politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » The rise and rise of Richi Sunak as seen on the Betfair exchan

noneoftheabove said:

Casino_Royale said:

DavidL said:

IanB2 said:

DavidL said:

Day 2.5 of WFH. I think if I have to do 3 months of this there is going to be blood.

I reckon in all seriousness there's going to be a lot more alcoholism about. Like how the Russians coped with communism.

I have sworn off the drink for the duration. Last drink was Friday. I am sure that's not adding to my irritation. Not at all...

I've patented "phone pubs" in my company, unofficially.

We will Skype in a few of us on Thursday night. Each will have a beer in hand.

Japanese beat you to it Im afraid- its called on-nomi

https://metro.co.uk/2020/03/17/nomi-new-japanese-trend-drinking-online-turning-self-isolation-room-personal-pub-12409713/

DAlexander said:

noneoftheabove said:

DAlexander said:

noneoftheabove said:

Philip_Thompson said:

GideonWise said:

Fenster said:

MarqueeMark said:

I for one am happy that we have Rishi in lock-step with the PM. Not sure how this situation would have played out if No.10 didn't have confidence that an independent No. 11 and Sajid's Spads were going to do the right thing....

Sunak is ten times as impressive as Javid. I didn't take to Javid's speaking style at all, and he lost me when he did that silly legs-apart stance.

Haha pretty much where I was with Javid.

Sunak is impressive because he is likely to know more than those briefing him and definitely more than the political journalists asking him questions. Therefore he doesn't need to bluster or bluff on tricky questions he just talks as if he is an expert, which he probably is.

However, he is still using a peashooter when we need a bazooka. Hopefully he is aware of that and he is working to fix it.

£330bn is a peashooter?

Mostly 1 year loans to businesses who would still be bust at the end of the 1 year?

If a business needs to be propped up by government for more than a year, it is not a viable business. Businesses need to be able to adapt to the new situation quickly and those that can't will go to the wall unfortunately.

When things eventually return to normal then new businesses will be able to emerge and things will start to recover.

I don't buy the idea that everything must be preserved as it was before the virus outbreak and infinite amounts of government money thrown at the problem that we'll be paying for for decades.

Plenty of businesses dont have reserves of 4 months costs whilst still being perfectly viable pre and post covid 19.

Yes but if the "during" part of covid 19 is say 2 or even 3 years are we going to keep paying for these "viable" businesses? This could be the new normal.

There would be much lower economic cost to letting them fail and new businesses replace them afterwards if it goes on too long.

MightyAlex said:

DougSeal said:

kamski said:

another_richard said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

DavidL said:

Day 2.5 of WFH. I think if I have to do 3 months of this there is going to be blood.

A few days it dawned on me there's not going to be any live sport for the next few months.

No football, no rugby, and no cricket, that might lead to blood in this household.

I wonder if county championship cricket could be played.

Would fill up the sports schedules nicely.

The chess candidates tournament is happening, it's pretty exciting, and the live commentary on chess24 is usually quite entertaining. Round 2 starts in half an hour

Of all the sports...sitting stationary facing an opponent who is breathing on you for hours on end?!??? I would ahve thought of all the sports, cricket was the saftest from a Covid-19 perspective.

Most sports can be done safely IMO its just the spectators who are really at risk.

another_richard said:

SandyRentool said:

Totally off topic - we've just had some Mallards mating in our back garden.

Not the most romantic of encounters.

I remember you doing a 'birds in the garden' list last year.

Any updates ?

Casino_Royale said:

DavidL said:

IanB2 said:

DavidL said:

Day 2.5 of WFH. I think if I have to do 3 months of this there is going to be blood.

I reckon in all seriousness there's going to be a lot more alcoholism about. Like how the Russians coped with communism.

I have sworn off the drink for the duration. Last drink was Friday. I am sure that's not adding to my irritation. Not at all...

I've patented "phone pubs" in my company, unofficially.

We will Skype in a few of us on Thursday night. Each will have a beer in hand.

noneoftheabove said:

MightyAlex said:

DougSeal said:

kamski said:

another_richard said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

DavidL said:

Day 2.5 of WFH. I think if I have to do 3 months of this there is going to be blood.

A few days it dawned on me there's not going to be any live sport for the next few months.

No football, no rugby, and no cricket, that might lead to blood in this household.

I wonder if county championship cricket could be played.

Would fill up the sports schedules nicely.

The chess candidates tournament is happening, it's pretty exciting, and the live commentary on chess24 is usually quite entertaining. Round 2 starts in half an hour

Of all the sports...sitting stationary facing an opponent who is breathing on you for hours on end?!??? I would ahve thought of all the sports, cricket was the saftest from a Covid-19 perspective.

Most sports can be done safely IMO its just the spectators who are really at risk.

Dont forget the Darwin award chasing sports star who decided to lick all the microphones at a press conference to mock the spread of Coronavirus and went on to catch it......

isam said:

...

isam said:

Re my tooth... fractured in Sunday, half of it fell out On Monday... sounds like a Craig David song so far...

I have an appointment tomorrow, I suppose it will need a filling. It doesn’t really host, I wonder if it’s best to get a temporary solution from the chemist and only go to the dentist if it becomes really painful. Will they still be open if we lockdown?

rottenborough said:

If two people are in lock down in separate houses. Good mates say. Neither shows any signs of the illness and neither is going anywhere.

Eventually there must be a point when they can visit each other (say it is walking distance)? How long can someone stay asymptomatic?

twistedfirestopper3 said:

isam said:

...

I haven't played games for a few years, but all my lads are still big gamers. I watched them play Modern Warfare Battlezone (I think!) last night, it was way to fast for my old eyes to follow on a 55inch 4K telly. Made me feel quite sick!

GideonWise said:

Nigelb said:

DougSeal said:

I post without comment a counterpoint to the Imperial College study.

https://necsi.edu/review-of-ferguson-et-al-impact-of-non-pharmaceutical-interventions

It is an interesting argument, which seems intuitively correct:

...However, they make structural mistakes in analyzing outbreak response. They ignore standard Contact Tracing [2] allowing isolation of infected prior to symptoms. They also ignore door-to-door monitoring to identify cases with symptoms [3]. Their conclusions that there will be resurgent outbreaks are wrong. After a few weeks of lockdown almost all infectious people are identified and their contacts are isolated prior to symptoms and cannot infect others [4]. The outbreak can be stopped completely with no resurgence as in China, where new cases were down to one yesterday, after excluding imported international travelers that are quarantined.

Their assumptions are equivalent to ergodicity, as they consider new infections to be a function of infected fraction and immunity, and not influenced by where in the trajectory of the outbreak they are, distinguishing going up from going down...

Of course it is dependent on sufficiently reducing the number of new cases via lockdown so that contact tracing becomes effective again.

And 'sufficiently' is likely not trivial to define.

More widespread testing would, of course, reduce modelling uncertainties.

I agree there is some merit in this critique. The expert input for this decision by the government is not just coming from this Imperial team, there is at least one more academic team who are experts in Infectious Disease Models and PHE will have their own experts. Hopefully the different groups have taken different approaches to conceptualising this problem.

More broadly, I think it is important to use models to inform decisions but we must noSome people choose to put their faith in experts but those experts sometimes choose to put their faith into models. That's dangeroust forget the BASICS. That is, we must keep sense checking the information provided to us against observed reality.

Some people choose to put their faith in experts but those experts sometimes choose to put their faith into models. That's dangerous. We must always think for ourselves, listen to evidence and make a judgement. Then think again, listen to new evidence and make a further judgement.

Crucially, it is important not to forget how to think.

Pulpstar said:

DougSeal said:

kamski said:

another_richard said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

DavidL said:

Day 2.5 of WFH. I think if I have to do 3 months of this there is going to be blood.

A few days it dawned on me there's not going to be any live sport for the next few months.

No football, no rugby, and no cricket, that might lead to blood in this household.

I wonder if county championship cricket could be played.

Would fill up the sports schedules nicely.

The chess candidates tournament is happening, it's pretty exciting, and the live commentary on chess24 is usually quite entertaining. Round 2 starts in half an hour

Of all the sports...sitting stationary facing an opponent who is breathing on you for hours on end?!??? I would ahve thought of all the sports, cricket was the saftest from a Covid-19 perspective.

You can set live chess up to be non face to face very easily if you want to. 2 boards, back to back.

One player calls E4, other player moves the opponent's piece to E4 etc.

Or you can just play online !

geoffw said:

The time of slow tv might have come into its own. Five-day test cricket on terrestrial channels would be an ideal way to fill the airwaves, with the usual sparse spectator crowd: low risk for the players and spectators and a long-drawn out soporific spell on tv to ease us gently into the required catatonic boredom to tide us over the duration.

NerysHughes said:

Floater said:

https://twitter.com/SuneEngel/status/1239947669709127682?ref_src=twsrc^tfw|twcamp^tweetembed|twterm^1239947669709127682&ref_url=https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2020/mar/18/coronavirus-live-news-updates-outbreak-us-states-uk-australia-europe-eu-self-isolation-lockdown-latest-update

3.5 million??? Do they have a different strain?

MikeSmithson said:

Wouldn't it be great if the final EPL games were played in empty stadiums with all matches broadcast live for free. Its going without sport that I'm finding hard.

tlg86 said:

geoffw said:

The time of slow tv might have come into its own. Five-day test cricket on terrestrial channels would be an ideal way to fill the airwaves, with the usual sparse spectator crowd: low risk for the players and spectators and a long-drawn out soporific spell on tv to ease us gently into the required catatonic boredom to tide us over the duration.

I suspect they don't have the rights, but it would be good if the BBC could show re-runs of Geoffrey Boycott's finest innings.

FeersumEnjineeya said:

DAlexander said:

noneoftheabove said:

DAlexander said:

noneoftheabove said:

DAlexander said:

noneoftheabove said:

Philip_Thompson said:

GideonWise said:

Fenster said:

MarqueeMark said:

I for one am happy that we have Rishi in lock-step with the PM. Not sure how this situation would have played out if No.10 didn't have confidence that an independent No. 11 and Sajid's Spads were going to do the right thing....

Sunak is ten times as impressive as Javid. I didn't take to Javid's speaking style at all, and he lost me when he did that silly legs-apart stance.

Haha pretty much where I was with Javid.

Sunak is impressive because he is likely to know more than those briefing him and definitely more than the political journalists asking him questions. Therefore he doesn't need to bluster or bluff on tricky questions he just talks as if he is an expert, which he probably is.

However, he is still using a peashooter when we need a bazooka. Hopefully he is aware of that and he is working to fix it.

£330bn is a peashooter?

Mostly 1 year loans to businesses who would still be bust at the end of the 1 year?

If a business needs to be propped up by government for more than a year, it is not a viable business. Businesses need to be able to adapt to the new situation quickly and those that can't will go to the wall unfortunately.

When things eventually return to normal then new businesses will be able to emerge and things will start to recover.

I don't buy the idea that everything must be preserved as it was before the virus outbreak and infinite amounts of government money thrown at the problem that we'll be paying for for decades.

Plenty of businesses dont have reserves of 4 months costs whilst still being perfectly viable pre and post covid 19.

Yes but if the "during" part of covid 19 is say 2 or even 3 years are we going to keep paying for these "viable" businesses? This could be the new normal.

There would be much lower economic cost to letting them fail and new businesses replace them afterwards if it goes on too long.

I dont think lockdown is mentally or socially possible for that long regardless of the economy.

If as soon as we relax the lockdown the virus makes a comeback then we'll be in exactly the same situation as we are right now currently heading into the first lockdown.

The only way we could let it infect a large proportion of the population is if we increase ICU beds massively between now and then somehow or an effective treatment is rapidly discovered and mass produced which makes that unnecessary.

That, surely, is what we should be doing. Lock down tightly to get the spread under control, then gradually release restrictions while putting massive efforts into expanding ICU capacity. The idea of "cocooning" the vulnerable was never going to be practicable.

Casino_Royale said:

OldKingCole said:

Casino_Royale said:

DavidL said:

IanB2 said:

DavidL said:

Day 2.5 of WFH. I think if I have to do 3 months of this there is going to be blood.

I reckon in all seriousness there's going to be a lot more alcoholism about. Like how the Russians coped with communism.

I have sworn off the drink for the duration. Last drink was Friday. I am sure that's not adding to my irritation. Not at all...

I've patented "phone pubs" in my company, unofficially.

We will Skype in a few of us on Thursday night. Each will have a beer in hand.

Has anyone used Zoom? I'm trying to re-establish a discussion group with a bunch of reasonably tech savvy..... all Facebook/Google/email ushering ...... OAPs
Don't THINK they've all got Skype.

I don't but I might look into it.

Skype is unreliable.

tlg86 said:

geoffw said:

The time of slow tv might have come into its own. Five-day test cricket on terrestrial channels would be an ideal way to fill the airwaves, with the usual sparse spectator crowd: low risk for the players and spectators and a long-drawn out soporific spell on tv to ease us gently into the required catatonic boredom to tide us over the duration.

I suspect they don't have the rights, but it would be good if the BBC could show re-runs of Geoffrey Boycott's finest innings.

turbotubbs said:

FeersumEnjineeya said:

DAlexander said:

noneoftheabove said:

DAlexander said:

noneoftheabove said:

DAlexander said:

noneoftheabove said:

Philip_Thompson said:

GideonWise said:

Fenster said:

MarqueeMark said:

I for one am happy that we have Rishi in lock-step with the PM. Not sure how this situation would have played out if No.10 didn't have confidence that an independent No. 11 and Sajid's Spads were going to do the right thing....

Sunak is ten times as impressive as Javid. I didn't take to Javid's speaking style at all, and he lost me when he did that silly legs-apart stance.

Haha pretty much where I was with Javid.

Sunak is impressive because he is likely to know more than those briefing him and definitely more than the political journalists asking him questions. Therefore he doesn't need to bluster or bluff on tricky questions he just talks as if he is an expert, which he probably is.

However, he is still using a peashooter when we need a bazooka. Hopefully he is aware of that and he is working to fix it.

£330bn is a peashooter?

Mostly 1 year loans to businesses who would still be bust at the end of the 1 year?

If a business needs to be propped up by government for more than a year, it is not a viable business. Businesses need to be able to adapt to the new situation quickly and those that can't will go to the wall unfortunately.

When things eventually return to normal then new businesses will be able to emerge and things will start to recover.

I don't buy the idea that everything must be preserved as it was before the virus outbreak and infinite amounts of government money thrown at the problem that we'll be paying for for decades.

Plenty of businesses dont have reserves of 4 months costs whilst still being perfectly viable pre and post covid 19.

Yes but if the "during" part of covid 19 is say 2 or even 3 years are we going to keep paying for these "viable" businesses? This could be the new normal.

There would be much lower economic cost to letting them fail and new businesses replace them afterwards if it goes on too long.

I dont think lockdown is mentally or socially possible for that long regardless of the economy.

If as soon as we relax the lockdown the virus makes a comeback then we'll be in exactly the same situation as we are right now currently heading into the first lockdown.

The only way we could let it infect a large proportion of the population is if we increase ICU beds massively between now and then somehow or an effective treatment is rapidly discovered and mass produced which makes that unnecessary.

That, surely, is what we should be doing. Lock down tightly to get the spread under control, then gradually release restrictions while putting massive efforts into expanding ICU capacity. The idea of "cocooning" the vulnerable was never going to be practicable.

This IS what we are doing.

NerysHughes said:

GideonWise said:

MarqueeMark said:

GideonWise said:

Nigelb said:

DougSeal said:

I post without comment a counterpoint to the Imperial College study.

https://necsi.edu/review-of-ferguson-et-al-impact-of-non-pharmaceutical-interventions

It is an interesting argument, which seems intuitively correct:

...However, they make structural mistakes in analyzing outbreak response. They ignore standard Contact Tracing [2] allowing isolation of infected prior to symptoms. They also ignore door-to-door monitoring to identify cases with symptoms [3]. Their conclusions that there will be resurgent outbreaks are wrong. After a few weeks of lockdown almost all infectious people are identified and their contacts are isolated prior to symptoms and cannot infect others [4]. The outbreak can be stopped completely with no resurgence as in China, where new cases were down to one yesterday, after excluding imported international travelers that are quarantined.

Their assumptions are equivalent to ergodicity, as they consider new infections to be a function of infected fraction and immunity, and not influenced by where in the trajectory of the outbreak they are, distinguishing going up from going down...

Of course it is dependent on sufficiently reducing the number of new cases via lockdown so that contact tracing becomes effective again.

And 'sufficiently' is likely not trivial to define.

More widespread testing would, of course, reduce modelling uncertainties.

I agree there is some merit in this critique. The expert input for this decision by the government is not just coming from this Imperial team, there is at least one more academic team who are experts in Infectious Disease Models and PHE will have their own experts. Hopefully the different groups have taken different approaches to conceptualising this problem.

More broadly, I think it is important to use models to inform decisions but we must not forget the BASICS. That is, we must keep sense checking the information provided to us against observed reality.

Some people choose to put their faith in experts but those experts sometimes choose to put their faith into models. That's dangerous. We must always think for ourselves, listen to evidence and make a judgement. Then think again, listen to new evidence and make a further judgement.

Crucially, it is important not to forget how to think.

A month ago it looked like the End of Days in much of Asia, not just China with its welded homes.

Today? Not so much.

In six weeks, will be thinking "What was THAT all about?"

We might well. But the question all along has been whether we lockdown hard or whether we let the pandemic do its thing but with some measures to smooth the curve. The government has favoured the latter approach but quickly pivoted on Monday.

In the safety of the lockdown we can observe China, Korea and all the others and see how they get on unlocking their societies.

Korea is not in lock down

stodge said:

MightyAlex said:

Most sports can be done safely IMO its just the spectators who are really at risk.

Some sports require medical cover and if that isn't available, the activity cannot go ahead.

One sport still very much going is greyhound racing - it used to be on World of Sport in the 60s and 70s when the horse racing was off. Saturday afternoon dogs at Harringay, morning dogs at Hackney. Also gone are venues like Catford and Walthamstow and of course Wimbledon.

Nonetheless, dog racing lives on and should be on ITV on Saturday afternoon instead of the horse racing.

OldKingCole said:

Casino_Royale said:

OldKingCole said:

Casino_Royale said:

DavidL said:

IanB2 said:

DavidL said:

Day 2.5 of WFH. I think if I have to do 3 months of this there is going to be blood.

I reckon in all seriousness there's going to be a lot more alcoholism about. Like how the Russians coped with communism.

I have sworn off the drink for the duration. Last drink was Friday. I am sure that's not adding to my irritation. Not at all...

I've patented "phone pubs" in my company, unofficially.

We will Skype in a few of us on Thursday night. Each will have a beer in hand.

Has anyone used Zoom? I'm trying to re-establish a discussion group with a bunch of reasonably tech savvy..... all Facebook/Google/email ushering ...... OAPs
Don't THINK they've all got Skype.

I don't but I might look into it.

Skype is unreliable.

Agree. Just been on the Skype site for info and it said it was busy, and to come back later. I appreciate they might be, world-wide at the moment, but .....

DAlexander said:

FeersumEnjineeya said:

DAlexander said:

noneoftheabove said:

DAlexander said:

noneoftheabove said:

DAlexander said:

noneoftheabove said:

Philip_Thompson said:

GideonWise said:

Fenster said:

MarqueeMark said:

I for one am happy that we have Rishi in lock-step with the PM. Not sure how this situation would have played out if No.10 didn't have confidence that an independent No. 11 and Sajid's Spads were going to do the right thing....

Sunak is ten times as impressive as Javid. I didn't take to Javid's speaking style at all, and he lost me when he did that silly legs-apart stance.

Haha pretty much where I was with Javid.

Sunak is impressive because he is likely to know more than those briefing him and definitely more than the political journalists asking him questions. Therefore he doesn't need to bluster or bluff on tricky questions he just talks as if he is an expert, which he probably is.

However, he is still using a peashooter when we need a bazooka. Hopefully he is aware of that and he is working to fix it.

£330bn is a peashooter?

Mostly 1 year loans to businesses who would still be bust at the end of the 1 year?

If a business needs to be propped up by government for more than a year, it is not a viable business. Businesses need to be able to adapt to the new situation quickly and those that can't will go to the wall unfortunately.

When things eventually return to normal then new businesses will be able to emerge and things will start to recover.

I don't buy the idea that everything must be preserved as it was before the virus outbreak and infinite amounts of government money thrown at the problem that we'll be paying for for decades.

Plenty of businesses dont have reserves of 4 months costs whilst still being perfectly viable pre and post covid 19.

Yes but if the "during" part of covid 19 is say 2 or even 3 years are we going to keep paying for these "viable" businesses? This could be the new normal.

There would be much lower economic cost to letting them fail and new businesses replace them afterwards if it goes on too long.

I dont think lockdown is mentally or socially possible for that long regardless of the economy.

If as soon as we relax the lockdown the virus makes a comeback then we'll be in exactly the same situation as we are right now currently heading into the first lockdown.

The only way we could let it infect a large proportion of the population is if we increase ICU beds massively between now and then somehow or an effective treatment is rapidly discovered and mass produced which makes that unnecessary.

That, surely, is what we should be doing. Lock down tightly to get the spread under control, then gradually release restrictions while putting massive efforts into expanding ICU capacity. The idea of "cocooning" the vulnerable was never going to be practicable.

Yes I agree that elimination has to be the aim, my worry is it is going to take several lockdowns over a year or possibly longer to get it to that point.

If that happens I'm wondering if the government should bailout all businesses while this is happening.

FeersumEnjineeya said:

DAlexander said:

noneoftheabove said:

DAlexander said:

noneoftheabove said:

DAlexander said:

noneoftheabove said:

Philip_Thompson said:

GideonWise said:

Fenster said:

MarqueeMark said:

I for one am happy that we have Rishi in lock-step with the PM. Not sure how this situation would have played out if No.10 didn't have confidence that an independent No. 11 and Sajid's Spads were going to do the right thing....

Sunak is ten times as impressive as Javid. I didn't take to Javid's speaking style at all, and he lost me when he did that silly legs-apart stance.

Haha pretty much where I was with Javid.

Sunak is impressive because he is likely to know more than those briefing him and definitely more than the political journalists asking him questions. Therefore he doesn't need to bluster or bluff on tricky questions he just talks as if he is an expert, which he probably is.

However, he is still using a peashooter when we need a bazooka. Hopefully he is aware of that and he is working to fix it.

£330bn is a peashooter?

Mostly 1 year loans to businesses who would still be bust at the end of the 1 year?

If a business needs to be propped up by government for more than a year, it is not a viable business. Businesses need to be able to adapt to the new situation quickly and those that can't will go to the wall unfortunately.

When things eventually return to normal then new businesses will be able to emerge and things will start to recover.

I don't buy the idea that everything must be preserved as it was before the virus outbreak and infinite amounts of government money thrown at the problem that we'll be paying for for decades.

Plenty of businesses dont have reserves of 4 months costs whilst still being perfectly viable pre and post covid 19.

Yes but if the "during" part of covid 19 is say 2 or even 3 years are we going to keep paying for these "viable" businesses? This could be the new normal.

There would be much lower economic cost to letting them fail and new businesses replace them afterwards if it goes on too long.

I dont think lockdown is mentally or socially possible for that long regardless of the economy.

If as soon as we relax the lockdown the virus makes a comeback then we'll be in exactly the same situation as we are right now currently heading into the first lockdown.

The only way we could let it infect a large proportion of the population is if we increase ICU beds massively between now and then somehow or an effective treatment is rapidly discovered and mass produced which makes that unnecessary.

That, surely, is what we should be doing. Lock down tightly to get the spread under control, then gradually release restrictions while putting massive efforts into expanding ICU capacity. The idea of "cocooning" the vulnerable was never going to be practicable.

FeersumEnjineeya said:

turbotubbs said:

FeersumEnjineeya said:

DAlexander said:

noneoftheabove said:

DAlexander said:

noneoftheabove said:

DAlexander said:

noneoftheabove said:

Philip_Thompson said:

GideonWise said:

Fenster said:

MarqueeMark said:

I for one am happy that we have Rishi in lock-step with the PM. Not sure how this situation would have played out if No.10 didn't have confidence that an independent No. 11 and Sajid's Spads were going to do the right thing....

Sunak is ten times as impressive as Javid. I didn't take to Javid's speaking style at all, and he lost me when he did that silly legs-apart stance.

Haha pretty much where I was with Javid.

Sunak is impressive because he is likely to know more than those briefing him and definitely more than the political journalists asking him questions. Therefore he doesn't need to bluster or bluff on tricky questions he just talks as if he is an expert, which he probably is.

However, he is still using a peashooter when we need a bazooka. Hopefully he is aware of that and he is working to fix it.

£330bn is a peashooter?

Mostly 1 year loans to businesses who would still be bust at the end of the 1 year?

If a business needs to be propped up by government for more than a year, it is not a viable business. Businesses need to be able to adapt to the new situation quickly and those that can't will go to the wall unfortunately.

When things eventually return to normal then new businesses will be able to emerge and things will start to recover.

I don't buy the idea that everything must be preserved as it was before the virus outbreak and infinite amounts of government money thrown at the problem that we'll be paying for for decades.

Plenty of businesses dont have reserves of 4 months costs whilst still being perfectly viable pre and post covid 19.

Yes but if the "during" part of covid 19 is say 2 or even 3 years are we going to keep paying for these "viable" businesses? This could be the new normal.

There would be much lower economic cost to letting them fail and new businesses replace them afterwards if it goes on too long.

I dont think lockdown is mentally or socially possible for that long regardless of the economy.

If as soon as we relax the lockdown the virus makes a comeback then we'll be in exactly the same situation as we are right now currently heading into the first lockdown.

The only way we could let it infect a large proportion of the population is if we increase ICU beds massively between now and then somehow or an effective treatment is rapidly discovered and mass produced which makes that unnecessary.

That, surely, is what we should be doing. Lock down tightly to get the spread under control, then gradually release restrictions while putting massive efforts into expanding ICU capacity. The idea of "cocooning" the vulnerable was never going to be practicable.

This IS what we are doing.

No, it isn't, and even if was, it's what we should have been doing from the beginning, like Japan and South Korea.

glw said:

IanB2 said:

glw said:

NerysHughes said:

IanB2 said:

Floater said:

NerysHughes said:

Floater said:

https://twitter.com/SuneEngel/status/1239947669709127682?ref_src=twsrc^tfw|twcamp^tweetembed|twterm^1239947669709127682&ref_url=https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2020/mar/18/coronavirus-live-news-updates-outbreak-us-states-uk-australia-europe-eu-self-isolation-lockdown-latest-update

3.5 million??? Do they have a different strain?

Someone equated that to a 4% death rate - so, no.

I don't believe the difference between intervention and nothing ranges from 12,000 to 3,500,000. The figures at both ends are surely wrong.

The Diamond Princess shows why the 3.5 million figure is nonsense. That ship was the perfect breeding ground for the virus and the majority of people were aged over 60, they had 16 days in quarantine living on top of each other yet only 20% of passengers tested postive with 25% having no symptons.

A large proportion of the population must be immune to Covid-19

https://www.eurosurveillance.org/content/10.2807/1560-7917.ES.2020.25.10.2000180

That's a poor comparison, as everyone on the Diamond Princess got proper healthcare when needed. The Iranian doomsday scenario would be the exact opposite of that. Say 50-60% of the population infected, but essentially no healthcare because the system is overwhelmed, and people dying from all the other things that the Iranian healthcare system has to do.

The oft mentioned ski chalet was the same. A whole ski holiday living on top of each other and sharing a chalet with no precautions, yet half of them were uninfected.

That doesn't make a good comparison either. Any of those people who developed any serious symptoms got healthcare. What the Iranians are being warned about is an outbreak becoming so large that there's no real healthcare, not just for coronavirus but for everything. If things got bad enough you will get outbreaks of other diseases too.

Benpointer said:

Glasto cancelled, I see. Unsurprising in the great scheme of things.

MikeSmithson said:

Wouldn't it be great if the final EPL games were played in empty stadiums with all matches broadcast live for free. Its going without sport that I'm finding hard.

egg said:

another_richard said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

DavidL said:

Day 2.5 of WFH. I think if I have to do 3 months of this there is going to be blood.

A few days it dawned on me there's not going to be any live sport for the next few months.

No football, no rugby, and no cricket, that might lead to blood in this household.

I wonder if county championship cricket could be played.

Would fill up the sports schedules nicely.

The difference between a county championship match behind closed doors and usual attendance is about 11 people and a dog.

Then again again it’s about players and staff available , not mass gathering

This current football and rugby seasons certain be annulled without a winner or any ups and downs, most likely the coming cricket season too, and quite possibly next seasons football and rugby too.
Very tough on Liverpool, but this is war.

another_richard said:

tlg86 said:

geoffw said:

The time of slow tv might have come into its own. Five-day test cricket on terrestrial channels would be an ideal way to fill the airwaves, with the usual sparse spectator crowd: low risk for the players and spectators and a long-drawn out soporific spell on tv to ease us gently into the required catatonic boredom to tide us over the duration.

I suspect they don't have the rights, but it would be good if the BBC could show re-runs of Geoffrey Boycott's finest innings.

But Geoff's best innings were often quick scoring.

The 1965 Gillette Cup final for example.

https://www.espncricinfo.com/series/8629/scorecard/368638/surrey-vs-yorkshire-final-gillette-cup-england-1965

turbotubbs said:

FeersumEnjineeya said:

turbotubbs said:

FeersumEnjineeya said:

DAlexander said:

noneoftheabove said:

DAlexander said:

noneoftheabove said:

DAlexander said:

noneoftheabove said:

Philip_Thompson said:

GideonWise said:

Fenster said:

MarqueeMark said:

I for one am happy that we have Rishi in lock-step with the PM. Not sure how this situation would have played out if No.10 didn't have confidence that an independent No. 11 and Sajid's Spads were going to do the right thing....

Sunak is ten times as impressive as Javid. I didn't take to Javid's speaking style at all, and he lost me when he did that silly legs-apart stance.

Haha pretty much where I was with Javid.

Sunak is impressive because he is likely to know more than those briefing him and definitely more than the political journalists asking him questions. Therefore he doesn't need to bluster or bluff on tricky questions he just talks as if he is an expert, which he probably is.

However, he is still using a peashooter when we need a bazooka. Hopefully he is aware of that and he is working to fix it.

£330bn is a peashooter?

Mostly 1 year loans to businesses who would still be bust at the end of the 1 year?

If a business needs to be propped up by government for more than a year, it is not a viable business. Businesses need to be able to adapt to the new situation quickly and those that can't will go to the wall unfortunately.

When things eventually return to normal then new businesses will be able to emerge and things will start to recover.

I don't buy the idea that everything must be preserved as it was before the virus outbreak and infinite amounts of government money thrown at the problem that we'll be paying for for decades.

Plenty of businesses dont have reserves of 4 months costs whilst still being perfectly viable pre and post covid 19.

Yes but if the "during" part of covid 19 is say 2 or even 3 years are we going to keep paying for these "viable" businesses? This could be the new normal.

There would be much lower economic cost to letting them fail and new businesses replace them afterwards if it goes on too long.

I dont think lockdown is mentally or socially possible for that long regardless of the economy.

If as soon as we relax the lockdown the virus makes a comeback then we'll be in exactly the same situation as we are right now currently heading into the first lockdown.

The only way we could let it infect a large proportion of the population is if we increase ICU beds massively between now and then somehow or an effective treatment is rapidly discovered and mass produced which makes that unnecessary.

That, surely, is what we should be doing. Lock down tightly to get the spread under control, then gradually release restrictions while putting massive efforts into expanding ICU capacity. The idea of "cocooning" the vulnerable was never going to be practicable.

This IS what we are doing.

No, it isn't, and even if was, it's what we should have been doing from the beginning, like Japan and South Korea.

We started out a slightly different strategy, but have changed tack in recent times. We are now trying to suppress spread massively whilst clearing the hospitals, creating more ICU capacity and scraping together as many ventilators as possible. It was probably a mistake not to go hard at the start, but without shutting the borders and closing down incoming travel we would have been seeing new infections popping up all over (all those skiers on the mid-term holiday).

MarqueeMark said:

Anabobazina said:

MarqueeMark said:

GideonWise said:

Nigelb said:

DougSeal said:

I post without comment a counterpoint to the Imperial College study.

https://necsi.edu/review-of-ferguson-et-al-impact-of-non-pharmaceutical-interventions

It is an interesting argument, which seems intuitively correct:

...However, they make structural mistakes in analyzing outbreak response. They ignore standard Contact Tracing [2] allowing isolation of infected prior to symptoms. They also ignore door-to-door monitoring to identify cases with symptoms [3]. Their conclusions that there will be resurgent outbreaks are wrong. After a few weeks of lockdown almost all infectious people are identified and their contacts are isolated prior to symptoms and cannot infect others [4]. The outbreak can be stopped completely with no resurgence as in China, where new cases were down to one yesterday, after excluding imported international travelers that are quarantined.

Their assumptions are equivalent to ergodicity, as they consider new infections to be a function of infected fraction and immunity, and not influenced by where in the trajectory of the outbreak they are, distinguishing going up from going down...

Of course it is dependent on sufficiently reducing the number of new cases via lockdown so that contact tracing becomes effective again.

And 'sufficiently' is likely not trivial to define.

More widespread testing would, of course, reduce modelling uncertainties.

I agree there is some merit in this critique. The expert input for this decision by the government is not just coming from this Imperial team, there is at least one more academic team who are experts in Infectious Disease Models and PHE will have their own experts. Hopefully the different groups have taken different approaches to conceptualising this problem.


Crucially, it is important not to forget how to think.

A month ago it looked like the End of Days in much of Asia, not just China with its welded homes.

Today? Not so much.

In six weeks, will be thinking "What was THAT all about?"

Fair comment. I spoke with my Shanghai-based colleague yesterday in the SMT meeting. She spent most of the session reassuring her English colleagues that life would eventually return to normal and not to worry too much. It was good to talk to her actually!

Of course, it does require people not to be twats, hunker down for a few weeks and let the forest fire burn out for lack of trees.

C'mon, HM the Q - tell the nation what to do. It could be the, er, crowning moment of your entire reign.

Scott_xP said:

https://twitter.com/BethRigby/status/1240234870447771648

MikeSmithson said:

Benpointer said:

Glasto cancelled, I see. Unsurprising in the great scheme of things.

Maybe we could replace it with clips of Corbyn's 2017 Glastonbury appearance. Remember him going to be "in Downing Street by Christmas/?"

Scott_xP said:

https://twitter.com/BethRigby/status/1240234870447771648

Philip_Thompson said:

RobD said:

Scott_xP said:

https://twitter.com/BethRigby/status/1240234870447771648

Will be interesting to see.

Will be a very sombre and respectful atmosphere. Can Corbyn do that for 6 questions?

RochdalePioneers said:

These £330bn in emergency loans. Suggestions this morning that a company with a less than stellar credit rating (i.e. struggling for cash hence the need for a loan) might not get it. Similarly business now in trouble gets the loan, keeps going now then falls over when repayments get demanded.

They'll need to become grants for smaller businesses. If you are easyJet you can probably cope with borrowing. If you are the cafe where easyJet pilots used to eat every morning outside Luton airport probably less so.

Anabobazina said:

MarqueeMark said:

Anabobazina said:

MarqueeMark said:

GideonWise said:

Nigelb said:

DougSeal said:

I post without comment a counterpoint to the Imperial College study.

https://necsi.edu/review-of-ferguson-et-al-impact-of-non-pharmaceutical-interventions

It is an interesting argument, which seems intuitively correct:

...However, they make structural mistakes in analyzing outbreak response. They ignore standard Contact Tracing [2] allowing isolation of infected prior to symptoms. They also ignore door-to-door monitoring to identify cases with symptoms [3]. Their conclusions that there will be resurgent outbreaks are wrong. After a few weeks of lockdown almost all infectious people are identified and their contacts are isolated prior to symptoms and cannot infect others [4]. The outbreak can be stopped completely with no resurgence as in China, where new cases were down to one yesterday, after excluding imported international travelers that are quarantined.

Their assumptions are equivalent to ergodicity, as they consider new infections to be a function of infected fraction and immunity, and not influenced by where in the trajectory of the outbreak they are, distinguishing going up from going down...

Of course it is dependent on sufficiently reducing the number of new cases via lockdown so that contact tracing becomes effective again.

And 'sufficiently' is likely not trivial to define.

More widespread testing would, of course, reduce modelling uncertainties.

I agree there is some merit in this critique. The expert input for this decision by the government is not just coming from this Imperial team, there is at least one more academic team who are experts in Infectious Disease Models and PHE will have their own experts. Hopefully the different groups have taken different approaches to conceptualising this problem.


Crucially, it is important not to forget how to think.

A month ago it looked like the End of Days in much of Asia, not just China with its welded homes.

Today? Not so much.

In six weeks, will be thinking "What was THAT all about?"

Fair comment. I spoke with my Shanghai-based colleague yesterday in the SMT meeting. She spent most of the session reassuring her English colleagues that life would eventually return to normal and not to worry too much. It was good to talk to her actually!

Of course, it does require people not to be twats, hunker down for a few weeks and let the forest fire burn out for lack of trees.

C'mon, HM the Q - tell the nation what to do. It could be the, er, crowning moment of your entire reign.

Agreed, the bragging about pub visits on here last night was a low point for PB.

another_richard said:

tlg86 said:

geoffw said:

The time of slow tv might have come into its own. Five-day test cricket on terrestrial channels would be an ideal way to fill the airwaves, with the usual sparse spectator crowd: low risk for the players and spectators and a long-drawn out soporific spell on tv to ease us gently into the required catatonic boredom to tide us over the duration.

I suspect they don't have the rights, but it would be good if the BBC could show re-runs of Geoffrey Boycott's finest innings.

But Geoff's best innings were often quick scoring.

The 1965 Gillette Cup final for example.

https://www.espncricinfo.com/series/8629/scorecard/368638/surrey-vs-yorkshire-final-gillette-cup-england-1965

Foss said:

Scott_xP said:

https://twitter.com/BethRigby/status/1240234870447771648

Seems a reasonable compromise.

FeersumEnjineeya said:

turbotubbs said:

FeersumEnjineeya said:

turbotubbs said:

FeersumEnjineeya said:

DAlexander said:

noneoftheabove said:

DAlexander said:

noneoftheabove said:

DAlexander said:

noneoftheabove said:

Philip_Thompson said:

GideonWise said:

Fenster said:

MarqueeMark said:

I for one am happy that we have Rishi in lock-step with the PM. Not sure how this situation would have played out if No.10 didn't have confidence that an independent No. 11 and Sajid's Spads were going to do the right thing....

Sunak is ten times as impressive as Javid. I didn't take to Javid's speaking style at all, and he lost me when he did that silly legs-apart stance.

Haha pretty much where I was with Javid.

Sunak is impressive because he is likely to know more than those briefing him and definitely more than the political journalists asking him questions. Therefore he doesn't need to bluster or bluff on tricky questions he just talks as if he is an expert, which he probably is.

However, he is still using a peashooter when we need a bazooka. Hopefully he is aware of that and he is working to fix it.

£330bn is a peashooter?

Mostly 1 year loans to businesses who would still be bust at the end of the 1 year?

If a business needs to be propped up by government for more than a year, it is not a viable business. Businesses need to be able to adapt to the new situation quickly and those that can't will go to the wall unfortunately.

When things eventually return to normal then new businesses will be able to emerge and things will start to recover.

I don't buy the idea that everything must be preserved as it was before the virus outbreak and infinite amounts of government money thrown at the problem that we'll be paying for for decades.

Plenty of businesses dont have reserves of 4 months costs whilst still being perfectly viable pre and post covid 19.

Yes but if the "during" part of covid 19 is say 2 or even 3 years are we going to keep paying for these "viable" businesses? This could be the new normal.

There would be much lower economic cost to letting them fail and new businesses replace them afterwards if it goes on too long.

I dont think lockdown is mentally or socially possible for that long regardless of the economy.

If as soon as we relax the lockdown the virus makes a comeback then we'll be in exactly the same situation as we are right now currently heading into the first lockdown.

The only way we could let it infect a large proportion of the population is if we increase ICU beds massively between now and then somehow or an effective treatment is rapidly discovered and mass produced which makes that unnecessary.

That, surely, is what we should be doing. Lock down tightly to get the spread under control, then gradually release restrictions while putting massive efforts into expanding ICU capacity. The idea of "cocooning" the vulnerable was never going to be practicable.

This IS what we are doing.

No, it isn't, and even if was, it's what we should have been doing from the beginning, like Japan and South Korea.

We started out a slightly different strategy, but have changed tack in recent times. We are now trying to suppress spread massively whilst clearing the hospitals, creating more ICU capacity and scraping together as many ventilators as possible. It was probably a mistake not to go hard at the start, but without shutting the borders and closing down incoming travel we would have been seeing new infections popping up all over (all those skiers on the mid-term holiday).

We're still not really locking down though. Schools are still open; shops are still open. Our "lockdown" is very half-hearted and probably insufficient to stop the spread.