Did you know that if you rest one of your testicles on top of an empty beer bottle, and hold a flame at the base, eventually it gets sucked inside......If you've done this and know how to get it out, message me please...
Yes and no. I am struggling to think about anything but the virus and its implications for my family and friends. So hard to concentrated on anything else.
A few seconds when my brain manages to consider the possibility of Harris becoming POTUS is actually giving me a break.
Did you know that if you rest one of your testicles on top of an empty beer bottle, and hold a flame at the base, eventually it gets sucked inside......If you've done this and know how to get it out, message me please...
Did you know that if you rest one of your testicles on top of an empty beer bottle, and hold a flame at the base, eventually it gets sucked inside......If you've done this and know how to get it out, message me please...
Urgently!!
Why would you hold a flame to the base of your testicle? And what is the beer bottle for?
It should also be between every BBC program. A 30s clip with the key government advice. I'm sure they can compel them to broadcast it, so the only cost is the production.
Has anybody rich or famous died from the virus yet? I did see an Italian architect had died a few days ago but I didn’t recognize the name.
You’ll have to ask our official scorekeeper, @Dura_Ace .
Nobody on the Dead Pool yet. I don't even think we have a confirmed infection.
I am splitting the contest into two awards: Boomer Remover Dead Pool Champion - first nominated sleb to cark it of confirmed Covid-19 infection or conditions caused thereby. Marco Bielsa Award for Sporting Excellence - first sleb to die who wasn't just a really old person found on Wikipedia.
In all cases the adjudicator's decision is final and not accessible to appeal.
Extract from my brief to Council colleagues in other Authorities this evening...
One thing is for sure. Leaving this to Facebook is no solution. Social media focuses on those who shout the loudest. We need to support those with the quietest voices most of whom might never have heard of social media. That what the State is for.
It will be our task to knit the calls for help with those who are able to serve. But how?
This is what I have discussed with a fellow Council Leader when thinking how to do solve this problem practically and to get our Councils organised, so we don’t let our residents down.
We need to break the task into manageable chunks. We made some working assumptions together.
Of the 1.5m people to be super-served on the NHS list, let’s say 900,000 are in England. There are over 300 authorities here so let’s say 3,000 vulnerable people per authority. How will we serve these people over-and-above everyone else?
Let’s say a typical district has 25 wards. That’s 120 people per ward on the critical list. And, let’s say that there might be 3 times as many other families self-isolating or otherwise generally in need.
We can allocate 25 senior managers, one to each ward, perhaps supported by a Constable. We can divi-out out a share of the national volunteer base into 25 chunks.
So, that’s 25 ward with 120 people to be super-served + 360 others that’s 480 people to be served in total. Per ward. That is not an insurmountable task. It becomes manageable. And deliverable.
Well, we'll soon find out as the Dutch have genuinely gone with the herd immunity option
Dutch have one of the highest population densities in Europe, aging population, and hospitals running at capacity. They'll be the worst off in EU, but I'm not sure they had a choice.
I guess the market is efficient. It was odd in Tesco this evening - I'm going to supermarkets late to get fresh fruit - most of the shelves were empty, including Sesame Oil. They were playing disco hits from the 70's. It was like a satire on consumerism.
US numbers in now, +6513 cases (+48% daily), which is absolutely catastrophic. They are going to have the worst problem in the world.
They're not even testing properly yet. Although I have it at around a 33% increase. The fact that about half the cases found so far are in NYS (12,000+) indicates that there is likely a massive issue all over the country.
US numbers in now, +6513 cases (+48% daily), which is absolutely catastrophic. They are going to have the worst problem in the world.
In NYC and LA and Miami and San Francisco maybe, in West Virginia, Kansas, Wyoming and Montana probably not
Los Angeles has relatively few cases - don't forget that it is very low density, and with bugger all public transport. In total there are 200-something in the whole of LA county.
And this is a place with more than 10 million people - 25% larger than NYC.
So, while I have no doubt that it will be hit relatively hard, it will probably grow less quickly here simply because there are so many fewer contact points.
US numbers in now, +6513 cases (+48% daily), which is absolutely catastrophic. They are going to have the worst problem in the world.
In NYC and LA and Miami and San Francisco maybe, in West Virginia, Kansas, Wyoming and Montana probably not
Los Angeles has relatively few cases - don't forget that it is very low density, and with bugger all public transport. In total there are 200-something in the whole of LA county.
And this is a place with more than 10 million people - 25% larger than NYC.
So, while I have no doubt that it will be hit relatively hard, it will probably grow less quickly here simply because there are so many fewer contact points.
There is probably an earthquake lying in wait - is there a market on that?
US numbers in now, +6513 cases (+48% daily), which is absolutely catastrophic. They are going to have the worst problem in the world.
In NYC and LA and Miami and San Francisco maybe, in West Virginia, Kansas, Wyoming and Montana probably not
Los Angeles has relatively few cases - don't forget that it is very low density, and with bugger all public transport. In total there are 200-something in the whole of LA county.
And this is a place with more than 10 million people - 25% larger than NYC.
So, while I have no doubt that it will be hit relatively hard, it will probably grow less quickly here simply because there are so many fewer contact points.
There is probably an earthquake lying in wait - is there a market on that?
I was thinking just the same thing. Of course, angelinos will be well stocked with staples in the event of a quake
I guess the market is efficient. It was odd in Tesco this evening - I'm going to supermarkets late to get fresh fruit - most of the shelves were empty, including Sesame Oil. They were playing disco hits from the 70's. It was like a satire on consumerism.
US numbers in now, +6513 cases (+48% daily), which is absolutely catastrophic. They are going to have the worst problem in the world.
In NYC and LA and Miami and San Francisco maybe, in West Virginia, Kansas, Wyoming and Montana probably not
Los Angeles has relatively few cases - don't forget that it is very low density, and with bugger all public transport. In total there are 200-something in the whole of LA county.
And this is a place with more than 10 million people - 25% larger than NYC.
So, while I have no doubt that it will be hit relatively hard, it will probably grow less quickly here simply because there are so many fewer contact points.
There is probably an earthquake lying in wait - is there a market on that?
I was thinking just the same thing. Of course, angelinos will be well stocked with staples in the event of a quake
There could be a serious problem if people aren't allowed to visit places like national parks, beaches, etc. A lot of folks are probably hoping to get some exercise in such places as the only alternative to being stuck at home, but if everyone does it those places are going to be too crowded and they'll have to be closed, which is what has just happened with National Trust parks.
I hope the government has recruited the very best behavioural experts in order to deal with these sorts of potential problems.
US numbers in now, +6513 cases (+48% daily), which is absolutely catastrophic. They are going to have the worst problem in the world.
In NYC and LA and Miami and San Francisco maybe, in West Virginia, Kansas, Wyoming and Montana probably not
Los Angeles has relatively few cases - don't forget that it is very low density, and with bugger all public transport. In total there are 200-something in the whole of LA county.
And this is a place with more than 10 million people - 25% larger than NYC.
So, while I have no doubt that it will be hit relatively hard, it will probably grow less quickly here simply because there are so many fewer contact points.
There is probably an earthquake lying in wait - is there a market on that?
Separately, if you want to bet on an earthquake, then Berkshire Hathaway is the world's largest insurer of California earthquake insurance. In the event of "the big one", their stock would drop in half.
I appreciate the thread header, but it's pretty irrelevant. The shadow chancellor will be shit at any sort of economics and female. If Starmer wins by a lot then he'll go for boring and past best by (Cooper, Griffith, Vaz, Thornberry). If he wins by not a lot he'll got for someone that gets intellectually intimidated by a 1970s Casio calculator (RLB, Butler, RLB etc).
Reeves is far too intelligent and centre-left to be Labour shadow chancellor, I'm not sure that Starmer will have enough credit in the bank with maomentum to appoint someone that could propose a credible platform.
On topic, is this the most pointless thread in PB history? I doubt even Starmer himself cares who his Shadow Chancellor will be at the moment
This could be the Chief Sec to the treasury in a GNU in 3 months time, and then who knows? PM this time next year?
Forget about a GNU. Everyone thought the same with Brexit and it didn’t happen. The Tories have a large majority and they will see out this parliament, no matter what the repercussions may be for them.
I appreciate the thread header, but it's pretty irrelevant. The shadow chancellor will be shit at any sort of economics and female. If Starmer wins by a lot then he'll go for boring and past best by (Cooper, Griffith, Vaz, Thornberry). If he wins by not a lot he'll got for someone that gets intellectually intimidated by a 1970s Casio calculator (RLB, Butler, RLB etc).
Reeves is far too intelligent and centre-left to be Labour shadow chancellor, I'm not sure that Starmer will have enough credit in the bank with maomentum to appoint someone that could propose a credible platform.
In the light of the last, what, two weeks, maybe even one week, I don't think the bounds of "credible" lie anywhere near where we used to think they did! If in the next month a Tory chancellor with a thumping majority announced he'll run a deficit over 25% of GDP and immediately renationalise the railways, British Airways, electricity, gas, water and telecoms/broadband as either "essential to the war effort" or on the brink of going bust, I don't think I'd be particularly startled. Before the year's out BoJo might have overseen nationalisation of the banks, insurance, the supermarkets (to be replaced by a National Food Service?), whatever's left of the car industry, all the logistics, parcel and delivery services, even Wimpy, Primark and Premier Inn, and by that stage I might have ceased to bat an eyelid...
If Labour were then to say, for the sake of fairness, we should also nationalise the pubs, BTL houses, the mobile network operators and Fred's fish-and-chip shop down the road, at what point do those demands go beyond the "credible"(!)
In seriousness, all normal political, social and economic laws have either ceased operating or can no longer be assumed to be operating in the immediate future. That doesn't mean that everything will change forever, or at least change drastically forever, but it will be a long while yet before normal service is resumed.
Post-crisis, the big debate for the rest of this decade is surely going to be the pace and means by which we return to the status quo ante, which aspects of national life we try to return to a semblance of "normality" first, and whether there are some aspects of the Olden Ways we decide never to return to.
I think someone who predicts where those fault lines will lie may have some profitable betting opportunities ahead! Clearly there will be people in Labour who will quite like the increased state intervention in the economy and will oppose the rapid reversal of those measures, but that's a case where old political rules still apply and there's so much more in play than that.
If we all get used to cleaner air in our cities and reduced carbon emissions on our conscience, and have experienced both the costs as well as the benefits of humanity's greater interconnectedness, will we return to so much car-based commuting or cheap mass air travel? We're going to get much better (both technically and managerially) at working from home, but also going to suffer whatever scars to the national and individual psyche an extended period of social distancing inflicts. How will that affect the way we live, our feelings, our goals for the country, our sense of togetherness, our political desires? Having experienced a period of unprecedented governmental control, will we be more, or less, comfortable with deep state intrusion into the structure of our lives?
All manner of possibilities have been blown wide open. The Overton window on so many different issues could shift quite rapidly, it's going to be like waking up inside Overton's conservatory and discovering primeval forces and animal spirits have combined to build Overton's kaleidoscope all around it. For now we're staring out disoriented while watching the patterns of our lives, everything we've ever known, mixed up and recombined then briefly reglimpsed and then shattered again, with new forms swirling around to replace them.
And if you can judge how those novel pieces will start fitting together over the next few months and years, you might grasp the world-perspective we'll end up in that will dictate how we choose the path forward from the rubble.
Even if you believe the nature of humanity is such that our fundamental wants will be the same (via some Maslowian hierarchy or whatever) it could well be that people hold a new set of assumptions about how food/security/love/esteem might best be delivered or achieved. There are a lot of long-term surveys about social and political attitudes that are going to make interesting reading, as we watch how they get reshaped in the 2020s...
I appreciate the thread header, but it's pretty irrelevant. The shadow chancellor will be shit at any sort of economics and female. If Starmer wins by a lot then he'll go for boring and past best by (Cooper, Griffith, Vaz, Thornberry). If he wins by not a lot he'll got for someone that gets intellectually intimidated by a 1970s Casio calculator (RLB, Butler, RLB etc).
Reeves is far too intelligent and centre-left to be Labour shadow chancellor, I'm not sure that Starmer will have enough credit in the bank with maomentum to appoint someone that could propose a credible platform.
In the light of the last, what, two weeks, maybe even one week, I don't think the bounds of "credible" lie anywhere near where we used to think they did! If in the next month a Tory chancellor with a thumping majority announced he'll run a deficit over 25% of GDP and immediately renationalise the railways, British Airways, electricity, gas, water and telecoms/broadband as either "essential to the war effort" or on the brink of going bust, I don't think I'd be particularly startled. Before the year's out BoJo might have overseen nationalisation of the banks, insurance, the supermarkets (to be replaced by a National Food Service?), whatever's left of the car industry, all the logistics, parcel and delivery services, even Wimpy, Primark and Premier Inn, and by that stage I might have ceased to bat an eyelid...
If Labour were then to say, for the sake of fairness, we should also nationalise the pubs, BTL houses, the mobile network operators and Fred's fish-and-chip shop down the road, at what point do those demands go beyond the "credible"(!)
I think that (for the moment) the Overton window is relatively static (although both big parties at the GE were promising big state spending), because there's an understanding that this debt fuelled spending is unsustainable, this is not the new normal.
I mix with an extremely young & left wing circle (which is why when they swung against Lab I twigged that Corbyn was screwed & profited handsomely), and while I could see a greater role of the state in the economy, the Govt's ineptitude at running non-essential services will ensure that the Overton window remains somewhat static.
In an economic sense the Overton window is an equilibrium, and a one off shock (like this pandemic) is not enough to cause long term shifts.
... while I could see a greater role of the state in the economy, the Govt's ineptitude at running non-essential services will ensure that the Overton window remains somewhat static.
In an economic sense the Overton window is an equilibrium, and a one off shock (like this pandemic) is not enough to cause long term shifts.
Do see where you're coming from but, hmm, dunno. Plenty of historical examples of temporary or emergency measures that either never get unwound or lead to some alternative change rather than a return to the status quo. And even if the status quo is restored, the Overton window may still be shifted - something previously unthinkable is now thinkable, because we've experienced it and seen how it might work, at least for a while. Moreover, we've learned a bit about how to make it work, even if imperfectly.
The flip side is the stuff we have got into the habit of taking for granted as part of the political, economic or social firmament: things we treat as unstoppable or inevitable forces, to which no alternative can be envisaged. Once we've seen they can, in extremis, be switched off, they will inevitably lose some of the power they held over us.
Of course there will be plenty of emergency measures that will be rescinded promptly and everyone will be glad to see the back of. But I'm not sure how easy it is right now to judge precisely what things will return almost exactly to the status quo, what changes might persist, and what things might revert for now but find themselves "in play" for further changes because the very possibility of change now seems a feasible prospect. Partly because we don't know right now how everything is going to play out, but also because the "us" in a few years who'll influence those choices, will not be the same "us" as today or a few months ago. There will surely be changes wrought upon us both individually and collectively by this unprecedented experience.
The experience of isolation is going to have psychological effects. Our close encounters with mortality - it seems likely most of us are going to know someone who dies of/with COVID-19 and almost all of us will know someone who contracts it - may change attitudes to life and health. I wonder whether the experience of one catastrophe shattering our previously largely comfortable lives might make us more sensitive to the prospect of another one doing so - if a virus can cause Western society to grind to a halt, does the threat of e.g. climate change seem more realistic too? (In which case we open ourselves up to arguments like: if we can stop planes for one thing, can't we for the other?) We are also not just going to be affected by the pandemic itself, but by all the things that spin off from its disruption (probably more driven by government responses than the virus in its own right) of the interconnected, complex systems that underpin our way of life. As David H pointed out in his excellent header, there is a non-zero probability of these spiralling out of control, and the influence of whatever that maelstrom conjures upon us might be even more dramatic.
On Spanish Tv there is a sign permanantly on the screen - #queda en casa - that helps t push home the basic message. There are still problems here with people from the big cities trying to get to second homes but some tentative signs that here in the south the rate of infection increase may be slowing. Lockdown life is pretty dull but set against the alternative... I just don't see why so many in the UK are failing to get it.
Think it's very likely to be Anneliese Dodds, Cooper and Reeves wouldn't fit with the platform Starmer is standing on. All the other names on that list are pretty implausible.
On Spanish Tv there is a sign permanantly on the screen - #queda en casa - that helps t push home the basic message. There are still problems here with people from the big cities trying to get to second homes but some tentative signs that here in the south the rate of infection increase may be slowing. Lockdown life is pretty dull but set against the alternative... I just don't see why so many in the UK are failing to get it.
Not to mention it's Death or Bongo: You can have a lockdown, or you can have a bunch of people dying, followed by a lockdown.
On Spanish Tv there is a sign permanantly on the screen - #queda en casa - that helps t push home the basic message. There are still problems here with people from the big cities trying to get to second homes but some tentative signs that here in the south the rate of infection increase may be slowing. Lockdown life is pretty dull but set against the alternative... I just don't see why so many in the UK are failing to get it.
Not to mention it's Death or Bongo: You can have a lockdown, or you can have a bunch of people dying, followed by a lockdown.
Think it's very likely to be Anneliese Dodds, Cooper and Reeves wouldn't fit with the platform Starmer is standing on. All the other names on that list are pretty implausible.
Cooper and Reeves are both economists, and Starmer might feel it is important to hit the ground running on Sunak's economic countermeasures to Covid-19. Likewise for the new Shadow Health, Home and Business Secretaries. Anneliese Dodds looks more like a Shadow Chancellor for normal times who could spend three quiet years drafting economic policy for the next manifesto.
But since that seems to have been Shadsy's train of thought too, these are the first three in the betting with a combined price of even money or 50 per cent (well, 51 per cent but let's hope for an odds boost to keep the arithmetic simple).
On topic, which is odd for me! Before you look at candidates for the shadow CofE should you consider which of the labour MPs who are thought of as 'big beasts' will Starmer want to include in his shadow cabinet? Will they demand one of the three big gigs? Will C of E be available for new talent?
Think it's very likely to be Anneliese Dodds, Cooper and Reeves wouldn't fit with the platform Starmer is standing on. All the other names on that list are pretty implausible.
Cooper and Reeves are both economists, and Starmer might feel it is important to hit the ground running on Sunak's economic countermeasures to Covid-19. Likewise for the new Shadow Health, Home and Business Secretaries. Anneliese Dodds looks more like a Shadow Chancellor for normal times who could spend three quiet years drafting economic policy for the next manifesto.
But since that seems to have been Shadsy's train of thought too, these are the first three in the betting with a combined price of even money or 50 per cent (well, 51 per cent but let's hope for an odds boost to keep the arithmetic simple).
I wonder if Starmer remembers what happened when Ed Miliband made Alan Johnson shadow chancellor?
I needed to do some food shopping yesterday (for bread, milk etc.). Decided to walk and avoid all the coughing fits on public transport. Very few people on street (like Christmas Day) and lots of weird social distancing - people crossing street to avoid close contact.
Elephant and Castle shopping centre was almost empty except for Iceland, where there was a queue to get in! Co-op opposite very quiet, some empty shelves but I got most of what I went for.
Re the Coronovirus trends, the main problem with John Murdoch-Brown's projections are that they are straight line when the graphs are curving.As pointed out by The ShakespeareanApe on Twitter. Even clearer looking at the case trends also shown on the FT's brilliant page based on the Johns Hopkins monitoring. The country that really needs ti worry is the USA.
I needed to do some food shopping yesterday (for bread, milk etc.). Decided to walk and avoid all the coughing fits on public transport. Very few people on street (like Christmas Day) and lots of weird social distancing - people crossing street to avoid close contact.
Elephant and Castle shopping centre was almost empty except for Iceland, where there was a queue to get in! Co-op opposite very quiet, some empty shelves but I got most of what I went for.
Yep. People seem to be doing everything right until they get to the shops and seem to be deliberately seeking out a queue.
On Spanish Tv there is a sign permanantly on the screen - #queda en casa - that helps t push home the basic message. There are still problems here with people from the big cities trying to get to second homes but some tentative signs that here in the south the rate of infection increase may be slowing. Lockdown life is pretty dull but set against the alternative... I just don't see why so many in the UK are failing to get it.
Not to mention it's Death or Bongo: You can have a lockdown, or you can have a bunch of people dying, followed by a lockdown.
Think it's very likely to be Anneliese Dodds, Cooper and Reeves wouldn't fit with the platform Starmer is standing on. All the other names on that list are pretty implausible.
Cooper and Reeves are both economists, and Starmer might feel it is important to hit the ground running on Sunak's economic countermeasures to Covid-19. Likewise for the new Shadow Health, Home and Business Secretaries. Anneliese Dodds looks more like a Shadow Chancellor for normal times who could spend three quiet years drafting economic policy for the next manifesto.
But since that seems to have been Shadsy's train of thought too, these are the first three in the betting with a combined price of even money or 50 per cent (well, 51 per cent but let's hope for an odds boost to keep the arithmetic simple).
I wonder if Starmer remembers what happened when Ed Miliband made Alan Johnson shadow chancellor?
As I recall, (Alan) Johnson’s wife ran off with a security guard.
London Fields was full of hipsters yesterday. Broadway Market was still operating, albeit probably at reduced capacity. I literally heard one girl mention to her boyfriend that they needed truffle oil.
The social distancing thing has not reached Hackney yet.
Think it's very likely to be Anneliese Dodds, Cooper and Reeves wouldn't fit with the platform Starmer is standing on. All the other names on that list are pretty implausible.
Cooper and Reeves are both economists, and Starmer might feel it is important to hit the ground running on Sunak's economic countermeasures to Covid-19. Likewise for the new Shadow Health, Home and Business Secretaries. Anneliese Dodds looks more like a Shadow Chancellor for normal times who could spend three quiet years drafting economic policy for the next manifesto.
But since that seems to have been Shadsy's train of thought too, these are the first three in the betting with a combined price of even money or 50 per cent (well, 51 per cent but let's hope for an odds boost to keep the arithmetic simple).
I wonder if Starmer remembers what happened when Ed Miliband made Alan Johnson shadow chancellor?
As I recall, (Alan) Johnson’s wife ran off with a security guard.
And that was about it.
Johnson really wasn't the right man for the Treasury. Even shadowing it.
On Spanish Tv there is a sign permanantly on the screen - #queda en casa - that helps t push home the basic message. There are still problems here with people from the big cities trying to get to second homes but some tentative signs that here in the south the rate of infection increase may be slowing. Lockdown life is pretty dull but set against the alternative... I just don't see why so many in the UK are failing to get it.
Not to mention it's Death or Bongo: You can have a lockdown, or you can have a bunch of people dying, followed by a lockdown.
Yes, this is exactly the point I've been trying to make in my recent posts. We are (mostly) not a nation of selfish hoarders. Rather the problem is simply the inevitable consequence of disruption to a finely tuned supply chain.
While the supermarkets ramp up supplies and people's cupboards fill, the shelves will remain sparsely filled. But when the two curves meet, the shelves will quite suddenly appear full again, as if by magic.
On Spanish Tv there is a sign permanantly on the screen - #queda en casa - that helps t push home the basic message. There are still problems here with people from the big cities trying to get to second homes but some tentative signs that here in the south the rate of infection increase may be slowing. Lockdown life is pretty dull but set against the alternative... I just don't see why so many in the UK are failing to get it.
Not to mention it's Death or Bongo: You can have a lockdown, or you can have a bunch of people dying, followed by a lockdown.
Certainly all the lines, except for the US, have (on the log scale) at least a slight discernible downturn as the numbers of cases rise. So putting a straight line through ours from the origin isn't a credible forward prediction. The question is how much of a curve will we have, and how will this become more evident, as our gradual move towards isolation has gathered pace over the past week?
The fear must be what catastrophe awaits the US. New York State would already, on its own, drop into eighth place against countries on number of cases, and NYC itself will in a day or two have twice as many confirmed cases as the whole of the UK, and the US is still on catch up in terms of testing. Were it a country, NYC alone would drop into ninth.
Yet the airspace above the US is awash with internal flights.
On Spanish Tv there is a sign permanantly on the screen - #queda en casa - that helps t push home the basic message. There are still problems here with people from the big cities trying to get to second homes but some tentative signs that here in the south the rate of infection increase may be slowing. Lockdown life is pretty dull but set against the alternative... I just don't see why so many in the UK are failing to get it.
Not to mention it's Death or Bongo: You can have a lockdown, or you can have a bunch of people dying, followed by a lockdown.
Finished Lancaster and York, by Alison Weir, yesterday. Good book for anyone wanting a single volume to cover the Wars of the Roses.
Agree. Her book on Katherine Swynford, one of the great women of English history and ancestor of almost everybody, including everyone royal in Europe and five American presidents, is also a top read.
On Spanish Tv there is a sign permanantly on the screen - #queda en casa - that helps t push home the basic message. There are still problems here with people from the big cities trying to get to second homes but some tentative signs that here in the south the rate of infection increase may be slowing. Lockdown life is pretty dull but set against the alternative... I just don't see why so many in the UK are failing to get it.
Not to mention it's Death or Bongo: You can have a lockdown, or you can have a bunch of people dying, followed by a lockdown.
Certainly all the lines, except for the US, have (on the log scale) at least a slight discernible downturn as the numbers of cases rise. So putting a straight line through ours from the origin isn't a credible forward prediction. The question is how much of a curve will we have, and how will this become more evident, as our gradual move towards isolation has gathered pace over the past week?
The fear must be what catastrophe awaits the US. New York State would already, on its own, drop into eighth place against countries on number of cases, and NYC itself will in a day or two have twice as many confirmed cases as the whole of the UK, and the US is still on catch up in terms of testing. Were it a country, NYC alone would drop into ninth.
Yet the airspace above the US is awash with internal flights.
Its ok, we are told it is borders that spread diseases, not travel.
Finished Lancaster and York, by Alison Weir, yesterday. Good book for anyone wanting a single volume to cover the Wars of the Roses.
With the very important caveat that it finishes in 1471. Arguably that was the moment when the dynastic struggle ended, but the instability it had caused lasted well into the 1490s and as late as 1541 Henry VIII feared there was a Yorkist attempt to supplant him.
Morning Gideon, how are the family this morning? Hope they are no worse.
Thanks for asking. My wife is in bed and I'm just trying to keep the household going. She couldn't sleep last night as she said she was struggling to breathe. I slept on a camping bed in the other room.
Using the spo2 measure that Foxy recommended and her oxygen saturation is fine so. It's good to have one for those who haven't.
Yes, this is exactly the point I've been trying to make in my recent posts. We are (mostly) not a nation of selfish hoarders. Rather the problem is simply the inevitable consequence of disruption to a finely tuned supply chain.
While the supermarkets ramp up supplies and people's cupboards fill, the shelves will remain sparsely filled. But when the two curves meet, the shelves will quite suddenly appear full again, as if by magic.
This also shows the “Project Fear” projections of empty shelves in the event of no-deal Brexit were spot on.
On Spanish Tv there is a sign permanantly on the screen - #queda en casa - that helps t push home the basic message. There are still problems here with people from the big cities trying to get to second homes but some tentative signs that here in the south the rate of infection increase may be slowing. Lockdown life is pretty dull but set against the alternative... I just don't see why so many in the UK are failing to get it.
Not to mention it's Death or Bongo: You can have a lockdown, or you can have a bunch of people dying, followed by a lockdown.
Certainly all the lines, except for the US, have (on the log scale) at least a slight discernible downturn as the numbers of cases rise. So putting a straight line through ours from the origin isn't a credible forward prediction. The question is how much of a curve will we have, and how will this become more evident, as our gradual move towards isolation has gathered pace over the past week?
The fear must be what catastrophe awaits the US. New York State would already, on its own, drop into eighth place against countries on number of cases, and NYC itself will in a day or two have twice as many confirmed cases as the whole of the UK, and the US is still on catch up in terms of testing. Were it a country, NYC alone would drop into ninth.
Yet the airspace above the US is awash with internal flights.
Its ok, we are told it is borders that spread diseases, not travel.
The US surely needs to suspend domestic flights soon. Though cities with Trump hotels may be exempted...
Mr. Algakirk, probably not going to read any new histories for a little while shelf space etc, plus a to-read pile) but it was interesting reading about most of the 15th century.
Mr. Doethur, I did find it interesting that it ended there rather than in 1485 at the Battle of Bosworth Field (which I remember learning about in the first episode of Blackadder).
Morning Gideon, how are the family this morning? Hope they are no worse.
Thanks for asking. My wife is in bed and I'm just trying to keep the household going. She couldn't sleep last night as she said she was struggling to breathe. I slept on a camping bed in the other room.
Using the spo2 measure that Foxy recommended and her oxygen saturation is fine so. It's good to have one for those who haven't.
Did you know that if you rest one of your testicles on top of an empty beer bottle, and hold a flame at the base, eventually it gets sucked inside......If you've done this and know how to get it out, message me please...
Yes, this is exactly the point I've been trying to make in my recent posts. We are (mostly) not a nation of selfish hoarders. Rather the problem is simply the inevitable consequence of disruption to a finely tuned supply chain.
While the supermarkets ramp up supplies and people's cupboards fill, the shelves will remain sparsely filled. But when the two curves meet, the shelves will quite suddenly appear full again, as if by magic.
This also shows the “Project Fear” projections of empty shelves in the event of no-deal Brexit were spot on.
Yep. Even had it been harmless, I expect a round of panic buying would have broken out regardless. Probably pasta again.
On Spanish Tv there is a sign permanantly on the screen - #queda en casa - that helps t push home the basic message. There are still problems here with people from the big cities trying to get to second homes but some tentative signs that here in the south the rate of infection increase may be slowing. Lockdown life is pretty dull but set against the alternative... I just don't see why so many in the UK are failing to get it.
Not to mention it's Death or Bongo: You can have a lockdown, or you can have a bunch of people dying, followed by a lockdown.
Whether it is or not, I think there is a big problem with graphs being bandied about on social media because in their different forms they are all showing different things, and as a result, difficult to interpret whether they are good or bad news. With key variants being whether they are on log or straight line scales, and whether they are showing total deaths/confirmed cases or NEW deaths/confirmed cases. And I say this as somebody who would understand it if explained properly (the fear is that people like Trump wouldn’t but would order action taken on them anyway).
In the early days (and still) we were constantly told about the need to “flatten the curve”. But that was in the context of peak new and/or “active” cases (with the knock on effect on hospitals). Probably on a straight line scale. Hence cases rising to a peak and returning back to a low level (before potentially spiking again). Having drilled that into people we are now seeing all sorts of graphs with flattening (or otherwise) curves - but these are usually total cases (and complicated by whether they are log scales or not). And then the mistake is made of using the latter to assess progress towards the former objective. All very confusing.
What is further difficult to comprehend is how the gap gets filled between where we/other countries are now, and where the experts hope to see us in future. So in the U.K. we are currently at c230 deaths and 50 new per day. But the chief scientific officer talks about 20k deaths as potentially being a reasonably optimistic outcome (i’m not sure if that is this summer, this year, or in total). Which begs the question of quite how much worse the deaths figures are likely to get in coming weeks and months. Are we talking about daily levels of Spain and Italy now, or much worse than that? Do we have a graph of the distribution of the 20,000 in circulation? Etc etc.
Apologies for lengthy post, but I think it just shows how difficult simplistic graphical representations of the science are, and how difficult it is to imagine what is, or might be, to come.
Comments
The boredom of quarantine
https://twitter.com/asfarasdelgados/status/1241505838508003328?s=21
Did you know that if you rest one of your testicles on top of an empty beer bottle, and hold a flame at the base, eventually it gets sucked inside......If you've done this and know how to get it out, message me please...
Urgently!!
A few seconds when my brain manages to consider the possibility of Harris becoming POTUS is actually giving me a break.
Call it betting mindfulness.
https://twitter.com/clarkemicah/status/1241509523778670595?s=21
I am splitting the contest into two awards:
Boomer Remover Dead Pool Champion - first nominated sleb to cark it of confirmed Covid-19 infection or conditions caused thereby.
Marco Bielsa Award for Sporting Excellence - first sleb to die who wasn't just a really old person found on Wikipedia.
In all cases the adjudicator's decision is final and not accessible to appeal.
Extract from my brief to Council colleagues in other Authorities this evening...
One thing is for sure. Leaving this to Facebook is no solution. Social media focuses on those who shout the loudest. We need to support those with the quietest voices most of whom might never have heard of social media. That what the State is for.
It will be our task to knit the calls for help with those who are able to serve. But how?
This is what I have discussed with a fellow Council Leader when thinking how to do solve this problem practically and to get our Councils organised, so we don’t let our residents down.
We need to break the task into manageable chunks. We made some working assumptions together.
Of the 1.5m people to be super-served on the NHS list, let’s say 900,000 are in England. There are over 300 authorities here so let’s say 3,000 vulnerable people per authority. How will we serve these people over-and-above everyone else?
Let’s say a typical district has 25 wards. That’s 120 people per ward on the critical list. And, let’s say that there might be 3 times as many other families self-isolating or otherwise generally in need.
We can allocate 25 senior managers, one to each ward, perhaps supported by a Constable. We can divi-out out a share of the national volunteer base into 25 chunks.
So, that’s 25 ward with 120 people to be super-served + 360 others that’s 480 people to be served in total. Per ward. That is not an insurmountable task. It becomes manageable. And deliverable.
Bunnco - Your Man on the Spot
Why don't people want venison?
And this is a place with more than 10 million people - 25% larger than NYC.
So, while I have no doubt that it will be hit relatively hard, it will probably grow less quickly here simply because there are so many fewer contact points.
I hope the government has recruited the very best behavioural experts in order to deal with these sorts of potential problems.
https://metro.co.uk/2020/03/21/national-trust-close-parks-gardens-stop-spread-coronavirus-12436732
Article 107(2)(b) of the TFEU would seem to cover it:
"2. The following shall be compatible with the internal market:
(b) aid to make good the damage caused by natural disasters or exceptional occurrences;"
We shall see. But most likely file under Brexiteer arsewit propaganda.
That's a big file.
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/
Reeves is far too intelligent and centre-left to be Labour shadow chancellor, I'm not sure that Starmer will have enough credit in the bank with maomentum to appoint someone that could propose a credible platform.
If Labour were then to say, for the sake of fairness, we should also nationalise the pubs, BTL houses, the mobile network operators and Fred's fish-and-chip shop down the road, at what point do those demands go beyond the "credible"(!)
Post-crisis, the big debate for the rest of this decade is surely going to be the pace and means by which we return to the status quo ante, which aspects of national life we try to return to a semblance of "normality" first, and whether there are some aspects of the Olden Ways we decide never to return to.
I think someone who predicts where those fault lines will lie may have some profitable betting opportunities ahead! Clearly there will be people in Labour who will quite like the increased state intervention in the economy and will oppose the rapid reversal of those measures, but that's a case where old political rules still apply and there's so much more in play than that.
If we all get used to cleaner air in our cities and reduced carbon emissions on our conscience, and have experienced both the costs as well as the benefits of humanity's greater interconnectedness, will we return to so much car-based commuting or cheap mass air travel? We're going to get much better (both technically and managerially) at working from home, but also going to suffer whatever scars to the national and individual psyche an extended period of social distancing inflicts. How will that affect the way we live, our feelings, our goals for the country, our sense of togetherness, our political desires? Having experienced a period of unprecedented governmental control, will we be more, or less, comfortable with deep state intrusion into the structure of our lives?
All manner of possibilities have been blown wide open. The Overton window on so many different issues could shift quite rapidly, it's going to be like waking up inside Overton's conservatory and discovering primeval forces and animal spirits have combined to build Overton's kaleidoscope all around it. For now we're staring out disoriented while watching the patterns of our lives, everything we've ever known, mixed up and recombined then briefly reglimpsed and then shattered again, with new forms swirling around to replace them.
Even if you believe the nature of humanity is such that our fundamental wants will be the same (via some Maslowian hierarchy or whatever) it could well be that people hold a new set of assumptions about how food/security/love/esteem might best be delivered or achieved. There are a lot of long-term surveys about social and political attitudes that are going to make interesting reading, as we watch how they get reshaped in the 2020s...
I think that (for the moment) the Overton window is relatively static (although both big parties at the GE were promising big state spending), because there's an understanding that this debt fuelled spending is unsustainable, this is not the new normal.
I mix with an extremely young & left wing circle (which is why when they swung against Lab I twigged that Corbyn was screwed & profited handsomely), and while I could see a greater role of the state in the economy, the Govt's ineptitude at running non-essential services will ensure that the Overton window remains somewhat static.
In an economic sense the Overton window is an equilibrium, and a one off shock (like this pandemic) is not enough to cause long term shifts.
The flip side is the stuff we have got into the habit of taking for granted as part of the political, economic or social firmament: things we treat as unstoppable or inevitable forces, to which no alternative can be envisaged. Once we've seen they can, in extremis, be switched off, they will inevitably lose some of the power they held over us.
Of course there will be plenty of emergency measures that will be rescinded promptly and everyone will be glad to see the back of. But I'm not sure how easy it is right now to judge precisely what things will return almost exactly to the status quo, what changes might persist, and what things might revert for now but find themselves "in play" for further changes because the very possibility of change now seems a feasible prospect. Partly because we don't know right now how everything is going to play out, but also because the "us" in a few years who'll influence those choices, will not be the same "us" as today or a few months ago. There will surely be changes wrought upon us both individually and collectively by this unprecedented experience.
The experience of isolation is going to have psychological effects. Our close encounters with mortality - it seems likely most of us are going to know someone who dies of/with COVID-19 and almost all of us will know someone who contracts it - may change attitudes to life and health. I wonder whether the experience of one catastrophe shattering our previously largely comfortable lives might make us more sensitive to the prospect of another one doing so - if a virus can cause Western society to grind to a halt, does the threat of e.g. climate change seem more realistic too? (In which case we open ourselves up to arguments like: if we can stop planes for one thing, can't we for the other?) We are also not just going to be affected by the pandemic itself, but by all the things that spin off from its disruption (probably more driven by government responses than the virus in its own right) of the interconnected, complex systems that underpin our way of life. As David H pointed out in his excellent header, there is a non-zero probability of these spiralling out of control, and the influence of whatever that maelstrom conjures upon us might be even more dramatic.
But since that seems to have been Shadsy's train of thought too, these are the first three in the betting with a combined price of even money or 50 per cent (well, 51 per cent but let's hope for an odds boost to keep the arithmetic simple).
Before you look at candidates for the shadow CofE should you consider which of the labour MPs who are thought of as 'big beasts' will Starmer want to include in his shadow cabinet?
Will they demand one of the three big gigs? Will C of E be available for new talent?
I needed to do some food shopping yesterday (for bread, milk etc.). Decided to walk and avoid all the coughing fits on public transport. Very few people on street (like Christmas Day) and lots of weird social distancing - people crossing street to avoid close contact.
Elephant and Castle shopping centre was almost empty except for Iceland, where there was a queue to get in! Co-op opposite very quiet, some empty shelves but I got most of what I went for.
Finished Lancaster and York, by Alison Weir, yesterday. Good book for anyone wanting a single volume to cover the Wars of the Roses.
He has to be locked up indefinitely. Otherwise we will never get the fucker out of the Oval Office.
And that was about it.
German police arrest man over high-speed rail tampering
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-51992070
Quite right.
Broadway Market was still operating, albeit probably at reduced capacity.
I literally heard one girl mention to her boyfriend that they needed truffle oil.
The social distancing thing has not reached Hackney yet.
While the supermarkets ramp up supplies and people's cupboards fill, the shelves will remain sparsely filled. But when the two curves meet, the shelves will quite suddenly appear full again, as if by magic.
The fear must be what catastrophe awaits the US. New York State would already, on its own, drop into eighth place against countries on number of cases, and NYC itself will in a day or two have twice as many confirmed cases as the whole of the UK, and the US is still on catch up in terms of testing. Were it a country, NYC alone would drop into ninth.
Yet the airspace above the US is awash with internal flights.
Hoping this goes away soon.
Using the spo2 measure that Foxy recommended and her oxygen saturation is fine so. It's good to have one for those who haven't.
Boys seem ok just trashing my house.
Mr. Algakirk, probably not going to read any new histories for a little while shelf space etc, plus a to-read pile) but it was interesting reading about most of the 15th century.
Mr. Doethur, I did find it interesting that it ended there rather than in 1485 at the Battle of Bosworth Field (which I remember learning about in the first episode of Blackadder).
In the early days (and still) we were constantly told about the need to “flatten the curve”. But that was in the context of peak new and/or “active” cases (with the knock on effect on hospitals). Probably on a straight line scale. Hence cases rising to a peak and returning back to a low level (before potentially spiking again). Having drilled that into people we are now seeing all sorts of graphs with flattening (or otherwise) curves - but these are usually total cases (and complicated by whether they are log scales or not). And then the mistake is made of using the latter to assess progress towards the former objective. All very confusing.
What is further difficult to comprehend is how the gap gets filled between where we/other countries are now, and where the experts hope to see us in future. So in the U.K. we are currently at c230 deaths and 50 new per day. But the chief scientific officer talks about 20k deaths as potentially being a reasonably optimistic outcome (i’m not sure if that is this summer, this year, or in total). Which begs the question of quite how much worse the deaths figures are likely to get in coming weeks and months. Are we talking about daily levels of Spain and Italy now, or much worse than that? Do we have a graph of the distribution of the 20,000 in circulation? Etc etc.
Apologies for lengthy post, but I think it just shows how difficult simplistic graphical representations of the science are, and how difficult it is to imagine what is, or might be, to come.