politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » It’s time for the Wednesday PB Nighthawks cafe

Newsnight: "Did the government forget about those in care?"

alex_ said:

Yokes said:

Just as a note, Skype for Business is being replaced by Teams. Skype as a consumer brand product I think is being retained.

The fundamental difference for the Business product is that I think Teams is entirely cloud based whilst with SfB you could as a business operate it as your own in house instance. The flaw for Teams is that you are at the mercy of Microsoft's server and bandwidth management, you get what you get with no control over server load or bandwidth allocation.

There are a ton of corporate Unified Comms options out there for businesses whether in premise or hosted and there are pure video bridge services that are end device agnostic. The options for businesses are legion

It seems to me from limited experience that Skype is fine (better?) for ad-hoc impromptu phone calls/meetings. Teams et al for more formal planned stuff.

I’m going to spend ages on this so I may as well post this

Skype is a consumer product - it’s not going anywhere as it servers a purpose

Skype for business is a rebranding exercise for the product hat was called lync and as with many Microsoft marketing decisions did the name change just caused confusion.

The online version of Skype for business is end of life and is being replaced by teams by July 2021 - as it should do as the servers Skype used within azure were badly maintained VMs. Teams uses standard azure functionality which means it’s far far easier to scale and so avoids peak load issues.

The on-premise server version of Skype for Business is still available and will continue to be available if you wish to keep things on premise. I can’t see it disappearing for a few years although I don’t think any incentive is given to anyone for selling it.

Alistair said:

CarlottaVance said:

Good to see the BBC tweeting regional newspapers whose journalism frequently puts national (pun intended) newspapers to shame:

https://twitter.com/hendopolis/status/1250535760027095047?s=20

I'm still trying to work out how The Times running a story with corroborating evidence which was dismissed by the Scottish Government as a non story is actually an embarrassing SNP conspiracy theory blown apart by the Courier but I'm sure I'll get there eventually.

Forty a day wrote two letters to Hancock because of the Times story, not two Nat Onal front pages? Aye, right.

HYUFD said:

https://twitter.com/jburnmurdoch/status/1250538132694499338?s=20

So our government is one of those that screwed up. And it has cost thousands of lives.

What did Microsoft pay for skype, $8.5bn or something like that.

Yokes said:

alex_ said:

Yokes said:

Just as a note, Skype for Business is being replaced by Teams. Skype as a consumer brand product I think is being retained.

The fundamental difference for the Business product is that I think Teams is entirely cloud based whilst with SfB you could as a business operate it as your own in house instance. The flaw for Teams is that you are at the mercy of Microsoft's server and bandwidth management, you get what you get with no control over server load or bandwidth allocation.

There are a ton of corporate Unified Comms options out there for businesses whether in premise or hosted and there are pure video bridge services that are end device agnostic. The options for businesses are legion

It seems to me from limited experience that Skype is fine (better?) for ad-hoc impromptu phone calls/meetings. Teams et al for more formal planned stuff.

Teams is heavily integrated into the rest of the MS estate but the reality is that Microsoft have spent years and many different versions of trying to the get the Unified Comms right. Teams is just the latest.

The biggest thing I find in my work is that the organisations we work with have all kinds of tools to collaborate internally but woe betide you if you are using anything other than a) a webcam or b) are a 3rd party trying to communicate. Its here that the Zooms of this world play very well. For those really aiming at top end security. however, they often deploy their own video & audio bridging.

The problem is that no-one has got unified comms right - the problem is everyone has different ideas on what it is.

I actually like teams, my only issue is that I can’t work out how add none UK numbers to our system.

MikeSmithson said:

Just heard that a former close colleague of mine has died. This really brings it home.

Sorry to hear this Mike. My sympathies.

SandyRentool said:

HYUFD said:

https://twitter.com/jburnmurdoch/status/1250538132694499338?s=20

So our government is one of those that screwed up. And it has cost thousands of lives.

The per million death toll and cases for the UK is not in any way out of the ordinary. In fact the UK is exceptionally unexceptional in this regard.

Benpointer said:

HYUFD said:

https://twitter.com/jburnmurdoch/status/1250538132694499338?s=20

Why does the line for France never go above 500?

According to Worldometer they have had several days over 1000.

I don't get why relative population size of countries is never seen as important in these comparison graphs? It seems obvious that all things being equal the larger countries are going to have bigger numbers. Of course within that there is scope for analysing similar countries on a "how did they do basis". But if ignoring similarities is size and demographics (and indeed other factors like population densities, both within eg. cities and within household units), then larger numbers alone tell you nothing. Or am i missing something?

MaxPB said:

rcs1000 said:

dodrade said:

eek said:

ManchesterKurt said:

TGOHF666 said:

Skype = android
Teams = iphone

Both Msft products intended for different purposes

Word = Android
Excel = iPhone

Nope Skype (the none business version) was a bought in consumer product.

Skype for business was previously called Lync and was ok but never that great (it could however do conference calls if managed well).

Teams can do both 1 to 1 calls and larger conference calls - it uses different technology (azure video) for the conference functionality.

If Teams is superior why haven't Microsoft discontinued Skype yet?

Because Skype is a consumer product in one part of Microsoft, while Teams is a business product that's part of the Office suite and meant to compete with Slack.

The real question is does anyone still use Skype? I haven't come across it in any sense, consumer or business.

I used it to call my mother-in-law on her ancient laptop.

But for anyone else...

HYUFD said:

https://twitter.com/NadineDorries/status/1250536669855563777?s=20

Nadine is - and I hate to say this - absolutely correct.

http://nrg.cs.ucl.ac.uk/mjh/covid19/#covid-eu

Probably worth people looking at this guys work, Its pretty geeky and statto but is also very useful.

Its also rather reassuring.

rcs1000 said:

HYUFD said:

https://twitter.com/NadineDorries/status/1250536669855563777?s=20

Nadine is - and I hate to say this - absolutely correct.

Unfortunately Piers is more interested in being an attention seeking loudmouth at the moment than careful probing of the facts

MaxPB said:

rcs1000 said:

dodrade said:

eek said:

ManchesterKurt said:

TGOHF666 said:

Skype = android
Teams = iphone

Both Msft products intended for different purposes

Word = Android
Excel = iPhone

Nope Skype (the none business version) was a bought in consumer product.

Skype for business was previously called Lync and was ok but never that great (it could however do conference calls if managed well).

Teams can do both 1 to 1 calls and larger conference calls - it uses different technology (azure video) for the conference functionality.

If Teams is superior why haven't Microsoft discontinued Skype yet?

Because Skype is a consumer product in one part of Microsoft, while Teams is a business product that's part of the Office suite and meant to compete with Slack.

The real question is does anyone still use Skype? I haven't come across it in any sense, consumer or business.

Many local authorities. But likely not for much longer.

FrancisUrquhart said:

Ch4 ran a CV special this evening with footage from the front line. Again, things seemed busy but no sign of any sort of Italy / Spain total and utter meltdown.

Again, it begs the question why are we seeing basically the same levels of hospital deaths.

Our population is about 10% higher than Italy, 37% more densely populated, and obesity rates are 40% higher.

https://obesity.procon.org/global-obesity-levels/

Benpointer said:

HYUFD said:

https://twitter.com/jburnmurdoch/status/1250538132694499338?s=20

Why does the line for France never go above 500?

According to Worldometer they have had several days over 1000.

No standardisation of reporting on Worldometer. They just accept whatever governments choose to officially report, but don't attempt quality control or standardisation. France (and Belgium) apparently is recording Care Home/community deaths. Others may be recording deaths due to Covid. The UK i think is doing post mortem tests and adding to statistics. But obviously not counting care homes. Some countries may just be lying.

Trump suggesting WHO knew how bad CV was and didn't warn Europe fast enough. Its full on rant mode.

FrancisUrquhart said:

Ch4 ran a CV special this evening with footage from the front line. Again, things seemed busy but no sign of any sort of Italy / Spain total and utter meltdown.

Again, it begs the question why are we seeing basically the same levels of hospital deaths.

Yes, on the face of it you would think that not having a Lombardy-style shambles taking place in London, for example, ought to mean that British patients are getting a better standard of care on average, and their rates of survival ought therefore to be significantly higher.

Without doing a detailed trawl of the figures one can only speculate, but I have three possible suggestions for what might be causing this apparent discrepancy:

1. Britain locked down later into its epidemic and has ended up with a higher rate of hospitalisations than Italy but, because the healthcare system hasn't been swamped in any part of the country, the patient survival rate has indeed been better and this has cancelled out the effect of the late lockdown
2. Lombardy had a meltdown but the Italians managed to save some other regions from serious harm through the prompt use of travel bans. Britain didn't do this so, although our healthcare system coped better in the round, the epidemic was more widespread which negated the advantage of that preparedness
3. There are important factors about the progress of Covid-19 and how it affects individual patients very differently which we still do not understand. It may simply be that a proportion of those infected with this virus are doomed to die, regardless of how rudimentary or sophisticated their medical treatment happens to be. Thus, the fact that parts of the Italian medical system became overloaded whereas the NHS appears to be coping much better has made no difference to patient survival rates

kle4 said:

MaxPB said:

rcs1000 said:

dodrade said:

eek said:

ManchesterKurt said:

TGOHF666 said:

Skype = android
Teams = iphone

Both Msft products intended for different purposes

Word = Android
Excel = iPhone

Nope Skype (the none business version) was a bought in consumer product.

Skype for business was previously called Lync and was ok but never that great (it could however do conference calls if managed well).

Teams can do both 1 to 1 calls and larger conference calls - it uses different technology (azure video) for the conference functionality.

If Teams is superior why haven't Microsoft discontinued Skype yet?

Because Skype is a consumer product in one part of Microsoft, while Teams is a business product that's part of the Office suite and meant to compete with Slack.

The real question is does anyone still use Skype? I haven't come across it in any sense, consumer or business.

Many local authorities. But likely not for much longer.

Is that Skype For Business or Skype Skype? I'm presuming the former but may be wrong. My experience with clients is that Skype For Business is something I've mostly come across in the public sector.

Black_Rook said:

MarqueeMark said:

Black_Rook said:

MaxPB said:

FrancisUrquhart said:

AlastairMeeks said:

FrancisUrquhart said:

First...have you got any flour?

I got self-raising flour for my mum today. She was delighted.

Getting a bit concerned Mrs U might end up mugging somebody if she sees them with this rare white powder.

Waitrose in this part of NW London had a fair bit of flour, managed to get strong white, 00 and wholemeal. We're all set for a few weeks.

I managed to get hold of a bag of self-raising out of Morrisons in town during the height of panic buying a few weeks back. It was the premium sifted stuff and had been put on a higher up shelf than the rest of the flour, hidden in plain sight amongst an assortment of other cake-baking ingredients. The locusts had stripped everything else bare but completely missed this specific brand. Needless to say I felt very pleased with myself at the time.

I haven't noticed whether or not the Tesco Extra where I normally do my big shop has any flour, since I've not needed to look for it recently, but if they don't then flour and paracetamol - which I know is still in short supply and has been moved behind the pharmacy counter - must be the very last empty shelves left in the store. Last time I was in there they were still a wee bit light on chopped tomatoes and baked beans, but pasta, bog roll and virtually everything else was pretty much back to normal.

I have a trip to M&S tomorrow. Be interested to see if parmesan has reappeared.....

Really?! My experience of the height of the panic buying episode was that cheese was one of the very few foodstuffs never to be in seriously short supply at any point.

Going back about three weeks, anybody whose diet consisted entirely of cheese, yoghurt, chocolate biscuits and wine was doing very nicely thank you. It's just the whole of the rest of the population that was snatching and hoarding bags of penne and fusilli on sight.

It is the absence of cannelloni which troubles me.

Andy_JS said:

MaxPB said:

rcs1000 said:

dodrade said:

eek said:

ManchesterKurt said:

TGOHF666 said:

Skype = android
Teams = iphone

Both Msft products intended for different purposes

Word = Android
Excel = iPhone

Nope Skype (the none business version) was a bought in consumer product.

Skype for business was previously called Lync and was ok but never that great (it could however do conference calls if managed well).

Teams can do both 1 to 1 calls and larger conference calls - it uses different technology (azure video) for the conference functionality.

If Teams is superior why haven't Microsoft discontinued Skype yet?

Because Skype is a consumer product in one part of Microsoft, while Teams is a business product that's part of the Office suite and meant to compete with Slack.

The real question is does anyone still use Skype? I haven't come across it in any sense, consumer or business.

What's the alternative to Skype?

WhatsApp is what MS staff used internally for none work calls.

Yokes said:

SandyRentool said:

HYUFD said:

https://twitter.com/jburnmurdoch/status/1250538132694499338?s=20

So our government is one of those that screwed up. And it has cost thousands of lives.

The per million death toll and cases for the UK is not in any way out of the ordinary. In fact the UK is exceptionally unexceptional in this regard.

I prefer to compare us to other island nations that took advantage of their geography alongside an early lockdown to keep the numbers down. NZ did what we failed to do.

Anyway, time for bed.

"Does smoking protect against coronavirus? That was the amazing claim from David Hockney but multiple scientific studies now suggest he might be on to something

Hockney said in a letter 'it's beginning to look like' smokers are protected
Chinese and US data shows a disproportionately small number of smokers in hospitals
Public health agencies in the UK and US urge people to quit to protect health
But the proof of any effect on COVID-19 either way is lacking, scientists say"

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8214749/David-Hockney-claims-smoking-cigarettes-PROTECT-against-coronavirus.html

FrancisUrquhart said:

Trump is on a rant about congress and house of representatives...called their approval process of officials a scam.

I see White Wash live is streaming again then.

rcs1000 said:

HYUFD said:

https://twitter.com/NadineDorries/status/1250536669855563777?s=20

Nadine is - and I hate to say this - absolutely correct.

Ouch. But she's right.

Black_Rook said:

FrancisUrquhart said:

Ch4 ran a CV special this evening with footage from the front line. Again, things seemed busy but no sign of any sort of Italy / Spain total and utter meltdown.

Again, it begs the question why are we seeing basically the same levels of hospital deaths.

Yes, on the face of it you would think that not having a Lombardy-style shambles taking place in London, for example, ought to mean that British patients are getting a better standard of care on average, and their rates of survival ought therefore to be significantly higher.

Without doing a detailed trawl of the figures one can only speculate, but I have three possible suggestions for what might be causing this apparent discrepancy:

1. Britain locked down later into its epidemic and has ended up with a higher rate of hospitalisations than Italy but, because the healthcare system hasn't been swamped in any part of the country, the patient survival rate has indeed been better and this has cancelled out the effect of the late lockdown
2. Lombardy had a meltdown but the Italians managed to save some other regions from serious harm through the prompt use of travel bans. Britain didn't do this so, although our healthcare system coped better in the round, the epidemic was more widespread which negated the advantage of that preparedness
3. There are important factors about the progress of Covid-19 and how it affects individual patients very differently which we still do not understand. It may simply be that a proportion of those infected with this virus are doomed to die, regardless of how rudimentary or sophisticated their medical treatment happens to be. Thus, the fact that parts of the Italian medical system became overloaded whereas the NHS appears to be coping much better has made no difference to patient survival rates

I mused on this on a previous post. I think there's a degree of crossover between our lists, but a few bits that are different.

MyBurningEars said:

Benpointer said:

I think the other remarkable thing is that we are not (yet at least) seeing pictures of people dying in hospital corridors due to lack of ICU beds.

That the Excel facility is hardly being used is surely a good sign?

Long may it continue.

I'm still trying to get my head around the apocalyptic footage we've seen in Italy and Spain, versus the apparent calm here, and yet the death tolls look like they'll come out broadly similar and our daily numbers look comparably bad.

Differential media coverage, particularly with respect to access to the chaotic bits? Or the coffins?

Do overcrowded ICUs and people not even being admitted actually make no substantial difference unless it's really really bad - up to a certain point perhaps only those with near-zero chance of survival, or those who were likely to get better anyway so didn't really require an ICU bed (but had one been free, might have been given one "just in case"), were missing out over there?

Do scenes look better here just because, although cases are somewhat concentrated in London and a few other places, they're still relatively more spread out than Italy/Spain?

Something else I'm missing entirely?

I've no idea on this one.

Black_Rook said:

MarqueeMark said:

Black_Rook said:

MaxPB said:

FrancisUrquhart said:

AlastairMeeks said:

FrancisUrquhart said:

First...have you got any flour?

I got self-raising flour for my mum today. She was delighted.

Getting a bit concerned Mrs U might end up mugging somebody if she sees them with this rare white powder.

Waitrose in this part of NW London had a fair bit of flour, managed to get strong white, 00 and wholemeal. We're all set for a few weeks.

I managed to get hold of a bag of self-raising out of Morrisons in town during the height of panic buying a few weeks back. It was the premium sifted stuff and had been put on a higher up shelf than the rest of the flour, hidden in plain sight amongst an assortment of other cake-baking ingredients. The locusts had stripped everything else bare but completely missed this specific brand. Needless to say I felt very pleased with myself at the time.

I haven't noticed whether or not the Tesco Extra where I normally do my big shop has any flour, since I've not needed to look for it recently, but if they don't then flour and paracetamol - which I know is still in short supply and has been moved behind the pharmacy counter - must be the very last empty shelves left in the store. Last time I was in there they were still a wee bit light on chopped tomatoes and baked beans, but pasta, bog roll and virtually everything else was pretty much back to normal.

I have a trip to M&S tomorrow. Be interested to see if parmesan has reappeared.....

Really?! My experience of the height of the panic buying episode was that cheese was one of the very few foodstuffs never to be in seriously short supply at any point.

Going back about three weeks, anybody whose diet consisted entirely of cheese, yoghurt, chocolate biscuits and wine was doing very nicely thank you. It's just the whole of the rest of the population that was snatching and hoarding bags of penne and fusilli on sight.

My snout reports that everything is back to normal at local supermarket except flour.

SandyRentool said:

Yokes said:

SandyRentool said:

HYUFD said:

https://twitter.com/jburnmurdoch/status/1250538132694499338?s=20

So our government is one of those that screwed up. And it has cost thousands of lives.

The per million death toll and cases for the UK is not in any way out of the ordinary. In fact the UK is exceptionally unexceptional in this regard.

I prefer to compare us to other island nations that took advantage of their geography alongside an early lockdown to keep the numbers down. NZ did what we failed to do.

Anyway, time for bed.

NZ is far more isolated than the UK.

He's now saying "China has paid us many billions of dollars in tariffs".......funny, I thought it was Americans buying Chinese goods who were paying the tariffs....

New iPhone:

https://www.macrumors.com/2020/04/15/iphone-se-2020/

Trouble brewing in the heartlands.

"Crowds gathered outside of the Ohio Statehouse in Columbus during Gov. Mike DeWine's daily COVID-19 press briefing on the afternoon of April 13 to protest statewide shutdowns.

This isn't the first protest regarding the pandemic-related business closures and stay at home order: About 75 protestors gathered on Thursday, April 9 according to an article by WOSU."

https://www.clevescene.com/scene-and-heard/archives/2020/04/14/were-not-afraid-of-any-virus-crowds-gathered-outside-of-ohio-statehouse-protesting-coronavirus-shutdowns

SandyRentool said:

Yokes said:

SandyRentool said:

HYUFD said:

https://twitter.com/jburnmurdoch/status/1250538132694499338?s=20

So our government is one of those that screwed up. And it has cost thousands of lives.

The per million death toll and cases for the UK is not in any way out of the ordinary. In fact the UK is exceptionally unexceptional in this regard.

I prefer to compare us to other island nations that took advantage of their geography alongside an early lockdown to keep the numbers down. NZ did what we failed to do.

Anyway, time for bed.

This is valid up to a point, although New Zealand does also have the advantage of having a small population and being and very remote. It doesn't have to contend with, amongst other things, having many hundreds of thousands of nationals abroad in need of repatriation; being reliant for much of its imports upon road transport (i.e. it's not subject to a constant inward flow of truckers arriving by tunnel and ferry and driving all over the country); and clandestine immigration/people smuggling.

At this stage of the crisis their decision to move decisively and self-isolate the whole country really looks to have paid off, but I'm not at all sure we could have done that anything like so successfully.

RobD said:

Nigelb said:

Guardian...

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/apr/15/its-heartbreaking-people-dying-at-home-help-denied-them
” A number of other patients are also dying at home from cardiac arrest. Now in our area the ROLE procedure has changed because of the volume of patients who are dying. We have always had ROLE but what is new is that, because of the volume of [such cases], they are changing the way we do it. You would normally need a GP to confirm that someone has died and why, but due to the sheer volume at the moment that is not practical.

“In the job last week we did three ROLEs in one nursing home in one night. That is almost unheard of.

“This is really significant. Are these deaths at home being recorded in the daily statistics of deaths? No, they’re not at the moment. Is that a way of the numbers [of overall Covid-related deaths] being fudged?

“I don’t know what the policy is elsewhere, but here in the West Midlands ambulance personnel have been told to continue trying to resuscitate people who do not have a DNR in place, including those who have suffered a cardiac arrest, even though hospital doctors in the region have been told not to undertake an active attempt to resuscitate someone. The resuscitate procedure is important because it puts clinicians at risk of catching the coronavirus.

“A nurse I know was left heartbroken by the new policy. She said that she saw a 25-year-old die and there was no attempt to resuscitate....

They are being recorded by the ONS. The Guardian trying to push the narrative that the government are deliberately fudging the numbers?

Not really.
The story is more about what is happening at the sharp end (though it’s true that many/most of these deaths won’t appear in the Covid figures).

Nigelb said:

RobD said:

Nigelb said:

Guardian...

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/apr/15/its-heartbreaking-people-dying-at-home-help-denied-them
” A number of other patients are also dying at home from cardiac arrest. Now in our area the ROLE procedure has changed because of the volume of patients who are dying. We have always had ROLE but what is new is that, because of the volume of [such cases], they are changing the way we do it. You would normally need a GP to confirm that someone has died and why, but due to the sheer volume at the moment that is not practical.

“In the job last week we did three ROLEs in one nursing home in one night. That is almost unheard of.

“This is really significant. Are these deaths at home being recorded in the daily statistics of deaths? No, they’re not at the moment. Is that a way of the numbers [of overall Covid-related deaths] being fudged?

“I don’t know what the policy is elsewhere, but here in the West Midlands ambulance personnel have been told to continue trying to resuscitate people who do not have a DNR in place, including those who have suffered a cardiac arrest, even though hospital doctors in the region have been told not to undertake an active attempt to resuscitate someone. The resuscitate procedure is important because it puts clinicians at risk of catching the coronavirus.

“A nurse I know was left heartbroken by the new policy. She said that she saw a 25-year-old die and there was no attempt to resuscitate....

They are being recorded by the ONS. The Guardian trying to push the narrative that the government are deliberately fudging the numbers?

Not really.
The story is more about what is happening at the sharp end (though it’s true that many/most of these deaths won’t appear in the Covid figures).

The accusation is right there in the quote. That they don't feature in the daily numbers from hospitals means that the numbers of overall Covid-related deaths are being fudged. That's simply not true.

eek said:

Andy_JS said:

MaxPB said:

rcs1000 said:

dodrade said:

eek said:

ManchesterKurt said:

TGOHF666 said:

Skype = android
Teams = iphone

Both Msft products intended for different purposes

Word = Android
Excel = iPhone

Nope Skype (the none business version) was a bought in consumer product.

Skype for business was previously called Lync and was ok but never that great (it could however do conference calls if managed well).

Teams can do both 1 to 1 calls and larger conference calls - it uses different technology (azure video) for the conference functionality.

If Teams is superior why haven't Microsoft discontinued Skype yet?

Because Skype is a consumer product in one part of Microsoft, while Teams is a business product that's part of the Office suite and meant to compete with Slack.

The real question is does anyone still use Skype? I haven't come across it in any sense, consumer or business.

What's the alternative to Skype?

WhatsApp is what MS staff used internally for none work calls.

A significant difference between WhatsApp and Skype is that on a laptop (and tablet I think?), WhatsApp is just text chat and sharing files only. Still useful but not quite a direct Skype competitor in that sense. Use of smartphones drops off quite significantly at older ages, so like what RCS said, if you want to video-call your gran or elderly parent then Skype was often a good option in a way that WhatsApp wouldn't be.

Which reminds me - a particular use-case is care homes letting you video-call your relatives. Skype (the consumer version) is very commonly used for this, if I think about the people I know who've used that service.

I'd suggest a more clear-cut answer to @AndyJS is Hangouts. Can be used on smartphone, tablet or laptop, and lets you converse with text chat, audio, video and share files. You can also, like Skype (and this was at one point seen as a major feature of Skype particularly for people who wanted to call relatives overseas), use Hangouts to call an actual telephone number though I believe you need to add calling credit to your account even to use it for free calls.

SandyRentool said:

Yokes said:

SandyRentool said:

HYUFD said:

https://twitter.com/jburnmurdoch/status/1250538132694499338?s=20

So our government is one of those that screwed up. And it has cost thousands of lives.

The per million death toll and cases for the UK is not in any way out of the ordinary. In fact the UK is exceptionally unexceptional in this regard.

I prefer to compare us to other island nations that took advantage of their geography alongside an early lockdown to keep the numbers down. NZ did what we failed to do.

Anyway, time for bed.

New Zealand is rather more geographically isolated than we are.

IshmaelZ said:

Black_Rook said:

FrancisUrquhart said:

Ch4 ran a CV special this evening with footage from the front line. Again, things seemed busy but no sign of any sort of Italy / Spain total and utter meltdown.

Again, it begs the question why are we seeing basically the same levels of hospital deaths.

Yes, on the face of it you would think that not having a Lombardy-style shambles taking place in London, for example, ought to mean that British patients are getting a better standard of care on average, and their rates of survival ought therefore to be significantly higher.

Without doing a detailed trawl of the figures one can only speculate, but I have three possible suggestions for what might be causing this apparent discrepancy:

1. Britain locked down later into its epidemic and has ended up with a higher rate of hospitalisations than Italy but, because the healthcare system hasn't been swamped in any part of the country, the patient survival rate has indeed been better and this has cancelled out the effect of the late lockdown
2. Lombardy had a meltdown but the Italians managed to save some other regions from serious harm through the prompt use of travel bans. Britain didn't do this so, although our healthcare system coped better in the round, the epidemic was more widespread which negated the advantage of that preparedness
3. There are important factors about the progress of Covid-19 and how it affects individual patients very differently which we still do not understand. It may simply be that a proportion of those infected with this virus are doomed to die, regardless of how rudimentary or sophisticated their medical treatment happens to be. Thus, the fact that parts of the Italian medical system became overloaded whereas the NHS appears to be coping much better has made no difference to patient survival rates

Ethnicity seems to be critically important. Italy is 95% ethnically Italian and half the balance are white European. UK 87% white.

Edit: and London 56% white.

That's a very good point. London is highly diverse, as you just pointed out in your edit. In England as a whole the present estimate for the non-white segment of the population is about 15%.

I don't think it can be the only answer - apart from my possible explanations given above, others have pointed out that the UK has a higher population density and higher rates of obesity than Italy - but it seems plausible as a contributory factor given the disproportionately severe effect that the virus reportedly has on BAME patients.

rcs1000 said:

SandyRentool said:

Yokes said:

SandyRentool said:

HYUFD said:

https://twitter.com/jburnmurdoch/status/1250538132694499338?s=20

So our government is one of those that screwed up. And it has cost thousands of lives.

The per million death toll and cases for the UK is not in any way out of the ordinary. In fact the UK is exceptionally unexceptional in this regard.

I prefer to compare us to other island nations that took advantage of their geography alongside an early lockdown to keep the numbers down. NZ did what we failed to do.

Anyway, time for bed.

New Zealand is rather more geographically isolated than we are.

I think a lot of people in the UK think of Australia / New Zealand in terms of Britian / Ireland. Its that smaller island off not that far from off the coast of the bigger one.

When in reality it is 1500 miles away.

Enjoying laying Biden at 1.1.

Happy days.

Black_Rook said:

IshmaelZ said:

Black_Rook said:

FrancisUrquhart said:

Ch4 ran a CV special this evening with footage from the front line. Again, things seemed busy but no sign of any sort of Italy / Spain total and utter meltdown.

Again, it begs the question why are we seeing basically the same levels of hospital deaths.

Yes, on the face of it you would think that not having a Lombardy-style shambles taking place in London, for example, ought to mean that British patients are getting a better standard of care on average, and their rates of survival ought therefore to be significantly higher.

Without doing a detailed trawl of the figures one can only speculate, but I have three possible suggestions for what might be causing this apparent discrepancy:

1. Britain locked down later into its epidemic and has ended up with a higher rate of hospitalisations than Italy but, because the healthcare system hasn't been swamped in any part of the country, the patient survival rate has indeed been better and this has cancelled out the effect of the late lockdown
2. Lombardy had a meltdown but the Italians managed to save some other regions from serious harm through the prompt use of travel bans. Britain didn't do this so, although our healthcare system coped better in the round, the epidemic was more widespread which negated the advantage of that preparedness
3. There are important factors about the progress of Covid-19 and how it affects individual patients very differently which we still do not understand. It may simply be that a proportion of those infected with this virus are doomed to die, regardless of how rudimentary or sophisticated their medical treatment happens to be. Thus, the fact that parts of the Italian medical system became overloaded whereas the NHS appears to be coping much better has made no difference to patient survival rates

Ethnicity seems to be critically important. Italy is 95% ethnically Italian and half the balance are white European. UK 87% white.

Edit: and London 56% white.

That's a very good point. London is highly diverse, as you just pointed out in your edit. In England as a whole the present estimate for the non-white segment of the population is about 15%.

I don't think it can be the only answer - apart from my possible explanations given above, others have pointed out that the UK has a higher population density and higher rates of obesity than Italy - but it seems plausible as a contributory factor given the disproportionately severe effect that the virus reportedly has on BAME patients.

Well we do know heart disease, diabetes and obesity are terrible comorbidities to have if you catch CV. We also know that genetically BAME have more greater instances of the first two and that obesity is also a big problem (although also a wider societal issue).

WOW!.

Fox news saying multiple sources say the virus escaped from a lab in Wuhan via an intern who went to a wet market.

I know something that is nearly as rare as flour and yeast. A decent exercise mat that doesn't cost £60 cos its some poncy yoga jobbie.

I need a new one and bugger me if I can get one that isn't some either utter garbage or requires the user to wear lululemon yoga pants are a prerequisite to purchasing it.

I’ve never bought flour, what do people use it for?

Andy_JS said:

rottenborough said:

WOW!.

Fox news saying multiple sources say the virus escaped from a lab in Wuhan via an intern who went to a wet market.

Is anyone shocked by the allegation?

Not particularly, no

FrancisUrquhart said:

I know something that is nearly as rare as flour and yeast. A decent exercise mat that doesn't cost £60 cos its some poncy yoga jobbie.

I need a new one and bugger me if I can get one that isn't some either utter garbage or requires the user to wear lululemon yoga pants are a prerequisite to purchasing it.

Nothing wrong with lululemon - good employers who seem to treat staff well.

MaxPB said:

Andy_JS said:

MaxPB said:

rcs1000 said:

dodrade said:

eek said:

ManchesterKurt said:

TGOHF666 said:

Skype = android
Teams = iphone

Both Msft products intended for different purposes

Word = Android
Excel = iPhone

Nope Skype (the none business version) was a bought in consumer product.

Skype for business was previously called Lync and was ok but never that great (it could however do conference calls if managed well).

Teams can do both 1 to 1 calls and larger conference calls - it uses different technology (azure video) for the conference functionality.

If Teams is superior why haven't Microsoft discontinued Skype yet?

Because Skype is a consumer product in one part of Microsoft, while Teams is a business product that's part of the Office suite and meant to compete with Slack.

The real question is does anyone still use Skype? I haven't come across it in any sense, consumer or business.

What's the alternative to Skype?

So many options. It depends on your setting. In the corporate world teams, hangouts/meet and zoom. In consumer land WhatsApp, duo, facetime, hangouts are all superior to Skype.

I don't think the consumer-land comparison you're making is quite like-for-like here if someone (thinking of @AndyJS in particular) is looking for a Skype replacement, though clearly they're all competitors in a similar space. For example FaceTime is Apple-only - you do get some families where everyone uses Apple and they even give granny an iPhone or iPad for that reason, but you can't guarantee that none of your friends or relatives use Android or only have a Windows laptop.

Duo is available on web, iOS and Android, and lets you do voice and video calls. But I don't think you can share files and photos, which is something I suspect a lot of people do with elderly relatives. Can you call a telephone line from Duo? Or do a text chat? I think in those respects it's missing features that a lot of people use Skype for.

WhatsApp I wrote about below.

Hangouts I would say is the closest in functionality. But as far as I can see, like Skype it's losing the race against the likes of FaceTime and the now-ubiquitous WhatsApp. Google doesn't seem to have much interest in Hangouts, I didn't like them getting rid of the rather fun picture-drawing tool a few years back! I wonder whether the fact Hangouts and Skype have so much functionality is one of the reasons they've slipped behind, and apps that focus on doing a few things well and have a clearer (albeit slimmer) purpose have prospered.

Due to my dislike of Facebook I did try to get my family chat group to shift from WhatsApp to the more privacy-friendly Signal but nobody else had it installed on their phone!! >:-[ From memory you weren't a WhatsApp fan either @MaxPB? Did you ever persuade anyone to move away from it?

IshmaelZ said:

isam said:

I’ve never bought flour, what do people use it for?

Cutting cocaine for the retail market.

Due to the scarcity the roles of the white powders may be reversed.