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Some terrible front pages for BoJo over COVID – politicalbetting.com
Some terrible front pages for BoJo over COVID – politicalbetting.com
it was always going to be that the government’s delay in bringing him lock down in March last year would become a difficult political issue for Boris Johnson and his ministers. The UK has the worst death toll in Europe and it is argued that if lock-down had been brought in earlier the impact would have been lessened and many more people would have survived.
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https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/oct/12/damning-commons-covid-report-should-be-seen-only-as-a-start?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other
Boris will still not call the inquiry he promised.
On intelligence.
It's worth trying to consider the biological aspects. Intelligence comes from / is contained within our brains, and this meatware's function is essentially what we are trying to replicate in hardware or software. The problem is that individual neurons are not trivial to replicate, yet alone the network of interconnected 86 billion neurons in a brain, with neuron having, on average, a thousand connections with other neurons. (*). Because this is not possible to replicate, computer scientists cheat.
https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/320289#types
So the question becomes: is the vast number and interconnectivity of neurons necessary for true intelligence, or can much less complicated systems create intelligence? Or do they just create a false simulacrum of it, like Queen Marie Antoinette's Automaton?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nITEU4fsqCU
(*) An amazing fact: to reach this huge target, a developing fetus must create around 250,000 neurons per minute.
But what advice were the government getting at the time?
Additionally, we had never done a lockdown before in this manner. The entire apparatus of state had to be turned around to face this issue - and the leviathan of state is never good at responding quickly at scale to novel situations.
I have a great deal of sympathy with the politicians who had to deal with this back in March 2020 - especially as the plans we had prepared targeted the wrong sort of disease. What's more problematic for me are the events of November / December 2020.
But we must also bring China into this: if China had been truthful about the scale of the problem they faced back in early 2020, then the world might have been a little more prepared. Their lies and denials could well have led to the loss of countless lives.
All they needed to say to the world was: "This is really, really bad, people." Instead they said: "Move along; nothing to see here."
They have consistently put forward the wrong options. No quarantine for international travel at the start. No lockdown until too late. No special measures for care homes (indeed, in Birmingham there is a criminal investigation ongoing as to whether patients with Covid were deliberately and illegally discharged from hospitals to care homes in ways that flouted procedure). Obsession with hand washing.
But then, having buggered up so comprehensively, they switched to the other extreme. Zero Covid. Lock down forever. Every death is a case of murder.
Whatever the claims of political interference at the start, one very safe conclusion we can draw is that SAGE was utterly useless and indeed damaging in this situation and should be disbanded.
But ‘impossible to replicate’, and ‘cheat’ are loaded judgments.
The reality is that electronics have a massive advantage in terms of processing speed*, and the efforts to simulate brain-like connections are becoming increasingly sophisticated.
https://www.eetimes.com/rain-neuromorphics-tapes-out-demo-chip-for-analog-ai/
(*new photonics chips, which are in their infancy, but already in commercial development, are potentially several orders of magnitude faster than electronics.)
New technology may - or may not - make it easier to replicate the brain's functions. But we are not there yet, in the systems currently in use.
Stopping all international flights in a country as interconnected as the UK would have been a very brave move, and one that was politically fraught. Shoving returnees into hostels and hotels are the same - particularly when we did not have mass testing for the disease.
The essential failing was that pandemic has for many years been identified as an inevitability with potentially dire public health consequences, but had been neglected in recent years. This seems to be a problem related to short termism associated with western democracies in the twitter era; they are in thrall to the ever changing vagaries of public opinion and cannot deal with big existential problems.
And so it will go on. There is evidence around of this everywhere. Was just reading up on Sunaks proposed £2 billion cuts - courts and justice are identified as being in the firing line. This a week after all the promises on increased prosecutions and speeding up trials. So the government simultaneously promises to solve something whilst cutting it and society has lost the ability to question it.
The R4 commentary on the report just now saying that anyone looking for "the guilty men" will be disappointed - it looks at systemic failures rather than bad actors.
I look forward to similarly robust reports from Edinburgh, Cardiff & Belfast....
A political leader of any calibre ALWAYS keeps abreast of facts with an eye for detail and an attention to their brief. It's their job. They are SUPPOSED to lead.
Can anyone really tell me that Margaret Thatcher or even Tony Blair would have been so shockingly inept as Johnson was in spring 2019? Permitting events like the Cheltenham Festival to continue when Italy had already gone into lockdown has nothing to do with us using hindsighting.
It was, and is, the most shocking example of an inept useless buffoon who never should have been elected Prime Minister and who is totally unfit for the office.
But your last point is an important one: what were opposition politicians calling for at the time? From memory, they were as much blind-sided by this as the government back in March/April/May. To be fair to Starmer, he only became Labour leader in early April, and was involved with the leadership election up to then. Nevertheless, it would be interesting to see what he was saying about the situation in March.
The number of payroll employees showed another monthly increase, up 207,000 to a record 29.2 million in September 2021, returning to pre-coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic (February 2020) levels.
Following a period of employment growth and low unemployment, since the start of the pandemic the employment rate generally decreased, and the unemployment rate increased. However, since the end of 2020, both have shown signs of recovery. Our latest Labour Force estimates for June to August 2021 show the employment rate increased by 0.5 percentage points on the quarter, to 75.3%. and the unemployment rate decreased by 0.4 percentage points, to 4.5%. The economic inactivity rate is down 0.2 percentage points on the previous quarter, to 21.1%.
The number of job vacancies in July to September 2021 was a record high of 1,102,000, an increase of 318,000 from its pre-pandemic (January to March 2020) level; this was the second consecutive month that the three-month average has risen over one million.
https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/employmentandemployeetypes/bulletins/uklabourmarket/october2021
Until he didn't.
However, I do think that the supply of PPE was a shambles, and that previous plans for the sort of emergency we faced were junked...... I think by the May government and that relationships between the various parts of Care of the Elderly were very bad. I suspect that one outcome of this will be an improvement in relationships in this sector. It's a long while now since I was involved, but my recollection is that neither hospitals nor the care home sector particularly trusted each other, and that too often co-operation was minimal or non-existent.
The onus is on the state to have an extremely good reason for sweeping away our civil liberties, not the other way around, and we should never lose sight of that.
The more this gets spoken about like this the more I think I may have been wrong to back lockdown and the Swedish option may have been better.
Because it's one thing saying this is needed to stop the NHS from collapsing but now it's been normalised as it should have been done for other reasons.
How did it come to this? What awful luck (a lot of of this bad luck is self inflicted of course) that we have a dunce leading us at a time of national emergency.
The Inquiry should be about strategy rather than tactics. Jacinda's tactics were right but was her strategy sound? Despite NZ having major advantages because of its position, it is still at risk.
Covid 19 would need to be beaten by herd immunity and/or vaccination. You can't totally rely on it becoming less virulent with time. Full lockdown at the first sign would stretch out the deaths, but it was never a free lunch.
The main lesson to be learned was to harness the science as soon as possible. Vaccination, vaccination, vaccination. The rest is frippery.
Everyone was blindsided by this - and it seems everyone chose a wise approach of following the science. Unfortunately, the science was as clear as mud at the time.
Or just to Johnson?
There did seem to be some 'sweetheart' deals though, which 'didn't turn out well'.
I am not a fan of Johnson. I didn't vote for his party, and wouldn't vote for it with him in charge. But he is undoubtedly popular in a way no UK politician has been since the height of Blair.
But that popularity could subside as rapidly as Blair's did.
Admittedly it's difficult to see how, but Callaghan got a lot of stick in the Winter of Discontent.
England is horribly behind in its current phase of vaccine roll-out: boosters and teens.
Proof-points:
- Teens: England is falling way behind Scotland, which started at the same time.
- Boosters: England is falling way its own pace of 2nd doses earlier in the year.
(1/4)
https://twitter.com/PaulMainwood/status/1447583841619689477?s=20
I have to say ‘deluded right-wing anti-Johnson half wit’ doesn’t actually narrow it down. I can think of several posters it would apply to…
I'm not sure how damaging it is either. Doesn't look as useless as Blair looked over Foot & Mouth. As long as we are in a comfortably obscure spot in the league tables people are surely going to say, yeah, we made mistakes, but so did everybody.
That was the reason lockdown was brought in, because to not have it would mean the NHS would collapse. The NHS didn't collapse.
So now people want to move the Overton Window even further and say that it should have been brought in even sooner without such a risk. I say no to that.
We should be investigating why we spent so long in lockdown while Sweden and others largely coped without it, not why we didn't have our liberties taken away for longer.
https://twitter.com/PaulBrandITV/status/1447811109860294658?s=20
(Though I'd never claim that the government made every decision correct.)
I'm not, so far, impressed with Test and Trace, though, and experience of the system isn't helping.
SAGE agreed there is no evidence to suggest that banning very large gatherings would reduce transmission. Preventing all social interaction in public spaces, including restaurants and bars, would have an effect, but would be very difficult to implement.
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/888781/S0381_Thirteenth_meeting_on_Wuhan_Coronavirus__Covid-19__.pdf
Cheltenham started 4 days later
1) The clusterfuck that was test, trace, and isolate.
2) Failure to spot the signs in September and October which led to a delayed lockdown.
3) The bullshit on having a normal Christmas.
4) The threats of legal action against schools who wanted to close early because of high case numbers.
5) Which led to the farce of schools reopening for one day after Christmas.
In short Boris Johnson was repeatedly behind the curve, not just at the start but all the way through.
By the time we were thinking about it, it was too late.
World-beating, even. And run from here in Cambridge.
The Wellcome Sanger Institute needs a heck of a lot of kudos for its wok.
People increasingly recognising it was a mistake but very difficult to walk back from.
As a data point one care home CEO mentioned to me they had had 1,800 fatalities since (I think) March. 1% of them were “with COVID” (not even of COVID). His view is no jab no job is a massive over-reaction which will exacerbate staff shortages and hence reduce the quality of care.
More to the point the government is now pushing for mandatory flu vaccines for care home staff despite 50% efficacy… the principle of mandatory vaccines has been established and the government is pushing for further and ongoing intervention
https://twitter.com/shjfrench/status/1447807762239524865?s=20
Italy went into lockdown on 22nd Feb, and was also all over the news every day. The first cases in London started in February, and by March all 4 UK countries had cases. So we knew how severe the disease could be and that it was spreading in the community here by the end of February. We closed schools on 18 March, and went into lockdown on 23rd March.
The idea that we didn't know or weren't warned so couldn't lockdown earlier is simply nonsense.
But once lockdown happened, once our fundamental civil liberties were encroached, then the border should have been locked down and quarantine enforced. It should have been the final element to be lifted too.
I can forgive many mistakes in a fast moving environment but what I can't forgive is people being able to go on holidays and bring the virus back with them at the same time schools were shut by law. That was utterly unforgivable.
If the situation is so critical that our children's education has to be disrupted then shut the damned border already!
Mr. Eagles, largely agree. The Christmas fiasco may also have repercussions this time, with more people going for a big family Christmas, if they can, ironically increasing transmission rates.
The further that you go up away from the coal-face, the bigger the mistakes and the bigger the misallocation of resources.
If anyone unvaccinated gets it that's their choice.
If anyone vaccinated gets it we've done what we reasonably can for them.
Childcare? Skills? Unemployable?
We need to be much more innovative in supporting people into work here.
It's far far better for you and everyone else if you work.
It plays into the bigger picture about the PM being a ditherer who won’t make a decision until he absolutely has to, and always bears the imprint of whoever sat on him last.
But there is a UK inquiry, which will look at England-only matters as well. There is a Scotland only inquiry. There is a N. Ireland only inquiry.
Which country is missing ? And who runs it ?
Care staff have a lot of similar duties to nurses etc but are expected to wipe people's bums, at night, providing close personal care for the national minimum wage. A waitress getting the same minimum wage but earning tips gets higher paid than care staff.
If there's a lack of staff in the care sector it's not because they're only able to recruit from the well over 90% of the population fully vaccinated.
For those who hate Boris as so.many do on this site this thread is a form of therapy.
I am asking why there is no inquiry into actions taken by the Welsh Government in Wales, when the other devolved administrations are holding one.
For those working on UC anyone who gets a better pay rise they know they'll have to work harder but the reality is that the state will effectively tax them 75% of every extra penny they earn.
If you were facing a real tax rate of 75% would that incentivise you to look for a slightly better paid job?
NICOLA Sturgeon has been urged to “come clean” after it was reported she overruled advisors who suggested telling the public about a coronavirus outbreak at a major conference.
https://www.heraldscotland.com/politics/19637594.sturgeon-told-come-clean-overruling-aides-health-minister-nike-conference-outbreak/
Increasing staff wages - which would be a good thing - requires a significant increase in government spending.
There is currently a structural shortage of beds in the space so we can’t afford operators to go out of business
Also, look at the scientific advice the government was getting, as others have mentioned below.
I think that Johnson is ill-equipped to be Prime Minister, but won't let that entirely drive my views on the inevitable inquiry into our pandemic response - which should be broad, rational and scientific - and neutral.
It is clear that those who hate Johnson will try to use it for party political reasons and I think this is regrettable, but this tendency has been there throughout and I detected and lamented this in a post here as early as last April. Consider Mike's comment in the header ("the UK has the worst death toll in Europe") true (assuming all countries methodology is the same and is as reliable) but doesn't allow for our population size, density, international hub etc etc. It's party politicking a pandemic, and I say that as a fellow LibDem.
Our initial response was following a very swift response in Asia, a fast response in some major Eurpoean countries, us a week or so later and the States after that. It is obviously more problematic and grave for a state to come over authoritarian in some countries than others.
Any inquiry must look at things in the round. For example, the care home protocols need investigating to be sure. Was the decision to move each patient to a care home when positive or untested a government instruction or was it made by the particular clinician (under instruction from bods above?)? What would have happened if these people had NOT been moved, would there have been fewer beds and other hospital resources available at the admission end? I suspect this issue is not as clear cut as the Johnson-haters (even though I am one) pretend and the important thing about the inquiry is to establish best practice for the future not to settle political scores. PPE provision was clearly inadequate and best practice protocols can be amended for the eventuality of a future similar crisis. The inquiry must be constructive not score-settling.
Like you, I am appalled and shell-shocked by the ease (as I see it) that civil liberties were withdrawn. Ferguson's comments around this are instructive: "We couldn't get away with it in Europe, we thought. And then Italy did it.”
We seemed to exit liberal democracy far too readily for me off the back of fear tactics and playing on our NHS national religion - by the government but other actors too. Was this legal? Any enquiry must address this.
If true that best-practice in the future would advise a week-faster response would best-practice have been to come out of the first lockdown earlier (as I believed, I was banging on about this at the time)? It was far too easy for the government to extend it. Was the second lockdown even necessary? Regarding the third lockdown, I recall that we locked down two or three days after the new variant was discovered but why did we take so long to come out of this third lockdown? The route out was glacially slow; was the government motivated more from fear of criticism from vocal opponents rather than by science or legality.
These are just some of the questions I want answering. A lot of this comes down to checks and balances in a liberal democracy.
The interesting thing is that many universities now are offering degrees in social care. So we have people going to university, getting a degree in social care, then working in the social care sector ... For minimum wage. 🤦♂️
I’ve had surgery cancelled twice so far this year and counting. My neighbour who had a heart attack’s rehab keeps getting cancelled and my girlfriend can’t even get a blood test at her GP.
The thing is simply not fit for purpose right now
An earlier lockdown might have postponed some of these deaths but that is not saying that it would have prevented them. The priority for the government was to ensure that the NHS were not completely overwhelmed as we saw in northern Italy and elsewhere driving up the death rate. They succeeded. Indeed the Nightingale hospitals were barely called upon but were a sensible contingency in case they did not. But they did.
The vast majority of those who died early in the pandemic were frankly always going to die of this disease. They were the low hanging fruit. This report is bordering on stupid. Our scientists and our politicians were given the correct priorities: make sure that the inevitable peaks of this virus were not so high as to overwhelm the health service. Anything else is frankly delusional.
The delay in the winter lockdown is much harder to defend because by that time we knew the cavalry, in the form of effective vaccines, was coming so delay had a point. In March 2020 it really didn't.
You have to balance the risks. Care home residents have no choice but to be in the home. They have no say and no choice over who looks after them. The risk is negligible for everyone else but care residents are by far and away the most vulnerable to infection.
If the care worker so lacks in care that they don't care if they infect societies most vulnerable individuals with the disease then they shouldn't be working in the sector. That will reduce deaths. Replace them with people who do care enough to get vaccinated.
FPT (it's educational on insulating your house
It's perfectly possible properly to insulate / improve solid walled houses. I have done a whole series of them myself. It doesn't need a full cavity - which as you say weren't a regular thing until perhaps 1925-1930.
You can internally insulate it (which will take around 3-4" off each external wall done well), or externally insulate it. In either case you can easily take it up to a decent standard (say a C or even a B on the EPC scale). Those approaches are even routinely used under the ECO programme for people who qualify for support, and have been for many years. Perhaps there are slightly more wrinkles and PM needed, but it is a normal thing to do.
Today building without a cavity is also a normal thing to do in many technologies / types of build.
Personally I have done an 1850s cottage, several pre WW1, and a couple more from the 1920s - all solid walled.
Yes there will be exceptions, but a very small proportion.
If you're house is very well insulated (not difficult, just lots) direct electrical heating can be fine and is coming back for new houses. One option is to have essentially Willis Heaters (like immersion heaters) installed directly in the slab, and run them on Economy-7. A quality house will take days to leak the heat out, so that approach can work fine running overnight.
These days many do not bother with heating upstairs, except perhaps an electric towel rail and a fan heater in the cupboard for once a year when a boost is needed or something breaks.
(Though that highlights that for well-insulated, airtight houses, controlled cooling is as important as controlled heating.)
He went around shaking hands and blatantly flouting the recommendations early on.
Then ended up in an ICU.
I mean, as an example, you can't fault it.