Barring a late surge, today is looking like being the fourth day in a row that worldwide deaths have not been as high as the previous day. Is this just an Easter thing, or has the world peaked?
I had thought there would be a third wave of 'rest of the world' cases. Many countries (Turkey, Brazil, Ecuador, Algeria, to name but four) looked on the cusp of the sort of exponential growth that western Europe saw. But this doesn't seem to be happening. Different circumstances (climate, demographics, geographical factors) or (deliberately or otherwise) dodgy data?

ydoethur said:

Charles said:

rcs1000 said:

Charles said:

DecrepiterJohnL said:

kle4 said:

The_Apocalypse said:

kyf_100 said:

Black_Rook said:

contrarian said:

You can tell from this press conference that the doctors are firmly in control of policy.

So imagine the worst hit the economy could take from this, your absolute worst nightmare, and assume its going to be worse than that.

For two million job losses read four million, in other words.

Oh, it's going to be a grade A catastrophe, through a combination of public fear, changing habits, ongoing social distancing measures and a long and grinding lockdown.

Once discretionary retail gets up and running, a lot of customers won't come back because they'll move online or only go out to buy clothes, in particular, if they're essential and not the sort of basics they can pick up whilst at the supermarket. The shops will also, presumably, be made to put staff on the doors to arrange orderly queues or shoo customers away once they're full (which, for smaller units, may mean only having two people in there at any one time.)

Services like hairdressers will also come back, but I wouldn't be at all surprised if they were made to trade by appointment only and half the chairs were left empty to at least keep the customers 2m apart from each other. The staff will probably be told to wear masks.

God alone knows when the leisure and hospitality industries will be allowed to resume trading. Worst case scenario is that nobody gets to reopen until we have herd immunity or a vaccine, because social distancing, and the whole lot goes to the wall. That'll cause a depression on its own.

Fact is, I don't think it'll get quite that far because the imperative to avert mass unemployment and socio-economic collapse will eventually force the Government to let the virus out of jail. In fact, I've suspected for some time that this is what the Nightingale hospitals are primarily for - not so much dealing with the immediate crisis but warehousing the victims of the second wave. But I certainly wouldn't want to be employed by (or recently laid off from) a business like a cafe or a gym right now.

Yeah, this is some great depression level stuff. I have access to some limited economic data through my job and it's hard to see how this doesn't result in a near fatal blow to the high street. There won't be any reason to leave our homes soon - there won't be anywhere left open to go.

The tax base is clearly going to take a kicking, it's not a question of us all paying more tax, it's going to be a fact that there simply aren't enough people left working to pay enough tax to keep public services going. Austerity will seem mild compared to the cuts that will need to be made.

The alternative is we print a load of funny money. Which I think is where we are headed.

Yes, I don’t see Boris making more cuts. They will print money to avoid economic disaster.

Indeed. The future is really going to pay for this one.

Or we will discover the debt and deficit hawks have been talking nonsense for the past decade and a half. Our current situation is unprecedented (I think) in that it is not a normal market failure of supply or demand that can be fixed by government stepping in. This is where we have "voluntarily" shut down large sections of the economy. Maybe when lockdown ends, it will return to normal. Maybe it won't. Who knows? The Treasury must be prepared to act but it is hard to know in advance what will be needed and where.

You print money but keep it as a specific liability (monetisation of debt). You then have a specific surcharge (a Corona solidarity charge) that can only be applied to paying down this liability. And once it’s gone it’s gone.

The risk with money printing is that the emergencies get a little less... real... every time. Eventually you're printing it to avoid the most minor of recessions.

I think this ends - perhaps twenty years from now - with governments debasing the currency.

It was inevitable from the day the Bank of England was founded, as was predicted by a wide man

Is that an epic typo, or was he the first City fat cat?

Sadly a typo! He was a wise man...

Charles said:

ydoethur said:

Charles said:

rcs1000 said:

Charles said:

DecrepiterJohnL said:

kle4 said:

The_Apocalypse said:

kyf_100 said:

Black_Rook said:

contrarian said:

You can tell from this press conference that the doctors are firmly in control of policy.

So imagine the worst hit the economy could take from this, your absolute worst nightmare, and assume its going to be worse than that.

For two million job losses read four million, in other words.

Oh, it's going to be a grade A catastrophe, through a combination of public fear, changing habits, ongoing social distancing measures and a long and grinding lockdown.

Once discretionary retail gets up and running, a lot of customers won't come back because they'll move online or only go out to buy clothes, in particular, if they're essential and not the sort of basics they can pick up whilst at the supermarket. The shops will also, presumably, be made to put staff on the doors to arrange orderly queues or shoo customers away once they're full (which, for smaller units, may mean only having two people in there at any one time.)

Services like hairdressers will also come back, but I wouldn't be at all surprised if they were made to trade by appointment only and half the chairs were left empty to at least keep the customers 2m apart from each other. The staff will probably be told to wear masks.

God alone knows when the leisure and hospitality industries will be allowed to resume trading. Worst case scenario is that nobody gets to reopen until we have herd immunity or a vaccine, because social distancing, and the whole lot goes to the wall. That'll cause a depression on its own.

Fact is, I don't think it'll get quite that far because the imperative to avert mass unemployment and socio-economic collapse will eventually force the Government to let the virus out of jail. In fact, I've suspected for some time that this is what the Nightingale hospitals are primarily for - not so much dealing with the immediate crisis but warehousing the victims of the second wave. But I certainly wouldn't want to be employed by (or recently laid off from) a business like a cafe or a gym right now.

Yeah, this is some great depression level stuff. I have access to some limited economic data through my job and it's hard to see how this doesn't result in a near fatal blow to the high street. There won't be any reason to leave our homes soon - there won't be anywhere left open to go.

The tax base is clearly going to take a kicking, it's not a question of us all paying more tax, it's going to be a fact that there simply aren't enough people left working to pay enough tax to keep public services going. Austerity will seem mild compared to the cuts that will need to be made.

The alternative is we print a load of funny money. Which I think is where we are headed.

Yes, I don’t see Boris making more cuts. They will print money to avoid economic disaster.

Indeed. The future is really going to pay for this one.

Or we will discover the debt and deficit hawks have been talking nonsense for the past decade and a half. Our current situation is unprecedented (I think) in that it is not a normal market failure of supply or demand that can be fixed by government stepping in. This is where we have "voluntarily" shut down large sections of the economy. Maybe when lockdown ends, it will return to normal. Maybe it won't. Who knows? The Treasury must be prepared to act but it is hard to know in advance what will be needed and where.

You print money but keep it as a specific liability (monetisation of debt). You then have a specific surcharge (a Corona solidarity charge) that can only be applied to paying down this liability. And once it’s gone it’s gone.

The risk with money printing is that the emergencies get a little less... real... every time. Eventually you're printing it to avoid the most minor of recessions.

I think this ends - perhaps twenty years from now - with governments debasing the currency.

It was inevitable from the day the Bank of England was founded, as was predicted by a wide man

Is that an epic typo, or was he the first City fat cat?

Sadly a typo! He was a wise man...

Who was it, out of curiosity?

TheScreamingEagles said:

Where was the Prince of Orange in the line of succession when he invaded our glorious lands?

About fourth

Roughly speaking the order was
James, Prince of Wales
Mary
Anne.

He jumped the queue by marrying Mary.

TGOHF666 said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

Thread

https://twitter.com/pmdfoster/status/1249781924308094976

Tweets that won’t be true by Thursday.

It's on the government's own website, are you saying the government are lying?

ydoethur said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

Where was the Prince of Orange in the line of succession when he invaded our glorious lands?

About fourth

Roughly speaking the order was
James, Prince of Wales
Mary
Anne.

He jumped the queue by marrying Mary.

Thanks, I thought he was up towards the top.

HYUFD said:

Big_G_NorthWales said:

HYUFD said:

nichomar said:

HYUFD said:

Theuniondivvie said:

HYUFD said:

Theuniondivvie said:

The apple doesn't fall far from the tone deaf tree.

https://twitter.com/brawday/status/1249749690754744320?s=20

It'll certainly do wonders for uniting the mood of my nation.

It may annoy diehard republican Nats like you but for the rest of us we will be very happy for them and many of us will join in the celebrations

Straight in at number 1 in the Scottish charts.

https://youtu.be/XrwKRlBsDNc

Even in Scotland more people support the monarchy than oppose it, the fact some Celtic supporters (who have always been Nat and republican) turned out to buy a record really means nothing, you need little more than 1 man and his dog buying a record to top the Scottish charts

There is supporting the monarchy then there is getting excited about a nobody marrying a rich nobody neither of whom have done anything to gain the respect of the people. An event most people I would think will ignore.

Beatrice is 9th in line to the throne, hardly a nobody

She is a nobody

As has been shown 9th in line to the thrown does not mean you have zero chance of becoming monarch

The fact that the only time it happened required the person in question to raise an army, invade, and defeat the reigning monarch on a field of battle is irrelevant in your eyes?

Cookie said:

On topic - this Tory leaver give SKS a big positive reception simply though not being Jeremy Corbyn. I expect it will turn out that I disagree with him on most things. But he is at least a democrat and not a nutter.
I probably won' t ever vote for him. But it's possible, in a way it never was with Corbyn.
Of course, the thing with newly-prominent politicians is that we can at the start project what we want onto them. Before anything comes along to taint our view of them, we give them the benefit of the doubt. Especially if they've got really good hair.

Will you be lending him your comb?

ydoethur said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

Where was the Prince of Orange in the line of succession when he invaded our glorious lands?

About fourth

Roughly speaking the order was
James, Prince of Wales
Mary
Anne.

He jumped the queue by marrying Mary.

William of Orange married Mary in 1677, fully 11 years before landing at Brixham.

SirNorfolkPassmore said:

Quincel said:

SirNorfolkPassmore said:

Quincel said:

The gap on Betfair between Biden as Next POTUS (2.39) and Dem Winning Party 2020 (2.06) is astonishing. It would tie up money for a while but backing Biden and laying Dems returns 7% in 7 months unless he is replaced and his replacement wins. Albeit you can get 12% by just backing him for the nomination.

As a 77 year old man, your actuarial risk of death in the next 12 months in the USA is 4.4%. That's 12 months rather than 7, but still accounts for a fair bit of that.

And that's not factoring in coronavirus, the risk of incapacity short of death, the risk of scandal, and the fact that (based on stats over the past century) being President or a presidential candidate is far riskier than being a cop or a fireman in terms of chance of death in the course of your duties.

So it seems to me a fair return, but not generous.

Christ, 4.4% fair enough. I suspect his risk is quite a bit lower owing to his wealth, political importance (i.e. he'd get the best doctors) and general fitness (he's just campaigned a hell of a lot, he must be fairly spry) but nonetheless I see your point.

Probably, and presumably he wouldn't be standing if he had a huge, life limiting health condition. But the reality in your late 70s is that the chance of something fatal or debilitating to the extent that you can't operate anything like normally again is non-negligible. You can buy yourself some improvement, but a massive stroke is a massive stroke, and that's without a virus which poses a particular risk to over 70s stalking the land.

For comparison, Pete Buttigieg's actuarial risk of death in the next year as a 38 year old man is 0.2%, and Amy Klobuchar's as a 59 year old woman is 0.65%. So it's a big gap.

I think you're reading these off from here (or a similar source):
https://www.ssa.gov/oact/STATS/table4c6.html

This looks to be an all lives table (ie it covers the whole US population, regardless of things like smoking status, socioeconomic status/access to healthcare, medical history. I would tend to suggest that this will somewhat overestimate the actual chances of death for the people mentioned, and in particular Biden.

As you note, he probably wouldn't be standing if there was something obviously wrong with him. Based on that, the above factors would amount to a similar effect to medical underwriting, so a "Select" table of assured lives would be more appropriate than the all lives table above.

Looking at the usual array of UK tables available*, 1-2% (as a pure probability of death in 12 months) seems more likely than 4.4%. Most of your other points are fair, however.

*US mortality is typically worse than in the UK, but this is largely because of people who don't look like Biden

Sunil_Prasannan said:

ydoethur said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

Where was the Prince of Orange in the line of succession when he invaded our glorious lands?

About fourth

Roughly speaking the order was
James, Prince of Wales
Mary
Anne.

He jumped the queue by marrying Mary.

William of Orange married Mary in 1677, fully 11 years before landing at Brixham.

I am aware of that. I’ll rephrase. His earlier marriage to Mary enabled him to jump the queue.

alterego said:

Cookie said:

On topic - this Tory leaver give SKS a big positive reception simply though not being Jeremy Corbyn. I expect it will turn out that I disagree with him on most things. But he is at least a democrat and not a nutter.
I probably won' t ever vote for him. But it's possible, in a way it never was with Corbyn.
Of course, the thing with newly-prominent politicians is that we can at the start project what we want onto them. Before anything comes along to taint our view of them, we give them the benefit of the doubt. Especially if they've got really good hair.

Will you be lending him your comb?

He can have it! I no longer have need for a comb given the hair-shaving thing discussed earlier. (Actually, I haven't owned a comb or similar since the 1980s).

SirNorfolkPassmore said:

Cookie said:

Barring a late surge, today is looking like being the fourth day in a row that worldwide deaths have not been as high as the previous day. Is this just an Easter thing, or has the world peaked?
I had thought there would be a third wave of 'rest of the world' cases. Many countries (Turkey, Brazil, Ecuador, Algeria, to name but four) looked on the cusp of the sort of exponential growth that western Europe saw. But this doesn't seem to be happening. Different circumstances (climate, demographics, geographical factors) or (deliberately or otherwise) dodgy data?

I'd be very cautious about worldwide totals. Western democracies will vary a fair bit due to reporting methodologies, numbers admitted to hospital versus dying at home and so on. But I suspect figures from Venezuela, Belarus or whatever are next to useless.

It's hopefully true that the first wave has peaked or is peaking in much of the developed world. More broadly - hard to say.

Thanks.

blairf said:

SirNorfolkPassmore said:

blairf said:

SirNorfolkPassmore said:

blairf said:

stodge said:

rcs1000 said:

As an ex-Goldman guy myself, I tend to agree with most of your concerns about the UK economy. The high level of stamp duty, for example, is utter madness as it dicourages the efficient allocation of a scarce resource.

The only reason land is in short supply is that such a system works for both developers and Government as it keeps house prices high and generates strong stamp duty receipts as the demand for housing always outstrips the supply.

Said developers have land banks but they have unwitting allies in local communities who also help to keep the supply of land scarce by restricting what can be built on and what kinds of development are permissible.

oooh. one of my favourite bug bears!! bear with me.

Our housing problem in the UK is not one of 'shortage' it is misallocation. We have about 65M people and about 80M bedrooms in the UK. The issue is lots of single and couple elderly folk knocking around in big houses. The reason for this is, ta da, the ridiculous transaction taxes on moving. We have put so much friction into the property market the bedrooms don't get allocated efficiently. Any housing 'shortage' is illusory, it is not physical, we can leave our greenfields alone. it is a market failure through abjectedly bad tax policy.

Is having about 20% of bedrooms being spare bedrooms uncommon internationally, though?

I don't know, and am genuinely interested. But my immediate reaction to your post is to think that those who can afford it keep a spare room. I am typing this in mine, and if I have a guest they will stay in it - but I've no desire to make it permanently available to someone else. That's not to do with transaction tax - it's a lifestyle choice. So how many of the 15m spare rooms you claim are friction problems, and how many are lifestyle choices? I'm not saying you're wrong, just asking the question.

We in UK are amongst the most 'spare bedroomed' in the world. I did some pan european stuff on this a while back. And Europe is the most 'spare bedroomed' region in the world. UK isn't an outlier high but we are top 5 or 6 IIRC.

My 'king for a day' solution is to remove stamp duty and turn council tax, remove council tax and replace it with a true ad volorem tax. say 1% of your properties value every year.

Thank you. I suspect there is merit in what you say. I'd be interested in analysis of how much of the 15m spare bedrooms that might free up (noting it's quite possible that we will move to more people working from home in the long term following recent experience, which makes spare rooms more valuable to people). But there seems to be some scope as you say.

the work we did was for one of the big retirement home builders so there was some self-interest to the work! But is was quite compelling. The biggest barriers to downsizing amongst the elderly was familiarity with area/home, keeping bedrooms available for visits, pressure from childrent/inheritors, and cost. Cost was actually quite low (which somewhat bolloxes my argument but hey ho!) The resistance from kids/inheritors is interesting. The inheritance tax wrinkle of homes being exempt meant they liked mum/dad/granny keeping the house so they could cope the lot tax free (and obviously then sell it and trouser the gain tax free).

Keeping a spare room for visits is understandable but illogical. As Kirsty says on Location location location, a home is for ever not just for Christmas. Just put up an inflatable mattress and buy a sofa bed.

This conversation has a high signal-to-noise ratio and I enjoyed reading it. Have to say I'm in two minds about Keeping a spare room for visits is understandable but illogical. It adds a little bit of extra cleaning to the chores, but the space can still have uses outside of visiting periods. You might not strictly speaking need it, but then you might not mind having it for your spare bookcase or whatever either. And when family visit for a bit you might not want them grumpy every morning after a sleep on an inflatable... (this may depend on how often you have them around, but it's not uncommon for elderly relatives with no work commitments to visit for weeks or even months, if my circle of acquaintances is anything to go by).

It's only "irrational" if the convenience isn't outweighed by the cost and obviously different people have a different willingness to pay. There certainly are people who would be happy to pay for the extra space, in a similar way to being prepared to pay for a second home for a country retreat. Where I think you're onto something is that a lot of empty nesters seem to regard their spare bedroom as a kind of sunk cost. They wouldn't have paid tens of thousands of pounds just to get an empty room, they bought it because at the time they needed it for their kids. Now it's empty they could, in principle, free up those thousands of pounds but even aside from the stamp duty issue it's just not worth the bother and expense of moving again (there are other frictions to moving house!). I can see it being arguably irrational that people are keeping something - effectively "hoarding rooms" - which they would not be willing to pay for at its current price, but now they have them, don't want to convert it back to cash either. But if people quite like having spare rooms, and the evidence seems to suggest we do, maybe we should just build more and bigger houses. (Hah! Fat chance I know...)

"Post-mortems no longer required for those who die of coronavirus in Scotland"

https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/scottish-news/post-mortem-delays-set-up-21849347

SirNorfolkPassmore said:

Quincel said:

The gap on Betfair between Biden as Next POTUS (2.39) and Dem Winning Party 2020 (2.06) is astonishing. It would tie up money for a while but backing Biden and laying Dems returns 7% in 7 months unless he is replaced and his replacement wins. Albeit you can get 12% by just backing him for the nomination.

As a 77 year old man, your actuarial risk of death in the next 12 months in the USA is 4.4%. That's 12 months rather than 7, but still accounts for a fair bit of that.

And that's not factoring in coronavirus, the risk of incapacity short of death, the risk of scandal, and the fact that (based on stats over the past century) being President or a presidential candidate is far riskier than being a cop or a fireman in terms of chance of death in the course of your duties.

So it seems to me a fair return, but not generous.

As we've just established with Johnson if Biden actually falls ill then all those calculation will be for nought. Betfair will pull the market.

Cookie said:

Barring a late surge, today is looking like being the fourth day in a row that worldwide deaths have not been as high as the previous day. Is this just an Easter thing, or has the world peaked?
I had thought there would be a third wave of 'rest of the world' cases. Many countries (Turkey, Brazil, Ecuador, Algeria, to name but four) looked on the cusp of the sort of exponential growth that western Europe saw. But this doesn't seem to be happening. Different circumstances (climate, demographics, geographical factors) or (deliberately or otherwise) dodgy data?

You have to factor in the one off negative death rate as people rise at Easter.

MyBurningEars said:

blairf said:

SirNorfolkPassmore said:

blairf said:

SirNorfolkPassmore said:

blairf said:

stodge said:

rcs1000 said:

As an ex-Goldman guy myself, I tend to agree with most of your concerns about the UK economy. The high level of stamp duty, for example, is utter madness as it dicourages the efficient allocation of a scarce resource.

The only reason land is in short supply is that such a system works for both developers and Government as it keeps house prices high and generates strong stamp duty receipts as the demand for housing always outstrips the supply.

Said developers have land banks but they have unwitting allies in local communities who also help to keep the supply of land scarce by restricting what can be built on and what kinds of development are permissible.

oooh. one of my favourite bug bears!! bear with me.

Our housing problem in the UK is not one of 'shortage' it is misallocation. We have about 65M people and about 80M bedrooms in the UK. The issue is lots of single and couple elderly folk knocking around in big houses. The reason for this is, ta da, the ridiculous transaction taxes on moving. We have put so much friction into the property market the bedrooms don't get allocated efficiently. Any housing 'shortage' is illusory, it is not physical, we can leave our greenfields alone. it is a market failure through abjectedly bad tax policy.

Is having about 20% of bedrooms being spare bedrooms uncommon internationally, though?

I don't know, and am genuinely interested. But my immediate reaction to your post is to think that those who can afford it keep a spare room. I am typing this in mine, and if I have a guest they will stay in it - but I've no desire to make it permanently available to someone else. That's not to do with transaction tax - it's a lifestyle choice. So how many of the 15m spare rooms you claim are friction problems, and how many are lifestyle choices? I'm not saying you're wrong, just asking the question.

We in UK are amongst the most 'spare bedroomed' in the world. I did some pan european stuff on this a while back. And Europe is the most 'spare bedroomed' region in the world. UK isn't an outlier high but we are top 5 or 6 IIRC.

My 'king for a day' solution is to remove stamp duty and turn council tax, remove council tax and replace it with a true ad volorem tax. say 1% of your properties value every year.

Thank you. I suspect there is merit in what you say. I'd be interested in analysis of how much of the 15m spare bedrooms that might free up (noting it's quite possible that we will move to more people working from home in the long term following recent experience, which makes spare rooms more valuable to people). But there seems to be some scope as you say.

the work we did was for one of the big retirement home builders so there was some self-interest to the work! But is was quite compelling. The biggest barriers to downsizing amongst the elderly was familiarity with area/home, keeping bedrooms available for visits, pressure from childrent/inheritors, and cost. Cost was actually quite low (which somewhat bolloxes my argument but hey ho!) The resistance from kids/inheritors is interesting. The inheritance tax wrinkle of homes being exempt meant they liked mum/dad/granny keeping the house so they could cope the lot tax free (and obviously then sell it and trouser the gain tax free).

Keeping a spare room for visits is understandable but illogical. As Kirsty says on Location location location, a home is for ever not just for Christmas. Just put up an inflatable mattress and buy a sofa bed.

This conversation has a high signal-to-noise ratio and I enjoyed reading it. Have to say I'm in two minds about Keeping a spare room for visits is understandable but illogical. It adds a little bit of extra cleaning to the chores, but the space can still have uses outside of visiting periods. You might not strictly speaking need it, but then you might not mind having it for your spare bookcase or whatever either. And when family visit for a bit you might not want them grumpy every morning after a sleep on an inflatable... (this may depend on how often you have them around, but it's not uncommon for elderly relatives with no work commitments to visit for weeks or even months, if my circle of acquaintances is anything to go by).

It's only "irrational" if the convenience isn't outweighed by the cost and obviously different people have a different willingness to pay. There certainly are people who would be happy to pay for the extra space, in a similar way to being prepared to pay for a second home for a country retreat. Where I think you're onto something is that a lot of empty nesters seem to regard their spare bedroom as a kind of sunk cost. They wouldn't have paid tens of thousands of pounds just to get an empty room, they bought it because at the time they needed it for their kids. Now it's empty they could, in principle, free up those thousands of pounds but even aside from the stamp duty issue it's just not worth the bother and expense of moving again (there are other frictions to moving house!). I can see it being arguably irrational that people are keeping something - effectively "hoarding rooms" - which they would not be willing to pay for at its current price, but now they have them, don't want to convert it back to cash either. But if people quite like having spare rooms, and the evidence seems to suggest we do, maybe we should just build more and bigger houses. (Hah! Fat chance I know...)

For people who are working.. say 2 kids. The ideal is a 4 bedroom house. Why? Parents have 1 room. the 2 kids one each -

1) The last bedroom in many UK houses is a 6x6 foot box.
2) It's combined The Study (WFH)/Library/Paperwork, with a spare bed taking up half of it.

Luckyguy1983 said:

Sunil_Prasannan said:

ydoethur said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

Where was the Prince of Orange in the line of succession when he invaded our glorious lands?

About fourth

Roughly speaking the order was
James, Prince of Wales
Mary
Anne.

He jumped the queue by marrying Mary.

William of Orange married Mary in 1677, fully 11 years before landing at Brixham.

On my Kings and Queens of England and Scotland cards, William and Mary are the only pair to have held the throne.

Strictly speaking, your cards are wrong, as Phillip of Spain was declared co-ruler with Mary I. However, Phillip wasn’t terribly interested in being King of England.

Cookie said:

alterego said:

Cookie said:

Barring a late surge, today is looking like being the fourth day in a row that worldwide deaths have not been as high as the previous day. Is this just an Easter thing, or has the world peaked?
I had thought there would be a third wave of 'rest of the world' cases. Many countries (Turkey, Brazil, Ecuador, Algeria, to name but four) looked on the cusp of the sort of exponential growth that western Europe saw. But this doesn't seem to be happening. Different circumstances (climate, demographics, geographical factors) or (deliberately or otherwise) dodgy data?

I suspect your last possible cause is the most probable but who knows. There will, I'm sure, be tomorrow lots of answers to questions impossible to answer with any certainty today.

Do you think there will be a surge of covid deaths in the developing world? I had thought there would be - hard to put in place any social distancing measures in cities like Lagos or Nairobi, and no great healthcare capacity - but there seems no evidence of it. Hopefully covid just doesn't work so well in the tropics.

Covid also seems to be most dangerous to the over 80s and the average life expectancy in the developing world is well below 80 anyway

Mexicanpete said:

HYUFD said:

Big_G_NorthWales said:

alex_ said:

Big_G_NorthWales said:

HYUFD said:

Big_G_NorthWales said:

HYUFD said:

nichomar said:

HYUFD said:

Theuniondivvie said:

HYUFD said:

Theuniondivvie said:

The apple doesn't fall far from the tone deaf tree.

https://twitter.com/brawday/status/1249749690754744320?s=20

It'll certainly do wonders for uniting the mood of my nation.

It may annoy diehard republican Nats like you but for the rest of us we will be very happy for them and many of us will join in the celebrations

Straight in at number 1 in the Scottish charts.

https://youtu.be/XrwKRlBsDNc

Even in Scotland more people support the monarchy than oppose it, the fact some Celtic supporters (who have always been Nat and republican) turned out to buy a record really means nothing, you need little more than 1 man and his dog buying a record to top the Scottish charts

There is supporting the monarchy then there is getting excited about a nobody marrying a rich nobody neither of whom have done anything to gain the respect of the people. An event most people I would think will ignore.

Beatrice is 9th in line to the throne, hardly a nobody

She is a nobody

As has been shown 9th in line to the thrown does not mean you have zero chance of becoming monarch

Thrown is a good word with the minor royals. They should all disappear into irrelevance

Well since you are clearly not a monarchist, it is hardly surprising you think that way.

To be honest I have been a republican most of my life, probably following my grandmother demanding I stood and sang the national anthem on the queens coronation in 1953, but to be fair over the last couple of decades I have grown to greatly respect the Queen and will be sad when she passes

After that the monarchy needs to be scaled down though I accept Charles and William will probably be the next two to serve as monarch

BigG the republican Blair voter, who knew he was such a radical?

Nah, he's a Boris fanboi, just like you!

HYUFD and I are very different as he has not yet learnt that Boris is a liberal one nation conservative like myself

Luckyguy1983 said:

ydoethur said:

Luckyguy1983 said:

Sunil_Prasannan said:

ydoethur said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

Where was the Prince of Orange in the line of succession when he invaded our glorious lands?

About fourth

Roughly speaking the order was
James, Prince of Wales
Mary
Anne.

He jumped the queue by marrying Mary.

William of Orange married Mary in 1677, fully 11 years before landing at Brixham.

On my Kings and Queens of England and Scotland cards, William and Mary are the only pair to have held the throne.

Strictly speaking, your cards are wrong, as Phillip of Spain was declared co-ruler with Mary I. However, Phillip wasn’t terribly interested in being King of England.

Mary definitely had her own card all to herself. I mean I am all for 'had enough of experts', but these are pukka cards from The National Trust gift shop.

Ah, well, who can gainsay that?

Have a nice evening everyone.

Big_G_NorthWales said:

Light relief folks

https://twitter.com/andywigmore/status/1249772629927526406?s=09

Including a cameo by Trump.

IanB2 said:

Today the UK appears to have the biggest rise in case numbers aside from the US, and a percentage rise greater than the US. And the same again on the new deaths data. I can see why our figures are giving rise to concern.

I think you're looking at partial US numbers. NY is comparable to the UK at the moment.

TheWhiteRabbit said:

IanB2 said:

Today the UK appears to have the biggest rise in case numbers aside from the US, and a percentage rise greater than the US. And the same again on the new deaths data. I can see why our figures are giving rise to concern.

I think you're looking at partial US numbers. NY is comparable to the UK at the moment.

Yes, the US data is partial, but in percentage growth terms we were above them yesterday and look possible to be so again today. Comparison with other European countries is starting to look very poor.

IanB2 said:

Today the UK appears to have the biggest rise in case numbers aside from the US, and a percentage rise greater than the US. And the same again on the new deaths data. I can see why our figures are giving rise to concern.

One minor milestone may be reached tomorrow: Germany, which has been consistently praised for its handling of coronavirus, will have a higher official death toll than China.

williamglenn said:

IanB2 said:

Today the UK appears to have the biggest rise in case numbers aside from the US, and a percentage rise greater than the US. And the same again on the new deaths data. I can see why our figures are giving rise to concern.

One minor milestone may be reached tomorrow: Germany, which has been consistently praised for its handling of coronavirus, will have a higher official death toll than China.

China most likely has over 40,000 deaths in Wuhan alone so Chinese figures can be ignored
https://www.rfa.org/english/news/china/wuhan-deaths-03272020182846.html

IanB2 said:

TheWhiteRabbit said:

IanB2 said:

Today the UK appears to have the biggest rise in case numbers aside from the US, and a percentage rise greater than the US. And the same again on the new deaths data. I can see why our figures are giving rise to concern.

I think you're looking at partial US numbers. NY is comparable to the UK at the moment.

Yes, the US data is partial, but in percentage growth terms we were above them yesterday and look possible to be so again today. Comparison with other European countries is starting to look very poor.

We have not yet had over 1000 deaths a day as France had and per head our deaths are still below France, Spain, Italy, Belgium and the Netherlands

SirNorfolkPassmore said:

Cookie said:

Barring a late surge, today is looking like being the fourth day in a row that worldwide deaths have not been as high as the previous day. Is this just an Easter thing, or has the world peaked?
I had thought there would be a third wave of 'rest of the world' cases. Many countries (Turkey, Brazil, Ecuador, Algeria, to name but four) looked on the cusp of the sort of exponential growth that western Europe saw. But this doesn't seem to be happening. Different circumstances (climate, demographics, geographical factors) or (deliberately or otherwise) dodgy data?

I'd be very cautious about worldwide totals. Western democracies will vary a fair bit due to reporting methodologies, numbers admitted to hospital versus dying at home and so on. But I suspect figures from Venezuela, Belarus or whatever are next to useless.

It's hopefully true that the first wave has peaked or is peaking in much of the developed world. More broadly - hard to say.

I suspect that the actual number of deaths is being under-reported in 99% of countries right now. Even here we know that care home deaths and home deaths aren't included.

TGOHF666 said:

https://twitter.com/nudderingnudnik/status/1249780214688813059?s=21

Why is being a “nasty fool” a disqualification from being a Labour MP?