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

By the way, if anyone in Westminster is still reading PB you need to do something to ensure continuity of supply for people on pre-pay Gas and Electric meters. For a good number of the most vunerable people the risks around this are greater than the risks around rent.

geoffw said:

RobD said:

geoffw said:

Foss said:

Scott_xP said:

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

Seems a reasonable compromise.

With all the mp's crowded into the HoC bars to watch the action?

They are also closed.

Tea rooms too?

Haven't read about that, but suspect they won't be crammed full of people even if they are open.

Big_G_NorthWales said:

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.

The two main posters making such bragging rights were either deliberately trying to anger other posters or were otherwise insane

I passed about eight or nine pubs/bars/restaurants on my home last night. All of them had customers - not many, but the amount you'd expect on a Tuesday night.

Big_G_NorthWales said:

GideonWise said:

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.

We will be. But it takes a few days to do a full 180 degree turn. Schools will be closed very soon is my view.

Sky just did a report from a school and the majority of parents backed the government

That's called self-selection!

eristdoof said:

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.

I always loved how in SE London (incl. Greater London) we used to call the local Greyhound Racing "Catford-Dogs"

On a course in Ilford years ago I came across a poster for Barking Dogs Club.

Big_G_NorthWales said:

GideonWise said:

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.

We will be. But it takes a few days to do a full 180 degree turn. Schools will be closed very soon is my view.

Sky just did a report from a school and the majority of parents backed the government

Presumably this conclusion coming from the zenith of good polling practice: a vox pop

Foss said:

By the way, if anyone in Westminster is still reading PB you need to do something to ensure continuity of supply for people on pre-pay Gas and Electric meters. The for a good number of the most vunerable people the risks around this are greater than the risks around rent.

Excellent point.

eristdoof said:

Presumably this conclusion coming from the zenith of good polling practice: a vox pop

SKY normally go out of their way to give air time to critics of the Government.....

rottenborough said:

Foss said:

By the way, if anyone in Westminster is still reading PB you need to do something to ensure continuity of supply for people on pre-pay Gas and Electric meters. The for a good number of the most vunerable people the risks around this are greater than the risks around rent.

Excellent point.

TBH, I was hoping that someone might pick it up as a wildcard question for PMQs (a long shot, I know).

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?

More will need to be done and he has said it, but he's using a bazooka - the issue is we need an array of bazookas.

£20bn is a peashooter.
The £330bn is simply loans - allowing companies to bring their own money forwards in time and spend it all right now. Meaning they'll have that much less of their own money afterwards.

Sensible enough if this is all going to blow over in a few weeks. Not so much if this is going to last several months/over a year/ 18 months-plus as per Government statements.
If a company has, say, a 4% profit margin and has to cover, say, 60% of its outgoings (minimal stock, but still wages, rent, and existing debt servicing) for eighteen months, how many years of its future profits will it have spent in just surviving?

(Answer: 27 years. So it will be a viable and profitable concern again by the year 2050, which is nice).

Andy_Cooke 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?

More will need to be done and he has said it, but he's using a bazooka - the issue is we need an array of bazookas.

£20bn is a peashooter.
The £330bn is simply loans - allowing companies to bring their own money forwards in time and spend it all right now. Meaning they'll have that much less of their own money afterwards.

Sensible enough if this is all going to blow over in a few weeks. Not so much if this is going to last several months/over a year/ 18 months-plus as per Government statements.
If a company has, say, a 4% profit margin and has to cover, say, 60% of its outgoings (minimal stock, but still wages, rent, and existing debt servicing) for eighteen months, how many years of its future profits will it have spent in just surviving?

(Answer: 27 years. So it will be a viable and profitable concern again by the year 2050, which is nice).

I'd be surprised if the majority of those loans were repaid.

MattW said:

Reflecting on last night's thread, I think a self-isolation / lockdown zone in London could be boundaried by one of the new congestion charge proposed expansions, for which data, modelling is already available.

Would give a means of enforcement - you get an automatic fine if your vehicle passes the monitors, only rescinded if you have filled out the paperwork in advance on the net.

If the true rate is so high compared to the reported why is the % of positive tests so low. Is it a high check rate of low probability infected hospital admissions ?>

£1 now less than $1.19. That is surely a new post-1985 low.

Philip_Thompson said:

To continue my thought below about if season can't be completed I'd follow through the lower leagues with the "promote the top clubs but no relegation" plan too if the season can't be completed. And for the CL spots too.

For clubs currently outside the top who were hoping to get to the top (or those hoping to get into CL) its harsh but they can try again next season. However relegating a club that could have climbed out of the relegation zone is much worse fairer just not relegate anyone - even if that gives an undeserved mulligan to clubs like Norwich, or Bolton etc

Depending on how we come out of this there may be a 50% chance of another 2-3 month closure in the winter. Adding more teams doesnt really work, unless they provision for each time playing each other just once as a back up plan for next season.

Pulpstar said:

If the true rate is so high compared to the reported why is the % of positive tests so low. Is it a high check rate of low probability infected hospital admissions ?>

And contact tracing not being effective. There's no way only 1,500 people have it in the whole UK.

DavidL said:

He was excellent yesterday, even better than he was at the budget. I agree that his confidence is increasing. He is articulate and quick but also measured.

Tory fanboys gonna fanboy I guess.

He always seems like a right shyster to me, but that is pretty much all current Tories in this vile incarnation of the party. Not that I would ever be a fan, but at least there used to be the odd tolerable intellectual.

Mind you, I never understood the Ruth Davidson wankfest either. She always sent my shyster needle off the chart.

Scott_xP said:

OldKingCole said:

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

A couple of our vendors use Zoom, and my experience of it has been reliable.

Our corporate system is Skype, which works OK for people on the system, but outside users have issues.

We had a Webex call with a vendor yesterday, which we had to move to Zoom half way through.

The future of Skype is meant to be Teams. We haven't tested it on a large scale yet.

Many thanks.

Mr. Isam, I'm not a doctor but I'd go see your dentist, as you have a genuine need.

If it were a check-up I'd suggest not going.

kamski 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.

Personal experience of contact tracing:
My son suddenly had a fever 39.6 on Saturday. On Sunday we got an email from his kindergarten (already closed, but my son was there recently) saying a parent of one of the children had tested positive. My wife phoned the kindergarten leader to get more info - apart from anything else she is an emergency dept doctor and wanted to find out if she might be infected before going to work. Apparently, the local health Amt didn't test the child because s/he had no symptoms, so weren't testing anyone at the kindergarten because nobody had come in contact with a confirmed infection. She then tried to get through to the Cologne number to try and get us tested, but gave up after an hour.

So she got herself tested at her hospital, and took a swab to test our son there too. Both came back negative.

Yesterday we heard from the kindergarten that one of the teachers tested positive. I was expecting the local health people to get in touch, as our son is certainly a contact, but we've heard nothing.

I'm wondering if they've given up. Which would be stupid and depressing.

I'm glad your wife and son came back negative.

Somehow I don't belive the lack of tracing and testing is because they don't want to, but are "fire fighting" - dealing with the cases where people are ill. It is also more anecdotal evidence against the idea that Germany are testing many many more young people, causing the low reported case/death rate.

FeersumEnjineeya said:

£1 now less than $1.19. That is surely a new post-1985 low.

Could be a good thing. Perhaps Bailey of the BoE has engineered it down.

Mango said:

DavidL said:

He was excellent yesterday, even better than he was at the budget. I agree that his confidence is increasing. He is articulate and quick but also measured.

Tory fanboys gonna fanboy I guess.

He always seems like a right shyster to me, but that is pretty much all current Tories in this vile incarnation of the party. Not that I would ever be a fan, but at least there used to be the odd tolerable intellectual.

Mind you, I never understood the Ruth Davidson wankfest either. She always sent my shyster needle off the chart.

You hardly sound like a neutral observer yourself. Whereas David, can be never be described as a fanboy.

Benpointer said:

WhisperingOracle said:

NerysHughes said:

Pagan2 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.

propping up a business isnt just economic cost it is also social cost of those that still have a job to goto. Covid could potentially send half our small businesses to the wall in my opinion , first the ones directly unable to operate, followed by the ones that support them or are supported on the wages of their staff.....its a huge chain of domino effects

This domino effect is happening today, our IT support firm will close this Friday, its main customer was a pub chain. There will be thousands of such closures over the next few weeks. We could hit 5 million unemployed very quickly and 10 million by the end of the year. Millions of peoples lives will be destroyed by our response to Covid 19

Incomes policy is an immediate priority, which Trump of all people is ahead on, as is rents. Starmer is right today that there are also major issues about local and national public services if this shutdown continues for any length of time. The government's spending response has started well but there's little time to lose.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/mar/17/the-chancellors-stimulus-package-doesnt-go-nearly-far-enough

It's more than that surely. Otherwise viable businesses are closing and need to be kept going.

How about Government pays all salaries (for every company's payroll as at 1st March) for the next year; in return corporate profits taxed at 100%, again for next year. No one allowed to be dismissed during the coming year?

I'd be see surprised to see the Tories going for that level of intervention via tax, although that's nearer to what the French seem to be doing. Whatever the policy on loan or grant-linked salaries, rents and incomes is going to be, though, it needs to be radical and it has to come soon.

FrancisUrquhart said:

Guido being massive irresponsible again. When will they all learn, this is not a game, it is not about who gets the scoop first. This is about what is best for the nation.

The whole press/media need to take a long look at themselves before they do something very stupid and, perhaps with good reason, the government take appropriate action.

Philip_Thompson said:

Stark_Dawning said:

Big_G_NorthWales said:

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.

The two main posters making such bragging rights were either deliberately trying to anger other posters or were otherwise insane

I passed about eight or nine pubs/bars/restaurants on my home last night. All of them had customers - not many, but the amount you'd expect on a Tuesday night.

Some people will have good reason to be in them at the minute.

There may be people of 65 who feel they've had enough of this world and are prepared to depart it. But I'm 66 and I want another 20-30 years ... please. I'm guessing that there are more religious people in the first group. I'm an atheist and on balance I consider that death is the end, apart from some medical students hopefully making use of my body.

OTOH I don't object to a couple I know in their 90s continuing to socialise. They think that that they've had a long and mostly good life but now feel pretty decrepit. Being isolated from their children would be miserable.

The other two people I know in their 90s are fit as a fiddle and are both determined to hang around for another 5-10 years. They've self-isolated.

So it's very hard to generalise and use 70 as a cut-off point.

Pulpstar said:

If the true rate is so high compared to the reported why is the % of positive tests so low. Is it a high check rate of low probability infected hospital admissions ?>

One reason is because so many people have such mild symptoms they don't even know AND it takes several days for symptoms to appear after infection.

I posted a good video the other day about what 1 death actually means in terms of current numbers of infected.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mCa0JXEwDEk&t=1s

FrancisUrquhart said:

Guido being massive irresponsible again. When will they all learn, this is not a game, it is not about who gets the scoop first. This is about what is best for the nation.

This pandemic has woken me up to the fact that Guido is a ****.

noneoftheabove said:

Benpointer said:

WhisperingOracle said:

NerysHughes said:

Pagan2 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.

propping up a business isnt just economic cost it is also social cost of those that still have a job to goto. Covid could potentially send half our small businesses to the wall in my opinion , first the ones directly unable to operate, followed by the ones that support them or are supported on the wages of their staff.....its a huge chain of domino effects

This domino effect is happening today, our IT support firm will close this Friday, its main customer was a pub chain. There will be thousands of such closures over the next few weeks. We could hit 5 million unemployed very quickly and 10 million by the end of the year. Millions of peoples lives will be destroyed by our response to Covid 19

Incomes policy is an immediate priority, which Trump of all people is ahead on, as is rents. Starmer is right today that there are also major issues about local and national public services if this shutdown continues for any length of time. The government's spending response has started well but there's little time to lose.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/mar/17/the-chancellors-stimulus-package-doesnt-go-nearly-far-enough

It's more than that surely. Otherwise viable businesses are closing and need to be kept going.

How about Government pays all salaries (for every company's payroll as at 1st March) for the next year; in return corporate profits taxed at 100%, again for next year. No one allowed to be dismissed during the coming year?

My objection to that is the big execs getting paid millions by the state for doing nothing. Helicopter money to everyone of either median wage or full time min wage, but give companies or employees the right to temporarily suspend employment. Those who are still working like NHS staff and essential services get paid twice my way as well, which is only fair.

Yes fair enough. There would certainly need to be a cap on the govt salary commitment - I hadn't thought of that.

SouthamObserver said:

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.

As a Spurs fan, I am absolutely loving there being no football. I will miss the cricket, though.

rural_voter said:

Philip_Thompson said:

Stark_Dawning said:

Big_G_NorthWales said:

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.

The two main posters making such bragging rights were either deliberately trying to anger other posters or were otherwise insane

I passed about eight or nine pubs/bars/restaurants on my home last night. All of them had customers - not many, but the amount you'd expect on a Tuesday night.

Some people will have good reason to be in them at the minute.

There may be people of 65 who feel they've had enough of this world and are prepared to depart it. But I'm 66 and I want another 20-30 years ... please. I'm guessing that there are more religious people in the first group. I'm an atheist and on balance I consider that death is the end, apart from some medical students hopefully making use of my body.

OTOH I don't object to a couple I know in their 90s continuing to socialise. They think that that they've had a long and mostly good life but now feel pretty decrepit. Being isolated from their children would be miserable.

The other two people I know in their 90s are fit as a fiddle and are both determined to hang around for another 5-10 years. They've self-isolated.

So it's very hard to generalise and use 70 as a cut-off point.

The point is, it doesn't matter what individuals desire. Even if somebody in their 60s wants to go, they are going to crash the system, because they will still need to be scooped up and they could well infect other people.

This is situation isn't like the pros / cons of being able to kill ones self, where the strain on the system would be minimal.

What ideas is master blue-sky thinker Dom Cummings coming up with to reslove this, I wonder?

Very OT: Something to distract you for a few minutes
https://twitter.com/Cmdr_Hadfield/status/1240243302236073985?s=20

Big_G_NorthWales said:

RobD said:

Pulpstar said:

If the true rate is so high compared to the reported why is the % of positive tests so low. Is it a high check rate of low probability infected hospital admissions ?>

And contact tracing not being effective. There's no way only 1,500 people have it in the whole UK.

200,000 confirmed cases of covid 19 worldwide according to John Hopkins University

That means 200k tested positive - it omits all those infected who have not been tested, largely because they do not have symptoms and so do not present at the medical facilities where testing takes place, i.e. the submerged iceberg.

edit p.s. it is Johns Hopkins

rottenborough said:

https://twitter.com/BrewDog/status/1240208876408123393

So you have to have a beard and a shelve of tattoos to use it?

Benpointer said:

What ideas is master blue-sky thinker Dom Cummings coming up with to reslove this, I wonder?

"Whatever it takes" had Big Doms fingerprints all over it.

TheScreamingEagles said:

The person I spent most of last weekend with now has a persistent cough and this morning told me she has a temperature.

Self isolation should be fun right?

PB on a big monitor instead of a phone screen?

squareroot2 said:

eristdoof said:

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

May be his best innings were, but most of his innings were turgid.

You need to understand TEST cricket first before making such pronouncements.

Oh I understand Test cricket very well. I did not mean that his innings were inappropriate, but they were very low risk and slow scoring. I also think that too few batsmen in recent years are proper test batsmen. You do not have to be an opener or a slow scoring batsman to be a good Test batsman, you do need to adapt to the game situation. Taylor, Ponting Lara and Tendulkar are all excellent examples.

FrancisUrquhart said:

Benpointer said:

What ideas is master blue-sky thinker Dom Cummings coming up with to reslove this, I wonder?

"Whatever it takes" had Big Doms fingerprints all over it.

If so, for once I agree with him.

WhisperingOracle said:

Benpointer said:

How about Government pays all salaries (for every company's payroll as at 1st March) for the next year; in return corporate profits taxed at 100%, again for next year. No one allowed to be dismissed during the coming year?

I'd be see surprised to see the Tories going for that level of intervention via tax, although that's nearer to what the French seem to be doing. Whatever the policy on loan or grant-linked salaries, rents and incomes is going to be, though, it needs to be radical and it has to come soon.

I believed the government would cling to last week's budget as recently as yesterday afternoon. I was wrong - they get it. They need to go a lot further and I have confidence that they will get there as they said "we will need to go further" and said give us a couple of days.

This is now a wartime economy. We can keep people working and businesses solvent - and have an economy when we get through this. Or we can let companies fold and people go hungry and not have a society when we get through this. So many of the people who need direct injections of Treasury cash are Tory voters. Would be an odd thing if Johnson hung them out to dry...

Benpointer said:

FrancisUrquhart said:

Benpointer said:

What ideas is master blue-sky thinker Dom Cummings coming up with to reslove this, I wonder?

"Whatever it takes" had Big Doms fingerprints all over it.

If so, for once I agree with him.

They need to deploy his skills for other messaging. The government really need a 5 point "pledge card" type thing that every single minister just repeats at every occasion. They did well on the hand washing, but now the public need to be educated to do a lot more and fast.

JM1 said:

Barnesian 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 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.

"Some people choose to put their faith in experts but those experts sometimes choose to put their faith into models. That's dangerous."

Totally agree. I hope the government is using multiple sources of advice and also referring to the models and assumptions used by Italy, France, Germany etc that inform their policy decisions to get a more robust basis rather than depending on just the Imperial model.

They are using more than the Imperial model - I know (first-hand) of colleagues in other Universities who are participating in this.

That's good to hear. Reassuring.

FrancisUrquhart said:

Benpointer said:

What ideas is master blue-sky thinker Dom Cummings coming up with to reslove this, I wonder?

"Whatever it takes" had Big Doms fingerprints all over it.

But it is not new. Von der Leyen used it before Johnson in the corona crisis, and it was widely used by someone in the EU/ECB during the Euro-Crisis.

NerysHughes said:

Big_G_NorthWales said:

RobD said:

Pulpstar said:

If the true rate is so high compared to the reported why is the % of positive tests so low. Is it a high check rate of low probability infected hospital admissions ?>

And contact tracing not being effective. There's no way only 1,500 people have it in the whole UK.

200,000 confirmed cases of covid 19 worldwide according to John Hopkins University

Thats 0.00002597402 of the worlds population

The fraction with it is probably a fair bit higher.

I have decided to be positive today.
(EasyJet by the way, are acting on a biz assumption that they will back at 50% service levels in May).

I think there is an iceberg effect, which tests haven’t been picking up.
Therefore, real infections are much higher.
But real emergency cases are much lower, as a %.

I also think the virus is more susceptible to strong but not disruptive social distancing / isolation measures than Imperial’s model suggests.

I also think we’ll find at least a partly effective vaccine in 2020.

None of this means that ICUs will not be overloaded, it is too late to avoid that. However it does mean that “lock down”, when it comes, would be many weeks, not many months.

Although we may be be battling this “for two years”, perhaps 18 months of that will be relatively unobtrusive, with new measures around, say, temperature checks to access certain buildings, continuation of current advice to quarantine in case of symptoms for 7-14 days etc.

The above is all assumption, and maybe hopelessly optimistic, but cannot I think he disproven by the evidence on the table today.

eristdoof said:

FrancisUrquhart said:

Benpointer said:

What ideas is master blue-sky thinker Dom Cummings coming up with to reslove this, I wonder?

"Whatever it takes" had Big Doms fingerprints all over it.

But it is not new. Von der Leyen used it before Johnson in the corona crisis, and it was widely used by someone in the EU/ECB during the Euro-Crisis.

Good artists borrow. Great artists steal.

I don’t think it really matters who said it first if it’s the right thing to say.

eristdoof said:

FrancisUrquhart said:

Benpointer said:

What ideas is master blue-sky thinker Dom Cummings coming up with to reslove this, I wonder?

"Whatever it takes" had Big Doms fingerprints all over it.

But it is not new. Von der Leyen used it before Johnson in the corona crisis, and it was widely used by someone in the EU/ECB during the Euro-Crisis.

Not saying it was, but had the Big Dom fingerprints of him screaming at ministers "f##king use it, again and again and again".

Gardenwalker said:

Why is the £ falling?

Fear of colossal money printing and roaring inflation in a country that is quite small and now on its own?

Gardenwalker said:

I have decided to be positive today.
(EasyJet by the way, are acting on a biz assumption that they will back at 50% service levels in May).

I think there is an iceberg effect, which tests haven’t been picking up.
Therefore, real infections are much higher.
But real emergency cases are much lower, as a %.

I also think the virus is more susceptible to strong but not disruptive social distancing / isolation measures than Imperial’s model suggests.

I also think we’ll find at least a partly effective vaccine in 2020.

None of this means that ICUs will not be overloaded, it is too late to avoid that. However it does mean that “lock down”, when it comes, would be many weeks, not many months.

Although we may be be battling this “for two years”, perhaps 18 months of that will be relatively unobtrusive, with new measures around, say, temperature checks to access certain buildings, continuation of current advice to quarantine in case of symptoms for 7-14 days etc.

The above is all assumption, and maybe hopelessly optimistic, but cannot I think he disproven by the evidence on the table today.

Fingers crossed.

kinabalu said:

Gardenwalker said:

Why is the £ falling?

Fear of colossal money printing and roaring inflation in a country that is quite small and now on its own?

But it should be relative. Would you rather be Italy, Spain, France, USA or UK now?