopus after they took over our previous supplier's customer base.

    The gas smells the same, so no complaints from me.
  • Pro_RataPro_Rata Posts: 4,785

    MaxPB said:

    alex_ said:

    So as SAGE release another set of graphs allegedly predicting high numbers of people ending up in hospital over the next few weeks, we continue to hear the line that "80% are vaxxed, therefore there remain 6 million vulnerable". Does anyone ever ask them to explain the figures from ONS suggesting that high 90s% of people have antibodies - the difference presumably being made up by prior infection - and why the believed immunity to serious illness caused by this isn't reflected in the models?

    Also the need to continue to ask the question about whether, in a world where vaccines and other developed "immunity" appears to give high protection against serious illness, but less so again infection, whether the current approach to categorising Covid deaths is particularly helpful or increasingly misleading?

    It's almost as if they didn't read the boy who cried wolf. They keep producing their garbage data and they've lost all of their credibility. Even today Whitty was banging on about heading into winter at a higher infection baseline than last year, however, he didn't mention that immunity levels are probably 10x higher than they were in September 2020.
    The problem is on here we call them out...the wider public i don't think remember the horseshit,

    New models come, media misreport them, iSAGE all over the media screaming disaster, Starmer echoing it....and then we rinse and repeat.

    It all gets lost in the noise that the original models that kicked all this off was utter garbage.
    True.

    Unfortunately ministers are basing policy on things like NPIs based on this modelling garbage. And those NPIs effect all of us and knacker the economy.

    As Lilico is pointing out tonight: the latest garbage model figure of 7K hospitalisations a day by next month needs heroic increases in case #s to start happening like tomorrow. The figure dropped 25% today.

    7k Hospitalisations a day, assuming, with few new vaccinations, that the relationship between cases and Hospitalisations is now static, would mean over 200k detected cases a day. Given 50% detection, which we've been close to for ages, that would mean 3.5 million infections in a week, and hitting herd immunity in a matter of 2-3 weeks. I don't think there's anywhere near that acceleration potential in the ecosystem

    Even if cases vs Hospitalisations are worse than static because of, for instance, waning immunity, that is still going to need a big number, and boosters come into the mix quickly and continue through the winter.
  • maaarshmaaarsh Posts: 3,391

    The first piece of advice my PhD supervisor gave me back in the day when working with modeling / ML....as soon as you have run something, do a raincheck, ask yourself if the output is even possible or realistic...

    7000 hospitalisations in a month....we would have to be having 100,000s of daily infections in a couple of weeks time for that.

    That's their middle scenario. The bad scenario is just hilarious. Their upside scenario is 2000 hospitalisations by the end of this month.

    It's really hard to explain this in a way which says anything good for the integrity of the modellers involved.
  • alex_ said:

    The first piece of advice my PhD supervisor gave me back in the day when working with modeling / ML....as soon as you have run something, do a raincheck, ask yourself if the output is even possible or realistic...

    7000 hospitalisations in a month....we would have to be having 100,000s of daily infections in a couple of weeks time for that.

    I don't think they care anymore. They are just being told to come up with some garbage numbers that can be used in the press to scare a few more people into staying at WFH or missing a social event and maybe getting the vax if they haven't already.

    Most folks don't need to be scared into WFH. Just given the option by their employer.

    I've done one day in the office this week. That's enough for me.
    I think it's more that they make it more difficult for employers (particularly public sector employers) to insist that people spend a bit more time coming into the office.
    But many, like mine, have said that a hybrid model is the new normal. That's a big reduction in commuter journeys and bums on seats into the long term.

    Plus of course companies reducing their office space.
  • https://twitter.com/politicsforali/status/1437874281355091971

    Can't win the London Mayoralty, it is the election system that is wrong!

    Why is that Twitter handle called Politics for Ali? Is that Mohammed Ali? Or a girl called Ali?

    Anyway, FPTP for all elections was in the Tories manifesto in 2019 which won a landslide majority so ... 🤷‍♂️
    Ironically, less than 50% of the vote is what is needed to change the electoral system but not overturn any other decisions that are made, funny how that works.

    This is entirely cynical, there is evidently nothing wrong with the London Mayoralty system, BoJo won it twice.
    What are you talking about?

    Changing the electoral system works on the same basis as reversing every other decision that is made too. By Parliamentary democracy.

    There isn't anything that can't be reversed, that's part of the fundamental basics of Parliamentary Sovereignty.

    So how is that "funny" how it works? What do you think can't be overturned?
  • pigeonpigeon Posts: 4,088
    MaxPB said:

    pigeon said:

    pigeon said:

    The first piece of advice my PhD supervisor gave me back in the day when working with modeling / ML....as soon as you have run something, do a raincheck, ask yourself if the output is even possible or realistic...

    7000 hospitalisations in a month....we would have to be having 100,000s of daily infections in a couple of weeks time for that.

    Oh Lord, the Warwick group haven't been booting up their ZX Spectrums again, have they?

    Andrew Lilico
    @andrew_lilico
    ·
    3h
    How much longer will the media have an appetite for "We're all gonna die this Autumn!" pieces? Presumably pretty soon it'll just get embarrassing to have ever run one?
    For as long as it generates sales/clickbait, presumably? Apart from anything else, a significant fraction of the population is still shit scared and ready to lap up this kind of coverage.
    That proportion is definitely going down. My mum used to be a super masker, literally stepped out of the house and put her mask on then didn't take it off until she got back in, would even wear it in the car. Last week she stopped doing that, not sure what changed for her. Maybe she got bored or saw everyone else not wearing them. 🤷‍♂️
    There are still a lot of maskers around though. No shortage in the shops, and when I took the train down to London on Saturday morning it was full of them. Although, granted, the train was jam packed full of people full stop, because Great Northern couldn't run a piss up in the proverbial.

    We are still forced to use the rotten things in corridors and such like at work, with no end in sight. A visiting contractor recently remarked that we were the only business left that they visit where this is still the case.
  • tlg86tlg86 Posts: 25,165
    edited September 2021

    Cyclefree said:

    For anyone with any of the energy providers who have gone bust, I've recently signed up with Octopus Energy. Pretty impressed with their service and rates and have myself a competitive 2-year fixed rate.

    And if you get referred by an existing customer you (and they) get a bonus. Just sayin'. 😉

    We are also with Octopus after they took over our previous supplier's customer base.

    The gas smells the same, so no complaints from me.
    I signed an 18 month deal with Utility Point back in July, so whilst I felt good about having fixed my price for 18 months, I've now lost that and will get stung when I have to go back in to the market when I get set up on the provider of last resort.

    The problem is, you just have no idea as to who is about to go pop. It's illegal to trade insolvent so the first you know about it is when it gets announced. Not saying that any other will go, but don't be surprised if more do follow.
  • alex_alex_ Posts: 7,518
    maaarsh said:

    The first piece of advice my PhD supervisor gave me back in the day when working with modeling / ML....as soon as you have run something, do a raincheck, ask yourself if the output is even possible or realistic...

    7000 hospitalisations in a month....we would have to be having 100,000s of daily infections in a couple of weeks time for that.

    That's their middle scenario. The bad scenario is just hilarious. Their upside scenario is 2000 hospitalisations by the end of this month.

    It's really hard to explain this in a way which says anything good for the integrity of the modellers involved.
    The irony is that the even admit that the situation post July has been far better than they anticipated. The conclusion... if we've had fewer recorded cases, hospitalisations and deaths post July reopening than expected, then it has just left a much bigger pool of people to feed into cases, hospitalisations and deaths going forward!
  • maaarsh said:

    The first piece of advice my PhD supervisor gave me back in the day when working with modeling / ML....as soon as you have run something, do a raincheck, ask yourself if the output is even possible or realistic...

    7000 hospitalisations in a month....we would have to be having 100,000s of daily infections in a couple of weeks time for that.

    That's their middle scenario. The bad scenario is just hilarious. Their upside scenario is 2000 hospitalisations by the end of this month.

    It's really hard to explain this in a way which says anything good for the integrity of the modellers involved.
    Do you have a link for this model?
  • Toms said:

    Never trust a scientist. Hell's Bells they don't even trust each other.

    My maxim is ‘Never trust anybody who spells gonorrhoea correctly on the first attempt’
    Why ever not??
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 53,771

    Stocky said:

    pm215 said:

    Stocky said:

    Foxy said:


    Yes, that is the law on consent. It has not changed for years, and relates to the Gillick case in the Eighties.

    Yes, but I thought that this related to the 16-18 year olds? I'm surprised and somewhat troubled that 12 year olds are going to be able to get vaccinated for Covid without parental consent.
    The wikipedia page says that "Gillick competence" has always been about the under-16s. For 16-18 the assumption is that the young person has the choice to give consent or not. https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/consent-to-treatment/children/ says that can only be overruled in exceptional circumatances.

    So 11 year olds can't give consent, 16 year olds can, and Gillick is about doctors making a judgement call for the grey area in the middle. It doesn't mean "all 12 year olds can give consent themselves".
    So are we saying that a 12 year old can prove competence to their GP and get the vaccine without parents being informed? If that is so, then that is one thing, however if a 12 year old can enter a walk-in vaccination centre and get jabbed that is another.
    What difference does that make?

    The question is whether the child can show "competence" or not. I don't see how the competence required varies based upon whether its a vaccine centre or a GP that measures it. If the vaccine centre can test for competence then job done.
    If I remember rightly, the Gillick competence test is well established. I don't see why there should be a problem using the same system.
  • rcs1000 said:

    Stocky said:

    pm215 said:

    Stocky said:

    Foxy said:


    Yes, that is the law on consent. It has not changed for years, and relates to the Gillick case in the Eighties.

    Yes, but I thought that this related to the 16-18 year olds? I'm surprised and somewhat troubled that 12 year olds are going to be able to get vaccinated for Covid without parental consent.
    The wikipedia page says that "Gillick competence" has always been about the under-16s. For 16-18 the assumption is that the young person has the choice to give consent or not. https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/consent-to-treatment/children/ says that can only be overruled in exceptional circumatances.

    So 11 year olds can't give consent, 16 year olds can, and Gillick is about doctors making a judgement call for the grey area in the middle. It doesn't mean "all 12 year olds can give consent themselves".
    So are we saying that a 12 year old can prove competence to their GP and get the vaccine without parents being informed? If that is so, then that is one thing, however if a 12 year old can enter a walk-in vaccination centre and get jabbed that is another.
    What difference does that make?

    The question is whether the child can show "competence" or not. I don't see how the competence required varies based upon whether its a vaccine centre or a GP that measures it. If the vaccine centre can test for competence then job done.
    If I remember rightly, the Gillick competence test is well established. I don't see why there should be a problem using the same system.
    Precisely and if the vaccine centre can apply the test appropriately then why shouldn't they? Why should we be wasting a GP's time doing that?
  • alex_alex_ Posts: 7,518

    maaarsh said:

    The first piece of advice my PhD supervisor gave me back in the day when working with modeling / ML....as soon as you have run something, do a raincheck, ask yourself if the output is even possible or realistic...

    7000 hospitalisations in a month....we would have to be having 100,000s of daily infections in a couple of weeks time for that.

    That's their middle scenario. The bad scenario is just hilarious. Their upside scenario is 2000 hospitalisations by the end of this month.

    It's really hard to explain this in a way which says anything good for the integrity of the modellers involved.
    Do you have a link for this model?
    Where else?

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/sep/14/bring-in-measures-soon-or-risk-7000-daily-covid-cases-sage-warns
  • maaarshmaaarsh Posts: 3,391

    maaarsh said:

    The first piece of advice my PhD supervisor gave me back in the day when working with modeling / ML....as soon as you have run something, do a raincheck, ask yourself if the output is even possible or realistic...

    7000 hospitalisations in a month....we would have to be having 100,000s of daily infections in a couple of weeks time for that.

    That's their middle scenario. The bad scenario is just hilarious. Their upside scenario is 2000 hospitalisations by the end of this month.

    It's really hard to explain this in a way which says anything good for the integrity of the modellers involved.
    Do you have a link for this model?
    https://twitter.com/Dr_D_Robertson/status/1437767851360854034
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 53,771

    https://twitter.com/politicsforali/status/1437874281355091971

    Can't win the London Mayoralty, it is the election system that is wrong!

    Why is that Twitter handle called Politics for Ali? Is that Mohammed Ali? Or a girl called Ali?

    Anyway, FPTP for all elections was in the Tories manifesto in 2019 which won a landslide majority so ... 🤷‍♂️
    Ironically, less than 50% of the vote is what is needed to change the electoral system but not overturn any other decisions that are made, funny how that works.

    This is entirely cynical, there is evidently nothing wrong with the London Mayoralty system, BoJo won it twice.
    What are you talking about?

    Changing the electoral system works on the same basis as reversing every other decision that is made too. By Parliamentary democracy.

    There isn't anything that can't be reversed, that's part of the fundamental basics of Parliamentary Sovereignty.

    So how is that "funny" how it works? What do you think can't be overturned?
    To be fair, if parliament voted for a system of one-man, one-vote, and that man was Jeremy Corbyn, we'd have a problem.

    I think the convention that major constitutional change - like Scottish Independence, Brexit, or a change to the voting system - requires a referendum is a generally good one.
  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 44,069
    dixiedean said:

    Stocky said:

    pm215 said:

    Stocky said:

    Foxy said:


    Yes, that is the law on consent. It has not changed for years, and relates to the Gillick case in the Eighties.

    Yes, but I thought that this related to the 16-18 year olds? I'm surprised and somewhat troubled that 12 year olds are going to be able to get vaccinated for Covid without parental consent.
    The wikipedia page says that "Gillick competence" has always been about the under-16s. For 16-18 the assumption is that the young person has the choice to give consent or not. https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/consent-to-treatment/children/ says that can only be overruled in exceptional circumatances.

    So 11 year olds can't give consent, 16 year olds can, and Gillick is about doctors making a judgement call for the grey area in the middle. It doesn't mean "all 12 year olds can give consent themselves".
    So are we saying that a 12 year old can prove competence to their GP and get the vaccine without parents being informed? If that is so, then that is one thing, however if a 12 year old can enter a walk-in vaccination centre and get jabbed that is another.
    What difference does that make?

    The question is whether the child can show "competence" or not. I don't see how the competence required varies based upon whether its a vaccine centre or a GP that measures it. If the vaccine centre can test for competence then job done.
    One might think a vaccine centre might be better placed to judge competence to take a vaccine than a GP.
    Plus. You can't get to see a GP already. Do we want them using their time judging Gillicks?
    Indeed, one of the places most relevant to Gillick is contraception services, STD, and abortion. It is something that a lot of under 16s access away from their GPs, as often that is where other members of their family go.

    In practice, I don't think many teens will be vaccinated under Gillick, as it is good practice in assessing competence to enquire why the child doesn't want parents involved. Outside issues of sexuality that is pretty rare, though there are obviously some family situations where relations are very abnormal. The pros and cons of vaccination in this age are finely balanced, and vaccinating against* parental will potentially injurious to the child-parent relationship, so would rarely be done.

    *Gillick competence goes both ways so children can also refuse despite parental desire for vaccination.
  • alex_alex_ Posts: 7,518

    Toms said:

    Never trust a scientist. Hell's Bells they don't even trust each other.

    My maxim is ‘Never trust anybody who spells gonorrhoea correctly on the first attempt’
    Why ever not??
    My guess would be because they've had cause to research it...
  • maaarsh said:

    The first piece of advice my PhD supervisor gave me back in the day when working with modeling / ML....as soon as you have run something, do a raincheck, ask yourself if the output is even possible or realistic...

    7000 hospitalisations in a month....we would have to be having 100,000s of daily infections in a couple of weeks time for that.

    That's their middle scenario. The bad scenario is just hilarious. Their upside scenario is 2000 hospitalisations by the end of this month.

    It's really hard to explain this in a way which says anything good for the integrity of the modellers involved.
    LOL, the "bad scenario" is so bad it goes off the top of the chart....
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 53,771

    Cursed ratio time.

    France, Redfield & Wilton Strategies poll:

    Run-off

    Macron (LREM-RE): 52% (-3)
    Le Pen (RN-ID): 48% (+3)

    +/- vs. 15-16 April 2021

    https://twitter.com/EuropeElects/status/1437862049963560967

    Le Pen is promising to privatise state owned TV and radio and nationalise the motorways in plans called "really populist and really demagogic" by Macron's transport minister.

    https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-09-14/french-minister-slams-le-pen-s-plan-to-renationalize-highways
    Those sound like pretty sensible measures.

    (Albeit France's privatised motorways are generally excellent.)
  • MaxPB said:

    pigeon said:

    pigeon said:

    The first piece of advice my PhD supervisor gave me back in the day when working with modeling / ML....as soon as you have run something, do a raincheck, ask yourself if the output is even possible or realistic...

    7000 hospitalisations in a month....we would have to be having 100,000s of daily infections in a couple of weeks time for that.

    Oh Lord, the Warwick group haven't been booting up their ZX Spectrums again, have they?

    Andrew Lilico
    @andrew_lilico
    ·
    3h
    How much longer will the media have an appetite for "We're all gonna die this Autumn!" pieces? Presumably pretty soon it'll just get embarrassing to have ever run one?
    For as long as it generates sales/clickbait, presumably? Apart from anything else, a significant fraction of the population is still shit scared and ready to lap up this kind of coverage.
    That proportion is definitely going down. My mum used to be a super masker, literally stepped out of the house and put her mask on then didn't take it off until she got back in, would even wear it in the car. Last week she stopped doing that, not sure what changed for her. Maybe she got bored or saw everyone else not wearing them. 🤷‍♂️
    I used to be like that, whenever I walked to Ilford's Valentine's Park, I always wore a mask, but in recent weeks I only wear a mask when going to the shops. A few weeks back, I walked all the way to Wanstead and back without a mask, and at the weekend walked to South Woodford and back.
  • rcs1000 said:

    Cursed ratio time.

    France, Redfield & Wilton Strategies poll:

    Run-off

    Macron (LREM-RE): 52% (-3)
    Le Pen (RN-ID): 48% (+3)

    +/- vs. 15-16 April 2021

    https://twitter.com/EuropeElects/status/1437862049963560967

    Le Pen is promising to privatise state owned TV and radio and nationalise the motorways in plans called "really populist and really demagogic" by Macron's transport minister.

    https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-09-14/french-minister-slams-le-pen-s-plan-to-renationalize-highways
    Those sound like pretty sensible measures.

    (Albeit France's privatised motorways are generally excellent.)
    The M6 (Toll) is still in private hands!
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 53,771

    Toms said:

    Never trust a scientist. Hell's Bells they don't even trust each other.

    My maxim is ‘Never trust anybody who spells gonorrhoea correctly on the first attempt’
    Why ever not??
    They might be a doctor.
  • alex_alex_ Posts: 7,518
    rcs1000 said:

    Cursed ratio time.

    France, Redfield & Wilton Strategies poll:

    Run-off

    Macron (LREM-RE): 52% (-3)
    Le Pen (RN-ID): 48% (+3)

    +/- vs. 15-16 April 2021

    https://twitter.com/EuropeElects/status/1437862049963560967

    Le Pen is promising to privatise state owned TV and radio and nationalise the motorways in plans called "really populist and really demagogic" by Macron's transport minister.

    https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-09-14/french-minister-slams-le-pen-s-plan-to-renationalize-highways
    Those sound like pretty sensible measures.

    (Albeit France's privatised motorways are generally excellent.)
    And the non privatised ones, generally, aren't quite as good.
  • Foxy said:

    dixiedean said:

    Stocky said:

    pm215 said:

    Stocky said:

    Foxy said:


    Yes, that is the law on consent. It has not changed for years, and relates to the Gillick case in the Eighties.

    Yes, but I thought that this related to the 16-18 year olds? I'm surprised and somewhat troubled that 12 year olds are going to be able to get vaccinated for Covid without parental consent.
    The wikipedia page says that "Gillick competence" has always been about the under-16s. For 16-18 the assumption is that the young person has the choice to give consent or not. https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/consent-to-treatment/children/ says that can only be overruled in exceptional circumatances.

    So 11 year olds can't give consent, 16 year olds can, and Gillick is about doctors making a judgement call for the grey area in the middle. It doesn't mean "all 12 year olds can give consent themselves".
    So are we saying that a 12 year old can prove competence to their GP and get the vaccine without parents being informed? If that is so, then that is one thing, however if a 12 year old can enter a walk-in vaccination centre and get jabbed that is another.
    What difference does that make?

    The question is whether the child can show "competence" or not. I don't see how the competence required varies based upon whether its a vaccine centre or a GP that measures it. If the vaccine centre can test for competence then job done.
    One might think a vaccine centre might be better placed to judge competence to take a vaccine than a GP.
    Plus. You can't get to see a GP already. Do we want them using their time judging Gillicks?
    Indeed, one of the places most relevant to Gillick is contraception services, STD, and abortion. It is something that a lot of under 16s access away from their GPs, as often that is where other members of their family go.

    In practice, I don't think many teens will be vaccinated under Gillick, as it is good practice in assessing competence to enquire why the child doesn't want parents involved. Outside issues of sexuality that is pretty rare, though there are obviously some family situations where relations are very abnormal. The pros and cons of vaccination in this age are finely balanced, and vaccinating against* parental will potentially injurious to the child-parent relationship, so would rarely be done.

    *Gillick competence goes both ways so children can also refuse despite parental desire for vaccination.
    I'd have thought "my parents are anti-vaxxers/COVID deniers" would be a good reason

  • Eric Topol
    @EricTopol
    ·
    1h
    Does abdominal #obesity reduce the immune response to
    @BioNTech_Group /@Pfizer's vaccine?
    https://medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.09.10.21262710v1

    Looks that way for people without prior Covid. As assessed by waist circumference ✓ (far better than BMI) serially, including after 3 months
  • MaxPBMaxPB Posts: 37,603
    alex_ said:

    maaarsh said:

    The first piece of advice my PhD supervisor gave me back in the day when working with modeling / ML....as soon as you have run something, do a raincheck, ask yourself if the output is even possible or realistic...

    7000 hospitalisations in a month....we would have to be having 100,000s of daily infections in a couple of weeks time for that.

    That's their middle scenario. The bad scenario is just hilarious. Their upside scenario is 2000 hospitalisations by the end of this month.

    It's really hard to explain this in a way which says anything good for the integrity of the modellers involved.
    Do you have a link for this model?
    Where else?

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/sep/14/bring-in-measures-soon-or-risk-7000-daily-covid-cases-sage-warns
    What's completely stupid is that the current R value is under 1, somewhere around 0.8 by my calculation. I have no idea where they get R1.1 from and then have that sustained over a very long period of time given how close we are to the herd immunity threshold (estimated 75-85% of people with immunity now against a 85% to hit herd immunity).

    Eventually the virus just runs out of viable hosts, none of those scenarios have taken that into account and seem to just model an unlimited number of viable hosts.
  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 44,069
    pigeon said:

    MaxPB said:

    pigeon said:

    pigeon said:

    The first piece of advice my PhD supervisor gave me back in the day when working with modeling / ML....as soon as you have run something, do a raincheck, ask yourself if the output is even possible or realistic...

    7000 hospitalisations in a month....we would have to be having 100,000s of daily infections in a couple of weeks time for that.

    Oh Lord, the Warwick group haven't been booting up their ZX Spectrums again, have they?

    Andrew Lilico
    @andrew_lilico
    ·
    3h
    How much longer will the media have an appetite for "We're all gonna die this Autumn!" pieces? Presumably pretty soon it'll just get embarrassing to have ever run one?
    For as long as it generates sales/clickbait, presumably? Apart from anything else, a significant fraction of the population is still shit scared and ready to lap up this kind of coverage.
    That proportion is definitely going down. My mum used to be a super masker, literally stepped out of the house and put her mask on then didn't take it off until she got back in, would even wear it in the car. Last week she stopped doing that, not sure what changed for her. Maybe she got bored or saw everyone else not wearing them. 🤷‍♂️
    There are still a lot of maskers around though. No shortage in the shops, and when I took the train down to London on Saturday morning it was full of them. Although, granted, the train was jam packed full of people full stop, because Great Northern couldn't run a piss up in the proverbial.

    We are still forced to use the rotten things in corridors and such like at work, with no end in sight. A visiting contractor recently remarked that we were the only business left that they visit where this is still the case.
    Maybe 1% of the crowd at LCFC vs MCFC on Saturday were masked. I was in an FFP3, easy to spot when they swing the cameras on the crowd, as my seat is at a good angle for the cameramen.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 46,261

    Cursed ratio time.

    France, Redfield & Wilton Strategies poll:

    Run-off

    Macron (LREM-RE): 52% (-3)
    Le Pen (RN-ID): 48% (+3)

    +/- vs. 15-16 April 2021

    https://twitter.com/EuropeElects/status/1437862049963560967

    Is it bad that I want Le Pen to win just for the lolz?

    A tiny bit of me (not the majority) also wanted Trump to win for the same primitive and unpleasant reason, and that didn't turn out too good, so maybe I am just a Bad and Frivolous Person

  • MaxPB said:

    alex_ said:

    maaarsh said:

    The first piece of advice my PhD supervisor gave me back in the day when working with modeling / ML....as soon as you have run something, do a raincheck, ask yourself if the output is even possible or realistic...

    7000 hospitalisations in a month....we would have to be having 100,000s of daily infections in a couple of weeks time for that.

    That's their middle scenario. The bad scenario is just hilarious. Their upside scenario is 2000 hospitalisations by the end of this month.

    It's really hard to explain this in a way which says anything good for the integrity of the modellers involved.
    Do you have a link for this model?
    Where else?

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/sep/14/bring-in-measures-soon-or-risk-7000-daily-covid-cases-sage-warns
    What's completely stupid is that the current R value is under 1, somewhere around 0.8 by my calculation. I have no idea where they get R1.1 from and then have that sustained over a very long period of time given how close we are to the herd immunity threshold (estimated 75-85% of people with immunity now against a 85% to hit herd immunity).

    Eventually the virus just runs out of viable hosts, none of those scenarios have taken that into account and seem to just model an unlimited number of viable hosts.
    I rather worry for the next generation of students going through these people's classes....

  • Eric Topol
    @EricTopol
    ·
    1h
    Does abdominal #obesity reduce the immune response to
    @BioNTech_Group /@Pfizer's vaccine?
    https://medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.09.10.21262710v1

    Looks that way for people without prior Covid. As assessed by waist circumference ✓ (far better than BMI) serially, including after 3 months

    If so, it seems a good reason to offer booster shots.
  • turbotubbsturbotubbs Posts: 14,884
    MaxPB said:

    alex_ said:

    maaarsh said:

    The first piece of advice my PhD supervisor gave me back in the day when working with modeling / ML....as soon as you have run something, do a raincheck, ask yourself if the output is even possible or realistic...

    7000 hospitalisations in a month....we would have to be having 100,000s of daily infections in a couple of weeks time for that.

    That's their middle scenario. The bad scenario is just hilarious. Their upside scenario is 2000 hospitalisations by the end of this month.

    It's really hard to explain this in a way which says anything good for the integrity of the modellers involved.
    Do you have a link for this model?
    Where else?

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/sep/14/bring-in-measures-soon-or-risk-7000-daily-covid-cases-sage-warns
    What's completely stupid is that the current R value is under 1, somewhere around 0.8 by my calculation. I have no idea where they get R1.1 from and then have that sustained over a very long period of time given how close we are to the herd immunity threshold (estimated 75-85% of people with immunity now against a 85% to hit herd immunity).

    Eventually the virus just runs out of viable hosts, none of those scenarios have taken that into account and seem to just model an unlimited number of viable hosts.
    Having scanned the report, the main takeaway is that it’s our fault that the predictions were wrong. Apparently we didn’t start mixing enough, or get our behaviour back to pre Covid levels. Honestly, just put your hands up and say you got it wrong. It’s a tricky challenge. Carrying on like this is just making it worse.
  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 44,069

    Foxy said:

    dixiedean said:

    Stocky said:

    pm215 said:

    Stocky said:

    Foxy said:


    Yes, that is the law on consent. It has not changed for years, and relates to the Gillick case in the Eighties.

    Yes, but I thought that this related to the 16-18 year olds? I'm surprised and somewhat troubled that 12 year olds are going to be able to get vaccinated for Covid without parental consent.
    The wikipedia page says that "Gillick competence" has always been about the under-16s. For 16-18 the assumption is that the young person has the choice to give consent or not. https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/consent-to-treatment/children/ says that can only be overruled in exceptional circumatances.

    So 11 year olds can't give consent, 16 year olds can, and Gillick is about doctors making a judgement call for the grey area in the middle. It doesn't mean "all 12 year olds can give consent themselves".
    So are we saying that a 12 year old can prove competence to their GP and get the vaccine without parents being informed? If that is so, then that is one thing, however if a 12 year old can enter a walk-in vaccination centre and get jabbed that is another.
    What difference does that make?

    The question is whether the child can show "competence" or not. I don't see how the competence required varies based upon whether its a vaccine centre or a GP that measures it. If the vaccine centre can test for competence then job done.
    One might think a vaccine centre might be better placed to judge competence to take a vaccine than a GP.
    Plus. You can't get to see a GP already. Do we want them using their time judging Gillicks?
    Indeed, one of the places most relevant to Gillick is contraception services, STD, and abortion. It is something that a lot of under 16s access away from their GPs, as often that is where other members of their family go.

    In practice, I don't think many teens will be vaccinated under Gillick, as it is good practice in assessing competence to enquire why the child doesn't want parents involved. Outside issues of sexuality that is pretty rare, though there are obviously some family situations where relations are very abnormal. The pros and cons of vaccination in this age are finely balanced, and vaccinating against* parental will potentially injurious to the child-parent relationship, so would rarely be done.

    *Gillick competence goes both ways so children can also refuse despite parental desire for vaccination.
    I'd have thought "my parents are anti-vaxxers/COVID deniers" would be a good reason
    The risk would mostly be to them, rather than the child.

    Damaging a family relationship would have to be considered as a side effect in such a situation, which may well swing the balance against vaccination.
  • BREAKING NEWS: California's Governor has successfully avoided recall due with the vote count showing evidence of fraud says his Republican opponent: https://twitter.com/NoLieWithBTC/status/1437614398231781377

    Considering the election is tomorrow, if he's seen the vote count result he might have a point!
  • Pro_RataPro_Rata Posts: 4,785
    On 12-16 vaccination, one disappointment is that antibody testing hasn't become a bigger part of the mix since the summer - if we could say to 30% of teenagers, you've had COVID, you don't need vaccinating, then the risk / benefit balance tips further one way.

    I'd also like to see them promoted to vaccine refusers as well, give them a chance to excuse themselves but only by getting their result face to face from a health professional and having a discussion.

    Indeed, I think if I got a confirmed COVID case now and the broader spectrum immunity that I would get as a result, then I wouldn't want a booster in those circumstances, I would want it to go to someone who gained some genuine benefit from it, either here or abroad.
This discussion has been closed.