and certainly by 1209 (when several scholars were hanged for alleged complicity in a murder) there seems to be some sense of a united scholarly community.
Marvellous collegial effort in getting someone whacked!
Peer review ?
Southend is the longest pier in the UK. Southport is second longest.
and certainly by 1209 (when several scholars were hanged for alleged complicity in a murder) there seems to be some sense of a united scholarly community.
Marvellous collegial effort in getting someone whacked!
Peer review ?
Southend is the longest pier in the UK. Southport is second longest.
There has been an official update on the prime minister's condition. Apparently he continues to make good progress. Last night he succeeded in proving the Goldbach Conjecture, and this morning he exercised on the pommel horse for three hours.
So he’s digging an escape tunnel out of the hospital?
The Home Secretary is digging the tunnel - that's why she hasn't been seen for days.
I'm not seeing the Trabant as being a product of co-operation. This is not what I mean.
Constructive compétition is extremely valuable.
In the former Soviet Union, they insisted on multiple competing prototypes for military. Which produced the only internationally competitive products that country ever produced.
There has been an official update on the prime minister's condition. Apparently he continues to make good progress. Last night he succeeded in proving the Goldbach Conjecture, and this morning he exercised on the pommel horse for three hours.
So he’s digging an escape tunnel out of the hospital?
The Home Secretary is digging the tunnel - that's why she hasn't been seen for days.
Makes a change from digging a massive hole for herself.
From a couple of threads back - and with apologies as I was moving yesterday:-
“MattWMattW Posts: 3,011 April 10 @Cyclefree Gardening Question (10).
I am getting onto clearing away the clutter and old growth. As a general principle how much of the old growth still on plants, detritus on the ground etc should be cleared up at the start of the season? Should I spend time clearing all of these bits, for example? What should be left?
(Question 10a Never noticed before, but various furious people are fulminating about cyclists. Is there a meaning behind your user name? I always took it as a linear outlook on the world )“
Re clearing up:-
On plants it is worth cutting back old dead stems, either to the ground or down to the nearest leaf bud. This makes the plant tidier, looks nicer and avoids the possibility of disease. I generally leave old stems on during winter because they provide nesting material for birds and can look lovely when frosted or against the low autumn/winter light. But now that growth is happening there is no need.
Old twigs etc on the ground: you can leave these. Eventually these will rot down and get taken down into the earth by worms. Nature will do her stuff.
But if you want the garden to look nice I would pick it all up, rake it away and put in a compost heap if you have one or out for recycling. It helps clear away weeds and hiding places for slugs and snails and allows you to see what you have growing there ie other perennials which may be pushing through. It’s always a good idea to look closely at what is going on in your garden closely - ie at ground level and with your plants and doing a general tidy up gives you the chance to do that. You will see lots of things you might not notice otherwise and it is this sort of close observation which is the key to better gardening. Plus if you stick a garden fork into the earth and wiggle it around a bit you give the soil a bit of a boost especially if you add fresh soil/compost/mulch.
And it is so lovely to do a freshening/tidying up and see all the places where there is room to put new plants!
Re my user name: I have cycled for years, ever since university, to all my jobs, through London traffic and on various country routes (the London to Brighton bike ride, for instance). I have the scars and injuries to show for it! Love it - wind through my hair, freewheeling down a hill, etc. I learnt to ride in Ireland and just cycled all over the place for hours just for the sheer freedom of it, only coming home when it was time for tea.
Plus I am hot on freedom generally. So I chose the name because my first ever comment on Comment is Free years ago was about the pettifogging officials who had banned cycling in Regents Park, a rule now abandoned.
It has nothing to do with my mind which zigzags all over the place .....
Thanks for that.
We had our full bin collection today - recycling, garden and glass.
Question about compost heaps is planned - I have a single dalek composter, which is suboptimal.
Interesting on the cycling - a friend moved to Ireland recently and she is learning to drive at 60+ after 50 years cycling because she finds cycling in rural Ireland to be a death trap.
and certainly by 1209 (when several scholars were hanged for alleged complicity in a murder) there seems to be some sense of a united scholarly community.
Marvellous collegial effort in getting someone whacked!
Peer review ?
Southend is the longest pier in the UK. Southport is second longest.
Wigan the shortest?
Back to the garden...
That’s a journey, not a tourist attraction.
It has brown signs. It's a tourist attraction.Albeit not a terribly exciting one.
Surprisingly entertaining 5-minute video on how to donate your home PC's spare cycles to fight the coronavirus with the Folding@Home project. A good primer on molecular biology too for everyone who did not do a PhD with @Sunil_Prasannan. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-uwljuMp7w
A significant score in Cambridge’s favour, for sure.
I have an MA from Oxford and an MA from Cambridge neither which I earned. My Cambridge MA came first after completing three years in a senior Univeristy position. Then I got headhunted by Oxford which instantly gave me an MA because of my Cambridge degree. I've actually got an LLb from the LSE.
Matt Hancock describes PPE as a "precious resource."
Wrong. It is basic kit, essential for staff to stay alive. The idea that face masks should be used sparingly in a pandemic is frightening. The fact it's happening because of government failure to plan is criminal.
People are dying because of PPE failings and the fact there has been such small number of tests we dont have a clue which NHS/Carer environment is safe or not.
We could easily be on course to have the most deaths of any Country in Europe and those in charge will be held responsible for the flawed initial strategy, the PPE failings, the late lockdown failings, the pathetic inability to ramp up testing.
"We followed the Science but ended up with the worst results" - not so much.
It is all so easy BJO
Who says its easy but by definition the country that ends up with the worst outcome has clearly failed.
Which bit of We could easily be on course to have the most deaths of any Country in Europe do you not understand BigG
I am not quick to judge and will wait to see in the months and years to come just which outcomes were successful and which were not
You are not exactly an independent authority on this
The time to judge how well we have done in the UK compared to the rest of Europe is when the worst is over not when we are in the thick of. I believe there are going to be some very tricky questions for the government to answer but let's wait and see.
Yes, but a 'Nuremberg style reckoning' as was posited by at least one of Team Mouth Breather on here. No chance.
We'll do better than most countries on some aspects (for example, other than China, has any other country matched our efforts on the Nightingale hospitals) and worse on others but not catastrophically so. It will likely be UK science and engineering at the forefront of some of the global solutions.
There, that's my prediction.
They were building nightingale type hospitals in exhibition centers and hospital car parks in Spain two weeks before the UK. Valencia and Alicante hospital had 500 icu bed extensions set up as well as the largest in Madrid.
Everyone was awestruck when China built a Covid-19 hospital from scratch in 10 days.
We built Nightingale in 9.
Chalk one up for the British squaddies.
Indeed. Where did they (either) get all the beds from?
i think we did well but didn't the chinese actually build the building too, not just fit out an existing one?
A Chinese friend pointed out there is a large exhibition centre type building in Wuhan, which was not used. He presumed because of Party interest.
The Chinese building(s) will fail structurally in the near term - the earth in the foundation works did not have time to settle and they must have used accelerants in the concrete to make it cure faster. So cracking and spalling will occur within on year due to weather cycling.
Using a pre-existing convention centre like this is far more intelligent. You have -
- a temperature controlled space, big enough to fly a small aircraft in - equipment on site for sub-dividing it in any number of ways. - massive amounts of power and water available to start with - Management spaces, workshops, delivery facilities on a huge scale already ready and waiting. Not to mention toilets scaled for thousands of people. - massive parking facilities for cars, trucks etc - on-site helicopter arrival arrangements. - setup to connect into the major road networks
There has been an official update on the prime minister's condition. Apparently he continues to make good progress. Last night he succeeded in proving the Goldbach Conjecture, and this morning he exercised on the pommel horse for three hours.
There has been an official update on the prime minister's condition. Apparently he continues to make good progress. Last night he succeeded in proving the Goldbach Conjecture, and this morning he exercised on the pommel horse for three hours.
So he’s digging an escape tunnel out of the hospital?
The Home Secretary is digging the tunnel - that's why she hasn't been seen for days.
Makes a change from digging a massive hole for herself.
Maybe it is a 2-for-1 deal? Digging a hole for herself and the PM?
and certainly by 1209 (when several scholars were hanged for alleged complicity in a murder) there seems to be some sense of a united scholarly community.
Marvellous collegial effort in getting someone whacked!
Peer review ?
Southend is the longest pier in the UK. Southport is second longest.
We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills, we shall fight on the authorised parade routes; we shall never surrender!
I'm not seeing the Trabant as being a product of co-operation. This is not what I mean.
Constructive compétition is extremely valuable.
In the former Soviet Union, they insisted on multiple competing prototypes for military. Which produced the only internationally competitive products that country ever produced.
Fine if you want a tank or a jet fighter. Doubt it works for three bakers in the same town deciding what’s best to offer the public, the next day. Nor is it going to create you something you didn’t really know you wanted like an smart phone, or some obscure new polymer for a gasket. Hence the old Soviet Union fun poke as “Upper Volta, with rockets”.
There has been an official update on the prime minister's condition. Apparently he continues to make good progress. Last night he succeeded in proving the Goldbach Conjecture, and this morning he exercised on the pommel horse for three hours.
So he’s digging an escape tunnel out of the hospital?
That might explain what he was doing with his hands in his trouser pockets.
Can anyone explain to me why enforced cuts to oil production would be a good thing - other than for major oil producers? Why would most countries want to see this happen?
My thoughts, this will probably annoy some people, sorry. that's not my intention. I would like somebody to enplane why this is wrong, because it is rather 'brutal'.
How this ends, I can see only 3 possibility:
1. A vaccine come out that works. 2. we track trace and isolate everybody with this so it stops spreading. 3. We reach saturation, where a sufficiently large number have become immune to stop the spread.
But there are problems with each:
1 A vaccine is the best hope, but probably still 14 months or more off, hopefully sooner, but it may a lot long and could never happen. 2. its worked so far in South Korea and Taiwan, but with probably 100,000s with it in the UK it just does not seem achievable, and if we ever what to have international travel, globally I think this is not credible. 3. Lots of people will die.
Given that its most likely to be, 3. Lots of people will die. so how many? No estimate is going to be accurate but what can we assume:
Assumptions:
R0 The infection rate is 2.6 CFR based on German study is 0.37% UK Population is 66 million
from that we can calculate:
R0 of 2.6 will need 62% infected before infections become less that 1
62% of 66 million is 41 Million people
A CFR of 0.37% over 41 Million cases is 150,000 deaths.
150,000 deaths is a huge number. Very sadly, and I hope i'm wrong but I suspect unavoidable at this stage.
If the Hospitals are over-run in an area, it will go up from that, perhaps by a lot. if not the 150,000 it is.
While this is going on we have other this happening:
1) Los of individual freedom, I know this is sounds arbitrary even irreverent to some but it matter so me. 2) increased deaths form other things, suicide is often quoted, but missed hospital treatment for other conditions will probably be bigger. 3) disruption and damage to the wider economy. 4) Disruption and damage to the education of a generation of Kids.
While the 150,000 deaths is probably 'backed in' now the other things are not and will depend on the time scale.
The risk of hospital over-running is real and should make us try to spread this out the other factors should want us to get this over with' as quickly as possible.
Balancing theses should give us a optimum infection rate to aim for.
Given the average 20-25 (I think) day lag between infection and death and the dramatic drop of in the rate of increase in deaths in last week, and that there is still some capacity in the NHS. now it the time to start to reopen the knockdown
The 0.37% CFR is not constant amusing the population: lower in young and heath people, higher in older and sick people. if we could find polices that would alaw the virus to spread quicker in the low risk groups the we can get to saturation before lots of the old/sick get the virus, and we may bring the 150,000 number down a bit.
Therefor we should open the schools, soon. to parents who wish to send there kids to school.
Can anyone explain to me why enforced cuts to oil production would be a good thing - other than for major oil producers? Why would most countries want to see this happen?
If there where being sensible they would not as most places consume more oil then they export. however, they will have shares in oil companies in things like pension funds, and those companies have good lobbyists so policy is not always followed for the best interest of the nation concerned.
My thoughts, this will probably annoy some people, sorry. that's not my intention. I would like somebody to enplane why this is wrong, because it is rather 'brutal'.
How this ends, I can see only 3 possibility:
1. A vaccine come out that works. 2. we track trace and isolate everybody with this so it stops spreading. 3. We reach saturation, where a sufficiently large number have become immune to stop the spread.
I would say that 2 is just an adjustment of the route to 3, as is lockdown etc. All to do with staying under Health Service capacity.
But we have known that since the start.
(Aside: we can also expect to serious numbers of reports of mortality in care homes soon - just over 2 weeks ago I was picking reports of 25-30 incident reports a day just in the SE/London.)
I'm not seeing the Trabant as being a product of co-operation. This is not what I mean.
Constructive compétition is extremely valuable.
In the former Soviet Union, they insisted on multiple competing prototypes for military. Which produced the only internationally competitive products that country ever produced.
Fine if you want a tank or a jet fighter. Doubt it works for three bakers in the same town deciding what’s best to offer the public, the next day. Nor is it going to create you something you didn’t really know you wanted like an smart phone, or some obscure new polymer for a gasket. Hence the old Soviet Union fun poke as “Upper Volta, with rockets”.
As it happens, I was staying in Meursault in France not long before all this kicked off.
A lovely, lovely small town. There are three bakeries - which offer differing quality, prices etc. The result is that you can get a range of magnificent bread, pastries etc, by deciding between them.
In nearby Chablis, there is only there is only one bakery of any significance, who over charges for indifferent produce.
It was notable that outside the military, the Soviet Union loved the One Big X approach to providing goods and services. Which was uniformly crap.
Can anyone explain to me why enforced cuts to oil production would be a good thing - other than for major oil producers? Why would most countries want to see this happen?
I don't think "most" countries want it to happen, as most countries are net oil importers.
However the US wants it to happen, as the cost of production for Shale, is higher than the current oil price.
If this continues there will be massive redundancies in Shale oil extraction.
Can anyone explain to me why enforced cuts to oil production would be a good thing - other than for major oil producers? Why would most countries want to see this happen?
Not major oil producers but minor oil producing countries whose industries might go under, permanently, if prices remain low or if they are out-produced by the majors. Hence pb Tories' perennial fascination with Venezuela.
More on the Hooker-Gate....no laughing at the back...
A member of the travelling party told Mail Online they were not holidaymakers but three billionaires on their way to the cliffside villa to complete a business deal that would have created over 900 jobs. He claimed the others in the party were bodyguards, a secretary and translators.
Can anyone explain to me why enforced cuts to oil production would be a good thing - other than for major oil producers? Why would most countries want to see this happen?
Many countries tax oil/petrol/diesel products on a percentage basis. A collapse in the oil price collapses tax receipts....
I have long argued that the tax on petrol in the UK should be a fixed amount - £X per litre. This would reduce price fluctuations, since the tax is the majority of the price. It would stop windfalls to the treasury - true. But it would stabilise the revenue at a reliable level.
More on the Hooker-Gate....no laughing at the back...
A member of the travelling party told Mail Online they were not holidaymakers but three billionaires on their way to the cliffside villa to complete a business deal that would have created over 900 jobs. He claimed the others in the party were bodyguards, a secretary and translators.
Can anyone explain to me why enforced cuts to oil production would be a good thing - other than for major oil producers? Why would most countries want to see this happen?
Not major oil producers but minor oil producing countries whose industries might go under, permanently, if prices remain low or if they are out-produced by the majors. Hence pb Tories' perennial fascination with Venezuela.
ETA I am deliberately ignoring prices.
Venezuela is interesting because it is a rare modern example of people driving a country to oblivion using 1980's style People's Republic economics.
Can anyone explain to me why enforced cuts to oil production would be a good thing - other than for major oil producers? Why would most countries want to see this happen?
Many countries tax oil/petrol/diesel products on a percentage basis. A collapse in the oil price collapses tax receipts....
I have long argued that the tax on petrol in the UK should be a fixed amount - £X per litre. This would reduce price fluctuations, since the tax is the majority of the price. It would stop windfalls to the treasury - true. But it would stabilise the revenue at a reliable level.
They could have a system of going up a bit (as a %) when the oil price goes down and going down a bit when it goes up. It wouldn't be that hard to calculate.
There has been an official update on the prime minister's condition. Apparently he continues to make good progress. Last night he succeeded in proving the Goldbach Conjecture, and this morning he exercised on the pommel horse for three hours.
So he’s digging an escape tunnel out of the hospital?
The Home Secretary is digging the tunnel - that's why she hasn't been seen for days.
Makes a change from digging a massive hole for herself.
Maybe it is a 2-for-1 deal? Digging a hole for herself and the PM?
I have said many things about Patel, but I have never suggested she would let the PM get in her hole.
Can anyone explain to me why enforced cuts to oil production would be a good thing - other than for major oil producers? Why would most countries want to see this happen?
Many countries tax oil/petrol/diesel products on a percentage basis. A collapse in the oil price collapses tax receipts....
I have long argued that the tax on petrol in the UK should be a fixed amount - £X per litre. This would reduce price fluctuations, since the tax is the majority of the price. It would stop windfalls to the treasury - true. But it would stabilise the revenue at a reliable level.
Um well 2 seconds on google tells me that the duty on petrol and Diesel is a fixed amount of 57.95 pence per litre (except in remote areas where a subsidy exists). VAT is of course added on top of that but VAT is the only bit that isn't fixed.
A significant score in Cambridge’s favour, for sure.
I have an MA from Oxford and an MA from Cambridge neither which I earned. My Cambridge MA came first after completing three years in a senior Univeristy position. Then I got headhunted by Oxford which instantly gave me an MA because of my Cambridge degree. I've actually got an LLb from the LSE.
Can anyone explain to me why enforced cuts to oil production would be a good thing - other than for major oil producers? Why would most countries want to see this happen?
Many countries tax oil/petrol/diesel products on a percentage basis. A collapse in the oil price collapses tax receipts....
I have long argued that the tax on petrol in the UK should be a fixed amount - £X per litre. This would reduce price fluctuations, since the tax is the majority of the price. It would stop windfalls to the treasury - true. But it would stabilise the revenue at a reliable level.
They could have a system of going up a bit (as a %) when the oil price goes down and going down a bit when it goes up. It wouldn't be that hard to calculate.
There might be a bit of fun in the interaction of the various taxes... but that might work.
I would like to see a fixed rate tax, because it would be simpler and more transparent.
Did you know that emergency legislation was passed to make it illegal to give petrol and diesel away as a sales promotion?
Co-operation doesn't mean a single participant. For example, one entity making cars. The key question is will a bunch of people co-operating produce better outcomes than a bunch of people competing? I think they will.
Sticking with cars. Take F1. So at present we have the teams in cut throat competition. If Ferrari come up with something will they share it with Red Bull? Will they heckers like. They'll hoard it like diamonds because they want to WIN. They would even sabotage other cars if they could get away with it. Each team is motivated only to win races rather than to produce the best car possible. They would rather have a bad car which beats the others than a better car which doesn't.
Now consider a different way. Same resource, same teams, still racing, but now co-operating on technical development. Open and transparent knowledge sharing across the board. Will this not end up with the quality of whatever car wins being maximized? And also in an improvement in the quality of the cars at the back of the grid? Surely it will and it will.
This is levelling up. It's the only way the term is meaningful.
I know we can nitpick on the specific detail of the specific example - if they are racing how can they be forced to co-operate? etc etc - but it's more the general principle I'm seeking to illustrate.
A significant score in Cambridge’s favour, for sure.
I have an MA from Oxford and an MA from Cambridge neither which I earned. My Cambridge MA came first after completing three years in a senior Univeristy position. Then I got headhunted by Oxford which instantly gave me an MA because of my Cambridge degree. I've actually got an LLb from the LSE.
A (metaphorical) plague on all their houses.
I rather like the quote about LSE, over the scandal of one of Quaddafi's sons being praised for his writings on being more-democratic-than-democracy...
"One hopes they were doing it for the money. The alternative is they believed what they wrote."
There has been an official update on the prime minister's condition. Apparently he continues to make good progress. Last night he succeeded in proving the Goldbach Conjecture, and this morning he exercised on the pommel horse for three hours.
So he’s digging an escape tunnel out of the hospital?
The Home Secretary is digging the tunnel - that's why she hasn't been seen for days.
Makes a change from digging a massive hole for herself.
Maybe it is a 2-for-1 deal? Digging a hole for herself and the PM?
I have said many things about Patel, but I have never suggested she would let the PM get in her hole.
I shall get your coat. Is it the one with the bags of sand in the pockets?
A significant score in Cambridge’s favour, for sure.
I have an MA from Oxford and an MA from Cambridge neither which I earned. My Cambridge MA came first after completing three years in a senior Univeristy position. Then I got headhunted by Oxford which instantly gave me an MA because of my Cambridge degree. I've actually got an LLb from the LSE.
A (metaphorical) plague on all their houses.
To Sandpit, Hyufd and I, who all attended the greatest university in the world, this does all seem rather trite.
(In fact, one question for @Sandpit - were you a member of the Walking Club?)
There has been an official update on the prime minister's condition. Apparently he continues to make good progress. Last night he succeeded in proving the Goldbach Conjecture, and this morning he exercised on the pommel horse for three hours.
So he’s digging an escape tunnel out of the hospital?
The Home Secretary is digging the tunnel - that's why she hasn't been seen for days.
Makes a change from digging a massive hole for herself.
Maybe it is a 2-for-1 deal? Digging a hole for herself and the PM?
I have said many things about Patel, but I have never suggested she would let the PM get in her hole.
I shall get your coat. Is it the one with the bags of sand in the pockets?
NHS England said a further 823 people have died in hospital in England after testing positive for coronavirus, bringing the death toll there to 8,937.
The patients were aged between 11 and 102 years old and 33 of the 823 patients (aged between 29 and 94 years old) had no known underlying health condition.
Can anyone explain to me why enforced cuts to oil production would be a good thing - other than for major oil producers? Why would most countries want to see this happen?
Not major oil producers but minor oil producing countries whose industries might go under, permanently, if prices remain low or if they are out-produced by the majors. Hence pb Tories' perennial fascination with Venezuela.
ETA I am deliberately ignoring prices.
Venezuela is interesting because it is a rare modern example of people driving a country to oblivion using 1980's style People's Republic economics.
Aided and abetted by American sanctions, of course.
Co-operation doesn't mean a single participant. For example, one entity making cars. The key question is will a bunch of people co-operating produce better outcomes than a bunch of people competing? I think they will.
Sticking with cars. Take F1. So at present we have the teams in cut throat competition. If Ferrari come up with something will they share it with Red Bull? Will they heckers like. They'll hoard it like diamonds because they want to WIN. They would even sabotage other cars if they could get away with it. Each team is motivated only to win races rather than to produce the best car possible. They would rather have a bad car which beats the others than a better car which doesn't.
Now consider a different way. Same resource, same teams, still racing, but now co-operating on technical development. Open and transparent knowledge sharing across the board. Will this not end up with the quality of whatever car wins being maximized? And also in an improvement in the quality of the cars at the back of the grid? Surely it will and it will.
This is levelling up. It's the only way the term is meaningful.
I know we can nitpick on the specific detail of the specific example - if they are racing how can they be forced to co-operate? etc etc - but it's more the general principle I'm seeking to illustrate.
Have you noticed that technological innovation in F1 has to *restrained* by the rules? If allowed, they would be running 350mph on the straights probably...
Interestingly the massive investment in advanced technology in F1 - from that savage competition - feeds directly into a highly innovative, ultra fast moving industrial capability in this country. Which turns out to have other uses....
There has been an official update on the prime minister's condition. Apparently he continues to make good progress. Last night he succeeded in proving the Goldbach Conjecture, and this morning he exercised on the pommel horse for three hours.
So he’s digging an escape tunnel out of the hospital?
The Home Secretary is digging the tunnel - that's why she hasn't been seen for days.
Makes a change from digging a massive hole for herself.
Maybe it is a 2-for-1 deal? Digging a hole for herself and the PM?
I have said many things about Patel, but I have never suggested she would let the PM get in her hole.
I shall get your coat. Is it the one with the bags of sand in the pockets?
As long as it’s not made of wood...
I am listening to the cricket. if this had been live, Southam Observer and others would have been on here bemoaning the state of English cricket....
NHS England said a further 823 people have died in hospital in England after testing positive for coronavirus, bringing the death toll there to 8,937.
The patients were aged between 11 and 102 years old and 33 of the 823 patients (aged between 29 and 94 years old) had no known underlying health condition.
Not to minimize a death, but a 94 year old with no underlying health conditions, that is quite incredible when you think about it. I would love to make it 94 years without any serious health conditions.
Can anyone explain to me why enforced cuts to oil production would be a good thing - other than for major oil producers? Why would most countries want to see this happen?
Not major oil producers but minor oil producing countries whose industries might go under, permanently, if prices remain low or if they are out-produced by the majors. Hence pb Tories' perennial fascination with Venezuela.
ETA I am deliberately ignoring prices.
Venezuela is interesting because it is a rare modern example of people driving a country to oblivion using 1980's style People's Republic economics.
Aided and abetted by American sanctions, of course.
I really don’t think the sanctions were necessary for economic implosion. Between the vast corruption of the Chavistas, the incompetence of the Army in running the economy, the printing of money to pay for impossible promises (are you listening carefully, Mr Sunak?) the weakness of their tax system and the emigration of anyone with any talent or money who was not a slavish adherent of the regime, coupled to a collapse in the oil price -
- the American response was not going to make a huge difference either way.
My thoughts, this will probably annoy some people, sorry. that's not my intention. I would like somebody to enplane why this is wrong, because it is rather 'brutal'.
How this ends, I can see only 3 possibility:
1. A vaccine come out that works. 2. we track trace and isolate everybody with this so it stops spreading. 3. We reach saturation, where a sufficiently large number have become immune to stop the spread.
But there are problems with each:
1 A vaccine is the best hope, but probably still 14 months or more off, hopefully sooner, but it may a lot long and could never happen. 2. its worked so far in South Korea and Taiwan, but with probably 100,000s with it in the UK it just does not seem achievable, and if we ever what to have international travel, globally I think this is not credible. 3. Lots of people will die.
Given that its most likely to be, 3. Lots of people will die. so how many? No estimate is going to be accurate but what can we assume:
Assumptions:
R0 The infection rate is 2.6 CFR based on German study is 0.37% UK Population is 66 million
from that we can calculate:
R0 of 2.6 will need 62% infected before infections become less that 1
62% of 66 million is 41 Million people
A CFR of 0.37% over 41 Million cases is 150,000 deaths.
150,000 deaths is a huge number. Very sadly, and I hope i'm wrong but I suspect unavoidable at this stage.
If the Hospitals are over-run in an area, it will go up from that, perhaps by a lot. if not the 150,000 it is.
While this is going on we have other this happening:
1) Los of individual freedom, I know this is sounds arbitrary even irreverent to some but it matter so me. 2) increased deaths form other things, suicide is often quoted, but missed hospital treatment for other conditions will probably be bigger. 3) disruption and damage to the wider economy. 4) Disruption and damage to the education of a generation of Kids.
While the 150,000 deaths is probably 'backed in' now the other things are not and will depend on the time scale.
The risk of hospital over-running is real and should make us try to spread this out the other factors should want us to get this over with' as quickly as possible.
Balancing theses should give us a optimum infection rate to aim for.
Given the average 20-25 (I think) day lag between infection and death and the dramatic drop of in the rate of increase in deaths in last week, and that there is still some capacity in the NHS. now it the time to start to reopen the knockdown
The 0.37% CFR is not constant amusing the population: lower in young and heath people, higher in older and sick people. if we could find polices that would alaw the virus to spread quicker in the low risk groups the we can get to saturation before lots of the old/sick get the virus, and we may bring the 150,000 number down a bit.
Therefor we should open the schools, soon. to parents who wish to send there kids to school.
Am I just being callous? or does the logic hold?
Your analysis looks reasonable to me. The public seem to want to be under lockdown for longer so maybe a few more weeks need to go by.
I just plotted log(new cases) against time for the following countries: Italy, France, Spain, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, and they ALL show the same pattern: exponential growth followed by a plateau (France has only just reached the plateau). Yet the first three countries have had stricter lockdowns than the UK for longer than us, while the last two have not had full lockdowns. This suggests that the lockdowns are not making any difference to the pattern of the epidemics. If this pattern continues and Sweden does not have a run-away epidemic it will add to the arguments in favour of a partial lifting of the lockdown in the UK sooner rather than later.
There has been an official update on the prime minister's condition. Apparently he continues to make good progress. Last night he succeeded in proving the Goldbach Conjecture, and this morning he exercised on the pommel horse for three hours.
So he’s digging an escape tunnel out of the hospital?
The Home Secretary is digging the tunnel - that's why she hasn't been seen for days.
Makes a change from digging a massive hole for herself.
Maybe it is a 2-for-1 deal? Digging a hole for herself and the PM?
I have said many things about Patel, but I have never suggested she would let the PM get in her hole.
I shall get your coat. Is it the one with the bags of sand in the pockets?
As long as it’s not made of wood...
I am listening to the cricket. if this had been live, Southam Observer and others would have been on here bemoaning the state of English cricket....
And I of course would be saying how England couldn’t take a wicket or buy a run.
But it seems a bit pointless when we all know the outcome already.
Amusing myself by trying cooking things that everyone but me knows but I've never taken the time to try. A friend challenged me to make an omelette, so I googled the BBC recipe - this involves beating eggs, eh? How do you beat eggs? Back to Google - ah, yes, a nice American woman unpatronisinngly demonstrates. And...it was really very nice, with a glass of wine at a table while reading a book, unlike my usual microwaved curry-and-coke-on-a-lap-while-posting-on-PB routine.
What new lifestyles may yet emerge from all this??
Can anyone explain to me why enforced cuts to oil production would be a good thing - other than for major oil producers? Why would most countries want to see this happen?
Not major oil producers but minor oil producing countries whose industries might go under, permanently, if prices remain low or if they are out-produced by the majors. Hence pb Tories' perennial fascination with Venezuela.
ETA I am deliberately ignoring prices.
Venezuela is interesting because it is a rare modern example of people driving a country to oblivion using 1980's style People's Republic economics.
Aided and abetted by American sanctions, of course.
I really don’t think the sanctions were necessary for economic implosion. Between the vast corruption of the Chavistas, the incompetence of the Army in running the economy, the printing of money to pay for impossible promises (are you listening carefully, Mr Sunak?) the weakness of their tax system and the emigration of anyone with any talent or money who was not a slavish adherent of the regime, coupled to a collapse in the oil price -
- the American response was not going to make a huge difference either way.
Perhaps. Tbh I've never understood the fascination with that part of the world. At risk of doxxing myself, perhaps I am too young to have worn a Che teeshirt.
Amusing myself by trying cooking things that everyone but me knows but I've never taken the time to try. A friend challenged me to make an omelette, so I googled the BBC recipe - this involves beating eggs, eh? How do you beat eggs? Back to Google - ah, yes, a nice American woman unpatronisinngly demonstrates. And...it was really very nice, with a glass of wine at a table while reading a book, unlike my usual microwaved curry-and-coke-on-a-lap-while-posting-on-PB routine.
What new lifestyles may yet emerge from all this??
If you want to learn to cook on Youtube, Gordon Ramsay is (perhaps surprisingly) your man. Other chefs tend to assume (as you found) too much prior knowledge.
In the former Soviet Union, they insisted on multiple competing prototypes for military. Which produced the only internationally competitive products that country ever produced.
I would maintain that better results would have accrued if all of the resource had been concentrated on one group - so long as that group had the right people and was large enough to handle different perspectives but small enough to manage effectively.
This is essentially the same argument as for comprehensive schools. Large enough to handle mixed randomized intake - the silver bullet for social mobility - but requiring really good teachers and skillful management. The gold standard, but not easy to attain. So we cop out with quasi grammars, free schools, academies, and the dreaded privates and the like.
In a nutshell, co-operation not competition - hard to make it work but if you can it's the best way.
Co-operation doesn't mean a single participant. For example, one entity making cars. The key question is will a bunch of people co-operating produce better outcomes than a bunch of people competing? I think they will.
Sticking with cars. Take F1. So at present we have the teams in cut throat competition. If Ferrari come up with something will they share it with Red Bull? Will they heckers like. They'll hoard it like diamonds because they want to WIN. They would even sabotage other cars if they could get away with it. Each team is motivated only to win races rather than to produce the best car possible. They would rather have a bad car which beats the others than a better car which doesn't.
Now consider a different way. Same resource, same teams, still racing, but now co-operating on technical development. Open and transparent knowledge sharing across the board. Will this not end up with the quality of whatever car wins being maximized? And also in an improvement in the quality of the cars at the back of the grid? Surely it will and it will.
This is levelling up. It's the only way the term is meaningful.
I know we can nitpick on the specific detail of the specific example - if they are racing how can they be forced to co-operate? etc etc - but it's more the general principle I'm seeking to illustrate.
Lovely idea, but you’ll just stagnate pretty quickly. No carrot of more for me, no flame up the backside if you don’t bother. So it all grinds to a slow, stodgy, second rate halt, as the producers do what’s easiest for them, when they feel like it. Sure cooperating can work well in certain instances, the military maybe where there are precious few customers (compared to bread, or smart phones, or cars), and huge costs, or in special circumstances like war or now with the virus emergency, where the erstwhile competition can see they’re better off temporarily defeating the external problem. But as a general rule, no, nice idea doesn’t work. You get cardboard cars, cardboard bread, and no cardboard phones because nobody bothered inventing them.
Can anyone explain to me why enforced cuts to oil production would be a good thing - other than for major oil producers? Why would most countries want to see this happen?
Not major oil producers but minor oil producing countries whose industries might go under, permanently, if prices remain low or if they are out-produced by the majors. Hence pb Tories' perennial fascination with Venezuela.
ETA I am deliberately ignoring prices.
Venezuela is interesting because it is a rare modern example of people driving a country to oblivion using 1980's style People's Republic economics.
Aided and abetted by American sanctions, of course.
I really don’t think the sanctions were necessary for economic implosion. Between the vast corruption of the Chavistas, the incompetence of the Army in running the economy, the printing of money to pay for impossible promises (are you listening carefully, Mr Sunak?) the weakness of their tax system and the emigration of anyone with any talent or money who was not a slavish adherent of the regime, coupled to a collapse in the oil price -
- the American response was not going to make a huge difference either way.
Perhaps. Tbh I've never understood the fascination with that part of the world. At risk of doxxing myself, perhaps I am too young to have worn a Che teeshirt.
The Americans have been obsessed with Latin America for over two centuries, ever since the time of Monroe. They believe any incursion into America by foreign powers threatens both their status and their security.
The elephant in the room on sanctions is that they never work. Did they bring down Saddam? Or Putin? Or the ayatollahs in Iran? Or Mugabe? Or going further back, Mussolini or Hitler? No. Because ultimately, unless the population is able to overpower the military, they are an irrelevance in a dictatorship. The dictator will make sure the army and security forces get what they need, and even where they do have an effect, it’s the ordinary people will go without instead.
So there is no likelihood of sanctions toppling Maduro. But equally, there is no reason to think that they have made any major difference to Venezuela’s economy, which was a shambles long before they were imposed. What they undoubtedly are is a useful scapegoat for Maduro to hide the truth - that he’s stolen or wasted the wealth of Venezuela because he and his government are a bunch of tenth rate gangsters, losers, liars, swindlers, smackheads and failures who for the good of the human race should be strung up.
If you want some idea of how useless they are as a class, this story of an extraordinary bungled attempt at piracy by Venezuela is hilarious:
Amusing myself by trying cooking things that everyone but me knows but I've never taken the time to try. A friend challenged me to make an omelette, so I googled the BBC recipe - this involves beating eggs, eh? How do you beat eggs? Back to Google - ah, yes, a nice American woman unpatronisinngly demonstrates. And...it was really very nice, with a glass of wine at a table while reading a book, unlike my usual microwaved curry-and-coke-on-a-lap-while-posting-on-PB routine.
What new lifestyles may yet emerge from all this??
My thoughts, this will probably annoy some people, sorry. that's not my intention. I would like somebody to enplane why this is wrong, because it is rather 'brutal'.
How this ends, I can see only 3 possibility:
1. A vaccine come out that works. 2. we track trace and isolate everybody with this so it stops spreading. 3. We reach saturation, where a sufficiently large number have become immune to stop the spread.
But there are problems with each:
1 A vaccine is the best hope, but probably still 14 months or more off, hopefully sooner, but it may a lot long and could never happen. 2. its worked so far in South Korea and Taiwan, but with probably 100,000s with it in the UK it just does not seem achievable, and if we ever what to have international travel, globally I think this is not credible. 3. Lots of people will die.
Given that its most likely to be, 3. Lots of people will die. so how many? No estimate is going to be accurate but what can we assume:
Assumptions:
R0 The infection rate is 2.6 CFR based on German study is 0.37% UK Population is 66 million
from that we can calculate:
R0 of 2.6 will need 62% infected before infections become less that 1
62% of 66 million is 41 Million people
A CFR of 0.37% over 41 Million cases is 150,000 deaths.
150,000 deaths is a huge number. Very sadly, and I hope i'm wrong but I suspect unavoidable at this stage.
If the Hospitals are over-run in an area, it will go up from that, perhaps by a lot. if not the 150,000 it is.
While this is going on we have other this happening:
1) Los of individual freedom, I know this is sounds arbitrary even irreverent to some but it matter so me. 2) increased deaths form other things, suicide is often quoted, but missed hospital treatment for other conditions will probably be bigger. 3) disruption and damage to the wider economy. 4) Disruption and damage to the education of a generation of Kids.
While the 150,000 deaths is probably 'backed in' now the other things are not and will depend on the time scale.
The risk of hospital over-running is real and should make us try to spread this out the other factors should want us to get this over with' as quickly as possible.
Balancing theses should give us a optimum infection rate to aim for.
Given the average 20-25 (I think) day lag between infection and death and the dramatic drop of in the rate of increase in deaths in last week, and that there is still some capacity in the NHS. now it the time to start to reopen the knockdown
The 0.37% CFR is not constant amusing the population: lower in young and heath people, higher in older and sick people. if we could find polices that would alaw the virus to spread quicker in the low risk groups the we can get to saturation before lots of the old/sick get the virus, and we may bring the 150,000 number down a bit.
Therefor we should open the schools, soon. to parents who wish to send there kids to school.
Am I just being callous? or does the logic hold?
If the IFR is up at 0.66% or even higher at 1.0%, the number dead goes up really frighteningly. If the R0 is significantly higher (given the speed of infective spread, not implausible), the her immunity level could be more like 80%.
So - 50 million+ needed to be infected and immune. Which means 330,000 dead. And, from the same estimates that gave 0.66% IFR (which assumed c. 50% asymptomatic), we'd have 3.2 million hospitalised during the epidemic. That's nearly 25 times the number of hospital beds across the entire UK that were available for all reasons prior to the epidemic.
This rather strongly implies that the NHS would be overwhelmed several times over - unless the curve was flattened by so much that we'd get a vaccine well before everyone has "gone through"
If the NHS is overwhelmed, then many of that 3.2 million (or even, in your most optimistic estimate), about 1.8 million) who needed hospitalisation wouldn't get help.
So, what happens to people who genuinely need hospital assistance during the epidemic who don't get it? One would assume a scarily significant percentage of them would die.
We aren't "saturating" the virus through a population without shockingly high numbers dead - on current evidence.
And neither will doing so lead to a less damaging economic outcome (see http://www.igmchicago.org/surveys/policy-for-the-covid-19-crisis/ ) - economists across the spectrum are virtually unanimous in saying that releasing lockdowns too early would end up with an even worse economic outcome.
In the former Soviet Union, they insisted on multiple competing prototypes for military. Which produced the only internationally competitive products that country ever produced.
I would maintain that better results would have accrued if all of the resource had been concentrated on one group - so long as that group had the right people and was large enough to handle different perspectives but small enough to manage effectively.
This is essentially the same argument as for comprehensive schools. Large enough to handle mixed randomized intake - the silver bullet for social mobility - but requiring really good teachers and skillful management. The gold standard, but not easy to attain. So we cop out with quasi grammars, free schools, academies, and the dreaded privates and the like.
In a nutshell, co-operation not competition - hard to make it work but if you can it's the best way.
It has never been proven to work. Sadly, perhaps. Because picking winners requires super human judgement. Well, rational judgement.
For example, under the last Labour government, it was desired to merge to local primary schools. One was top of every league table, The other was on the point of collapse with appalling results. The plan was that, since the utterly failing school was larger, and the top staff had seniority, they would run the resulting merged school..... Despite the fact that management failures had been clearly incited as part of the collapse....
Amusing myself by trying cooking things that everyone but me knows but I've never taken the time to try. A friend challenged me to make an omelette, so I googled the BBC recipe - this involves beating eggs, eh? How do you beat eggs? Back to Google - ah, yes, a nice American woman unpatronisinngly demonstrates. And...it was really very nice, with a glass of wine at a table while reading a book, unlike my usual microwaved curry-and-coke-on-a-lap-while-posting-on-PB routine.
What new lifestyles may yet emerge from all this??
Hardly surprising. His hopes of a hard left Govt trashed, the left eviscerated within the Labour party.. its enough for any seriously left wing ex MP to turn to drink!
Have you noticed that technological innovation in F1 has to *restrained* by the rules? If allowed, they would be running 350mph on the straights probably...
Interestingly the massive investment in advanced technology in F1 - from that savage competition - feeds directly into a highly innovative, ultra fast moving industrial capability in this country. Which turns out to have other uses....
I did say not to nitpick on the precise example of F1. Serves me right, I suppose. Presenting too much flank. Could I have picked a more difficult case study than F1? Probably not. Mistake. I like a challenge but it was maybe an overstretch. Schools is better. Much better.
They certainly didn't go anywhere near the British people. The legacy is still there in current opinion polls - I perused Electoral Calculus yesterday on the basis of current polling. It would make very grim reading indeed to any Labour supporter wondering whether they made the right decision the other week. Very grim.
My thoughts, this will probably annoy some people, sorry. that's not my intention. I would like somebody to enplane why this is wrong, because it is rather 'brutal'.
How this ends, I can see only 3 possibility:
1. A vaccine come out that works. 2. we track trace and isolate everybody with this so it stops spreading. 3. We reach saturation, where a sufficiently large number have become immune to stop the spread.
But there are problems with each:
1 A vaccine is the best hope, but probably still 14 months or more off, hopefully sooner, but it may a lot long and could never happen. 2. its worked so far in South Korea and Taiwan, but with probably 100,000s with it in the UK it just does not seem achievable, and if we ever what to have international travel, globally I think this is not credible. 3. Lots of people will die.
Given that its most likely to be, 3. Lots of people will die. so how many? No estimate is going to be accurate but what can we assume:
Assumptions:
R0 The infection rate is 2.6 CFR based on German study is 0.37% UK Population is 66 million
from that we can calculate:
R0 of 2.6 will need 62% infected before infections become less that 1
62% of 66 million is 41 Million people
A CFR of 0.37% over 41 Million cases is 150,000 deaths.
150,000 deaths is a huge number. Very sadly, and I hope i'm wrong but I suspect unavoidable at this stage.
If the Hospitals are over-run in an area, it will go up from that, perhaps by a lot. if not the 150,000 it is.
While this is going on we have other this happening:
1) Los of individual freedom, I know this is sounds arbitrary even irreverent to some but it matter so me. 2) increased deaths form other things, suicide is often quoted, but missed hospital treatment for other conditions will probably be bigger. 3) disruption and damage to the wider economy. 4) Disruption and damage to the education of a generation of Kids.
While the 150,000 deaths is probably 'backed in' now the other things are not and will depend on the time scale.
The risk of hospital over-running is real and should make us try to spread this out the other factors should want us to get this over with' as quickly as possible.
Balancing theses should give us a optimum infection rate to aim for.
Given the average 20-25 (I think) day lag between infection and death and the dramatic drop of in the rate of increase in deaths in last week, and that there is still some capacity in the NHS. now it the time to start to reopen the knockdown
The 0.37% CFR is not constant amusing the population: lower in young and heath people, higher in older and sick people. if we could find polices that would alaw the virus to spread quicker in the low risk groups the we can get to saturation before lots of the old/sick get the virus, and we may bring the 150,000 number down a bit.
Therefor we should open the schools, soon. to parents who wish to send there kids to school.
Am I just being callous? or does the logic hold?
Analysis is along the right lines but there are a few optimistic factors to be added: 1. Improvements in treatment reduce the death rate. If an existing set of drugs has a significant effect they could be rolled out rapidly as their safety characteristics are already known. That might indicate extending lock down if there are genuine candidates in the trials taking place. 2. Some social isolation post lock down for all population not just vulnerable reduces R0. Old and vulnerable should have higher isolation though as you state.
Can a vaccine be produced buy Autumn as some reports are saying? Shouldn't bet on it but we are in uncharted waters.
Lovely idea, but you’ll just stagnate pretty quickly. No carrot of more for me, no flame up the backside if you don’t bother. So it all grinds to a slow, stodgy, second rate halt, as the producers do what’s easiest for them, when they feel like it. Sure cooperating can work well in certain instances, the military maybe where there are precious few customers (compared to bread, or smart phones, or cars), and huge costs, or in special circumstances like war or now with the virus emergency, where the erstwhile competition can see they’re better off temporarily defeating the external problem. But as a general rule, no, nice idea doesn’t work. You get cardboard cars, cardboard bread, and no cardboard phones because nobody bothered inventing them.
Of course it's not binary. We need co-operation AND competition. So let me put it a different way. Competition is overrated and co-operation is underrated in my view. The reason for this is that competition is the easy option. It's more challenging to make a co-operative environment work. But if you do it will shine.
Some of these figures seem wildly inconsistent. Yesterday the cumulative total of people testing positive went up from 65,077 the day before to 73,758, but the daily number of people testing positive was given as only 5,706!
Not that these numbers mean anything, but they might at least check that they add up...
Lovely idea, but you’ll just stagnate pretty quickly. No carrot of more for me, no flame up the backside if you don’t bother. So it all grinds to a slow, stodgy, second rate halt, as the producers do what’s easiest for them, when they feel like it. Sure cooperating can work well in certain instances, the military maybe where there are precious few customers (compared to bread, or smart phones, or cars), and huge costs, or in special circumstances like war or now with the virus emergency, where the erstwhile competition can see they’re better off temporarily defeating the external problem. But as a general rule, no, nice idea doesn’t work. You get cardboard cars, cardboard bread, and no cardboard phones because nobody bothered inventing them.
Of course it's not binary. We need co-operation AND competition. So let me put it a different way. Competition is overrated and co-operation is underrated in my view. The reason for this is that competition is the easy option. It's more challenging to make a co-operative environment work. But if you do it will shine.
Yes but so challenging, special circumstances aside, nobody’s made it work better than competing.
It’s no good having a plane that can take off using half the fuel, in half the distance if it only works on Tuesdays in May. It’s what produces the most and best for the most number most of the time.
NHS England said a further 823 people have died in hospital in England after testing positive for coronavirus, bringing the death toll there to 8,937.
The patients were aged between 11 and 102 years old and 33 of the 823 patients (aged between 29 and 94 years old) had no known underlying health condition.
Not to minimize a death, but a 94 year old with no underlying health conditions, that is quite incredible when you think about it. I would love to make it 94 years without any serious health conditions.
Turns out they didn't die from Covid-19, but rather were buried under a lorry load of rocking horse shit....
From a couple of threads back - and with apologies as I was moving yesterday:-
“MattWMattW Posts: 3,011 April 10 @Cyclefree Gardening Question (10).
I am getting onto clearing away the clutter and old growth. As a general principle how much of the old growth still on plants, detritus on the ground etc should be cleared up at the start of the season? Should I spend time clearing all of these bits, for example? What should be left?
(Question 10a Never noticed before, but various furious people are fulminating about cyclists. Is there a meaning behind your user name? I always took it as a linear outlook on the world )“
Re clearing up:-
On plants it is worth cutting back old dead stems, either to the ground or down to the nearest leaf bud. This makes the plant tidier, looks nicer and avoids the possibility of disease. I generally leave old stems on during winter because they provide nesting material for birds and can look lovely when frosted or against the low autumn/winter light. But now that growth is happening there is no need.
Old twigs etc on the ground: you can leave these. Eventually these will rot down and get taken down into the earth by worms. Nature will do her stuff.
But if you want the garden to look nice I would pick it all up, rake it away and put in a compost heap if you have one or out for recycling. It helps clear away weeds and hiding places for slugs and snails and allows you to see what you have growing there ie other perennials which may be pushing through. It’s always a good idea to look closely at what is going on in your garden closely - ie at ground level and with your plants and doing a general tidy up gives you the chance to do that. You will see lots of things you might not notice otherwise and it is this sort of close observation which is the key to better gardening. Plus if you stick a garden fork into the earth and wiggle it around a bit you give the soil a bit of a boost especially if you add fresh soil/compost/mulch.
And it is so lovely to do a freshening/tidying up and see all the places where there is room to put new plants!
Re my user name: I have cycled for years, ever since university, to all my jobs, through London traffic and on various country routes (the London to Brighton bike ride, for instance). I have the scars and injuries to show for it! Love it - wind through my hair, freewheeling down a hill, etc. I learnt to ride in Ireland and just cycled all over the place for hours just for the sheer freedom of it, only coming home when it was time for tea.
Plus I am hot on freedom generally. So I chose the name because my first ever comment on Comment is Free years ago was about the pettifogging officials who had banned cycling in Regents Park, a rule now abandoned.
It has nothing to do with my mind which zigzags all over the place .....
Thanks for that.
We had our full bin collection today - recycling, garden and glass.
Question about compost heaps is planned - I have a single dalek composter, which is suboptimal.
Interesting on the cycling - a friend moved to Ireland recently and she is learning to drive at 60+ after 50 years cycling because she finds cycling in rural Ireland to be a death trap.
On Mike's postscript note on penicillin, my father was a premature baby born February 1942 and was one of the first civilians in Britain to be given the drug after he developed an infection.
Fairly clear there are not widespread undetected infections in Scotland (although this is effectively a snapshot of two weeks ago, and blood donors are not a fully representative population sample):
Comments
(oh and the Aberystwyth Cliff Lift)
Constructive compétition is extremely valuable.
In the former Soviet Union, they insisted on multiple competing prototypes for military. Which produced the only internationally competitive products that country ever produced.
Thanks
(* "Alumnus" for a bloke, apparently. "Alumna" for a lady.)
We had our full bin collection today - recycling, garden and glass.
Question about compost heaps is planned - I have a single dalek composter, which is suboptimal.
Interesting on the cycling - a friend moved to Ireland recently and she is learning to drive at 60+ after 50 years cycling because she finds cycling in rural Ireland to be a death trap.
https://twitter.com/mattwardman/status/1248950419889565696
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-uwljuMp7w
The Chinese building(s) will fail structurally in the near term - the earth in the foundation works did not have time to settle and they must have used accelerants in the concrete to make it cure faster. So cracking and spalling will occur within on year due to weather cycling.
Using a pre-existing convention centre like this is far more intelligent. You have -
- a temperature controlled space, big enough to fly a small aircraft in
- equipment on site for sub-dividing it in any number of ways.
- massive amounts of power and water available to start with
- Management spaces, workshops, delivery facilities on a huge scale already ready and waiting. Not to mention toilets scaled for thousands of people.
- massive parking facilities for cars, trucks etc
- on-site helicopter arrival arrangements.
- setup to connect into the major road networks
Seeing those colours in the background of the banner - what does it say about me that they make me think "Gay Pride"?
Now I have a horrible image of a mashup of Gay Pride in Bowler hats in my head....
How this ends, I can see only 3 possibility:
1. A vaccine come out that works.
2. we track trace and isolate everybody with this so it stops spreading.
3. We reach saturation, where a sufficiently large number have become immune to stop the spread.
But there are problems with each:
1 A vaccine is the best hope, but probably still 14 months or more off, hopefully sooner, but it may a lot long and could never happen.
2. its worked so far in South Korea and Taiwan, but with probably 100,000s with it in the UK it just does not seem achievable, and if we ever what to have international travel, globally I think this is not credible.
3. Lots of people will die.
Given that its most likely to be, 3. Lots of people will die. so how many? No estimate is going to be accurate but what can we assume:
Assumptions:
R0 The infection rate is 2.6
CFR based on German study is 0.37%
UK Population is 66 million
from that we can calculate:
R0 of 2.6 will need 62% infected before infections become less that 1
62% of 66 million is 41 Million people
A CFR of 0.37% over 41 Million cases is 150,000 deaths.
150,000 deaths is a huge number. Very sadly, and I hope i'm wrong but I suspect unavoidable at this stage.
If the Hospitals are over-run in an area, it will go up from that, perhaps by a lot. if not the 150,000 it is.
While this is going on we have other this happening:
1) Los of individual freedom, I know this is sounds arbitrary even irreverent to some but it matter so me.
2) increased deaths form other things, suicide is often quoted, but missed hospital treatment for other conditions will probably be bigger.
3) disruption and damage to the wider economy.
4) Disruption and damage to the education of a generation of Kids.
While the 150,000 deaths is probably 'backed in' now the other things are not and will depend on the time scale.
The risk of hospital over-running is real and should make us try to spread this out the other factors should want us to get this over with' as quickly as possible.
Balancing theses should give us a optimum infection rate to aim for.
Given the average 20-25 (I think) day lag between infection and death and the dramatic drop of in the rate of increase in deaths in last week, and that there is still some capacity in the NHS. now it the time to start to reopen the knockdown
The 0.37% CFR is not constant amusing the population: lower in young and heath people, higher in older and sick people. if we could find polices that would alaw the virus to spread quicker in the low risk groups the we can get to saturation before lots of the old/sick get the virus, and we may bring the 150,000 number down a bit.
Therefor we should open the schools, soon. to parents who wish to send there kids to school.
Am I just being callous? or does the logic hold?
But we have known that since the start.
(Aside: we can also expect to serious numbers of reports of mortality in care homes soon - just over 2 weeks ago I was picking reports of 25-30 incident reports a day just in the SE/London.)
A lovely, lovely small town. There are three bakeries - which offer differing quality, prices etc. The result is that you can get a range of magnificent bread, pastries etc, by deciding between them.
In nearby Chablis, there is only there is only one bakery of any significance, who over charges for indifferent produce.
It was notable that outside the military, the Soviet Union loved the One Big X approach to providing goods and services. Which was uniformly crap.
However the US wants it to happen, as the cost of production for Shale, is higher than the current oil price.
If this continues there will be massive redundancies in Shale oil extraction.
ETA I am deliberately ignoring prices.
I have long argued that the tax on petrol in the UK should be a fixed amount - £X per litre. This would reduce price fluctuations, since the tax is the majority of the price. It would stop windfalls to the treasury - true. But it would stabilise the revenue at a reliable level.
I would like to see a fixed rate tax, because it would be simpler and more transparent.
Did you know that emergency legislation was passed to make it illegal to give petrol and diesel away as a sales promotion?
Sticking with cars. Take F1. So at present we have the teams in cut throat competition. If Ferrari come up with something will they share it with Red Bull? Will they heckers like. They'll hoard it like diamonds because they want to WIN. They would even sabotage other cars if they could get away with it. Each team is motivated only to win races rather than to produce the best car possible. They would rather have a bad car which beats the others than a better car which doesn't.
Now consider a different way. Same resource, same teams, still racing, but now co-operating on technical development. Open and transparent knowledge sharing across the board. Will this not end up with the quality of whatever car wins being maximized? And also in an improvement in the quality of the cars at the back of the grid? Surely it will and it will.
This is levelling up. It's the only way the term is meaningful.
I know we can nitpick on the specific detail of the specific example - if they are racing how can they be forced to co-operate? etc etc - but it's more the general principle I'm seeking to illustrate.
"One hopes they were doing it for the money. The alternative is they believed what they wrote."
(In fact, one question for @Sandpit - were you a member of the Walking Club?)
The patients were aged between 11 and 102 years old and 33 of the 823 patients (aged between 29 and 94 years old) had no known underlying health condition.
Interestingly the massive investment in advanced technology in F1 - from that savage competition - feeds directly into a highly innovative, ultra fast moving industrial capability in this country. Which turns out to have other uses....
https://twitter.com/BennSociety/status/1248662104141422597
I love the pay off at the end.
- the American response was not going to make a huge difference either way.
I just plotted log(new cases) against time for the following countries: Italy, France, Spain, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, and they ALL show the same pattern: exponential growth followed by a plateau (France has only just reached the plateau). Yet the first three countries have had stricter lockdowns than the UK
for longer than us, while the last two have not had full lockdowns. This suggests that the lockdowns are not making any difference to the pattern of the epidemics. If this pattern continues and Sweden does not have a run-away epidemic it will add to the arguments in favour of a partial lifting of the lockdown in the UK sooner rather than later.
But it seems a bit pointless when we all know the outcome already.
What new lifestyles may yet emerge from all this??
This is essentially the same argument as for comprehensive schools. Large enough to handle mixed randomized intake - the silver bullet for social mobility - but requiring really good teachers and skillful management. The gold standard, but not easy to attain. So we cop out with quasi grammars, free schools, academies, and the dreaded privates and the like.
In a nutshell, co-operation not competition - hard to make it work but if you can it's the best way.
The elephant in the room on sanctions is that they never work. Did they bring down Saddam? Or Putin? Or the ayatollahs in Iran? Or Mugabe? Or going further back, Mussolini or Hitler? No. Because ultimately, unless the population is able to overpower the military, they are an irrelevance in a dictatorship. The dictator will make sure the army and security forces get what they need, and even where they do have an effect, it’s the ordinary people will go without instead.
So there is no likelihood of sanctions toppling Maduro. But equally, there is no reason to think that they have made any major difference to Venezuela’s economy, which was a shambles long before they were imposed. What they undoubtedly are is a useful scapegoat for Maduro to hide the truth - that he’s stolen or wasted the wealth of Venezuela because he and his government are a bunch of tenth rate gangsters, losers, liars, swindlers, smackheads and failures who for the good of the human race should be strung up.
If you want some idea of how useless they are as a class, this story of an extraordinary bungled attempt at piracy by Venezuela is hilarious:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-52151951
If the R0 is significantly higher (given the speed of infective spread, not implausible), the her immunity level could be more like 80%.
So - 50 million+ needed to be infected and immune.
Which means 330,000 dead.
And, from the same estimates that gave 0.66% IFR (which assumed c. 50% asymptomatic), we'd have 3.2 million hospitalised during the epidemic. That's nearly 25 times the number of hospital beds across the entire UK that were available for all reasons prior to the epidemic.
This rather strongly implies that the NHS would be overwhelmed several times over - unless the curve was flattened by so much that we'd get a vaccine well before everyone has "gone through"
If the NHS is overwhelmed, then many of that 3.2 million (or even, in your most optimistic estimate), about 1.8 million) who needed hospitalisation wouldn't get help.
So, what happens to people who genuinely need hospital assistance during the epidemic who don't get it? One would assume a scarily significant percentage of them would die.
We aren't "saturating" the virus through a population without shockingly high numbers dead - on current evidence.
And neither will doing so lead to a less damaging economic outcome (see http://www.igmchicago.org/surveys/policy-for-the-covid-19-crisis/ ) - economists across the spectrum are virtually unanimous in saying that releasing lockdowns too early would end up with an even worse economic outcome.
For example, under the last Labour government, it was desired to merge to local primary schools. One was top of every league table, The other was on the point of collapse with appalling results. The plan was that, since the utterly failing school was larger, and the top staff had seniority, they would run the resulting merged school..... Despite the fact that management failures had been clearly incited as part of the collapse....
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Omelette-Glass-Wine-Elizabeth-David/dp/1906502358
The numbers are the main thing, of course, but does the English have to be so clunky? There are just three sentences and all could bear rewriting.
finally been tested and found negative.
1. Improvements in treatment reduce the death rate. If an existing set of drugs has a significant effect they could be rolled out rapidly as their safety characteristics are already known. That might indicate extending lock down if there are genuine candidates in the trials taking place.
2. Some social isolation post lock down for all population not just vulnerable reduces R0. Old and vulnerable should have higher isolation though as you state.
Can a vaccine be produced buy Autumn as some reports are saying? Shouldn't bet on it but we are in uncharted waters.
Not that these numbers mean anything, but they might at least check that they add up...
It’s no good having a plane that can take off using half the fuel, in half the distance if it only works on Tuesdays in May. It’s what produces the most and best for the most number most of the time.