politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » Swing for the moment. How the country shifted at GE2019
Comments
-
Good lord she's insane.MyBurningEars said:
Carole's take as soon as she sees Warner's name:
https://twitter.com/carolecadwalla/status/1238252717514072066
https://twitter.com/carolecadwalla/status/12382624057565839375 -
Does German really not have its own word for 'fake news'?Chameleon said:https://www.twitter.com/BMG_Bund/status/1238780849652465664
Attention fake news
It is alleged and quickly spread that the Federal Ministry of Health / the Federal Government would soon announce massive further restrictions on public life. That's not true!
Please help stop it from spreading.
Germany is with us.0 -
Yes. Or at least at risk of dying. Our positive tests percentage will be very high because testing is only on those with symptoms severe enough for them to be - and need to be - in hospital. There were "Testing Hubs" at hospitals which were used to test people who (against advice) turned up there. These have been removed as of yesterday.isam said:Aren't they just focussing on treating the only people who seem to be dying of it?
0 -
Yes.Essexit said:
If the primary goal is to save the lives of the vulnerable, is there any point in mass testing? Obviously it should be available for the elderly and those with pre-existing conditions but even drive-through testing uses finite resources.FrancisUrquhart said:
What about the drive-through testing that South Korea has implemented? We started rolling this out and then have suddenly stopped.Essexit said:
Why should we though? The best thing is for those people to stay at home. Most will recover. Sending out someone to test them diverts resources from those whose lives are in danger.SandyRentool said:
And now we have a policy of not even testing most people with symptoms.FrancisUrquhart said:1,140 coronavirus cases have now been confirmed in the UK, according to Public Health England.
42% increase day on day increase.
We are definitely now tracking Italy, Germany etc, in terms of raw numbers. I don't see how we are 3 weeks behind Italy.
If you are living at home with your elderly parents, or work in a job that requires you to (you know) go out, then getting tested once a week is a good thing. It means you potentially know about an infection before you are able to spread it to lots of people. And if you test positive, those close to you can be tested early.0 -
Of course, in the US the schools break for the summer at the beginning of June. The start of around twelve weeks of hell.RochdalePioneers said:
For our schools that's like them closing for Summer Holidays on 7th May...Alistair said:Arlene Forster says when they shut the schools down it will be for 16 weeks. Not shutting them just yet.
0 -
Carole's take as soon as she sees Dom's and Warner's names:MyBurningEars said:Interesting Wired piece from a few days ago for those who missed it.
Chief Number 10 advisor Dominic Cummings asked technology CEO and business leaders to share skills and talent with the government in order to tackle the coronavirus pandemic in a Downing Street meeting on Wednesday evening.
About 40 technology leaders attended the meeting, according to a person who was inside the room. Attendees included representatives of big technology multinationals including Google, Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft and Palantir, alongside smaller British companies such as food delivery service Deliveroo and Babylon Health, a company that provides remote medical consultations via an app.
The meeting was chaired by Cummings, and also attended by UK chief scientific advisor Patrick Vallance, and the NHS chief executive Simon Stevens. ...
According to the source, at the start of the two-hour-long meeting, Cummings outlined a series of technology needs the UK needs to address in order to confront the Covid-19 emergency. These included, for instance, avoiding overwhelming the NHS 111 medical helpline with calls, and therefore creating an alternative way for worried citizens to self-triage their symptoms via a digital app. Another key problem was the NHS’s lack of a “single source of truth” dataset – in other words the siloing and fragmentation of data across various parts of the healthcare system. ... Cummings was interested in accessing specific skills within companies, including data architecture, data science, and app development.
Their commitments would be assessed and followed up on by NHSX, a unit of the UK’s National Health Service focused on fostering digital innovation, which will now be coordinating technology responses across the whole system.
The source says that NHSX is already working with an AI company called Faculty (previously known as ASI Data Science) to build a series of tools aimed at helping decision-makers and at improving communication with the public. ... Ben Warner, the company's former commercial principal, who also did some work for the Cummings-run Vote Leave campaign, joined Number 10 in December to help the government develop digital solutions. ...
https://twitter.com/carolecadwalla/status/1238252717514072066
https://twitter.com/carolecadwalla/status/1238262405756583937
The Wired piece is indeed genuinely interesting. I can see a whole range of ways that a Cummings driven data revolution could be useful here. Also shows how totally focused on this the government rightly is.2 -
It’s probably a compound word that exceeds 240 characters....kle4 said:
Does German really not have its own word for 'fake news'?Chameleon said:https://www.twitter.com/BMG_Bund/status/1238780849652465664
Attention fake news
It is alleged and quickly spread that the Federal Ministry of Health / the Federal Government would soon announce massive further restrictions on public life. That's not true!
Please help stop it from spreading.
Germany is with us.
0 -
MyBurningEars said:
Interesting Wired piece from a few days ago for those who missed it.
Chief Number 10 advisor Dominic Cummings asked technology CEO and business leaders to share skills and talent with the government in order to tackle the coronavirus pandemic in a Downing Street meeting on Wednesday evening.
About 40 technology leaders attended the meeting, according to a person who was inside the room. Attendees included representatives of big technology multinationals including Google, Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft and Palantir, alongside smaller British companies such as food delivery service Deliveroo and Babylon Health, a company that provides remote medical consultations via an app.
The meeting was chaired by Cummings, and also attended by UK chief scientific advisor Patrick Vallance, and the NHS chief executive Simon Stevens. ...
According to the source, at the start of the two-hour-long meeting, Cummings outlined a series of technology needs the UK needs to address in order to confront the Covid-19 emergency. These included, for instance, avoiding overwhelming the NHS 111 medical helpline with calls, and therefore creating an alternative way for worried citizens to self-triage their symptoms via a digital app. Another key problem was the NHS’s lack of a “single source of truth” dataset – in other words the siloing and fragmentation of data across various parts of the healthcare system. ... Cummings was interested in accessing specific skills within companies, including data architecture, data science, and app development.
Their commitments would be assessed and followed up on by NHSX, a unit of the UK’s National Health Service focused on fostering digital innovation, which will now be coordinating technology responses across the whole system.
The source says that NHSX is already working with an AI company called Faculty (previously known as ASI Data Science) to build a series of tools aimed at helping decision-makers and at improving communication with the public. ... Ben Warner, the company's former commercial principal, who also did some work for the Cummings-run Vote Leave campaign, joined Number 10 in December to help the government develop digital solutions. ...
She really isn't helping.
Carole's take as soon as she sees Dom's and Warner's names:
https://twitter.com/carolecadwalla/status/1238252717514072066
https://twitter.com/carolecadwalla/status/1238262405756583937
0 -
gefälschtenachrichtenkle4 said:
Does German really not have its own word for 'fake news'?Chameleon said:https://www.twitter.com/BMG_Bund/status/1238780849652465664
Attention fake news
It is alleged and quickly spread that the Federal Ministry of Health / the Federal Government would soon announce massive further restrictions on public life. That's not true!
Please help stop it from spreading.
Germany is with us.0 -
I maintain that it was a minor problem for them that they ended up with 203 seats rather tham, say, 199. While the difference is trivial there's the psycological effect of it, and while most Labour figures of sense know it was bad, and will even admit it was bad hopefully, I don't know that they accept how bad it was. It will be very interesting to see how Starmer does to see if that is so.DavidL said:The diminished strength of the Tories in the south made their vote vastly more efficient and gave them their comfortable majority. Of course it also means that they are much more vulnerable to swings against them with far fewer absolutely safe seats.
Alastair’s excellent analysis demonstrates once again that if anything the extent of Labour’s disaster has been understated.1 -
I dunno about the fewer safe seats. On a UNS (stop laughing at the back) a swing of 3% is required just to deprive them of a majority. That’s a pretty hefty swing by historic standards. It would be comparable to 1964 and smaller than 1979, 1970, 1997 or 2010.DavidL said:The diminished strength of the Tories in the south made their vote vastly more efficient and gave them their comfortable majority. Of course it also means that they are much more vulnerable to swings against them with far fewer absolutely safe seats.
Alastair’s excellent analysis demonstrates once again that if anything the extent of Labour’s disaster has been understated.0 -
The problem with all the "quick tests" seems to be the reliability factor. If a test gives 98% correct results, you can just about live with the outliers. At 68% not so much.FrancisUrquhart said:
The test kit they demo didn't require a lab. It was processed then and there and result in 10 mins. Was simply prick of blood, inserted into kit and then wait 10 mins.matthiasfromhamburg said:
I think the problem is not so much the test kits, the bottleneck seems to be the lab capacity to process the test samples.FrancisUrquhart said:
There are now 14 companies about to offer tests. I believe the problem with all of them is you have to be 2-3 days into showing symptoms for it to test positive and nowhere near as accurate as the gold standard test.rottenborough said:
There's a company in Derbyshire who have a home test kit that can be posted. Finger prick of blood placed into the little device: looks like a pregnancy tester.Malmesbury said:
We are moving to a policy of testing people in hospital - who will most definitely have symptoms.SandyRentool said:
And now we have a policy of not even testing most people with symptoms.FrancisUrquhart said:1,140 coronavirus cases have now been confirmed in the UK, according to Public Health England.
42% increase day on day increase.
We are definitely now tracking Italy, Germany etc, in terms of raw numbers. I don't see how we are 3 weeks behind Italy.
Testing people who are home, ill, would mean one of
1) asking them to travel to a testing location.
2) sending people to their home to test them.
3) asking people to draw blood by themselves and post it?
Company told local news that NHS aren't interested.
They are being rolled out to pharmacy staff next week, to provide them with instant testing abilities and then potentially available to the wider public.0 -
GoebbelsRedde?kle4 said:
Does German really not have its own word for 'fake news'?Chameleon said:https://www.twitter.com/BMG_Bund/status/1238780849652465664
Attention fake news
It is alleged and quickly spread that the Federal Ministry of Health / the Federal Government would soon announce massive further restrictions on public life. That's not true!
Please help stop it from spreading.
Germany is with us.0 -
Underpinning her comment seems to be an assumption that how dare Khan possibly trust Johnson, which is pretty strange even though they are not political allies. And a assumption Khan must justify trusting Johnson if he does by sharing what may presumably be sensitive information.RobD said:
Good lord she's insane.MyBurningEars said:
Carole's take as soon as she sees Warner's name:
https://twitter.com/carolecadwalla/status/1238252717514072066
https://twitter.com/carolecadwalla/status/12382624057565839371 -
From the governments viewpoint, investing in further widespread testing doesn’t make much sense. They actively want the infection to spread, yet publishing ever rising numbers will simply have the opposite to reassurance for the person in the street. They will be able to judge, and project forward, the demand on health services from the cases pitching up on its doorstep. Meanwhile, given our strategy, large scale testing would simply be a potential distraction.rcs1000 said:
Yes.Essexit said:
If the primary goal is to save the lives of the vulnerable, is there any point in mass testing? Obviously it should be available for the elderly and those with pre-existing conditions but even drive-through testing uses finite resources.FrancisUrquhart said:
What about the drive-through testing that South Korea has implemented? We started rolling this out and then have suddenly stopped.Essexit said:
Why should we though? The best thing is for those people to stay at home. Most will recover. Sending out someone to test them diverts resources from those whose lives are in danger.SandyRentool said:
And now we have a policy of not even testing most people with symptoms.FrancisUrquhart said:1,140 coronavirus cases have now been confirmed in the UK, according to Public Health England.
42% increase day on day increase.
We are definitely now tracking Italy, Germany etc, in terms of raw numbers. I don't see how we are 3 weeks behind Italy.
If you are living at home with your elderly parents, or work in a job that requires you to (you know) go out, then getting tested once a week is a good thing. It means you potentially know about an infection before you are able to spread it to lots of people. And if you test positive, those close to you can be tested early.0 -
The projected peak of the epidemic is late May/early June. Might it be the case that, even if the Government has to relent and close the schools over this period, the examinations might be rescheduled for July?ydoethur said:
Only six A-levels still have coursework. What about the others?Time_to_Leave said:They might end up giving out a-levels based on coursework, teacher views, and mock exams I guess. If the exam boards take the decision it makes life easier for Unis, and there are precedents for awarding in that way for sick kids etc.
Mocks are a very poor substitute - it’s not as though all schools even do them any more.
If grades can be awarded by early August then university places can still be allocated for September. It'll be a tight call and total pandaemonium but we are in an emergency situation here.
Of course, if the exams can't be held at all and mocks and coursework aren't available then the students will have to be awarded grades based entirely on the teachers' predictions. In extremis, year 13 has to be emptied and the first year intake of the universities filled, regardless of how unsatisfactory the means used to allocate the students to the places.0 -
I can think of several, but they all relate to the Nazis and are politically sensitive.kle4 said:
Does German really not have its own word for 'fake news'?Chameleon said:https://www.twitter.com/BMG_Bund/status/1238780849652465664
Attention fake news
It is alleged and quickly spread that the Federal Ministry of Health / the Federal Government would soon announce massive further restrictions on public life. That's not true!
Please help stop it from spreading.
Germany is with us.0 -
"Falschmeldung" would be the most commonly used one, but "fake news" has made it into virtually any dictionary. Sign of the times.kle4 said:
Does German really not have its own word for 'fake news'?Chameleon said:https://www.twitter.com/BMG_Bund/status/1238780849652465664
Attention fake news
It is alleged and quickly spread that the Federal Ministry of Health / the Federal Government would soon announce massive further restrictions on public life. That's not true!
Please help stop it from spreading.
Germany is with us.0 -
Good afternoon, everyone.
Mr. kle4, German often adopts English directly (as per Job). I very occasionally play or watch videogames auf Deutsch and caught a snippet of a German gamer who was talking in her native language and then certain videogame terms, in English, slipped in. Bit like listening to Welsh radio and a name or English word popping up.0 -
On Tuesday we see Florida, Ohio, Illinois and Arizona vote. That will pretty much seal Sanders fate.rottenborough said:https://twitter.com/JohnRentoul/status/1238835287842787330
Some good news at last.0 -
Even 98% when done at mass scale is a bit problematic.matthiasfromhamburg said:
The problem with all the "quick tests" seems to be the reliability factor. If a test gives 98% correct results, you can just about live with the outliers. At 68% not so much.FrancisUrquhart said:
The test kit they demo didn't require a lab. It was processed then and there and result in 10 mins. Was simply prick of blood, inserted into kit and then wait 10 mins.matthiasfromhamburg said:
I think the problem is not so much the test kits, the bottleneck seems to be the lab capacity to process the test samples.FrancisUrquhart said:
There are now 14 companies about to offer tests. I believe the problem with all of them is you have to be 2-3 days into showing symptoms for it to test positive and nowhere near as accurate as the gold standard test.rottenborough said:
There's a company in Derbyshire who have a home test kit that can be posted. Finger prick of blood placed into the little device: looks like a pregnancy tester.Malmesbury said:
We are moving to a policy of testing people in hospital - who will most definitely have symptoms.SandyRentool said:
And now we have a policy of not even testing most people with symptoms.FrancisUrquhart said:1,140 coronavirus cases have now been confirmed in the UK, according to Public Health England.
42% increase day on day increase.
We are definitely now tracking Italy, Germany etc, in terms of raw numbers. I don't see how we are 3 weeks behind Italy.
Testing people who are home, ill, would mean one of
1) asking them to travel to a testing location.
2) sending people to their home to test them.
3) asking people to draw blood by themselves and post it?
Company told local news that NHS aren't interested.
They are being rolled out to pharmacy staff next week, to provide them with instant testing abilities and then potentially available to the wider public.0 -
Finding markers might be a problem.Black_Rook said:
The projected peak of the epidemic is late May/early June. Might it be the case that, even if the Government has to relent and close the schools over this period, the examinations might be rescheduled for July?ydoethur said:
Only six A-levels still have coursework. What about the others?Time_to_Leave said:They might end up giving out a-levels based on coursework, teacher views, and mock exams I guess. If the exam boards take the decision it makes life easier for Unis, and there are precedents for awarding in that way for sick kids etc.
Mocks are a very poor substitute - it’s not as though all schools even do them any more.
If grades can be awarded by early August then university places can still be allocated for September. It'll be a tight call and total pandaemonium but we are in an emergency situation here.
Of course, if the exams can't be held at all and mocks and coursework aren't available then the students will have to be awarded grades based entirely on the teachers' predictions. In extremis, year 13 has to be emptied and the first year intake of the universities filled, regardless of how unsatisfactory the means used to allocate the students to the places.
But then, equally, it might be easier. It’s bloody hard work to mark on top of a full teaching load. In the summer holidays would be more straightforward.
ETA - I suppose one blessing of stupid universities making fecking unconditional offers is that this will not necessarily be as much of a problem as it was before Gove buggered up admissions.0 -
Then we may as well just give up announcing the number of new cases because the numbers are pure fiction. They have already told us a couple of days ago that there were at least 10,000 cases when only a few hundred were confirmed. Is it just a PR exercise to make us believe er=we don't have too many cases?Essexit said:
Why should we though? The best thing is for those people to stay at home. Most will recover. Sending out someone to test them diverts resources from those whose lives are in danger.SandyRentool said:
And now we have a policy of not even testing most people with symptoms.FrancisUrquhart said:1,140 coronavirus cases have now been confirmed in the UK, according to Public Health England.
42% increase day on day increase.
We are definitely now tracking Italy, Germany etc, in terms of raw numbers. I don't see how we are 3 weeks behind Italy.0 -
The statistic to watch would be number of beds available in the NHS, if that is available and updated periodically.OllyT said:
Then we may as well just give up announcing the number of new cases because the numbers are pure fiction. They have already told us a couple of days ago that there were at least 10,000 cases when only a few hundred were confirmed. Is it just a PR exercise to make us believe er=we don't have too many cases?Essexit said:
Why should we though? The best thing is for those people to stay at home. Most will recover. Sending out someone to test them diverts resources from those whose lives are in danger.SandyRentool said:
And now we have a policy of not even testing most people with symptoms.FrancisUrquhart said:1,140 coronavirus cases have now been confirmed in the UK, according to Public Health England.
42% increase day on day increase.
We are definitely now tracking Italy, Germany etc, in terms of raw numbers. I don't see how we are 3 weeks behind Italy.0 -
He's still available at 30/1 nowrcs1000 said:
On Tuesday we see Florida, Ohio, Illinois and Arizona vote. That will pretty much seal Sanders fate.rottenborough said:https://twitter.com/JohnRentoul/status/1238835287842787330
Some good news at last.0 -
I recall learning from Borgen (or possible it was The Killing, I forget), that in Denmark they would for example use '15 minutes of fame' rather than whatever the danish example would be.Morris_Dancer said:Good afternoon, everyone.
Mr. kle4, German often adopts English directly (as per Job). I very occasionally play or watch videogames auf Deutsch and caught a snippet of a German gamer who was talking in her native language and then certain videogame terms, in English, slipped in. Bit like listening to Welsh radio and a name or English word popping up.
All languages do it, I'm sure, it just seems so arbitrary which break through.0 -
The simplest answer is always the easiest. They haven’t stopped publishing the figures because folk would cry “cover up” but the CMO has been clear that we already think there are north of 10,000 cases.OllyT said:
Then we may as well just give up announcing the number of new cases because the numbers are pure fiction. They have already told us a couple of days ago that there were at least 10,000 cases when only a few hundred were confirmed. Is it just a PR exercise to make us believe er=we don't have too many cases?Essexit said:
Why should we though? The best thing is for those people to stay at home. Most will recover. Sending out someone to test them diverts resources from those whose lives are in danger.SandyRentool said:
And now we have a policy of not even testing most people with symptoms.FrancisUrquhart said:1,140 coronavirus cases have now been confirmed in the UK, according to Public Health England.
42% increase day on day increase.
We are definitely now tracking Italy, Germany etc, in terms of raw numbers. I don't see how we are 3 weeks behind Italy.
0 -
-
Just remembered: today's Bog Roll Watch. The other Mr Rook was in town this morning, none available anywhere (Tesco Express, Morrisons or Savers.) Also, a notice on the door of Savers to the effect that they've already had to call out the local constabulary twice to break up fights between irate customers, and will not hesitate to do so again.
If the supply of Andrex isn't normalized again by the end of the week I fear that anarchy may ensue. And I say that only half-jokingly.0 -
They aren't hiding the fact. It isn't exactly good PR to tell the public by the way its actually probably 10,000+ and rising quickly, they could easily have not said anything. They should be commended for being honest.OllyT said:
Then we may as well just give up announcing the number of new cases because the numbers are pure fiction. They have already told us a couple of days ago that there were at least 10,000 cases when only a few hundred were confirmed. Is it just a PR exercise to make us believe er=we don't have too many cases?Essexit said:
Why should we though? The best thing is for those people to stay at home. Most will recover. Sending out someone to test them diverts resources from those whose lives are in danger.SandyRentool said:
And now we have a policy of not even testing most people with symptoms.FrancisUrquhart said:1,140 coronavirus cases have now been confirmed in the UK, according to Public Health England.
42% increase day on day increase.
We are definitely now tracking Italy, Germany etc, in terms of raw numbers. I don't see how we are 3 weeks behind Italy.1 -
That's certainly possible. But the most likely scenario is that the Italian and Greek and Spanish governments are able to borrow and spend without limit because the ECB backstops their debt issuances.Black_Rook said:
I've been trying not to talk too much about anything related to Brexit. However, for what it's worth there's a decent chance that this crisis will destroy the EU. It's going to severely distress all of the member state economies, but Italy and Spain are now holed below the water line and poor bloody Greece has had its chips. The flaws in the structure of the Eurozone have never been corrected; the creditor states and their electorates have neither sufficient money nor the necessary willpower to bail their neighbours; the chief creditor is, in any event, in a state of political paralysis and led by a lame duck; and neither the almighty refugee crisis nor the arguments about creeping authoritarianism in key central European states have gone away. The edifice is well ablaze, and even if the firefighters had the will to tackle it they've got no engine, no hoses and no hydrants. Just a bucket with a hole in the bottom.Time_to_Leave said:
So if we do eventually end up in the EEA, it’ll be Cnut’s kingdoms reborn.Black_Rook said:
And here's another: the English result doesn't conform as much to either the traditional post-War electoral picture or to the conventional North/South divide as it does to the political dispensation under Alfred the Great.Time_to_Leave said:Interesting. The next non-Tory majority Gvt might have a spread of seats we used to associate with the Tories. That concept makes my head hurt.
Aside from the odd outlier (notably the pale of Cambridge,) the new Toryland bears more than a passing resemblance to the Danelaw.
Never mind the fact that this all-devouring Coronavirus monster leaves little time to think about the new trading relationship. There might be no entity with which to negotiate such a thing anyway.
(See the fact that Italian 10 year government bonds yield less than 1%.)
At the end of all of this, the debt that the ECB (and the JCB and the BOE and even the Federal Reserve) has accumulated will be quietly forgiven. (Or rolled over into perpetuity, which is to all intents and purposes the same thing.)2 -
Well that seems like a reasoned view taken on merit and not political hatred.tlg86 said:4 -
Is Sinn Fein upset that coronavirus is making the IRA look like amateurs?tlg86 said:
2 -
I'd dispute its not good PR. It seems an attempt to remind people it will get worse before it gets better, and so hopefully people won't panic as case numbers increase markedly. If it sinks in then when the numbers are in thousands people will of course remain concerned, as they should be, but won't think it the end of the world because they were already told that was the likely situation.FrancisUrquhart said:
They aren't hiding the fact. It isn't exactly good PR to tell the public by the way its actually probably 10,000+ and rising quickly, they could easily have not said anything. They should be commended for being honest.OllyT said:
Then we may as well just give up announcing the number of new cases because the numbers are pure fiction. They have already told us a couple of days ago that there were at least 10,000 cases when only a few hundred were confirmed. Is it just a PR exercise to make us believe er=we don't have too many cases?Essexit said:
Why should we though? The best thing is for those people to stay at home. Most will recover. Sending out someone to test them diverts resources from those whose lives are in danger.SandyRentool said:
And now we have a policy of not even testing most people with symptoms.FrancisUrquhart said:1,140 coronavirus cases have now been confirmed in the UK, according to Public Health England.
42% increase day on day increase.
We are definitely now tracking Italy, Germany etc, in terms of raw numbers. I don't see how we are 3 weeks behind Italy.0 -
I wonder if the behavioural insight team successfully modelled it would be bog roll that people went mental over, rather than feeding yourself for 3 months, having drugs to manage flu like symptoms or perhaps not going to locations where you were most likely to catch it.Black_Rook said:Just remembered: today's Bog Roll Watch. The other Mr Rook was in town this morning, none available anywhere (Tesco Express, Morrisons or Savers.) Also, a notice on the door of Savers to the effect that they've already had to call out the local constabulary twice to break up fights between irate customers, and will not hesitate to do so again.
If the supply of Andrex isn't normalized again by the end of the week I fear that anarchy may ensue. And I say that only half-jokingly.0 -
There are some nutters on Twitter.
"The Tories are evil. They deliberately want people to die. Especially those most affected by disease. Who are the elderly. Who vote Conservative."
....
We can only hope that it remains true that, as David Cameron once said, Twitter isn't Britain.1 -
When I worked in fund management, the only way to make sensible decisions was to take your own theory and try and poke holes in it. What you must never, never do is try and find evidence that supports it.kle4 said:
She seems to have tremendous tenacity which no doubt helps in many investigative matters, but she also seems like she jumps to conclusions very very quickly.MyBurningEars said:
Pasted as text because of her habit of deleting tweets (without acknowledgement or apology) once she's realised that they're totally insupportable. The thread beneath was a mixture of people explaining this is BoJo's strategy to wipe out the elderly, Dom's strategy to unleash a wave of eugenics, or just what everyone else's GP was doing too because...
https://twitter.com/catherine5news/status/1238808367512129537
Carol is at the extreme other end of the spectrum. She has a theory. She ignores anything that contradicts it and seeks out only supporting evidence.3 -
What I want to know is if you aren't eating anything, what are you going to be wiping?FrancisUrquhart said:
I wonder if the behavioural insight team successfully modelled it would be bog roll that people went mental over, rather than feeding yourself for 3 months, having drugs to manage flu like symptoms or perhaps not going to locations where you were most likely to catch it.Black_Rook said:Just remembered: today's Bog Roll Watch. The other Mr Rook was in town this morning, none available anywhere (Tesco Express, Morrisons or Savers.) Also, a notice on the door of Savers to the effect that they've already had to call out the local constabulary twice to break up fights between irate customers, and will not hesitate to do so again.
If the supply of Andrex isn't normalized again by the end of the week I fear that anarchy may ensue. And I say that only half-jokingly.
1 -
It doesn't even make logical sense. Why would they kill off their supposed client vote?Morris_Dancer said:There are some nutters on Twitter.
"The Tories are evil. They deliberately want people to die. Especially those most affected by disease. Who are the elderly. Who vote Conservative."
....
We can only hope that it remains true that, as David Cameron once said, Twitter isn't Britain.2 -
From interviews, maybe?RochdalePioneers said:
My eldest is weeks away from his A-Levels. University place secured requiring grades that won't get sat. I assume universities will need to replenish their student numbers in September regardless so will they all offer based on predicted grades...?JM1 said:
I think that, most likely, we break up a week before Easter and then there is no Easter term (i.e., schools shut for April, May, June, July and back for the new school year). How childcare arrangements work is going to be a challenge, but we will likely move to this more lockdown like phase in a week or so I think.RochdalePioneers said:
For our schools that's like them closing for Summer Holidays on 7th May...Alistair said:Arlene Forster says when they shut the schools down it will be for 16 weeks. Not shutting them just yet.
0 -
Its just mad. When I prepped my parents, yes we got some toilet rolls, hand wash etc, but the real focus was on getting two freezers worth of frozen fruit, veg and meat.RobD said:
What I want to know is if you aren't eating anything, what are you going to be wiping?FrancisUrquhart said:
I wonder if the behavioural insight team successfully modelled it would be bog roll that people went mental over, rather than feeding yourself for 3 months, having drugs to manage flu like symptoms or perhaps not going to locations where you were most likely to catch it.Black_Rook said:Just remembered: today's Bog Roll Watch. The other Mr Rook was in town this morning, none available anywhere (Tesco Express, Morrisons or Savers.) Also, a notice on the door of Savers to the effect that they've already had to call out the local constabulary twice to break up fights between irate customers, and will not hesitate to do so again.
If the supply of Andrex isn't normalized again by the end of the week I fear that anarchy may ensue. And I say that only half-jokingly.0 -
The problems will not be confined to Greece, Spain and Italy only. Even the countries that have built up some reserves will be forced to go that way, let alone UK and US.rcs1000 said:
That's certainly possible. But the most likely scenario is that the Italian and Greek and Spanish governments are able to borrow and spend without limit because the ECB backstops their debt issuances.Black_Rook said:
I've been trying not to talk too much about anything related to Brexit. However, for what it's worth there's a decent chance that this crisis will destroy the EU. It's going to severely distress all of the member state economies, but Italy and Spain are now holed below the water line and poor bloody Greece has had its chips. The flaws in the structure of the Eurozone have never been corrected; the creditor states and their electorates have neither sufficient money nor the necessary willpower to bail their neighbours; the chief creditor is, in any event, in a state of political paralysis and led by a lame duck; and neither the almighty refugee crisis nor the arguments about creeping authoritarianism in key central European states have gone away. The edifice is well ablaze, and even if the firefighters had the will to tackle it they've got no engine, no hoses and no hydrants. Just a bucket with a hole in the bottom.Time_to_Leave said:
So if we do eventually end up in the EEA, it’ll be Cnut’s kingdoms reborn.Black_Rook said:
And here's another: the English result doesn't conform as much to either the traditional post-War electoral picture or to the conventional North/South divide as it does to the political dispensation under Alfred the Great.Time_to_Leave said:Interesting. The next non-Tory majority Gvt might have a spread of seats we used to associate with the Tories. That concept makes my head hurt.
Aside from the odd outlier (notably the pale of Cambridge,) the new Toryland bears more than a passing resemblance to the Danelaw.
Never mind the fact that this all-devouring Coronavirus monster leaves little time to think about the new trading relationship. There might be no entity with which to negotiate such a thing anyway.
(See the fact that Italian 10 year government bonds yield less than 1%.)
At the end of all of this, the debt that the ECB (and the JCB and the BOE and even the Federal Reserve) has accumulated will be quietly forgiven. (Or rolled over into perpetuity, which is to all intents and purposes the same thing.)0 -
By Skype, one presumes?ukpaul said:
From interviews, maybe?RochdalePioneers said:My eldest is weeks away from his A-Levels. University place secured requiring grades that won't get sat. I assume universities will need to replenish their student numbers in September regardless so will they all offer based on predicted grades...?
0 -
Or perhaps this crisis will demonstrate the inadequacy of the nation state in tackling global issues and thus reinforce the value of the EU.Black_Rook said:I've been trying not to talk too much about anything related to Brexit. However, for what it's worth there's a decent chance that this crisis will destroy the EU. It's going to severely distress all of the member state economies, but Italy and Spain are now holed below the water line and poor bloody Greece has had its chips. The flaws in the structure of the Eurozone have never been corrected; the creditor states and their electorates have neither sufficient money nor the necessary willpower to bail their neighbours; the chief creditor is, in any event, in a state of political paralysis and led by a lame duck; and neither the almighty refugee crisis nor the arguments about creeping authoritarianism in key central European states have gone away. The edifice is well ablaze, and even if the firefighters had the will to tackle it they've got no engine, no hoses and no hydrants. Just a bucket with a hole in the bottom.
Never mind the fact that this all-devouring Coronavirus monster leaves little time to think about the new trading relationship. There might be no entity with which to negotiate such a thing anyway.0 -
It's not really the supply that needs normalising, it's the demand.Black_Rook said:Just remembered: today's Bog Roll Watch. The other Mr Rook was in town this morning, none available anywhere (Tesco Express, Morrisons or Savers.) Also, a notice on the door of Savers to the effect that they've already had to call out the local constabulary twice to break up fights between irate customers, and will not hesitate to do so again.
If the supply of Andrex isn't normalized again by the end of the week I fear that anarchy may ensue. And I say that only half-jokingly.1 -
Now they voted Brexit and got them a majority they don't need them, or something equally bonkers.RobD said:
It doesn't even make logical sense. Why would they kill off their supposed client vote?Morris_Dancer said:There are some nutters on Twitter.
"The Tories are evil. They deliberately want people to die. Especially those most affected by disease. Who are the elderly. Who vote Conservative."
....
We can only hope that it remains true that, as David Cameron once said, Twitter isn't Britain.0 -
I think my parents are set. Whenever I go home there are always cupboards stocked to the brim with tinned food and other non-perishables, and a chest freezer full of the frozen stuff. I think they took protect and survive to heart.FrancisUrquhart said:
Its just mad. When I prepped my parents, yes we got toilet rolls, hand wash etc, but the real focus was on getting two freezers worth of frozen fruit, veg and meat.RobD said:
What I want to know is if you aren't eating anything, what are you going to be wiping?FrancisUrquhart said:
I wonder if the behavioural insight team successfully modelled it would be bog roll that people went mental over, rather than feeding yourself for 3 months, having drugs to manage flu like symptoms or perhaps not going to locations where you were most likely to catch it.Black_Rook said:Just remembered: today's Bog Roll Watch. The other Mr Rook was in town this morning, none available anywhere (Tesco Express, Morrisons or Savers.) Also, a notice on the door of Savers to the effect that they've already had to call out the local constabulary twice to break up fights between irate customers, and will not hesitate to do so again.
If the supply of Andrex isn't normalized again by the end of the week I fear that anarchy may ensue. And I say that only half-jokingly.0 -
Have they actually done anything other than give member states their own money back?kinabalu said:
Or perhaps this crisis will demonstrate the inadequacy of the nation state in tackling global issues and thus reinforce the value of the EU.Black_Rook said:I've been trying not to talk too much about anything related to Brexit. However, for what it's worth there's a decent chance that this crisis will destroy the EU. It's going to severely distress all of the member state economies, but Italy and Spain are now holed below the water line and poor bloody Greece has had its chips. The flaws in the structure of the Eurozone have never been corrected; the creditor states and their electorates have neither sufficient money nor the necessary willpower to bail their neighbours; the chief creditor is, in any event, in a state of political paralysis and led by a lame duck; and neither the almighty refugee crisis nor the arguments about creeping authoritarianism in key central European states have gone away. The edifice is well ablaze, and even if the firefighters had the will to tackle it they've got no engine, no hoses and no hydrants. Just a bucket with a hole in the bottom.
Never mind the fact that this all-devouring Coronavirus monster leaves little time to think about the new trading relationship. There might be no entity with which to negotiate such a thing anyway.0 -
This is a betting site. What are the odds that bog roll availability will revert to normal within 10 days?Black_Rook said:Just remembered: today's Bog Roll Watch. The other Mr Rook was in town this morning, none available anywhere (Tesco Express, Morrisons or Savers.) Also, a notice on the door of Savers to the effect that they've already had to call out the local constabulary twice to break up fights between irate customers, and will not hesitate to do so again.
If the supply of Andrex isn't normalized again by the end of the week I fear that anarchy may ensue. And I say that only half-jokingly.0 -
That will be sorted when we run out of food.Luckyguy1983 said:
It's not really the supply that needs normalising, it's the demand.Black_Rook said:Just remembered: today's Bog Roll Watch. The other Mr Rook was in town this morning, none available anywhere (Tesco Express, Morrisons or Savers.) Also, a notice on the door of Savers to the effect that they've already had to call out the local constabulary twice to break up fights between irate customers, and will not hesitate to do so again.
If the supply of Andrex isn't normalized again by the end of the week I fear that anarchy may ensue. And I say that only half-jokingly.0 -
Id say it will be available in more supermarkets than not. Probably not back to normal but improving. Back to normal 7/4, Completely unavailable 3/1TimT said:
This is a betting site. What are the odds that bog roll availability will revert to normal within 10 days?Black_Rook said:Just remembered: today's Bog Roll Watch. The other Mr Rook was in town this morning, none available anywhere (Tesco Express, Morrisons or Savers.) Also, a notice on the door of Savers to the effect that they've already had to call out the local constabulary twice to break up fights between irate customers, and will not hesitate to do so again.
If the supply of Andrex isn't normalized again by the end of the week I fear that anarchy may ensue. And I say that only half-jokingly.0 -
The Fortnite servers are going to get one hell of a bashing.CarlottaVance said:twitter.com/lisaocarroll/status/1238849081386119170?s=20
0 -
So, if everything shuts down for months lots of companies will go bankrupt. Will governments just print money again (Quantitative Easing) and end up owning everything from steel plant to cruise lines?rcs1000 said:
That's certainly possible. But the most likely scenario is that the Italian and Greek and Spanish governments are able to borrow and spend without limit because the ECB backstops their debt issuances.Black_Rook said:
I've been trying not to talk too much about anything related to Brexit. However, for what it's worth there's a decent chance that this crisis will destroy the EU. It's going to severely distress all of the member state economies, but Italy and Spain are now holed below the water line and poor bloody Greece has had its chips. The flaws in the structure of the Eurozone have never been corrected; the creditor states and their electorates have neither sufficient money nor the necessary willpower to bail their neighbours; the chief creditor is, in any event, in a state of political paralysis and led by a lame duck; and neither the almighty refugee crisis nor the arguments about creeping authoritarianism in key central European states have gone away. The edifice is well ablaze, and even if the firefighters had the will to tackle it they've got no engine, no hoses and no hydrants. Just a bucket with a hole in the bottom.Time_to_Leave said:
So if we do eventually end up in the EEA, it’ll be Cnut’s kingdoms reborn.Black_Rook said:
And here's another: the English result doesn't conform as much to either the traditional post-War electoral picture or to the conventional North/South divide as it does to the political dispensation under Alfred the Great.Time_to_Leave said:Interesting. The next non-Tory majority Gvt might have a spread of seats we used to associate with the Tories. That concept makes my head hurt.
Aside from the odd outlier (notably the pale of Cambridge,) the new Toryland bears more than a passing resemblance to the Danelaw.
Never mind the fact that this all-devouring Coronavirus monster leaves little time to think about the new trading relationship. There might be no entity with which to negotiate such a thing anyway.
(See the fact that Italian 10 year government bonds yield less than 1%.)
At the end of all of this, the debt that the ECB (and the JCB and the BOE and even the Federal Reserve) has accumulated will be quietly forgiven. (Or rolled over into perpetuity, which is to all intents and purposes the same thing.)
So, Boris does Corbyn's job and Trump does Sanders?0 -
Obviously I am anti-EU but I don't think this crisis has so far shown the EU in their finest clothes. Certainly Lagarde has been very poor as head of the ECB and they were slow to deal with issues such as flight slots. So far all the heavy lifting has been done by the nation states.kinabalu said:
Or perhaps this crisis will demonstrate the inadequacy of the nation state in tackling global issues and thus reinforce the value of the EU.Black_Rook said:I've been trying not to talk too much about anything related to Brexit. However, for what it's worth there's a decent chance that this crisis will destroy the EU. It's going to severely distress all of the member state economies, but Italy and Spain are now holed below the water line and poor bloody Greece has had its chips. The flaws in the structure of the Eurozone have never been corrected; the creditor states and their electorates have neither sufficient money nor the necessary willpower to bail their neighbours; the chief creditor is, in any event, in a state of political paralysis and led by a lame duck; and neither the almighty refugee crisis nor the arguments about creeping authoritarianism in key central European states have gone away. The edifice is well ablaze, and even if the firefighters had the will to tackle it they've got no engine, no hoses and no hydrants. Just a bucket with a hole in the bottom.
Never mind the fact that this all-devouring Coronavirus monster leaves little time to think about the new trading relationship. There might be no entity with which to negotiate such a thing anyway.2 -
I agree, I dont think it was the cab driver making all this up either.eadric said:Just had a fairly terrifying black cab ride across London (I'm now taking black cabs because they are bigger and there is a divide between you and the driver - better than Uber (one of a trillion unexpected ramifications of the Virus))
The driver was a very smart Albanian guy, late 30s, who previously lived in Milan for 18 years, where he was a semi pro football player. All we did - he and me - was talk corona, it is all that anyone talks about, now.
He had a few startling anecdotes.
1. He said it is bollocks that only old people get really ill and die. He said in his old football academy in Milan he knew four people with corona, one of which had died, and two were still very ill. They are/were in thei r30s like him. Super fit athletic types. Quite a few young people get this as well and sometimes they get it very very bad. And even die.
No kids tho, thank fuck.
2. He described the experience of a cousin in a small town. Let's call him X. This guy X is early 40s, unmarried, was living with his two elderly parents. First X's dad got coronavirus, badly, and when the ambulance drivers came and saw how bad X's dad was, they said to X: Say goodbye now, he'd not going to survive, he won't even be treated.
So they took X's dad away and sure enough he died three days later.
Then X's mum got ill, and the exact same thing happened: the medics came and shook their heads and said Say goodbye now, she's going, you won't see her again. So X - this time emotionally prepared - told the locals to come round and wave through the window to his mum, because she was about to go to hospital and she wasn't coming back. The neighbourhood came and waved goodbye.
A few days later X's mum died.
X then rang and asked about the bodies and he was told "Your mum and dad and have been taking to Special Crematorium XP4 (or whatever) they where have been burned with many other bodies. We cannot bury people as the virus lives on in corpses."
Now, the cab driver might have been making all this up. I do not believe he was.3 -
And that will normalize as soon as everyone feels they have sufficient inventory to cushion any shortfalls in supply. This really should be a quantity sufficient for the quarantine period of 14 days (as the ability to shop is the only logical thing that might interrupt supply to the customer's home), as supply already meets actual usage.Luckyguy1983 said:
It's not really the supply that needs normalising, it's the demand.Black_Rook said:Just remembered: today's Bog Roll Watch. The other Mr Rook was in town this morning, none available anywhere (Tesco Express, Morrisons or Savers.) Also, a notice on the door of Savers to the effect that they've already had to call out the local constabulary twice to break up fights between irate customers, and will not hesitate to do so again.
If the supply of Andrex isn't normalized again by the end of the week I fear that anarchy may ensue. And I say that only half-jokingly.0 -
Based on my experience of the cleared spaces in the big Tesco on Friday night, the hoarders appear to regard the necessities of survival as being, in descending order:FrancisUrquhart said:
I wonder if the behavioural insight team successfully modelled it would be bog roll that people went mental over, rather than feeding yourself for 3 months, having drugs to manage flu like symptoms or perhaps not going to locations where you were most likely to catch it.Black_Rook said:Just remembered: today's Bog Roll Watch. The other Mr Rook was in town this morning, none available anywhere (Tesco Express, Morrisons or Savers.) Also, a notice on the door of Savers to the effect that they've already had to call out the local constabulary twice to break up fights between irate customers, and will not hesitate to do so again.
If the supply of Andrex isn't normalized again by the end of the week I fear that anarchy may ensue. And I say that only half-jokingly.
1. Andrex
2. Kleenex
3. Pasta
4. Flour (yes, I don't understand that one either)
5. Canned fish
Admittedly I wasn't going around the whole shop doing a survey, so I don't know for example if all the paracetamol had been cleared out (although it certainly was earlier in the week,) but that was the general pattern.
There was also heavy depletion of baked beans, tinned tomatoes and washing up liquid, but stocks of fresh and frozen food didn't look too threadbare given that this was after the post-work rush on a Friday evening.0 -
If I were still in the fund management business, I think I might want to bet on a sharp rise in inflation.
Supply chains are being disrupted. People are trying to stockpile goods. And governments are printing money.
That's pretty much the classic monetarist definition of inflation: "too much much money chasing too few goods".
Five year TIPS (in the US) still have positive real yields. I don't think they will for long. Borrowing fixed rate and in investing in inflation linked securities could well be an awesome trade.6 -
That would be fine if people weren't using the figures to claim that our approach is working because we have less new cases than x,y or z when, in reality, we haven't got a scooby doo.Time_to_Leave said:
The simplest answer is always the easiest. They haven’t stopped publishing the figures because folk would cry “cover up” but the CMO has been clear that we already think there are north of 10,000 cases.OllyT said:
Then we may as well just give up announcing the number of new cases because the numbers are pure fiction. They have already told us a couple of days ago that there were at least 10,000 cases when only a few hundred were confirmed. Is it just a PR exercise to make us believe er=we don't have too many cases?Essexit said:
Why should we though? The best thing is for those people to stay at home. Most will recover. Sending out someone to test them diverts resources from those whose lives are in danger.SandyRentool said:
And now we have a policy of not even testing most people with symptoms.FrancisUrquhart said:1,140 coronavirus cases have now been confirmed in the UK, according to Public Health England.
42% increase day on day increase.
We are definitely now tracking Italy, Germany etc, in terms of raw numbers. I don't see how we are 3 weeks behind Italy.0 -
The author of the report from which most people quote the 80% have mild symptoms said on US tv he regrets using that term now. Within that 80% category, it ranges from nothing to something like a really bad flu including pneumonia. What he was trying to indicate was that they didn't need hospital treatment and weren't in mortal danger.eadric said:
Snipped
Then you have the sliding scale of pneumonia requiring hospitalization all the way through to total and utter collapse of everything.
I had bad pneumonia 2 years ago, it is really horrid as you feel like somebody is sitting on your chest all the time and impossible to take proper breaths.1 -
Quick note for anybody who isn't up on their medical stats, the usefulness of a positive/negative result depends not only the characteristics of the test itself (sensitivity = how good it is at picking up people who have the disease, specificity = how good it is at giving negative results to people who don't) but also on the characteristics of the patients sent for testing. If the vast majority of people you test don't actually have the disease, then you can have a situation where most people who get a positive result actually have a false positive (highly recommended link). This is a reason for not just testing everyone who demands a test, separate from the issues of availability and cost, but rather to restrict testing to those who already exhibit a certain level of symptoms, or who've been "funnelled" through a pathway of more basic tests first.matthiasfromhamburg said:
The problem with all the "quick tests" seems to be the reliability factor. If a test gives 98% correct results, you can just about live with the outliers. At 68% not so much.FrancisUrquhart said:
The test kit they demo didn't require a lab. It was processed then and there and result in 10 mins. Was simply prick of blood, inserted into kit and then wait 10 mins.matthiasfromhamburg said:
I think the problem is not so much the test kits, the bottleneck seems to be the lab capacity to process the test samples.FrancisUrquhart said:
There are now 14 companies about to offer tests. I believe the problem with all of them is you have to be 2-3 days into showing symptoms for it to test positive and nowhere near as accurate as the gold standard test.rottenborough said:
There's a company in Derbyshire who have a home test kit that can be posted. Finger prick of blood placed into the little device: looks like a pregnancy tester.Malmesbury said:
We are moving to a policy of testing people in hospital - who will most definitely have symptoms.SandyRentool said:
And now we have a policy of not even testing most people with symptoms.FrancisUrquhart said:1,140 coronavirus cases have now been confirmed in the UK, according to Public Health England.
42% increase day on day increase.
We are definitely now tracking Italy, Germany etc, in terms of raw numbers. I don't see how we are 3 weeks behind Italy.
Testing people who are home, ill, would mean one of
1) asking them to travel to a testing location.
2) sending people to their home to test them.
3) asking people to draw blood by themselves and post it?
Company told local news that NHS aren't interested.
They are being rolled out to pharmacy staff next week, to provide them with instant testing abilities and then potentially available to the wider public.
(This is a useful fact to remember after the pandemic too! There's a lot of controversy about e.g. screening programmes and which risk groups should enter into them. The lower risk you are, the greater the chance that if you do get a positive result, then it's a false one and will lead to unnecessary stress and potentially harmful interventions. It's part of the reason why eg a BMJ panel concluded that only high-risk men, like those with a family history of the disease, benefit from prostrate cancer screening.)0 -
I would argue with the way you phrased this.Black_Rook said:
The projected peak of the epidemic is late May/early June. Might it be the case that, even if the Government has to relent and close the schools over this period, the examinations might be rescheduled for July?ydoethur said:
Only six A-levels still have coursework. What about the others?Time_to_Leave said:They might end up giving out a-levels based on coursework, teacher views, and mock exams I guess. If the exam boards take the decision it makes life easier for Unis, and there are precedents for awarding in that way for sick kids etc.
Mocks are a very poor substitute - it’s not as though all schools even do them any more.
If grades can be awarded by early August then university places can still be allocated for September. It'll be a tight call and total pandaemonium but we are in an emergency situation here.
Of course, if the exams can't be held at all and mocks and coursework aren't available then the students will have to be awarded grades based entirely on the teachers' predictions. In extremis, year 13 has to be emptied and the first year intake of the universities filled, regardless of how unsatisfactory the means used to allocate the students to the places.
The Government has already said it sees school closures as being part of the plan as we approach the peak of the epidemic. Claiming this is 'relenting' or implying this would be a change of plan is simply dishonest.
On the subject of exams, when I did my A levels back in the early 80s we were warned not to treat our Mocks, which were held in January, as anything other than the real thing. The reasons given was that if for some reason we could not take our exams as planned then the Mocks could be used, along with other factors such as reports from the schools and interviews, as an alternative entry scheme for university.1 -
QE means that governments can borrow without concern to deficits. Need to raise money to spend? No problem the central bank will print some new money and buy your government bonds with it.logical_song said:
So, if everything shuts down for months lots of companies will go bankrupt. Will governments just print money again (Quantitative Easing) and end up owning everything from steel plant to cruise lines?rcs1000 said:
That's certainly possible. But the most likely scenario is that the Italian and Greek and Spanish governments are able to borrow and spend without limit because the ECB backstops their debt issuances.Black_Rook said:
I've been trying not to talk too much about anything related to Brexit. However, for what it's worth there's a decent chance that this crisis will destroy the EU. It's going to severely distress all of the member state economies, but Italy and Spain are now holed below the water line and poor bloody Greece has had its chips. The flaws in the structure of the Eurozone have never been corrected; the creditor states and their electorates have neither sufficient money nor the necessary willpower to bail their neighbours; the chief creditor is, in any event, in a state of political paralysis and led by a lame duck; and neither the almighty refugee crisis nor the arguments about creeping authoritarianism in key central European states have gone away. The edifice is well ablaze, and even if the firefighters had the will to tackle it they've got no engine, no hoses and no hydrants. Just a bucket with a hole in the bottom.Time_to_Leave said:
So if we do eventually end up in the EEA, it’ll be Cnut’s kingdoms reborn.Black_Rook said:
And here's another: the English result doesn't conform as much to either the traditional post-War electoral picture or to the conventional North/South divide as it does to the political dispensation under Alfred the Great.Time_to_Leave said:Interesting. The next non-Tory majority Gvt might have a spread of seats we used to associate with the Tories. That concept makes my head hurt.
Aside from the odd outlier (notably the pale of Cambridge,) the new Toryland bears more than a passing resemblance to the Danelaw.
Never mind the fact that this all-devouring Coronavirus monster leaves little time to think about the new trading relationship. There might be no entity with which to negotiate such a thing anyway.
(See the fact that Italian 10 year government bonds yield less than 1%.)
At the end of all of this, the debt that the ECB (and the JCB and the BOE and even the Federal Reserve) has accumulated will be quietly forgiven. (Or rolled over into perpetuity, which is to all intents and purposes the same thing.)
So, Boris does Corbyn's job and Trump does Sanders?
The questions is what governments do to support over-leveraged corporates (and consumers) who don't have the money to make interest payments.0 -
Voters. Dragging us back to the Tories.kinabalu said:
Tories. Dragging us back to the Middle Ages.Black_Rook said:And here's another: the English result doesn't conform as much to either the traditional post-War electoral picture or to the conventional North/South divide as it does to the political dispensation under Alfred the Great.
Aside from the odd outlier (notably the pale of Cambridge,) the new Toryland bears more than a passing resemblance to the Danelaw.1 -
Covid19 has won the argument.logical_song said:
So, if everything shuts down for months lots of companies will go bankrupt. Will governments just print money again (Quantitative Easing) and end up owning everything from steel plant to cruise lines?rcs1000 said:
That's certainly possible. But the most likely scenario is that the Italian and Greek and Spanish governments are able to borrow and spend without limit because the ECB backstops their debt issuances.Black_Rook said:
I've been trying not to talk too much about anything related to Brexit. However, for what it's worth there's a decent chance that this crisis will destroy the EU. It's going to severely distress all of the member state economies, but Italy and Spain are now holed below the water line and poor bloody Greece has had its chips. The flaws in the structure of the Eurozone have never been corrected; the creditor states and their electorates have neither sufficient money nor the necessary willpower to bail their neighbours; the chief creditor is, in any event, in a state of political paralysis and led by a lame duck; and neither the almighty refugee crisis nor the arguments about creeping authoritarianism in key central European states have gone away. The edifice is well ablaze, and even if the firefighters had the will to tackle it they've got no engine, no hoses and no hydrants. Just a bucket with a hole in the bottom.Time_to_Leave said:
So if we do eventually end up in the EEA, it’ll be Cnut’s kingdoms reborn.Black_Rook said:
And here's another: the English result doesn't conform as much to either the traditional post-War electoral picture or to the conventional North/South divide as it does to the political dispensation under Alfred the Great.Time_to_Leave said:Interesting. The next non-Tory majority Gvt might have a spread of seats we used to associate with the Tories. That concept makes my head hurt.
Aside from the odd outlier (notably the pale of Cambridge,) the new Toryland bears more than a passing resemblance to the Danelaw.
Never mind the fact that this all-devouring Coronavirus monster leaves little time to think about the new trading relationship. There might be no entity with which to negotiate such a thing anyway.
(See the fact that Italian 10 year government bonds yield less than 1%.)
At the end of all of this, the debt that the ECB (and the JCB and the BOE and even the Federal Reserve) has accumulated will be quietly forgiven. (Or rolled over into perpetuity, which is to all intents and purposes the same thing.)
So, Boris does Corbyn's job and Trump does Sanders?1 -
I'll take the nothing please.FrancisUrquhart said:
The author of the report from which most people quote the 80% have mild symptoms said on US tv he regrets using that term now. Within that 80% category, it ranges from nothing to something like a really bad flu including pneumonia. What he was trying to indicate was that they didn't need hospital treatment and weren't in mortal danger.eadric said:
Snipped
Then you have the sliding scale of pneumonia requiring hospitalization all the way through to total and utter collapse of everything.
I had bad pneumonia 2 years ago, it is really horrid as you feel like somebody is sitting on your chest all the time and impossible to take proper breaths.0 -
Exactly. It is very telling that in the news industry, going out of your way to find evidence that disproves a story is called "F%^king a story". As is "Why are you try to f%^k my story?"rcs1000 said:
When I worked in fund management, the only way to make sensible decisions was to take your own theory and try and poke holes in it. What you must never, never do is try and find evidence that supports it.kle4 said:
She seems to have tremendous tenacity which no doubt helps in many investigative matters, but she also seems like she jumps to conclusions very very quickly.MyBurningEars said:
Pasted as text because of her habit of deleting tweets (without acknowledgement or apology) once she's realised that they're totally insupportable. The thread beneath was a mixture of people explaining this is BoJo's strategy to wipe out the elderly, Dom's strategy to unleash a wave of eugenics, or just what everyone else's GP was doing too because...
https://twitter.com/catherine5news/status/1238808367512129537
Carol is at the extreme other end of the spectrum. She has a theory. She ignores anything that contradicts it and seeks out only supporting evidence.
0 -
The EU has been disastrously poor on things like airplane slots, where their actions worsen the crisis.Richard_Tyndall said:
Obviously I am anti-EU but I don't think this crisis has so far shown the EU in their finest clothes. Certainly Lagarde has been very poor as head of the ECB and they were slow to deal with issues such as flight slots. So far all the heavy lifting has been done by the nation states.kinabalu said:
Or perhaps this crisis will demonstrate the inadequacy of the nation state in tackling global issues and thus reinforce the value of the EU.Black_Rook said:I've been trying not to talk too much about anything related to Brexit. However, for what it's worth there's a decent chance that this crisis will destroy the EU. It's going to severely distress all of the member state economies, but Italy and Spain are now holed below the water line and poor bloody Greece has had its chips. The flaws in the structure of the Eurozone have never been corrected; the creditor states and their electorates have neither sufficient money nor the necessary willpower to bail their neighbours; the chief creditor is, in any event, in a state of political paralysis and led by a lame duck; and neither the almighty refugee crisis nor the arguments about creeping authoritarianism in key central European states have gone away. The edifice is well ablaze, and even if the firefighters had the will to tackle it they've got no engine, no hoses and no hydrants. Just a bucket with a hole in the bottom.
Never mind the fact that this all-devouring Coronavirus monster leaves little time to think about the new trading relationship. There might be no entity with which to negotiate such a thing anyway.
But I'm less critical of Legarde than you. I think she's made the decision that the ECB will continue to buy all the bonds Eurozone countries wish to issue, which is probably the right call right now.1 -
One possible answer is to let in far more students than they really need, see how they shapre up, and get rid of them after a term or two.ydoethur said:
Only six A-levels still have coursework. What about the others?Time_to_Leave said:They might end up giving out a-levels based on coursework, teacher views, and mock exams I guess. If the exam boards take the decision it makes life easier for Unis, and there are precedents for awarding in that way for sick kids etc.
Mocks are a very poor substitute - it’s not as though all schools even do them any more.
That has beeen the French system for ages.
0 -
Your musings on the mortality rate of younger people is very much against evidence. Yes some will die but the death rate is minuscule compared to the elderly.eadric said:Just had a fairly terrifying black cab ride across London (I'm now taking black cabs because they are bigger and there is a divide between you and the driver - better than Uber (one of a trillion unexpected ramifications of the Virus))
The driver was a very smart Albanian guy, late 30s, who previously lived in Milan for 18 years, where he was a semi pro football player. All we did - he and me - was talk corona, it is all that anyone talks about, now.
He had a few startling anecdotes.
1. He said it is bollocks that only old people get really ill and die. He said in his old football academy in Milan he knew four people with corona, one of which had died, and two were still very ill. They are/were in thei r30s like him. Super fit athletic types. Quite a few young people get this as well and sometimes they get it very very bad. And even die.
No kids tho, thank fuck.
2. He described the experience of a cousin in a small town. Let's call him X. This guy X is early 40s, unmarried, was living with his two elderly parents. First X's dad got coronavirus, badly, and when the ambulance drivers came and saw how bad X's dad was, they said to X: Say goodbye now, he'd not going to survive, he won't even be treated.
So they took X's dad away and sure enough he died three days later.
Then X's mum got ill, and the exact same thing happened: the medics came and shook their heads and said Say goodbye now, she's going, you won't see her again. So X - this time emotionally prepared - told the locals to come round and wave through the window to his mum, because she was about to go to hospital and she wasn't coming back. The neighbourhood came and waved goodbye.
A few days later X's mum died.
X then rang and asked about the bodies and he was told "Your mum and dad and have been taking to Special Crematorium XP4 (or whatever) they where have been burned with many other bodies. We cannot bury people as the virus lives on in corpses."
Now, the cab driver might have been making all this up. I do not believe he was.1 -
It’s already been reported that a small minority of younger people can have an immune system over-reaction and go into a critical illness in response to the virus. Nevertheless death rates for the under-65s remain extremely low.noneoftheabove said:
I agree, I dont think it was the cab driver making all this up either.eadric said:Just had a fairly terrifying black cab ride across London (I'm now taking black cabs because they are bigger and there is a divide between you and the driver - better than Uber (one of a trillion unexpected ramifications of the Virus))
The driver was a very smart Albanian guy, late 30s, who previously lived in Milan for 18 years, where he was a semi pro football player. All we did - he and me - was talk corona, it is all that anyone talks about, now.
He had a few startling anecdotes.
1. He said it is bollocks that only old people get really ill and die. He said in his old football academy in Milan he knew four people with corona, one of which had died, and two were still very ill. They are/were in thei r30s like him. Super fit athletic types. Quite a few young people get this as well and sometimes they get it very very bad. And even die.
No kids tho, thank fuck.
2. He described the experience of a cousin in a small town. Let's call him X. This guy X is early 40s, unmarried, was living with his two elderly parents. First X's dad got coronavirus, badly, and when the ambulance drivers came and saw how bad X's dad was, they said to X: Say goodbye now, he'd not going to survive, he won't even be treated.
So they took X's dad away and sure enough he died three days later.
Then X's mum got ill, and the exact same thing happened: the medics came and shook their heads and said Say goodbye now, she's going, you won't see her again. So X - this time emotionally prepared - told the locals to come round and wave through the window to his mum, because she was about to go to hospital and she wasn't coming back. The neighbourhood came and waved goodbye.
A few days later X's mum died.
X then rang and asked about the bodies and he was told "Your mum and dad and have been taking to Special Crematorium XP4 (or whatever) they where have been burned with many other bodies. We cannot bury people as the virus lives on in corpses."
Now, the cab driver might have been making all this up. I do not believe he was.
It’s also been reported that within Lombardy, hospital and mortuary services are overwhelmed,
All bad news, of course, but there is nothing new here.0 -
Might work? Maybe they could set online questions with a time limit for answering. I’m not that up with the possibilities techwise I’m afraid.ydoethur said:
By Skype, one presumes?ukpaul said:
From interviews, maybe?RochdalePioneers said:My eldest is weeks away from his A-Levels. University place secured requiring grades that won't get sat. I assume universities will need to replenish their student numbers in September regardless so will they all offer based on predicted grades...?
0 -
Even allowing for the pillockish recent behaviour of Sinn Fein, every time Arlene Foster opens her mouth I have every sympathy with their refusal to work with her.CarlottaVance said:
She’s a stupider version of Leo Varadkar.0 -
I'm by no means convinced that the small Tory weakening in their heartlands will persist. Forgetting for a moment the current problems I think the natural inclinations of the shires are more likely to revert to the norm - as the LD trajectory is still somewhat off the wall in reality. If someone like Moran becomes leader this will get worse.DavidL said:The diminished strength of the Tories in the south made their vote vastly more efficient and gave them their comfortable majority. Of course it also means that they are much more vulnerable to swings against them with far fewer absolutely safe seats.
Alastair’s excellent analysis demonstrates once again that if anything the extent of Labour’s disaster has been understated.0 -
Where's @HYUFD to rebut this?eadric said:Just had a fairly terrifying black cab ride across London (I'm now taking black cabs because they are bigger and there is a divide between you and the driver - better than Uber (one of a trillion unexpected ramifications of the Virus))
The driver was a very smart Albanian guy, late 30s, who previously lived in Milan for 18 years, where he was a semi pro football player. All we did - he and me - was talk corona, it is all that anyone talks about, now.
He had a few startling anecdotes.
1. He said it is bollocks that only old people get really ill and die. He said in his old football academy in Milan he knew four people with corona, one of which had died, and two were still very ill. They are/were in thei r30s like him. Super fit athletic types. Quite a few young people get this as well and sometimes they get it very very bad. And even die.
No kids tho, thank fuck.
2. He described the experience of a cousin in a small town. Let's call him X. This guy X is early 40s, unmarried, was living with his two elderly parents. First X's dad got coronavirus, badly, and when the ambulance drivers came and saw how bad X's dad was, they said to X: Say goodbye now, he'd not going to survive, he won't even be treated.
So they took X's dad away and sure enough he died three days later.
Then X's mum got ill, and the exact same thing happened: the medics came and shook their heads and said Say goodbye now, she's going, you won't see her again. So X - this time emotionally prepared - told the locals to come round and wave through the window to his mum, because she was about to go to hospital and she wasn't coming back. The neighbourhood came and waved goodbye.
A few days later X's mum died.
X then rang and asked about the bodies and he was told "Your mum and dad and have been taking to Special Crematorium XP4 (or whatever) they where have been burned with many other bodies. We cannot bury people as the virus lives on in corpses."
Now, the cab driver might have been making all this up. I do not believe he was.0 -
Or they could let far more students in than they have places for, and hope COVID-19 does the sorting for them.ClippP said:
One possible answer is to let in far more students than they really need, see how they shapre up, and get rid of them after a term or two.ydoethur said:
Only six A-levels still have coursework. What about the others?Time_to_Leave said:They might end up giving out a-levels based on coursework, teacher views, and mock exams I guess. If the exam boards take the decision it makes life easier for Unis, and there are precedents for awarding in that way for sick kids etc.
Mocks are a very poor substitute - it’s not as though all schools even do them any more.
That has beeen the French system for ages.0 -
That'd just impact the number of lecturers more than anything.rcs1000 said:
Or they could let far more students in than they have places for, and hope COVID-19 does the sorting for them.ClippP said:
One possible answer is to let in far more students than they really need, see how they shapre up, and get rid of them after a term or two.ydoethur said:
Only six A-levels still have coursework. What about the others?Time_to_Leave said:They might end up giving out a-levels based on coursework, teacher views, and mock exams I guess. If the exam boards take the decision it makes life easier for Unis, and there are precedents for awarding in that way for sick kids etc.
Mocks are a very poor substitute - it’s not as though all schools even do them any more.
That has beeen the French system for ages.0 -
Conducting a survey of Epping Forest cabbies.rcs1000 said:
Where's @HYUFD to rebut this?eadric said:Just had a fairly terrifying black cab ride across London (I'm now taking black cabs because they are bigger and there is a divide between you and the driver - better than Uber (one of a trillion unexpected ramifications of the Virus))
The driver was a very smart Albanian guy, late 30s, who previously lived in Milan for 18 years, where he was a semi pro football player. All we did - he and me - was talk corona, it is all that anyone talks about, now.
He had a few startling anecdotes.
1. He said it is bollocks that only old people get really ill and die. He said in his old football academy in Milan he knew four people with corona, one of which had died, and two were still very ill. They are/were in thei r30s like him. Super fit athletic types. Quite a few young people get this as well and sometimes they get it very very bad. And even die.
No kids tho, thank fuck.
2. He described the experience of a cousin in a small town. Let's call him X. This guy X is early 40s, unmarried, was living with his two elderly parents. First X's dad got coronavirus, badly, and when the ambulance drivers came and saw how bad X's dad was, they said to X: Say goodbye now, he'd not going to survive, he won't even be treated.
So they took X's dad away and sure enough he died three days later.
Then X's mum got ill, and the exact same thing happened: the medics came and shook their heads and said Say goodbye now, she's going, you won't see her again. So X - this time emotionally prepared - told the locals to come round and wave through the window to his mum, because she was about to go to hospital and she wasn't coming back. The neighbourhood came and waved goodbye.
A few days later X's mum died.
X then rang and asked about the bodies and he was told "Your mum and dad and have been taking to Special Crematorium XP4 (or whatever) they where have been burned with many other bodies. We cannot bury people as the virus lives on in corpses."
Now, the cab driver might have been making all this up. I do not believe he was.3 -
I was making a rather sick joke. I apologise.RobD said:
That'd just impact the number of lecturers more than anything.rcs1000 said:
Or they could let far more students in than they have places for, and hope COVID-19 does the sorting for them.ClippP said:
One possible answer is to let in far more students than they really need, see how they shapre up, and get rid of them after a term or two.ydoethur said:
Only six A-levels still have coursework. What about the others?Time_to_Leave said:They might end up giving out a-levels based on coursework, teacher views, and mock exams I guess. If the exam boards take the decision it makes life easier for Unis, and there are precedents for awarding in that way for sick kids etc.
Mocks are a very poor substitute - it’s not as though all schools even do them any more.
That has beeen the French system for ages.0 -
For how badly medical statistics can be misused in public health, medical treatment selection, sociology, and criminology, I highly recommend "Calculated Risks: How to Know When Numbers Deceive You" by Gerd GigerenzerMyBurningEars said:
Quick note for anybody who isn't up on their medical stats, the usefulness of a positive/negative result depends not only the characteristics of the test itself (sensitivity = how good it is at picking up people who have the disease, specificity = how good it is at giving negative results to people who don't) but also on the characteristics of the patients sent for testing. If the vast majority of people you test don't actually have the disease, then you can have a situation where most people who get a positive result actually have a false positive (highly recommended link). This is a reason for not just testing everyone who demands a test, separate from the issues of availability and cost, but rather to restrict testing to those who already exhibit a certain level of symptoms, or who've been "funnelled" through a pathway of more basic tests first.matthiasfromhamburg said:
The problem with all the "quick tests" seems to be the reliability factor. If a test gives 98% correct results, you can just about live with the outliers. At 68% not so much.FrancisUrquhart said:
The test kit they demo didn't require a lab. It was processed then and there and result in 10 mins. Was simply prick of blood, inserted into kit and then wait 10 mins.matthiasfromhamburg said:
I think the problem is not so much the test kits, the bottleneck seems to be the lab capacity to process the test samples.FrancisUrquhart said:
There are now 14 companies about to offer tests. I believe the problem with all of them is you have to be 2-3 days into showing symptoms for it to test positive and nowhere near as accurate as the gold standard test.rottenborough said:
There's a company in Derbyshire who have a home test kit that can be posted. Finger prick of blood placed into the little device: looks like a pregnancy tester.Malmesbury said:
We are moving to a policy of testing people in hospital - who will most definitely have symptoms.SandyRentool said:
And now we have a policy of not even testing most people with symptoms.FrancisUrquhart said:1,140 coronavirus cases have now been confirmed in the UK, according to Public Health England.
42% increase day on day increase.
We are definitely now tracking Italy, Germany etc, in terms of raw numbers. I don't see how we are 3 weeks behind Italy.
Testing people who are home, ill, would mean one of
1) asking them to travel to a testing location.
2) sending people to their home to test them.
3) asking people to draw blood by themselves and post it?
Company told local news that NHS aren't interested.
They are being rolled out to pharmacy staff next week, to provide them with instant testing abilities and then potentially available to the wider public.
(This is a useful fact to remember after the pandemic too! There's a lot of controversy about e.g. screening programmes and which risk groups should enter into them. The lower risk you are, the greater the chance that if you do get a positive result, then it's a false one and will lead to unnecessary stress and potentially harmful interventions. It's part of the reason why eg a BMJ panel concluded that only high-risk men, like those with a family history of the disease, benefit from prostrate cancer screening.)1 -
That would be a great improvement on the current system, where they let in far more students than they really need, see how they shape up and then keep them on and give them degrees anyway because they want the money.ClippP said:
One possible answer is to let in far more students than they really need, see how they shapre up, and get rid of them after a term or two.ydoethur said:
Only six A-levels still have coursework. What about the others?Time_to_Leave said:They might end up giving out a-levels based on coursework, teacher views, and mock exams I guess. If the exam boards take the decision it makes life easier for Unis, and there are precedents for awarding in that way for sick kids etc.
Mocks are a very poor substitute - it’s not as though all schools even do them any more.
That has beeen the French system for ages.0 -
Apparently, there's an opinion poll showing 83% of cab drivers aren't concerned, so @eadric is making it all up...matthiasfromhamburg said:
Conducting a survey of Epping Forest cabbies.rcs1000 said:
Where's @HYUFD to rebut this?eadric said:Just had a fairly terrifying black cab ride across London (I'm now taking black cabs because they are bigger and there is a divide between you and the driver - better than Uber (one of a trillion unexpected ramifications of the Virus))
The driver was a very smart Albanian guy, late 30s, who previously lived in Milan for 18 years, where he was a semi pro football player. All we did - he and me - was talk corona, it is all that anyone talks about, now.
He had a few startling anecdotes.
1. He said it is bollocks that only old people get really ill and die. He said in his old football academy in Milan he knew four people with corona, one of which had died, and two were still very ill. They are/were in thei r30s like him. Super fit athletic types. Quite a few young people get this as well and sometimes they get it very very bad. And even die.
No kids tho, thank fuck.
2. He described the experience of a cousin in a small town. Let's call him X. This guy X is early 40s, unmarried, was living with his two elderly parents. First X's dad got coronavirus, badly, and when the ambulance drivers came and saw how bad X's dad was, they said to X: Say goodbye now, he'd not going to survive, he won't even be treated.
So they took X's dad away and sure enough he died three days later.
Then X's mum got ill, and the exact same thing happened: the medics came and shook their heads and said Say goodbye now, she's going, you won't see her again. So X - this time emotionally prepared - told the locals to come round and wave through the window to his mum, because she was about to go to hospital and she wasn't coming back. The neighbourhood came and waved goodbye.
A few days later X's mum died.
X then rang and asked about the bodies and he was told "Your mum and dad and have been taking to Special Crematorium XP4 (or whatever) they where have been burned with many other bodies. We cannot bury people as the virus lives on in corpses."
Now, the cab driver might have been making all this up. I do not believe he was.2 -
So was I.rcs1000 said:
I was making a rather sick joke. I apologise.RobD said:
That'd just impact the number of lecturers more than anything.rcs1000 said:
Or they could let far more students in than they have places for, and hope COVID-19 does the sorting for them.ClippP said:
One possible answer is to let in far more students than they really need, see how they shapre up, and get rid of them after a term or two.ydoethur said:
Only six A-levels still have coursework. What about the others?Time_to_Leave said:They might end up giving out a-levels based on coursework, teacher views, and mock exams I guess. If the exam boards take the decision it makes life easier for Unis, and there are precedents for awarding in that way for sick kids etc.
Mocks are a very poor substitute - it’s not as though all schools even do them any more.
That has beeen the French system for ages.
1 -
+1numbertwelve said:
Your musings on the mortality rate of younger people is very much against evidence. Yes some will die but the death rate is minuscule compared to the elderly.eadric said:Just had a fairly terrifying black cab ride across London (I'm now taking black cabs because they are bigger and there is a divide between you and the driver - better than Uber (one of a trillion unexpected ramifications of the Virus))
The driver was a very smart Albanian guy, late 30s, who previously lived in Milan for 18 years, where he was a semi pro football player. All we did - he and me - was talk corona, it is all that anyone talks about, now.
He had a few startling anecdotes.
1. He said it is bollocks that only old people get really ill and die. He said in his old football academy in Milan he knew four people with corona, one of which had died, and two were still very ill. They are/were in thei r30s like him. Super fit athletic types. Quite a few young people get this as well and sometimes they get it very very bad. And even die.
No kids tho, thank fuck.
2. He described the experience of a cousin in a small town. Let's call him X. This guy X is early 40s, unmarried, was living with his two elderly parents. First X's dad got coronavirus, badly, and when the ambulance drivers came and saw how bad X's dad was, they said to X: Say goodbye now, he'd not going to survive, he won't even be treated.
So they took X's dad away and sure enough he died three days later.
Then X's mum got ill, and the exact same thing happened: the medics came and shook their heads and said Say goodbye now, she's going, you won't see her again. So X - this time emotionally prepared - told the locals to come round and wave through the window to his mum, because she was about to go to hospital and she wasn't coming back. The neighbourhood came and waved goodbye.
A few days later X's mum died.
X then rang and asked about the bodies and he was told "Your mum and dad and have been taking to Special Crematorium XP4 (or whatever) they where have been burned with many other bodies. We cannot bury people as the virus lives on in corpses."
Now, the cab driver might have been making all this up. I do not believe he was.
All he apparently wants is to stir up panic so that he feels less ashamed of his own inability to cope. There is no benefit nor enlightenment to be gained from such posts whatsoever.2 -
Fuck me, if I were him, armed with all that info, I'd be very choosy as to who I picked up in my cab!eadric said:Just had a fairly terrifying black cab ride across London (I'm now taking black cabs because they are bigger and there is a divide between you and the driver - better than Uber (one of a trillion unexpected ramifications of the Virus))
The driver was a very smart Albanian guy, late 30s, who previously lived in Milan for 18 years, where he was a semi pro football player. All we did - he and me - was talk corona, it is all that anyone talks about, now.
He had a few startling anecdotes.
1. He said it is bollocks that only old people get really ill and die. He said in his old football academy in Milan he knew four people with corona, one of which had died, and two were still very ill. They are/were in thei r30s like him. Super fit athletic types. Quite a few young people get this as well and sometimes they get it very very bad. And even die.
No kids tho, thank fuck.
2. He described the experience of a cousin in a small town. Let's call him X. This guy X is early 40s, unmarried, was living with his two elderly parents. First X's dad got coronavirus, badly, and when the ambulance drivers came and saw how bad X's dad was, they said to X: Say goodbye now, he'd not going to survive, he won't even be treated.
So they took X's dad away and sure enough he died three days later.
Then X's mum got ill, and the exact same thing happened: the medics came and shook their heads and said Say goodbye now, she's going, you won't see her again. So X - this time emotionally prepared - told the locals to come round and wave through the window to his mum, because she was about to go to hospital and she wasn't coming back. The neighbourhood came and waved goodbye.
A few days later X's mum died.
X then rang and asked about the bodies and he was told "Your mum and dad and have been taking to Special Crematorium XP4 (or whatever) they where have been burned with many other bodies. We cannot bury people as the virus lives on in corpses."
Now, the cab driver might have been making all this up. I do not believe he was.1 -
I know we keep hearing how much better Japan is doing than the UK - but this is the bit I do not get:
Cases/Deaths:
UK: 1,149 / 21
Japan: 788 / 22
Yes, Japan is "older" than the UK - but that much older?2 -
To be perfectly honest, if I had space to seriously hoard food I would be getting very tempted by now. But we live in a one bedroom flat so, unless one were to construct a model of the Leaning Tower of Pisa out of a stack of tins in the corner of the living room, I can't.RobD said:
I think my parents are set. Whenever I go home there are always cupboards stocked to the brim with tinned food and other non-perishables, and a chest freezer full of the frozen stuff. I think they took protect and survive to heart.FrancisUrquhart said:
Its just mad. When I prepped my parents, yes we got toilet rolls, hand wash etc, but the real focus was on getting two freezers worth of frozen fruit, veg and meat.RobD said:
What I want to know is if you aren't eating anything, what are you going to be wiping?FrancisUrquhart said:
I wonder if the behavioural insight team successfully modelled it would be bog roll that people went mental over, rather than feeding yourself for 3 months, having drugs to manage flu like symptoms or perhaps not going to locations where you were most likely to catch it.Black_Rook said:Just remembered: today's Bog Roll Watch. The other Mr Rook was in town this morning, none available anywhere (Tesco Express, Morrisons or Savers.) Also, a notice on the door of Savers to the effect that they've already had to call out the local constabulary twice to break up fights between irate customers, and will not hesitate to do so again.
If the supply of Andrex isn't normalized again by the end of the week I fear that anarchy may ensue. And I say that only half-jokingly.
I reckon there's about enough in here to keep us going for about a fortnight were we to be locked in, provided that we were disciplined and didn't resort to boredom-induced snacking. That will have to suffice.0 -
Trump Presser in 5.0
-
Sample size is so small at the moment. Even among the single large dataset from China, the experts don't know what the real rates are, just that as age increases you are your chances go south very quickly.CarlottaVance said:I know we keep hearing how much better Japan is doing than the UK - but this is the bit I do not get:
Cases/Deaths:
UK: 1,149 / 21
Japan: 788 / 22
Yes, Japan is "older" than the UK - but that much older?0 -
Maybe but she is a member of Cobra and is no doubt expressing Cobra opinionydoethur said:
Even allowing for the pillockish recent behaviour of Sinn Fein, every time Arlene Foster opens her mouth I have every sympathy with their refusal to work with her.CarlottaVance said:
She’s a stupider version of Leo Varadkar.0 -
Japan's outbreak is much older, and the virus takes time to kill the unfortunate victims.CarlottaVance said:I know we keep hearing how much better Japan is doing than the UK - but this is the bit I do not get:
Cases/Deaths:
UK: 1,149 / 21
Japan: 788 / 22
Yes, Japan is "older" than the UK - but that much older?0 -
Rent space an nearby Big Yellow Storage?Black_Rook said:
To be perfectly honest, if I had space to seriously hoard food I would be getting very tempted by now. But we live in a one bedroom flat so, unless one were to construct a model of the Leaning Tower of Pisa out of a stack of tins in the corner of the living room, I can't.RobD said:
I think my parents are set. Whenever I go home there are always cupboards stocked to the brim with tinned food and other non-perishables, and a chest freezer full of the frozen stuff. I think they took protect and survive to heart.FrancisUrquhart said:
Its just mad. When I prepped my parents, yes we got toilet rolls, hand wash etc, but the real focus was on getting two freezers worth of frozen fruit, veg and meat.RobD said:
What I want to know is if you aren't eating anything, what are you going to be wiping?FrancisUrquhart said:
I wonder if the behavioural insight team successfully modelled it would be bog roll that people went mental over, rather than feeding yourself for 3 months, having drugs to manage flu like symptoms or perhaps not going to locations where you were most likely to catch it.Black_Rook said:Just remembered: today's Bog Roll Watch. The other Mr Rook was in town this morning, none available anywhere (Tesco Express, Morrisons or Savers.) Also, a notice on the door of Savers to the effect that they've already had to call out the local constabulary twice to break up fights between irate customers, and will not hesitate to do so again.
If the supply of Andrex isn't normalized again by the end of the week I fear that anarchy may ensue. And I say that only half-jokingly.
I reckon there's about enough in here to keep us going for about a fortnight were we to be locked in, provided that we were disciplined and didn't resort to boredom-induced snacking. That will have to suffice.0 -
The United States of America ain't looking like a great argument for the United States of Europe right now....kinabalu said:
Or perhaps this crisis will demonstrate the inadequacy of the nation state in tackling global issues and thus reinforce the value of the EU.Black_Rook said:I've been trying not to talk too much about anything related to Brexit. However, for what it's worth there's a decent chance that this crisis will destroy the EU. It's going to severely distress all of the member state economies, but Italy and Spain are now holed below the water line and poor bloody Greece has had its chips. The flaws in the structure of the Eurozone have never been corrected; the creditor states and their electorates have neither sufficient money nor the necessary willpower to bail their neighbours; the chief creditor is, in any event, in a state of political paralysis and led by a lame duck; and neither the almighty refugee crisis nor the arguments about creeping authoritarianism in key central European states have gone away. The edifice is well ablaze, and even if the firefighters had the will to tackle it they've got no engine, no hoses and no hydrants. Just a bucket with a hole in the bottom.
Never mind the fact that this all-devouring Coronavirus monster leaves little time to think about the new trading relationship. There might be no entity with which to negotiate such a thing anyway.2 -
Testing sample bias?CarlottaVance said:I know we keep hearing how much better Japan is doing than the UK - but this is the bit I do not get:
Cases/Deaths:
UK: 1,149 / 21
Japan: 788 / 22
Yes, Japan is "older" than the UK - but that much older?0 -
In general, the further removed the rulers are from the people, the worse the governance.MarqueeMark said:
The United States of America ain't looking like a great argument for the United States of Europe right now....kinabalu said:
Or perhaps this crisis will demonstrate the inadequacy of the nation state in tackling global issues and thus reinforce the value of the EU.Black_Rook said:I've been trying not to talk too much about anything related to Brexit. However, for what it's worth there's a decent chance that this crisis will destroy the EU. It's going to severely distress all of the member state economies, but Italy and Spain are now holed below the water line and poor bloody Greece has had its chips. The flaws in the structure of the Eurozone have never been corrected; the creditor states and their electorates have neither sufficient money nor the necessary willpower to bail their neighbours; the chief creditor is, in any event, in a state of political paralysis and led by a lame duck; and neither the almighty refugee crisis nor the arguments about creeping authoritarianism in key central European states have gone away. The edifice is well ablaze, and even if the firefighters had the will to tackle it they've got no engine, no hoses and no hydrants. Just a bucket with a hole in the bottom.
Never mind the fact that this all-devouring Coronavirus monster leaves little time to think about the new trading relationship. There might be no entity with which to negotiate such a thing anyway.3 -
-
Surely he is in Florida golfing?Chameleon said:Trump Presser in 5.
0 -
Do you think Japanese TV is running commercials suggesting that the elderly help solve the epidemic by taking things into their own hands...CarlottaVance said:I know we keep hearing how much better Japan is doing than the UK - but this is the bit I do not get:
Cases/Deaths:
UK: 1,149 / 21
Japan: 788 / 22
Yes, Japan is "older" than the UK - but that much older?0 -
Damn it, I haven't taken the requisite drugs to make sense of him....Chameleon said:Trump Presser in 5.
0
