politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » Raab trails in fourth place in latest YouGov senior cabinet mi

rottenborough said:

HYUFD said:

Clap for Boris about to start

No clapping around my way.

I did my clap but unless you live in a very Tory area I doubt it will get the support the NHS clap did, most people hope he gets better but unless they are Tories are not going to clap for him

ABZ said:

bigjohnowls said:

FrancisUrquhart said:

bigjohnowls said:

FrancisUrquhart said:

bigjohnowls said:

FrancisUrquhart said:

eadric said:

Yes. That’s (hopefully) the flaw in their data

Well seeing the BBC report from a London ICU, one thing that really struck me, nowhere near the chaos we have seen in the likes of Italy or NY.

It was clearly very busy, clearly very stressful, but no signs of 100s of patients rammed absolutely into every corner of the corridors etc.

And now there is a lot of rumblings that the Excel centre may never really be needed and certainly unlikely to need the full 4,000 bed capacity.

Hopefully the rumblings are correct. Nobody in Government should get criticised for providing over capacity if thats the way it turns out.

I am still concerned we will have insufficient

Vallance stated at the press conference today that he didn't think it would be now be an issue. Individual hospitals might end up at max capacity, but that the system should have enough.

The scientists are normally very conservative with making claims like that, unlike politicians.

That is fantastic news if it turns out to be correct.

Not so fantastic news. Porton Down have "ground truth" data for 700+ individuals, and when evaluating all these antibody kits that every manufacturer claims are 98-99% accurate, they are all crap.

It seems like they have a test, but not one that is able to be scaled to mass market.

Yes I heard that.

No quick way out of this for me and Mrs BJ by the looks of it.

But they are working hard to scale up. I think that will be a few weeks away though, but not many months. The problem with the previous statements was that they did not (I think) assume the purchased antibody tests would be so poor.

This is clearly where the issue has arisen. The government and scientists clearly thought that these antibody tests would be fine and so ramping up massively the anti-gen test wouldn't be necessary. Then they got caught in no man's land, when it was found that the two Chinese companies who they bought samples from are bullshitters...and that 99% accuracy is only for people who have very severe symptoms i.e. no real different from the 14 UK companies who have offered ones with similar huge limitations.

Andy_JS said:

eadric said:

Re Korea.

My wife expressed the fear today that the end result of this virus would be hi-tech surveillance states, with the authorities monitoring everything we do and everyone we meet. Countries that don’t do this will be crippled by the bug.

I think she’s on to something.

Jeremy Cliffe wrote an article saying the same thing a couple of weeks ago.

https://www.newstatesman.com/science-tech/2020/03/rise-bio-surveillance-state

I think people across the country will be willing to do this. And it can be cleverly put together in a way that does not compromise privacy. Fortunately, our NHS is very trusted, so if it's released as an NHS app I think it will probably have substantial uptake. Harder in countries with less centralised health systems perhaps.

Y

HYUFD said:

ukpaul said:

HYUFD said:

maaarsh said:

HYUFD said:

99% of those who have died from coronavirus in Italy had a pre existing health condition
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-18/99-of-those-who-died-from-virus-had-other-illness-italy-says?fbclid=IwAR0Brz0oVmqUrA1dteq-rYzvRFTr_4fsZBuhav43ktWo6Ekk0xy9k6PEQpE

UK number today was 20 odd out of 786 that didn't.

So that is less than 5%

At least a third of the population has an underlying condition recognised as a significamt co-morbidity. That’s a lot of people that are potentially at that level of heightened risk.

So keep them indoors until we find a vaccine or treatments improved and outside the peak everyone else ie at least 2/3 of the population, can get back to normal

I’d be very surprised if Boris isn’t in that 1/3, maybe he’s lucky but his weight and shape give cause for concern (and his age and gender, more obviously). Why has been he trying to carry on when it’s not just the 5% who are at the severest end of and who need to be shielded in some way? It’s people like him as well, as the figures coming out of who is in ICUs attest.

HYUFD said:

stodge said:

HYUFD said:

Clap for Boris about to start

All quiet here in East London.

What a surprise, East London is solid Labour

You want to politicise it - fine. Would you have stood outside and applauded if it had been a Labour Prime Minister in the same position?

MyBurningEars said:

@Endillion

For what it's worth (very little as I haven't read their detailed argument) I'm not sure the actuaries have got this right, because I'm dubious about how granular their risk categories are. You might be able to say statistically that a 65 year-old male smoker who is obese with diabetes is expected live for another X years, but you can't say that COVID-19 robbed him of X years if he had a buggered immune system and was already in hospital receiving respiratory care for bacterial double pneumonia before he caught COVID-19 from the patient next-door. I don't think their "worst-case scenario" is necessarily "worst-case" enough.

It would be interesting to look at victims' medical records and consider how their health status compares to other people in the same actuarial risk group that was used to calculate their remaining life expectancy. I have a strong suspicion a disproportionate number of COVID-19 deaths will come from the poorlier end of their risk group. While it's true older people have a high rate of multimorbidity and that despite the challenges this poses to their care, plenty can live for many years with these conditions, it seems likely to me that COVID-related deaths will be especially common among those with the most serious conditions. Which is why blanket descriptions like "Y percent of victims had a pre-existing condition" are not especially helpful, something I suspect I would find myself in strong agreement with your esteemed colleagues on.

Similarly, I don't buy the argument that "COVID is killing people who would have died off in the flu season anyway". How do you know they'd even have caught the flu this year (not everyone does, even asymptomatically), or that whatever strain they caught wasn't one they had a sufficiently protective degree of immunity to due to previous exposure? But I can see that someone dying from COVID-19 due to a particularly weak immune system may not have great odds of getting through, say, the next three flu seasons unscathed.

I get the feeling that "how many COVID deaths were there, really?" is one of those questions that's only going to be answered by a careful regression analysis after the event, as happens with flu figures.

That makes sense to me. I suspect this thinking may well be driving the 50% load they've applied to the first year mortality load of their "85 year old obese male diabetic smoker" (p3). My direct experience of annuity/assurance pricing is fairly limited (and nearly ten years out of date, albeit the field probably hasn't changed much) but from what I do know, impaired life annuity pricing is pretty solid and the language they're using indicates they have high confidence in it. I'd be inclined to trust they know what they're doing on that score..

Endillion said:

MyBurningEars said:

Endillion said:

MyBurningEars said:

Endillion said:

On the theory (much discussed here) that many or most of the Covid-19 victims would have died this year or shortly afterwards from other or natural causes, the Covid-19 Actuaries Response Group has just published a four page note that may be of interest:

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/covid-19-actuaries-response-group_covid-19-arg-death-row-bulletin-activity-6653226206785347584-SQnY

In short, they do not agree with the implied hypothesis in the title:
We disagree. We think that the majority of COVID-19 deaths are deaths of people who would not have died anytime soon. We put forward our rationale in this bulletin. The data-driven argument is essentially:

(a) The COVID-19 deaths are concentrated at high ages, where existing conditions are common;
(b) Life expectancy of such people, even with ‘worst case’ profiles (eg obese smokers), are of the order of five years or more – these people would probably not have died (without COVID-19) anytime soon.

Finally, assuming these deaths are not really due to COVID-19 sends the wrong message – that the social distancing measures to protect our elderly are not important, or that their lives are unimportant.

Nice find! Is there a direct link to the paper somewhere?

Here's that group's earlier piece on whether the famous Imperial College modelling was "fit for purpose". (PDF link)

Interestingly, @rcs posted up a counterpiece to the Impedial Model by Nassim "Black Swan" Taleb and friends a while back which I really dissed as I didn't think the critique had any force at all. I was reassured to see the actuaries agree with me!! ("We also considered criticisms raised by Chen, Taleb, et al, and do not consider any of these to be material"...)

I can't find a direct link, but I guess keep watching Actuarial Post? If I see a link I'll PM it to you (if I remember).

I know a few people on the group, and may get involved myself if the day job clears up a bit (albeit it's not really my primary field). In the meantime, happy to continue to post links to stuff they publish if it looks to be of interest.

The summary I can see says:

There has been a great deal of comment and doubt, but little real debate, as to whether many of the COVID-19 deaths are really caused by COVID-19. Were they already ‘on death row’? Did they die ‘with’ but not ‘from’ COVID-19? The argument has been that many of the COVID-19 deaths are people of high age with existing medical conditions, and they would have died soon anyway.

We disagree. We think that the majority of COVID-19 deaths are deaths of people who would not have died anytime soon. We put forward our rationale in this bulletin. The data-driven argument is essentially:

(a) The COVID-19 deaths are concentrated at high ages, where existing conditions are common;
(b) Life expectancy of such people, even with ‘worst case’ profiles (eg obese smokers), are of the order of five years or more – these people would probably not have died (without COVID-19) anytime soon.

Finally, assuming these deaths are not really due to COVID-19 sends the wrong message – that the social distancing measures to protect our elderly are not important, or that their lives are unimportant.

The link I posted before should show that summary, and then some sort of embedded file below with the full report - reposted again for convenience:
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/covid-19-actuaries-response-group_covid-19-arg-death-row-bulletin-activity-6653226206785347584-SQnY/

So you should be able to read it on screen but I can't figure out how to get it into a usable file format.

Thanks. It was blurred out for me, but then when I clicked on the individual pages and waited a bit I could get them to unblur!

Turns out the worst-case scenarios they investigated were indeed pretty bad, not just "obese smoker" but people in pretty bad nick with more like 1-3 years rather than 5 years remaining. Also interesting that only 12% of COVID deaths in the British ICU context were for patients with "severe" comorbidity. (Though the actuaries do note that people on death's door already may not have gone to ICU.)

They do also suggest the EuroMOMO analysis will be interesting (the people who do the fancy mortality surveillance with regression analysis etc, and look at date of death and age at death to detect unusual patterns, rather than rely on whatever it says on the final death certificate)

eadric said:

All authorities (except the WHO) are now reversing their previous instructions not to wear masks. How much damage has been done, how many lives have been lost, from their utter ineptitude and stupidity?

If every country had had a stockpile of several billion N95 masks sat in a warehouse then I have no doubt we would all have been wearing them for at least a month by now, but we didn't. Instead we've had all sorts of half-baked reasons given for why we shouldn't wear masks, when what goverments have really meant is "don't use up our limited supply that needs to go to the nurses and doctors first".

FrancisUrquhart said:

bigjohnowls said:

FrancisUrquhart said:

bigjohnowls said:

FrancisUrquhart said:

eadric said:

Yes. That’s (hopefully) the flaw in their data

Well seeing the BBC report from a London ICU, one thing that really struck me, nowhere near the chaos we have seen in the likes of Italy or NY.

It was clearly very busy, clearly very stressful, but no signs of 100s of patients rammed absolutely into every corner of the corridors etc.

And now there is a lot of rumblings that the Excel centre may never really be needed and certainly unlikely to need the full 4,000 bed capacity.

Hopefully the rumblings are correct. Nobody in Government should get criticised for providing over capacity if thats the way it turns out.

I am still concerned we will have insufficient

Vallance stated at the press conference today that he didn't think it would be now be an issue. Individual hospitals might end up at max capacity, but that the system should have enough.

The scientists are normally very conservative with making claims like that, unlike politicians.

That is fantastic news if it turns out to be correct.

Not so fantastic news. Porton Down have "ground truth" data for 700+ individuals, and when evaluating all these antibody kits that every manufacturer claims are 98-99% accurate, they are all crap.

It seems like they have a test, but not one that is able to be scaled to mass market.

Getting results from the "Opinion Poll" antibody tests is very important. Will give us real evidence of how many have had it and the hospitalization and death rates.

FrancisUrquhart said:

eadric said:

Re Korea.

My wife expressed the fear today that the end result of this virus would be hi-tech surveillance states, with the authorities monitoring everything we do and everyone we meet. Countries that don’t do this will be crippled by the bug.

I think she’s on to something.

An accurate real time test would probably enable us not to have to do that.

That kind of "real time test" would have to be a device like a thermometer. Something that everybody can carry around and apply an infinite number of times, whenever deemed appropriate. That's not technically feasible for the foreseeable future. We'll have to rely on data collecting and processing.

MattW said:

I knew it :-). FPT

@Cyclefree's Gardening Corner Q9 #gardening

Looking after bulbs - I am just getting my first lot of container daffodils in flower.

Two questions if I may.

1 - What do I need to do to keep these healthy for this year and next year? (I am familiar with the basics - do not remove the leaves too soon after flowering, water when a finger depth is dry etc.)

2 - What is the best time to put in new bulbs (I want some snowdrops and crocuses and extra daffodils) for next year or 2022?

The photo is my daffs and my cousin's first tulips (he has a camera not an iPad :-) ).

Thanks for any comments. I will repost if I get new-thread-clobbered.

https://twitter.com/mattwardman/status/1247504724879986689
https://twitter.com/mattwardman/status/1247505506463289345

Apologies for the delay In replying. I had a lovely walk up to Thwaites Fell today. Simply glorious.

Re bulbs:-

1. There are summer bulbs it is worth planting now: lilies and gladioli for instance.
2. For next spring, bulbs will start becoming available from late August/September so autumn is the time to start planting.

I buy my bulbs from JParkers: they have a fantastic selection and deliver.

I tend to plant later but that’s usually because there is still so much blooming in autumn that there is no space for the bulbs.

The general rule is to put daffodils and narcissi in during September/October and leave tulips until November to avoid “tulip fire” which they can get if put in too early. All other bulbs - allium, crocuses, iris, all the early spring bulbs etc - can go in during the autumn.

Whether in pots or the ground don’t forget to layer them ie put the bigger ones at the bottom and smaller ones on top in layers and then you get a succession of flowers from January through to May. Or you can go for all tulips in one pot or flowers of the same colour etc. Endless wonderful permutations.

Re preserving bulbs: if in pots once the flowers are spent and the leaves have died down, take them out, cut all the leaves off, brush the earth off and store them in a paper bag somewhere cool and dark and away from squirrels or mice. Throw away the old earth or put on a compost heap.

In the ground you can leave lots of bulbs and they will generally return. But not all do - some tulips are better than others. Snowdrops do; ditto bluebells. Daffodils can be temperamental.

But, honestly, I wouldn’t really bother: daffs often go blind and won’t reflower and some tulips are not so good at this. Plus the replacement cost is tiny.

Lilies do survive year after year in pots, though you do need to keep topping up the compost or replacing. For snowdrops try buying them now when they are in the green and planting now. More reliable than planting bulbs.

Some of my favourite bulbs are iris reticulata for early spring and the “Ballerina” tulip combined with purple allium. A magical combination.

Philip_Thompson said:

SandyRentool said:

Sky News fixated on political minutiae tonight.
NOT IMPORTANT

Thousands are dying and they wibble about the intricacies of our constitution.

They've whined all day about "why don't we have a deputy PM" when Raab is in place.

Honestly who cares?

They clearly missed the announcement that the Chancellor is next in line after Raab so we have a clear line of 'succession' for now - sloppy work (as ever) from Sky

The only place I saw mention of tonight's clap was on here. Hardly surprising it didn't take off.

https://twitter.com/NadineDorries/status/1247603974452260865?s=20

eadric said:

glw said:

eadric said:

All authorities (except the WHO) are now reversing their previous instructions not to wear masks. How much damage has been done, how many lives have been lost, from their utter ineptitude and stupidity?

If every country had had a stockpile of several billion N95 masks sat in a warehouse then I have no doubt we would all have been wearing them for at least a month by now, but we didn't. Instead we've had all sorts of half-baked reasons given for why we shouldn't wear masks, when what goverments have really meant is "don't use up our limited supply that needs to go to the nurses and doctors first".

Absolutely. Simple honesty would have been better. ‘Yes masks limit the spread but we’d prefer it if you saved the n95s and ffp2s for health workers, instead wear a bandana, sew your own, anything’

Or HMG could have been smarter and ordered a billion masks for all in early feb, when it was obvious this pandemic was coming out way.

Would you (or anyone) have done better?

I think you're phasing what you say with some degree of acknowledgement of this, but you really ought to say so.

Andy_JS said:

ABZ said:

Andy_JS said:

eadric said:

Re Korea.

My wife expressed the fear today that the end result of this virus would be hi-tech surveillance states, with the authorities monitoring everything we do and everyone we meet. Countries that don’t do this will be crippled by the bug.

I think she’s on to something.

Jeremy Cliffe wrote an article saying the same thing a couple of weeks ago.

https://www.newstatesman.com/science-tech/2020/03/rise-bio-surveillance-state

I think people across the country will be willing to do this. And it can be cleverly put together in a way that does not compromise privacy. Fortunately, our NHS is very trusted, so if it's released as an NHS app I think it will probably have substantial uptake. Harder in countries with less centralised health systems perhaps.

Aren't you concerned about sleepwalking into a surveillance society? I am.

Not really, no. Anyway if someone really doesn't want to be surveyed I'm guessing you can just leave your phone at home - that's unthinkable for 99% of the population though so it should have the desired effect.

eadric said:

Re Korea.

My wife expressed the fear today that the end result of this virus would be hi-tech surveillance states, with the authorities monitoring everything we do and everyone we meet. Countries that don’t do this will be crippled by the bug.

I think she’s on to something.

She is.

Andy_JS said:

ABZ said:

Andy_JS said:

eadric said:

Re Korea.

My wife expressed the fear today that the end result of this virus would be hi-tech surveillance states, with the authorities monitoring everything we do and everyone we meet. Countries that don’t do this will be crippled by the bug.

I think she’s on to something.

Jeremy Cliffe wrote an article saying the same thing a couple of weeks ago.

https://www.newstatesman.com/science-tech/2020/03/rise-bio-surveillance-state

I think people across the country will be willing to do this. And it can be cleverly put together in a way that does not compromise privacy. Fortunately, our NHS is very trusted, so if it's released as an NHS app I think it will probably have substantial uptake. Harder in countries with less centralised health systems perhaps.

Aren't you concerned about sleepwalking into a surveillance society? I am.

That boat has sailed. We've been sleepwalking in to a surveillance society for 20 years.

Andy_JS said:

bigjohnowls said:

FrancisUrquhart said:

MyBurningEars said:

matthiasfromhamburg said:

MyBurningEars said:

kinabalu said:

CarlottaVance said:

https://twitter.com/TomMcTague/status/1247560929501478914?s=20

There IS quite a difference. Germany, UK, respectively -

Confirmed: 105,519
Deaths: 1,854
Recovered: 36,081
Active: 67,584

Confirmed: 55,242
Deaths: 6,159
Recovered: 135
Active: 48,948

Vorsprung Durch Technik?

Probably time to stop quoting the 135 number...

If you check the UK COVID-19 Dashboard from PHE, you'll find a document about the data that explains the following:

Recovered patients data
Previous updates of the dashboard included a number of patients recovered. This figure was the number of people discharged from NHS clinical services in England following a positive test result for COVID-19 and was provided by NHS services. This statistic has proved difficult to assemble and a replacement indicator is being developed.

So the "Recovered" figure is wrong which means that the "Active" figure is also wrong. Finally, the "Confirmed" figures mean completely different things for different countries because they perform the testing on different groups of people (some with more focus on healthcare staff, some more on strongly suspected patients, some more on contacts etc) and indeed these criteria for testing are changing over time in each country too.

On that basis, three out of the four numbers you're comparing are utterly unsuitable for comparison. And even deaths data from different countries has to be interpreted cautiously due to issues with eg which deaths are included, and what stage of the epidemic curve the country is at.

On Germany's testing programme, highly recommend reading this article in the Spiegel. I'm not sure the UK reporting on what's going on in Germany has been terribly good, other than an excitement at sheer numbers - there's been less interest in how the tests, on whom, and to what extent they form part of a sensible overall strategy.

To manage the looming shortage, lab operators have called for an even stricter decision-making process for who gets tested and who doesn't. Only people who are at risk or showing symptoms should be tested, they argue. "At the moment, we're still testing way too many healthy people," says Borucki. Well over 90 percent of the tests evaluated by Bioscientia come back negative. "We're wasting valuable reagents."

The Robert Koch Institute now feels the same way. "We don't have enough tests to be able to use them senselessly," the institute's director, Lothar Wieler, warned last week. At the same time, though, the institute has loosened the recommendation that has thus far been in place - namely that patients with symptoms should only be tested if they had contact with an infected person or had been in a region with a high number of confirmed cases. Given that the pathogen is now essentially everywhere, the focus on at-risk regions no longer makes sense, an institute spokeswoman said.

According to the Spiegel piece at least, there's plenty of German experts who think the right model to follow is South Korea (not just number of tests per head, but how those tests are used and on whom) and that the German testing system needs a really significant rethink.

As far as I understand the sightly different testing regimes that exist in different parts of the country are constantly under review. Our authorities have also taken up efforts to get a better picture of transmission patterns by random testing schemes.
This has been done in Gangelt, a subsection of the Kreis Heinsberg, our second recognised cluster:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/31/virologists-to-turn-germany-worst-hit-district-into-coronavirus-laboratory
Results and conclusions are yet to be released.

On Sunday a second, larger testing program has been started in Munich:
https://www.augsburger-allgemeine.de/bayern/Bayern-startet-eigene-Antikoerper-Studie-mit-Massentests-in-Muenchen-id57178731.html (sorry, only in german)

Similar programs are in preparation in Baden-Württemberg (north of Feiburg im Breisgau), in Hesse (between Frankfurt and Hanau) and here in Hamburg.

Hopefully these will provide some additional insight.

Thanks. For avoidance of doubt, I'm mostly narked at the way the UK media is reporting the German testing programme as if it were as simple as "more tests is better". It's about how you use them, too, and whether the situation is sustainable - even very large-scale testing will struggle to cope once enough people want a test. I don't doubt that the German public health people have worked hard and got a lot right.

Similarly there's some testing going on in Britain that is probably going under-reported including some "fourth pillar" surveillance testing at Porton Down:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/science-and-disease/coronavirus-tests-never-heard-hold-key-exit-lockdown/

Funny how the media also love to go on about how great South Korea have done (and they have), but less keen to inform everybody that means giving the government the power to spy on any individual citizen.

Realistically, this is the only way to effectively contact trace at any sort of scale and pace that enables one to keep the virus from spreading.

And if the UK had proposed doing this, they would be screaming what about my civil liberties.

Dont agree. Peter Hitchens might, but the rest of us are prepared for anything short term to avoid the plague

Are you still working on this or have you finished?

The only way to avoid it completely is to stay locked inside your residence for the next 18 months.

And how does that work for people who are living with others going out and about as normal?

Andy_JS said:

"The UK is approaching its peak in coronavirus deaths, with the highest number of expected daily deaths expected within a week, according to analysis by The Telegraph.

The peak in deaths is expected to come between the 11 and 14 April, although between now and then, the number of deaths on any one day will stay relatively static between 700 and 900.

After this point, while the number of deaths in any one day will still be in their hundreds, the number will begin to decrease as the lockdown-enforced social distancing begins to slow the virus’ spread."

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/04/07/uk-peak-coronavirus-deaths-expected-within-week-according-latest/

And then we'll get even more idiot journalists demanding of Raab "When do we end the lockdown? When do we end the lockdown?" As if the Government is just doing it as a wind up.

Re watching The Sweeney. It's on ITV4. Bloody brilliant. Guv'nor.

SandyRentool said:

In other news, we received a dozen eggs in today's food delivery.

I am, naturally, eggstatic.

UHT milk (expensive!) arrived at the weekend. Still, after 6 days without milk, I'm over the moo-n...

Sunil_Prasannan said:

SandyRentool said:

In other news, we received a dozen eggs in today's food delivery.

I am, naturally, eggstatic.

UHT milk (expensive!) arrived at the weekend. Still, after 6 days without milk, I'm over the moo-n...

You're milking that

matthiasfromhamburg said:

Nobody likes the idea of living in a surveillance society, but it's somewhat endearing that people believe that they do not yet live in one.
Remember the aftermath of the 'Skripal incident'. It took HMG two weeks to present 'conclusive evidence' of the pattern of movement of the alleged perpetrators. They may have had that evidence even earlier but hesitated to disclose the full scale of the surveillance state's capabilities. The state is already able to deploy that amount of surveillance on anyone, just not on everyone at the same time. In the current crisis we will have to trust our betters to do it for our own good.

There's nothing unusual about that sort of mass surveillance, scooping up call records, and networked ANPR and CCTV, are common throughout the western world, and widely used for reasons of fighting crime and national security. Obviously governments don't like to publicise it, and tend not to use it for minor crimes, and use parallel construction where possible for building criminal cases, but there really aren't many countries who eschew such systems.

matthiasfromhamburg said:

Andy_JS said:

ABZ said:

Andy_JS said:

eadric said:

Re Korea.

My wife expressed the fear today that the end result of this virus would be hi-tech surveillance states, with the authorities monitoring everything we do and everyone we meet. Countries that don’t do this will be crippled by the bug.

I think she’s on to something.

Jeremy Cliffe wrote an article saying the same thing a couple of weeks ago.

https://www.newstatesman.com/science-tech/2020/03/rise-bio-surveillance-state

I think people across the country will be willing to do this. And it can be cleverly put together in a way that does not compromise privacy. Fortunately, our NHS is very trusted, so if it's released as an NHS app I think it will probably have substantial uptake. Harder in countries with less centralised health systems perhaps.

Aren't you concerned about sleepwalking into a surveillance society? I am.

Nobody likes the idea of living in a surveillance society, but it's somewhat endearing that people believe that they do not yet live in one.
Remember the aftermath of the 'Skripal incident'. It took HMG two weeks to present 'conclusive evidence' of the pattern of movement of the alleged perpetrators. They may have had that evidence even earlier but hesitated to disclose the full scale of the surveillance state's capabilities. The state is already able to deploy that amount of surveillance on anyone, just not on everyone at the same time. In the current crisis we will have to trust our betters to do it for our own good.

I had to read this three times before I realised that two weeks of half the Secret Service investigating was meant as a short time, not a long time. That seems like, if anything, too long, given the resources thrown at that problem. As you imply, we're all just lost in the noise unless you or someone close to you does something worth surveilling (is that a word?), and even then it's often only retrospective.

DecrepiterJohnL said:

TOPPING said:

Re watching The Sweeney. It's on ITV4. Bloody brilliant. Guv'nor.

I'm watching Shoestring on DVD. One of the songs played on the radio in a background scene was Dennis Waterman singing the Minder theme. Minder would then (1980) have been a current show on a (or the) rival channel.

They're showing The Professionals also.

Edit: I see @another_richard has said this

SandyRentool said:

And then we'll get even more idiot journalists demanding of Raab "When do we end the lockdown? When do we end the lockdown?" As if the Government is just doing it as a wind up.

Might take a while, looking at Italy. Their peak was 18 days ago, and they only dropped below 50% of that today (and that's still 3k new cases).

Might be a psychological barrier when we drop below 1000? That's going to be a month maybe.

isam said:

TOPPING said:

Re watching The Sweeney. It's on ITV4. Bloody brilliant. Guv'nor.

‘Money, Money, Money’ is one of my favourite tv episodes

Not mine. It was out of character for Regan to be mates with the ex-villain.

Sunil_Prasannan said:

SandyRentool said:

In other news, we received a dozen eggs in today's food delivery.

I am, naturally, eggstatic.

UHT milk (expensive!) arrived at the weekend. Still, after 6 days without milk, I'm over the moo-n...

I've got two crates of San Miguel....was due on the 1st April....but if everyone claps at 10.00 for Tyson to get his beer tomorrow ..perhaps that will push it over the line....

matthiasfromhamburg said:

HYUFD said:

maaarsh said:

HYUFD said:

99% of those who have died from coronavirus in Italy had a pre existing health condition
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-18/99-of-those-who-died-from-virus-had-other-illness-italy-says?fbclid=IwAR0Brz0oVmqUrA1dteq-rYzvRFTr_4fsZBuhav43ktWo6Ekk0xy9k6PEQpE

UK number today was 20 odd out of 786 that didn't.

So that is less than 5%

As so often, the question is causation or correlation. People die "with coronavirus" and people die "with pre-existing medical conditions". Determining what they "died of" requires procedures which can be applied to a single individual but not to the large numbers of cases.

I wonder whether that last sentence is almost the wrong way round.

"X caused Y" is a problematic statement if there's multicausality at play. For example, if any one (or even more confusingly, any two out of four in combination) of U, V, W and X can cause Y... then what can you say if all of U, V, W and X are true, and Y happens? You can't say X "caused" Y in a sine qua non sense, because if X hadn't happened then Y would still have happened... but you could apply the same logic to any of U, V and W too!

If one considers a hypothetical very poorly victim of COVID-19 (and heed the good actuaries' warning that this is not representative of all such deaths!) and performed an extremely thorough post mortem, identified all the bacteria and fungi and viruses that were infecting the lungs, identified all the medical conditions that had cumulatively weakened the immune system, identified the cancer(s) or degenerative condition(s) that would likely have finished the victim off in a matter of months anyway.... well in that sense, what would it even mean to say "COVID caused this death", at an individual level?

Whereas on the population level, a highly competent statistician with a sufficiently high-quality data set might crunch the numbers and conclude "the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in P people (95% confidence interval from Q to R) dying who would not otherwise have died" and even be able to break that figure down, up to a certain level of granularity, in terms of sex, age, ethnic group etc. Even if they can't pin down which individuals those actually were (after all, who knows whether the fit 40-year-old whose doctor would say he sadly died of COVID-19, would have - in the absence of the pandemic and accompanying lockdown - been run over by a bus on the way to work, and therefore shouldn't count as an "excess death" in the statistical sense?) there's an argument for this aggregate figure being more meaningful, in the everyday sense of the word "caused", as "deaths caused by COVID-19" than the figure you'd get from tallying the death certificates where COVID-19 is listed as the main cause.

SandyRentool said:

Andy_JS said:

"The UK is approaching its peak in coronavirus deaths, with the highest number of expected daily deaths expected within a week, according to analysis by The Telegraph.

The peak in deaths is expected to come between the 11 and 14 April, although between now and then, the number of deaths on any one day will stay relatively static between 700 and 900.

After this point, while the number of deaths in any one day will still be in their hundreds, the number will begin to decrease as the lockdown-enforced social distancing begins to slow the virus’ spread."

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/04/07/uk-peak-coronavirus-deaths-expected-within-week-according-latest/

And then we'll get even more idiot journalists demanding of Raab "When do we end the lockdown? When do we end the lockdown?" As if the Government is just doing it as a wind up.

A free Press asking questions of when, a degree of individual freedom will be reternd, and replaced by individual responsibility is not idiotic, its what I want them to be asking.

HYUFD said:

rottenborough said:

HYUFD said:

Clap for Boris about to start

No clapping around my way.

I did my clap but unless you live in a very Tory area I doubt it will get the support the NHS clap did, most people hope he gets better but unless they are Tories are not going to clap for him

Hadn't heard about it to be honest, but as others have said we all wish him well.

If Theresa May had got her deal through the HofC, she might be in Intensive Care now, or worse...

another_richard said:

TOPPING said:

Re watching The Sweeney. It's on ITV4. Bloody brilliant. Guv'nor.

Minder
Professionals
Sweeney

One after the other on ITV4.

"Shut it!"

Tony, never a clue on Scotland forever and a day.

https://twitter.com/RobDunsmore/status/1247585854626967553?s=20

EPG said:

The media are disgracefully asking politicians questions that politicians and their supporters would rather not answer.

Feel free to pretend that's the only issue at play if it makes you feel better.

Yes it is true politicians don't like being asked any questions, and certainly not difficult ones. It doesn't follow that any question which provokes ire does so because the politician or their supporter does not want it asked, there are other possibilities.

It does depend on the question, every single time, if it is reasonable.

stodge said:

isam said:

And we will quite likely be in the midst of a depression

So what is the way out? Allow the virus to run loose through the population and accept the deaths as a necessary evil? Not sure that would be popular.

Austria and some other European countries are talking about a slow and phased re-emergence from lock down - Kurz talked about re-opening non-essential stores of less than 4,300 square feet from next Tuesday with all other stores to re-open from May 1st.

However, social distancing remains in place along with the mandatory wearing of face masks so presumably they have 9 million or so available.

I'm trying to imagine how we could do that in terms of businesses operating and social distancing on public transport.

I'm not convinced.

If I knew the way out, someone cleverer and more important would have already done it. I wasn’t being critical of anyone, when a killer virus is threatening to wipe out half the world there’s not much anyone can do. I just think we will be in a financial mess bigger than I’ve ever known

NickPalmer said:

HYUFD said:

rottenborough said:

HYUFD said:

Clap for Boris about to start

No clapping around my way.

I did my clap but unless you live in a very Tory area I doubt it will get the support the NHS clap did, most people hope he gets better but unless they are Tories are not going to clap for him

Hadn't heard about it to be honest, but as others have said we all wish him well.

Of course we wish him well....in the same way I do not want anyone, I mean anyone to suffer with this disease...

....but it is particularly unseemly and in bad taste to wish one person well when so many countless thousands of others are dying, and going to die..

Hyfud...really needs to sort out his priorities.....seriously....

ThomasNashe said:

Omnium said:

Is there a campaign somewhere or other to recognise shop-workers in this?

The Tesco, Sainsbury, Waitrose, etc staff.

I'd like to chip in if there is.

I agree: the minimum-waged heroes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q6yzrZfgQvI

RobD said:

isam said:

If Theresa May had got her deal through the HofC, she might be in Intensive Care now, or worse...

Or she might not.

Great point!

She is in a high risk category, and the current PM is in ICU, so I think on balance she’s glad she isn’t in that job now

isam said:

Endillion said:

MyBurningEars said:

Endillion said:

MyBurningEars said:

Endillion said:

On the theory (much discussed here) that many or most of the Covid-19 victims would have died this year or shortly afterwards from other or natural causes, the Covid-19 Actuaries Response Group has just published a four page note that may be of interest:

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/covid-19-actuaries-response-group_covid-19-arg-death-row-bulletin-activity-6653226206785347584-SQnY

In short, they do not agree with the implied hypothesis in the title:
We disagree. We think that the majority of COVID-19 deaths are deaths of people who would not have died anytime soon. We put forward our rationale in this bulletin. The data-driven argument is essentially:

(a) The COVID-19 deaths are concentrated at high ages, where existing conditions are common;
(b) Life expectancy of such people, even with ‘worst case’ profiles (eg obese smokers), are of the order of five years or more – these people would probably not have died (without COVID-19) anytime soon.

Finally, assuming these deaths are not really due to COVID-19 sends the wrong message – that the social distancing measures to protect our elderly are not important, or that their lives are unimportant.

Nice find! Is there a direct link to the paper somewhere?

Here's that group's earlier piece on whether the famous Imperial College modelling was "fit for purpose". (PDF link)

Interestingly, @rcs posted up a counterpiece to the Impedial Model by Nassim "Black Swan" Taleb and friends a while back which I really dissed as I didn't think the critique had any force at all. I was reassured to see the actuaries agree with me!! ("We also considered criticisms raised by Chen, Taleb, et al, and do not consider any of these to be material"...)

I can't find a direct link, but I guess keep watching Actuarial Post? If I see a link I'll PM it to you (if I remember).

I know a few people on the group, and may get involved myself if the day job clears up a bit (albeit it's not really my primary field). In the meantime, happy to continue to post links to stuff they publish if it looks to be of interest.

The summary I can see says:

There has been a great deal of comment and doubt, but little real debate, as to whether many of the COVID-19 deaths are really caused by COVID-19. Were they already ‘on death row’? Did they die ‘with’ but not ‘from’ COVID-19? The argument has been that many of the COVID-19 deaths are people of high age with existing medical conditions, and they would have died soon anyway.

We disagree. We think that the majority of COVID-19 deaths are deaths of people who would not have died anytime soon. We put forward our rationale in this bulletin. The data-driven argument is essentially:

(a) The COVID-19 deaths are concentrated at high ages, where existing conditions are common;
(b) Life expectancy of such people, even with ‘worst case’ profiles (eg obese smokers), are of the order of five years or more – these people would probably not have died (without COVID-19) anytime soon.

Finally, assuming these deaths are not really due to COVID-19 sends the wrong message – that the social distancing measures to protect our elderly are not important, or that their lives are unimportant.

The link I posted before should show that summary, and then some sort of embedded file below with the full report - reposted again for convenience:
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/covid-19-actuaries-response-group_covid-19-arg-death-row-bulletin-activity-6653226206785347584-SQnY/

So you should be able to read it on screen but I can't figure out how to get it into a usable file format.

https://twitter.com/actuarybyday/status/1246866119597621248?s=21

Thanks for posting this.

Daughter’s business got her grant today. Applied on Friday so impressively quick.

The wholesale price of green vegetables has gone up dramatically. She’s been selling a small box for £1.00 to those having deliveries and unable to get out. The cost has now gone up so much that she would now have to sell it for £5.30 on which she would make 20p. She’s only going to offer this to those who can’t get to Tesco’s etc and price it on the day.

Milk prices have shot up too. And eggs.

These sort of price increases are going to put pressure on people with no or little income.

Disgracefully, Asda and Sainsbury’s are selling meat from Poland instead of using the meat from local farmers.

Oh - and 41 sheep have gone missing from a farmer near Broughton.

HYUFD said:

ukpaul said:

HYUFD said:

maaarsh said:

HYUFD said:

99% of those who have died from coronavirus in Italy had a pre existing health condition
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-18/99-of-those-who-died-from-virus-had-other-illness-italy-says?fbclid=IwAR0Brz0oVmqUrA1dteq-rYzvRFTr_4fsZBuhav43ktWo6Ekk0xy9k6PEQpE

UK number today was 20 odd out of 786 that didn't.

So that is less than 5%

At least a third of the population has an underlying condition recognised as a significamt co-morbidity. That’s a lot of people that are potentially at that level of heightened risk.

So keep them indoors until we find a vaccine or treatments improved and outside the peak everyone else ie at least 2/3 of the population, can get back to normal

So what do the family of those people do?

1 parent with a highly elevated risk, does their child go to school? Does their partner go to work. In practices it doesn't mean locking away a third of the population but most of it

Casino_Royale said:

Cyclefree said:

Daughter’s business got her grant today. Applied on Friday so impressively quick.

The wholesale price of green vegetables has gone up dramatically. She’s been selling a small box for £1.00 to those having deliveries and unable to get out. The cost has now gone up so much that she would now have to sell it for £5.30 on which she would make 20p. She’s only going to offer this to those who can’t get to Tesco’s etc and price it on the day.

Milk prices have shot up too. And eggs.

These sort of price increases are going to put pressure on people with no or little income.

Disgracefully, Asda and Sainsbury’s are selling meat from Poland instead of using the meat from local farmers.

Oh - and 41 sheep have gone missing from a farmer near Broughton.

Very good news on your daughter's grant.

Less good news on the 41 sheep.....

tyson said:

Theuniondivvie said:

Vile, evil, lefty non-clapping!

https://twitter.com/PrisonPlanet/status/1247600583894278145?s=20

What a fucking pinhead....

The trouble is this is where this clapping nonsense ends.

Everyone will want a round of applause for anything, and it will become politicised and divisive.

Cyclefree said:

Daughter’s business got her grant today. Applied on Friday so impressively quick.

The wholesale price of green vegetables has gone up dramatically. She’s been selling a small box for £1.00 to those having deliveries and unable to get out. The cost has now gone up so much that she would now have to sell it for £5.30 on which she would make 20p. She’s only going to offer this to those who can’t get to Tesco’s etc and price it on the day.

Milk prices have shot up too. And eggs.

These sort of price increases are going to put pressure on people with no or little income.

Disgracefully, Asda and Sainsbury’s are selling meat from Poland instead of using the meat from local farmers.

Oh - and 41 sheep have gone missing from a farmer near Broughton.

I don't think sex work is particularly compatible with social distancing....so...just a theory on what's happened to the 41 sheep....

Cyclefree said:

Daughter’s business got her grant today. Applied on Friday so impressively quick.

The wholesale price of green vegetables has gone up dramatically. She’s been selling a small box for £1.00 to those having deliveries and unable to get out. The cost has now gone up so much that she would now have to sell it for £5.30 on which she would make 20p. She’s only going to offer this to those who can’t get to Tesco’s etc and price it on the day.

Milk prices have shot up too. And eggs.

These sort of price increases are going to put pressure on people with no or little income.

Disgracefully, Asda and Sainsbury’s are selling meat from Poland instead of using the meat from local farmers.

Oh - and 41 sheep have gone missing from a farmer near Broughton.

Interesting - and congratulations for your daughter!

I wonder if that's the first straw in a hyperinflationary wind?