politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » Amber Warnings – What might be the signals that all is not wel

First

I think Christine Lagarde might be an android. I heard her earlier call the virus “covid dash nineteen”

Mikel Arteta tests positive for coronavirus.

That's the Premier League finished.

TheScreamingEagles said:

Mikel Arteta tests positive for coronavirus.

That's the Premier League finished.

Oh well, no winner this year, on to 20/21

TheScreamingEagles said:

Mikel Arteta tests positive for coronavirus.

That's the Premier League finished.

I say null and void all results....fairs fair.

Personally i’m a great believer in (British) exceptionalism. I can’t stand the argument that if everyone else is doing something different, you must be wrong. Invest in your own experts, robustly examine their judgement, and back them to come up with the right solutions. Learn from other countries, but don’t blindly follow them. And knowing that you will treat crises like that gives you better experts because they have no hiding place and therefore know their expertise has to be genuine.

I don't understand what has been announced today that would actually flatten the peak.

Alistair said:

I don't understand what has been announced today that would actually flatten the peak.

Shush, we don't allow thinking here.

Alistair said:

I don't understand what has been announced today that would actually flatten the peak.

We are not there yet, as the CMO said, right now we actually need more infections,

Alistair said:

I don't understand what has been announced today that would actually flatten the peak.

Telling people not to phone 111 and not testing them. The peak will be based on partial data, so will be much lower.

eek said:

eadric said:

Also, does anyone know why PB cannot be accessed by normal Chrome, yet is available on Vanilla?

Yes - chrome have implemented new cookie settings which mean vanilla doesn't seem to work if you are trying to login from the pb website - I told @rcs1000 about the issue yesterday but can't offer a fix as I don't know what the fix actually is (I know it took Microsoft a while to fix their login system for this issue)..

Chrome is working fine with me on my MacBook.

eadric said:

Also, does anyone know why PB cannot be accessed by normal Chrome, yet is available on Vanilla?

I asked that question about 5 years ago but never discovered the answer.

TheScreamingEagles said:

eek said:

eadric said:

Also, does anyone know why PB cannot be accessed by normal Chrome, yet is available on Vanilla?

Yes - chrome have implemented new cookie settings which mean vanilla doesn't seem to work if you are trying to login from the pb website - I told @rcs1000 about the issue yesterday but can't offer a fix as I don't know what the fix actually is (I know it took Microsoft a while to fix their login system for this issue)..

Chrome is working fine with me on my MacBook.

are you logged in already or are you trying to log in. I'm logged in in Vanilla but I cannot login on the PB site.

eek said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

eek said:

eadric said:

Also, does anyone know why PB cannot be accessed by normal Chrome, yet is available on Vanilla?

Yes - chrome have implemented new cookie settings which mean vanilla doesn't seem to work if you are trying to login from the pb website - I told @rcs1000 about the issue yesterday but can't offer a fix as I don't know what the fix actually is (I know it took Microsoft a while to fix their login system for this issue)..

Chrome is working fine with me on my MacBook.

are you logged in already or are you trying to log in. I'm logged in in Vanilla but I cannot login on the PB site.

Already logged in.

An interesting piece but I’d counter it with two observations:

a) We’ve recently seen an example of the courts putting Gvt in its place and we should be gladdened by that; and

b) Even in the case of the Labour Party, it seems to be in the process of correcting its errors.

Basically, I think we have good checks and balances in this country. But you’re right that we should be cautious.

Alistair said:

I don't understand what has been announced today that would actually flatten the peak.

You don’t understand why people with symptoms not going out will reduce the number of infections?

IanB2 said:

Alistair said:

I don't understand what has been announced today that would actually flatten the peak.

We are not there yet, as the CMO said, right now we actually need more infections,

Perhaps that "take it on the chin" approach...

eadric said:

alex_ said:

Personally i’m a great believer in (British) exceptionalism. I can’t stand the argument that if everyone else is doing something different, you must be wrong. Invest in your own experts, robustly examine their judgement, and back them to come up with the right solutions. Learn from other countries, but don’t blindly follow them. And knowing that you will treat crises like that gives you better experts because they have no hiding place and therefore know their expertise has to be genuine.

"Personally I'm a great believer in British exceptionalism" is a phrase that, I confess, makes me shudder, in the context of a pandemic

Our experts may actually be getting the approach right though - i.e. other countries are making mistakes, or they're also doing the right thing but their particular circumstances are somewhat different.

The varied responses to the pandemic constitute a series of experiments with the lives of large groups of human beings, and we're not going to know which experiments were the most successful until this is all over.

Our might be one of the failures, but we oughtn't automatically to assume so.

eadric said:

If the government thinks we are really "4 weeks behind Italy" we are about to find out, in the next week, if they have made the gravest error in recent British history.

If they are wrong I will never vote Tory again. I might well be dead anyway. If they are right, I honour their intellectual bravery and audacity.

What are your success/failure criteria?

Black_Rook said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

Mikel Arteta tests positive for coronavirus.

That's the Premier League finished.

Yep, just saying on telly that the entire Arsenal team have been put into isolation. And I think the premature end of the football season has been gradually becoming apparent for a while, but hindsight's a wonderful thing ain't it?

Uefa has an emergency meeting on Tuesday, when I expect they'll decide to delay Euro 2020 for a calendar year. The European club competitions will probably get guillotined at the same meeting, or failing that shortly thereafter. Domestic football is already suspended in many European leagues, and don't see ours limping on much past the weekend.

The most likely outcome of all this is that the 2019/20 season gets wiped and everything starts again from scratch in August or September. Fantastic news for Norwich City. For Liverpool, not so much.

31 years and counting, eh?

FrancisUrquhart said:

eadric said:

If the government thinks we are really "4 weeks behind Italy" we are about to find out, in the next week, if they have made the gravest error in recent British history.

If they are wrong I will never vote Tory again. I might well be dead anyway. If they are right, I honour their intellectual bravery and audacity.

That was the most eye popping claim. I just don't see how that is possible. If they said 2 weeks, you would think hmmm maybe, but double that, really, like really...

I crunched the numbers on this. We get to 15k infections in 28 days if we have a 12-13% daily growth rate. We've not been that low any single day in March...

eadric said:

eek said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

eek said:

eadric said:

Also, does anyone know why PB cannot be accessed by normal Chrome, yet is available on Vanilla?

Yes - chrome have implemented new cookie settings which mean vanilla doesn't seem to work if you are trying to login from the pb website - I told @rcs1000 about the issue yesterday but can't offer a fix as I don't know what the fix actually is (I know it took Microsoft a while to fix their login system for this issue)..

Chrome is working fine with me on my MacBook.

are you logged in already or are you trying to log in.

Yes, I can read it, I just can't log in

Might just be a problem for people with multiple login identities?

Marcus01 said:

A rerun of the same argument that ran in the Thatcher years from thinly disguised political opponents masquerading as independents. Guardian reading folk always hate blue governments pandering to the needs of the great unwashed, this post is from the same mould. Of course treasured institutions like the legal system, civil service and the media will be up for reform when they've so patently been running an agenda against the wishes of a majority. Death of democracy? Or a democracy actually asserting itself?

I haven’t read the Guardian for years, apart from occasional articles posted on here or sent to me by friends and family. I was banned, in fact, by Comment is Free for pointing out many of the hypocrisies and other idiocies inflicted on their readers by some of their journalists: Seamus Milne and Ms Toynbee were particular targets of mine.

It was great fun until I got banned.

You have not noted that one of my biggest criticisms in the header is reserved for Labour and its supporters, of whom the Guardian is one. Not me.

Alistair said:

I don't understand what has been announced today that would actually flatten the peak.

Basically, SAGE do not seem to believe it possible to a significant degree. They think it would be "only a 30% reduction" essentially they are being defeatist, not brave.

eadric said:

If the government thinks we are really "4 weeks behind Italy" we are about to find out, in the next week, if they have made the gravest error in recent British history.

If they are wrong I will never vote Tory again. I might well be dead anyway. If they are right, I honour their intellectual bravery and audacity.

Why would you be dead? Are you in a major risk category’s?

FrancisUrquhart said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

Mikel Arteta tests positive for coronavirus.

That's the Premier League finished.

I say null and void all results....fairs fair.

You have to hand it to Liverpool, they’ve had a great go. They couldn’t get over the line this year, but there will be other years. They can be justly proud.

RobD said:

rcs1000 said:

RobD said:

edmundintokyo said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

FrancisUrquhart said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

Nigelb said:

FrancisUrquhart said:

Cyclefree said:

Genuine question: a few days ago the government was going to have 10,000 tests a day. Now there are going to be none, other than for those in hospital.

What is the reason for this?

That was the strangest thing I heard. They were going for the South Korea model and then today just totally pivoted to the opposite extreme, without explaining any reason why they were no longer interesting in screening the public at large.

That is another element which nudges me towards my conclusion of surrender to it.
If you’re just letting rip, what’s the point in ramping up testing ?

I think the logic is if the infection rate is as high as expected then mass testing is a waste of time.

It is useful at the start of the pandemic to try and find who has it, and do contact testing for the positive.

So they think SK approach is a waste of time? Even though they seem to be catching clusters of outbreaks and shutting them down?

The South Korean approach seems to be working on the assumption that if we contain it then it'll all be fine, but all it needs is a further outbreak later on and they are fecked.

No, that's not how it works. What they (and Japan etc) are doing is reducing the probability that in any given case, you give it to someone else. If the average sufferer passes it on to less than one person, the number of cases will decline, regardless of how many there are.

That's if the methods can be sustained in the long term (months, not weeks).

That's not true.

Right now, the growth is say 25% more cases per day. So that means on average, each infected person infects someone every four days.

A two week complete lockdown would mean that three cycles of this are missed (outside transmission in the home), and that a large number of people who were infectious cease being so.

Of course, when restrictions are relaxed, the number of cases will flare up again. But that's the way this is managed. A series of (say) lockdowns every two months. Unpleasant. But not fatal.

Your last point was my point exactly. For that strategy to work, they have to sustain it for the duration, as there will be no herd immunity to protect them further down the line.

Except that (1) this strategy avoids health systems becoming overloaded, (2) each time around there are slightly more people who are immune to the disease, so the growth should be more moderate, and (3) at some point a vaccine will be found.

We'll also get better at testing and isolation, so that future outbreaks should be identified more easily.

It's disruptive, but it's far from an existential threat.

Benpointer said:

Am I right in assuming that someon who has had Covid-19 and recovered is no longer infectious? (In contrast to, say, HIV)

Yes, though in the case of Flu for example people can still be infectious for some time after the symptoms have gone.

Jonathan said:

I think the government has the right approach in delaying the big measures to the last possible moment. My team have been working at home for a few days and everyone agrees they nearly had enough. Video conferencing is no substitute for human interaction.

Have you got Slack or Discord or something? You need somewhere where you can do background chatter that you can dip in and out of. Don't just try to recreate office meetings online, embrace the whole medium...

https://twitter.com/swearimnotpaul/status/1238179887250386946?s=21

edmundintokyo said:

Jonathan said:

I think the government has the right approach in delaying the big measures to the last possible moment. My team have been working at home for a few days and everyone agrees they nearly had enough. Video conferencing is no substitute for human interaction.

Have you got Slack or Discord or something? You need somewhere where you can do background chatter that you can dip in and out of. Don't just try to recreate office meetings online, embrace the whole medium...

Get them over the PB...and we can discuss the merits of various pizza toppings and favourite Christmas movies.

noneoftheabove said:

Sure it must have been posted earlier but missed it.

Electoral commission recommending delay in London mayoral elections til the Autumn.

They were calling for postponement of the locals earlier today. The other Mr Rook suggested that primary legislation would be required; I dare say that won't be long in coming.

Local elections in the middle of a pandemic are an unnecessary risk to public health, an unnecessary distraction to the local authorities themselves, and badly distracting and potentially replacing the leadership of those authorities mid-crisis is totally nuts. They're bound to be kicked into the long grass for the duration.

rcs1000 said:

RobD said:

rcs1000 said:

RobD said:

edmundintokyo said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

FrancisUrquhart said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

Nigelb said:

FrancisUrquhart said:

Cyclefree said:

Genuine question: a few days ago the government was going to have 10,000 tests a day. Now there are going to be none, other than for those in hospital.

What is the reason for this?

That was the strangest thing I heard. They were going for the South Korea model and then today just totally pivoted to the opposite extreme, without explaining any reason why they were no longer interesting in screening the public at large.

That is another element which nudges me towards my conclusion of surrender to it.
If you’re just letting rip, what’s the point in ramping up testing ?

I think the logic is if the infection rate is as high as expected then mass testing is a waste of time.

It is useful at the start of the pandemic to try and find who has it, and do contact testing for the positive.

So they think SK approach is a waste of time? Even though they seem to be catching clusters of outbreaks and shutting them down?

The South Korean approach seems to be working on the assumption that if we contain it then it'll all be fine, but all it needs is a further outbreak later on and they are fecked.

No, that's not how it works. What they (and Japan etc) are doing is reducing the probability that in any given case, you give it to someone else. If the average sufferer passes it on to less than one person, the number of cases will decline, regardless of how many there are.

That's if the methods can be sustained in the long term (months, not weeks).

That's not true.

Right now, the growth is say 25% more cases per day. So that means on average, each infected person infects someone every four days.

A two week complete lockdown would mean that three cycles of this are missed (outside transmission in the home), and that a large number of people who were infectious cease being so.

Of course, when restrictions are relaxed, the number of cases will flare up again. But that's the way this is managed. A series of (say) lockdowns every two months. Unpleasant. But not fatal.

Your last point was my point exactly. For that strategy to work, they have to sustain it for the duration, as there will be no herd immunity to protect them further down the line.

Except that (1) this strategy avoids health systems becoming overloaded, (2) each time around there are slightly more people who are immune to the disease, so the growth should be more moderate, and (3) at some point a vaccine will be found.

We'll also get better at testing and isolation, so that future outbreaks should be identified more easily.

It's disruptive, but it's far from an existential threat.

For some people it is exactly that.

FrancisUrquhart said:

Anabobazina said:

FrancisUrquhart said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

Mikel Arteta tests positive for coronavirus.

That's the Premier League finished.

I say null and void all results....fairs fair.

You have to hand it to Liverpool, they’ve had a great go. They couldn’t get over the line this year, but there will be other years. They can be justly proud.

Bit like when Gerrard slipped.

Yes, a simple mistake at a critical time. They will look back on the Watford game and forever wonder “if only”. In some ways, I suppose they only have themselves to blame.

Time_to_Leave said:

An interesting piece but I’d counter it with two observations:

a) We’ve recently seen an example of the courts putting Gvt in its place and we should be gladdened by that; and

b) Even in the case of the Labour Party, it seems to be in the process of correcting its errors.

Basically, I think we have good checks and balances in this country. But you’re right that we should be cautious.

True - up to a point.

But note that the response to (a) has been a manifesto promise to stop the courts doing so. That is a promise to remove or reduce an important check and balance.

On (b) I am not so sure. Labour have said all sorts of good things. Even Corbyn did so. Action has been lacking. There is a reason for that and I am not at all convinced that Labour has really inquired into why that is.

And, second, the fact that Labour’s immune system was so weak that the virus of anti-semitism took hold so easily is what is concerning. Again I am not sure that Labour has really understood why it has rotted and weakened from the inside. Until it does it is hard to make really effective changes.

It’s a change of culture which is needed not simply a better disciplinary system.

Foxy said:

Benpointer said:

Am I right in assuming that someon who has had Covid-19 and recovered is no longer infectious? (In contrast to, say, HIV)

Yes, though it does take a few weeks to no longer shed virus.

Thanks - so, unless it mutates, once you've survived it you're no longer at risk yourself or a risk to others.

If this is close to true then known cases in the US are going to shoot up very soon.

Ohio health official estimates 100,000 people in state have coronavirus

https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/487329-ohio-health-official-estimates-100000-people-in-state-have-coronavirus

Benpointer said:

Foxy said:

Benpointer said:

Am I right in assuming that someon who has had Covid-19 and recovered is no longer infectious? (In contrast to, say, HIV)

Yes, though it does take a few weeks to no longer shed virus.

Thanks - so, unless it mutates, once you've survived it you're no longer at risk yourself or a risk to others.

Even then, mutations tend to be by drift rather than shift, so there would be a degree of immunity.

Theuniondivvie said:

Fuxake, this is serious.

https://twitter.com/LorcanRK/status/1238219328031465476?s=20

The difference in approach between the UK and a country like Belgium is rather worrying. They can't both be right.

FrancisUrquhart said:

Apparently Macron just spoke to the nation, that's the first time he has done so on this crisis. I find that Macron and Merkel really haven't spoken much quite astonishing.

Merkel gave a detailed press conference yesterday.

eadric said:

If the government thinks we are really "4 weeks behind Italy" we are about to find out, in the next week, if they have made the gravest error in recent British history.

If they are wrong I will never vote Tory again. I might well be dead anyway. If they are right, I honour their intellectual bravery and audacity.

It's possible. There were 460 cases yesterday in the UK; Italy was at that number on February 26th, or two weeks ago. It took Italy four days to go from 100 to 500 cases; the UK took seven days. Who knows?

numbertwelve said:

Chameleon said:

https://twitter.com/aravosis/status/1238132638650695681?

Trump, for the third time, reaffirms his support of unifying Ireland.

I need to stop watching Trump videos. I’m wince-d out.

This is even by Trump standards up there with the weirdest / crazy one (watch to the end).

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8104723/Trump-caught-hot-mic-complaining-ink-stain-shirt-coronavirus-address.html

Benpointer said:

eadric said:

RobD said:

eadric said:

If the government thinks we are really "4 weeks behind Italy" we are about to find out, in the next week, if they have made the gravest error in recent British history.

If they are wrong I will never vote Tory again. I might well be dead anyway. If they are right, I honour their intellectual bravery and audacity.

What are your success/failure criteria?

All the data says we will be at Italian levels of infection within two weeks. ie 15,000 cases. 1500 critical cases, and nightmare. So within a fortnight we will know for SURE.

My guess is that within 7 days we will know if we are following that trajectory. ie Italy had 3000 cases about a week ago. If we have 3000 cases in a week we will know that we are on the Italian path and Boris and Co have made a tragic and epochal mistake.

According to Worldometer the UK has 20 critical cases; Italy has 1,153. Maybe that's what makes the UK advisers think we're 4 weeks behind.

Yes - providing you make allowances for different demographics, the critical case count would yield valuable data across countries with very different testing regimes.

brokenwheel said:

eadric said:

If the government thinks we are really "4 weeks behind Italy" we are about to find out, in the next week, if they have made the gravest error in recent British history.

If they are wrong I will never vote Tory again. I might well be dead anyway. If they are right, I honour their intellectual bravery and audacity.

This is an enormous gamble on the herd immunity theory given how little we fully understand about the virus. This strategy is an experiment, with a potential to backfire quite spectacularly.

That's where the science inevitably shades into political judgement. Arguably the optimum solution is to let the number of cases run right up to the limit of what the NHS can cope with, do the lockdown then to reduce the numbers and keep repeating until there's enough herd immunity in the population. The question is how close to health service collapse are you willing to go before applying the brakes?

Do you feel lucky?

Models are only as good as the assumptions behind them. Sometimes they’re more voodoo than science really. But they create a nice big figleaf.

eadric said:

Benpointer said:

The Premier League has released a statement:

“In light of Arsenal’s announcement tonight confirming that their first-team coach Mikel Arteta has tested positive for COVID-19, the Premier League will convene an emergency club meeting tomorrow morning regarding future fixtures.”

And I thought TSE was just having a bit of fun when he mooted the possibility that Liverpool might be robbed of their title by covid-19.

The EPL is finished. Likewise the UCL, the euros, and probably the Lympix. That much is clear

Sure I saw something to the effect that the Olympics are likely to be postponed.

edmundintokyo said:

Jonathan said:

I think the government has the right approach in delaying the big measures to the last possible moment. My team have been working at home for a few days and everyone agrees they nearly had enough. Video conferencing is no substitute for human interaction.

Have you got Slack or Discord or something? You need somewhere where you can do background chatter that you can dip in and out of. Don't just try to recreate office meetings online, embrace the whole medium...

edmundintokyo said:

Jonathan said:

I think the government has the right approach in delaying the big measures to the last possible moment. My team have been working at home for a few days and everyone agrees they nearly had enough. Video conferencing is no substitute for human interaction.

Have you got Slack or Discord or something? You need somewhere where you can do background chatter that you can dip in and out of. Don't just try to recreate office meetings online, embrace the whole medium...

Better still, slash the number of group meetings. Most of them are a waste of time anyway.

I am a phone man, old fashioned I know, but I find calling one key person is quicker, more pleasant and leads to better things than videoconferencing.

Stuartinromford said:

brokenwheel said:

eadric said:

If the government thinks we are really "4 weeks behind Italy" we are about to find out, in the next week, if they have made the gravest error in recent British history.

If they are wrong I will never vote Tory again. I might well be dead anyway. If they are right, I honour their intellectual bravery and audacity.

This is an enormous gamble on the herd immunity theory given how little we fully understand about the virus. This strategy is an experiment, with a potential to backfire quite spectacularly.

That's where the science inevitably shades into political judgement. Arguably the optimum solution is to let the number of cases run right up to the limit of what the NHS can cope with, do the lockdown then to reduce the numbers and keep repeating until there's enough herd immunity in the population. The question is how close to health service collapse are you willing to go before applying the brakes?

Do you feel lucky?

Really, you do need to anticipate that point by a couple of weeks, or you guarantee an ICU overcrowding crisis.