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rcs1000 said:

Quick Italy CV-19 update.

I've decided that the key metric is a moving average of the week-over-week change.

Why?

Because there are not uniform numbers of tests done on each day. The weekends tend to have fewer tests (which is reflected in the Sunday and Monday numbers). Plus, there's a ton of variability on a day-to-day basis.

For Italy as a whole, this shows new cases are currently tracking at down 20% week-over-week.

For Lombardy, which was the epicenter of the outbreak and which has tended to lead Italy by four or five days, the number is 28% down.

We can probably expect that the number of active cases will start to decline by next Sunday.

However, although the worst is clearly now behind in Italy (especially as the numbers we're seeing now are for people infected 10-14 days ago), predicting when lockdowns will be eased is a harder call. I would think that realistically four more weeks of these drops (combined with the fact that reported numbers are effectively two weeks in arrears) will probably be the point at which we start to see some easing.

Mexicanpete said:

Alistair said:

Life in American, important thing in this tweet is the screen shots of other tweets
https://twitter.com/GretchenKoch/status/1246830890719772674?s=19

What the USA needs is a good old Soviet-era Sociaist like Jeremy Corbyn. I believe he is free at the moment.

rottenborough said:

https://twitter.com/CharlotteCGill/status/1246817404715503617

Me and my pub mates have been discussing this for weeks, latterly on Zoom.

SandyRentool said:

Look North reported dickheads still driving up from Leeds to visit the Dales.

SandyRentool said:

Look North reported dickheads still driving up from Leeds to visit the Dales.

ydoethur said:

oxfordsimon said:

OllyT said:

NickPalmer said:

oxfordsimon said:

AndreaParma_82 said:

As expected, Angela Rayner will also be party chair (Lavery's current role)

Right... that isn't exactly a vote of confidence in his new deputy. She isn't the greatest media performer (as today has already shown). She might grow into it. But this looks like a place to keep her out of actual policy development.

That's silly - if she hadn't been, you'd say it was a snub. She's just been elected by a large margin of the membership, so seems a sensible choice as party chair.

Oxfordsimon is going to try put a negative spin on whoever Starmer appoints. It's totally predictable and therefore of very limited value.

Always nice to being on the receiving end of an ad hominem attack.
But my point still stands - whether or not you agree with it (or anything else I say) - Rayner should have been in line for a more substantial role given the mandate she received. Party Chair is something that Harriet Harman had as Deputy Leader - and she also had government/shadow cabinet roles at the same time.

This looks like a snub to me.

The alternative might be that Starmer believes the role of Party Chair to be crucial in overhauling the party machinery and policy offering without causing splits. Achieving that will be fundamental to the thing he has identified as his main priority - winning the next election. So maybe he wants to leave her, as the person best places to do it, free to concentrate on that.

Not saying that *is* the case, just that it’s another interpretation that fits the facts we have.

Mexicanpete said:

Alistair said:

Life in American, important thing in this tweet is the screen shots of other tweets
https://twitter.com/GretchenKoch/status/1246830890719772674?s=19

What the USA needs is a good old Soviet-era Sociaist like Jeremy Corbyn. I believe he is free at the moment.

oxfordsimon said:

OllyT said:

NickPalmer said:

oxfordsimon said:

AndreaParma_82 said:

As expected, Angela Rayner will also be party chair (Lavery's current role)

Right... that isn't exactly a vote of confidence in his new deputy. She isn't the greatest media performer (as today has already shown). She might grow into it. But this looks like a place to keep her out of actual policy development.

That's silly - if she hadn't been, you'd say it was a snub. She's just been elected by a large margin of the membership, so seems a sensible choice as party chair.

Oxfordsimon is going to try put a negative spin on whoever Starmer appoints. It's totally predictable and therefore of very limited value.

Always nice to being on the receiving end of an ad hominem attack.

But my point still stands - whether or not you agree with it (or anything else I say) - Rayner should have been in line for a more substantial role given the mandate she received. Party Chair is something that Harriet Harman had as Deputy Leader - and she also had government/shadow cabinet roles at the same time.

This looks like a snub to me.

williamglenn said:

MyBurningEars said:

Re fake news and 5G, interesting to remember that "Dr" Naomi Wolf was an adviser to Bill Clinton (and later to Al Gore). Anyone care to comment on Belfast's "3G clear air"?

She's not known for accuracy.

https://twitter.com/thymetikon/status/1131702577878503425

rottenborough said:

https://twitter.com/CharlotteCGill/status/1246817404715503617

Me and my pub mates have been discussing this for weeks, latterly on Zoom.

SandyRentool said:

BTW, work on my bug hotel was cut short today when I ran out of nails. I think it looks nice and rustic. Wor Lass is a bit more sceptical.

In other news, one of our neighbours has secured a delivery slot from Morrisons and kindly asked if we wanted to add anything to the order.

TOPPING said:

rottenborough said:

https://twitter.com/CharlotteCGill/status/1246817404715503617

Me and my pub mates have been discussing this for weeks, latterly on Zoom.

He is saying nothing more than I noted on here last week. They instantly create tension in society to say nothing of fake certificates.

MyBurningEars said:

williamglenn said:

MyBurningEars said:

Re fake news and 5G, interesting to remember that "Dr" Naomi Wolf was an adviser to Bill Clinton (and later to Al Gore). Anyone care to comment on Belfast's "3G clear air"?

She's not known for accuracy.

https://twitter.com/thymetikon/status/1131702577878503425

That book was just a rewriting for public consumption of her recent PhD thesis. Alarmingly, from Oxford! And they didn't pick up that it was so deeply erroneous presumably because even though it was really about social and legal history, she did it with their English literature deparment IIRC so it didn't receive scrutiny from anyone with actual knowledge of the subject under discussion. She's still got that PhD though... Narks me right off that she plonks the "Dr" in front of her name on twitter to enhance her authority even when spouting nonsense about 5G. Obviously she wasn't a science adviser but it's interesting she was an adviser to Bill Clinton and Al Gore bearing in mind their reputation for leaning towards technocratic/scientific input.

oxfordsimon said:

OllyT said:

NickPalmer said:

oxfordsimon said:

AndreaParma_82 said:

As expected, Angela Rayner will also be party chair (Lavery's current role)

Right... that isn't exactly a vote of confidence in his new deputy. She isn't the greatest media performer (as today has already shown). She might grow into it. But this looks like a place to keep her out of actual policy development.

That's silly - if she hadn't been, you'd say it was a snub. She's just been elected by a large margin of the membership, so seems a sensible choice as party chair.

Oxfordsimon is going to try put a negative spin on whoever Starmer appoints. It's totally predictable and therefore of very limited value.

Always nice to being on the receiving end of an ad hominem attack.

But my point still stands - whether or not you agree with it (or anything else I say) - Rayner should have been in line for a more substantial role given the mandate she received. Party Chair is something that Harriet Harman had as Deputy Leader - and she also had government/shadow cabinet roles at the same time.

This looks like a snub to me.

TheScreamingEagles said:

DecrepiterJohnL said:

Pulpstar said:

DecrepiterJohnL said:

MattW said:

Queueing for Wilko this lunchtime.

https://twitter.com/mattwardman/status/1246796590200782849
https://twitter.com/mattwardman/status/1246799986462949376

Maybe if the guidance were six feet and not two metres, people might know where to stand.

Noone should be "browsing" in any shop during lockdown. You come in, get what you need then leave. The queue is fine.

Why is Wilko open anyway? What do they sell?
https://www.wilko.com/

It's a bit like Ikea for plebs.

Foxy said:

Alistair said:

Gabs3 said:

rcs1000 said:

Alistair said:

One for the lovers of precedent
https://twitter.com/davidfrum/status/1246560488378548226?s=19

Personally, I think CV-19 increases the chance of President Trump being re-elected. With any national emergency, there is a desire to rally around the leadership, and we're seeing that now.

Plus:

- there is a monumental splurge from the government
- there are a lot of Americans who agree with President Trump's concerns about the cure being worse than the disease

I would now reckon he's a 60-70% chance of re-election right now.

I would say he is no more than 30-40% chance. The rally round effect has already been seen and he is still 2-5 points behind Biden. On top of that, Biden is stronger among blue collar whites than Clinton, so the electoral college advantage will be smaller for Trump. Plus people will be very angry in six months time and people tend to blame the President regardless of fault. And this time he is clearly at fault.

It is always important and illumi acting to dip into the average Joe Trump supporter with a Twitter account-verse.

They are loving his press conferences, they are "powerful" they are "unvarnished". They have memory holed his early claims that there wouldn't be any problem.

To be fair, lack of coherence and coarse language helped Trump connect with blue collar Americans so why shouldn't it work for Biden?

rottenborough said:

Meanwhile, in Sweden...

‘People wave and cheer when I cycle to work. Never has an epidemiologist been this famous.’

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8188049/Scientist-leading-Swedens-battle-against-coronavirus-says-Britains-lockdown-gone-far.html

eadric said:

Pulpstar said:

Till we've got a vaccine, unless it's been pretty much completely stamped out various aspects of life ain't returning to how they were even in the absence of any sort of official control.
I sure as hell am not going to the cinema till I've either got through it , am vaccinated or it's disappeared.

A senior medical acquaintance of mine says there is unlikely to be a vaccine, for a long time, if ever. Apparently these coronaviruses are real buggers to fight.

Cheering.

He could be wrong, of course

Black_Rook said:

ukpaul said:

rottenborough said:

https://twitter.com/CharlotteCGill/status/1246817404715503617

Me and my pub mates have been discussing this for weeks, latterly on Zoom.

An important question is how any exit needs to satisfy two totally disparate groups. On the one hand, those who want to have the freedom to get out of it and, on the other, those who want the safety of maintaining it. I can’t see how there can be a never ending lockdown, yet I also can’t see how there could also be a complete abandonment of it.

And so it comes back to phasing. Complete lockdown will have to be abandoned sooner rather than later, because the economy won't take the damage, but it'll need to be wound down carefully.

You would've thought that the easiest thing to do would be to...

*Encourage businesses to continue enabling everybody who can work from home to do so
*Ease some restrictions on socialising (allow public gatherings of 5 or 10 rather than 2, advise that children and younger adults can visit each others' residences)
*Let the "non-essential" retailers and services (everything from clothing to garden centres to hairdressers) resume trading, subject to basic social distancing requirements
*Re-open the schools
BUT
*Keep the over 70s (possibly extending the advice to the over 60s) and the medically vulnerable, shielded people under current advice, to be extended for a longer period if necessary
*Keep the hospitality trade, gyms, spectator sports and cultural establishments shuttered for the time being

Or some such similar combination of measures - enabling the illness to spread in a controlled way through the less vulnerable sections of the population, and to reduce the burden on the taxpayer of propping up those sectors of the economy that need to remain closed for longer to avert a second spike of hospital admissions.

One would fervently hope that there's a large team of number crunchers in Whitehall working on these trade-offs and preparing a plan. We can't stay under the current lockdown for more than a limited period, so the big questions are, of course, how slowly do we need to ease it for public health reasons, and how quickly to we need to ease it for economic and social reasons? Answers must be forthcoming if public confidence in the lockdown strategy - not to mention business confidence in there being some kind of light at the end of the tunnel - isn't simply going to collapse.

DecrepiterJohnL said:

Chris said:

DecrepiterJohnL said:

HYUFD said:

https://twitter.com/DouglasCarswell/status/1246800230449897472?s=20

Mr Ukip has a point. Why is being in the park standing up OK but lying down not?

Because you can lie down in your own home! The rules are that you can go out to exercise.

The impenetrable thickness of some people never ceases to amaze me.

If going to the park is dangerous, ban it. If it is not, then let people sunbathe. The trouble with inconsistent regulations is people misunderstand them, and so inadvertently break them.

TheScreamingEagles said:

Is that it from Brenda?

tlg86 said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

Is that it from Brenda?

Short and sweet, perfectly pitched in my opinion.

Luckyguy1983 said:

Her Maj was lovely.

Black_Rook said:

eadric said:

Pulpstar said:

Till we've got a vaccine, unless it's been pretty much completely stamped out various aspects of life ain't returning to how they were even in the absence of any sort of official control.
I sure as hell am not going to the cinema till I've either got through it , am vaccinated or it's disappeared.

A senior medical acquaintance of mine says there is unlikely to be a vaccine, for a long time, if ever. Apparently these coronaviruses are real buggers to fight.

Cheering.

He could be wrong, of course

i.e. Government must decide how many people must die, at what rate and over what period of time, as we plot a path back to a more normal time. Because eternal lockdown will inevitably result in socio-economic collapse.

More time will buy more research into treatments to mitigate the illness, but there's (most probably) no magic bullet.

TheScreamingEagles said:

Is that it from Brenda?

ukpaul said:

Black_Rook said:

ukpaul said:

rottenborough said:

https://twitter.com/CharlotteCGill/status/1246817404715503617

Me and my pub mates have been discussing this for weeks, latterly on Zoom.

An important question is how any exit needs to satisfy two totally disparate groups. On the one hand, those who want to have the freedom to get out of it and, on the other, those who want the safety of maintaining it. I can’t see how there can be a never ending lockdown, yet I also can’t see how there could also be a complete abandonment of it.

And so it comes back to phasing. Complete lockdown will have to be abandoned sooner rather than later, because the economy won't take the damage, but it'll need to be wound down carefully.

You would've thought that the easiest thing to do would be to...

*Encourage businesses to continue enabling everybody who can work from home to do so
*Ease some restrictions on socialising (allow public gatherings of 5 or 10 rather than 2, advise that children and younger adults can visit each others' residences)
*Let the "non-essential" retailers and services (everything from clothing to garden centres to hairdressers) resume trading, subject to basic social distancing requirements
*Re-open the schools
BUT
*Keep the over 70s (possibly extending the advice to the over 60s) and the medically vulnerable, shielded people under current advice, to be extended for a longer period if necessary
*Keep the hospitality trade, gyms, spectator sports and cultural establishments shuttered for the time being

Or some such similar combination of measures - enabling the illness to spread in a controlled way through the less vulnerable sections of the population, and to reduce the burden on the taxpayer of propping up those sectors of the economy that need to remain closed for longer to avert a second spike of hospital admissions.

One would fervently hope that there's a large team of number crunchers in Whitehall working on these trade-offs and preparing a plan. We can't stay under the current lockdown for more than a limited period, so the big questions are, of course, how slowly do we need to ease it for public health reasons, and how quickly to we need to ease it for economic and social reasons? Answers must be forthcoming if public confidence in the lockdown strategy - not to mention business confidence in there being some kind of light at the end of the tunnel - isn't simply going to collapse.

So, I work in a school. I have a co-morbidity. I’m in my fifties. Students get the virus and spread the virus. The chances are that, if I get it, I may be permanently harmed, even if I don’t die.

You think that I’m going to be forced back to work, in such a situation?

This is the issue, you can’t compel people either way; neither to stay locked down, nor to have to endanger themself by being pushed out of it.

ydoethur said:

SandyRentool said:

Queen nailed it.

Maybe you should ask her round your place to help with putting up the shed?

After lockdown has ended of course...

RobD said:

Chris said:

NerysHughes said:

Chris said:

NerysHughes said:

ABZ said:

'Only' 525 fatalities in Italy today - lowest since March 19th (about 10 days into their lockdown). Still quite a lot of new cases reported (4300), but I wonder if they are picking up milder cases. But still good news overall.

4300 cases 27 days into lockdown. Does this show that lockdowns work with this virus ?

Yes, of course the Italian numbers show that lockdowns can work.

There is the same number of new infections today as there were 9 days ago.

I have 4300 today compared with 5959 nine days ago. And compared with a peak of 6557 on 22 March, just under two weeks after the lockdown.

And I would guess they are testing more now than they were previously?

Jonathan said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

It was positively North Korean with the clip of the appreciation of the NHS.

Ah come on. She’s remarkable.

TheScreamingEagles said:

tlg86 said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

Is that it from Brenda?

Short and sweet, perfectly pitched in my opinion.

No offer to turn one of her many palaces as a emergency NHS hospital?

Big_G_NorthWales said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

tlg86 said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

Is that it from Brenda?

Short and sweet, perfectly pitched in my opinion.

No offer to turn one of her many palaces as a emergency NHS hospital?

Unnecessary at a moving moment in our history

The Queen has demonstrated her ability to inspire without politics

Long may she remain with us

Black_Rook said:

ukpaul said:

Black_Rook said:

ukpaul said:

rottenborough said:

https://twitter.com/CharlotteCGill/status/1246817404715503617

Me and my pub mates have been discussing this for weeks, latterly on Zoom.

An important question is how any exit needs to satisfy two totally disparate groups. On the one hand, those who want to have the freedom to get out of it and, on the other, those who want the safety of maintaining it. I can’t see how there can be a never ending lockdown, yet I also can’t see how there could also be a complete abandonment of it.

And so it comes back to phasing. Complete lockdown will have to be abandoned sooner rather than later, because the economy won't take the damage, but it'll need to be wound down carefully.

You would've thought that the easiest thing to do would be to...

*Encourage businesses to continue enabling everybody who can work from home to do so
*Ease some restrictions on socialising (allow public gatherings of 5 or 10 rather than 2, advise that children and younger adults can visit each others' residences)
*Let the "non-essential" retailers and services (everything from clothing to garden centres to hairdressers) resume trading, subject to basic social distancing requirements
*Re-open the schools
BUT
*Keep the over 70s (possibly extending the advice to the over 60s) and the medically vulnerable, shielded people under current advice, to be extended for a longer period if necessary
*Keep the hospitality trade, gyms, spectator sports and cultural establishments shuttered for the time being

Or some such similar combination of measures - enabling the illness to spread in a controlled way through the less vulnerable sections of the population, and to reduce the burden on the taxpayer of propping up those sectors of the economy that need to remain closed for longer to avert a second spike of hospital admissions.

One would fervently hope that there's a large team of number crunchers in Whitehall working on these trade-offs and preparing a plan. We can't stay under the current lockdown for more than a limited period, so the big questions are, of course, how slowly do we need to ease it for public health reasons, and how quickly to we need to ease it for economic and social reasons? Answers must be forthcoming if public confidence in the lockdown strategy - not to mention business confidence in there being some kind of light at the end of the tunnel - isn't simply going to collapse.

So, I work in a school. I have a co-morbidity. I’m in my fifties. Students get the virus and spread the virus. The chances are that, if I get it, I may be permanently harmed, even if I don’t die.

You think that I’m going to be forced back to work, in such a situation?

This is the issue, you can’t compel people either way; neither to stay locked down, nor to have to endanger themself by being pushed out of it.

You limp along with larger class sizes if you have to. The schools furlough staff who are too frightened to go back to work.

As soon as the lockdown is eased there will be these trade-offs. Indeed, as soon as the lockdown is eased, it's seemingly inevitable that more people will die of Covid-19 as a result.

But the lockdown can't last for all eternity. And anything that can't last forever must, necessarily, stop. It's merely a matter of when, and how.

rottenborough said:

Luckyguy1983 said:

Her Maj was lovely.

"Quiet, good humoured resolve".

The Brits in a nutshell.

rottenborough said:

Big_G_NorthWales said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

tlg86 said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

Is that it from Brenda?

Short and sweet, perfectly pitched in my opinion.

No offer to turn one of her many palaces as a emergency NHS hospital?

Unnecessary at a moving moment in our history

The Queen has demonstrated her ability to inspire without politics

Long may she remain with us

"No offer to turn one of her many palaces as a emergency NHS hospital"

You seriously think a windy old palace is a suitable quick turn around venue for an A&E and ventilator hospital??

TheScreamingEagles said:

It was positively North Korean with the clip of the appreciation of the NHS.