politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » Pelosi says Trump’s handling of the COVID-19 caused “unnecessa

Sandpit said:

Can I be first to argue that the UK health system should be much more like Germany's?

Everyone opposed to the government’s response should agree.

https://www.businessinsider.nl/germany-why-coronavirus-death-rate-lower-italy-spain-test-healthcare-2020-3?international=true&r=US

The levels of investment should be similar.

They aren't

ukpaul said:

another_richard said:

AlastairMeeks said:

That wasn’t so difficult after all:

https://twitter.com/nickeardleybbc/status/1250817782024994818?s=21

Vague blather.

It is the right answer, however. Everything is reliant on these numbers and we won't know when that willbe until those numbers turn up.

Indeed.

Which is why the 'plan to leave lockdown' is worthless until the results on the ground improve.

The limiting factors are new tests, new infections and new deaths not whether there is an official plan or not.

MarqueeMark said:

Big_G_NorthWales said:

Laura Kunnesberg - give us an idea when the restrictions will be eased

Did she sleep through Raab address.

Just point and laugh.

"Next question...."

Like the UW Covid model, the journalist chat bots at the press conference clearly need to be turned off...and replaced with some new ones.

Laura K wants a question which will be digestible for the light and fluffy 6pm News.

She knows the answer before it's given.

She isn't trying to get genuine new info - she is just trying to supply something for the masses who have no interest in any detail.

Big_G_NorthWales said:

AlastairMeeks said:

The paleo-conservatives are not so much out of line with the British public as in a completely different queue:

https://twitter.com/yougov/status/1250807470655766529?s=21

What on earth is a paleo - conservative

For me I am 100% behind the extension as are 91% of the public in this poll

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleoconservatism

hospitals bed usage down again today.
Up slightly in wales and East england , down in the rest of the country.

London 20% down since the 8th april.

RobD said:

another_richard said:

RobD said:

TGOHF666 said:

rottenborough said:

TGOHF666 said:

AlastairMeeks said:

That wasn’t so difficult after all:

https://twitter.com/nickeardleybbc/status/1250817782024994818?s=21

No 5 is a bit tenuous.

4 seems to be a goal that is always just over the horizon.

18k tests yesterday

Also capacity apparently far higher, 35,000.

So only have to triple capacity and use it at nearly 100% in the next two weeks to reach the government target.

Well they have already tripled it in the previous two weeks.

Tests have been pretty static for the last 10 days.

isam said:

AlastairMeeks said:

The paleo-conservatives are not so much out of line with the British public as in a completely different queue:

https://twitter.com/yougov/status/1250807470655766529?s=21

The problem, in my eyes, to that kind of polling, is that its like asking the British public if they think the 1/2 favourite for Saturdays big race, the horse everyone is talking about on the 24hour news cycle, is a good bet to win at those odds. 91% may say yes, and the minority opposing it, thinking it is actually a lay, will be the professionals/clued up layers and bookies. So being out of sync with public opinion, to me, isn't anything to worry about

Maybe I see everything in terms of gambling, to my detriment, though

But it does rather undercut the argument that any moment now the British public's going to revolt against the lockdown (or similar arguments that the government has been constrained by how early they could have started the lockdown or how long they can continue it for before people would just start ignoring it)

another_richard said:

RobD said:

another_richard said:

RobD said:

TGOHF666 said:

rottenborough said:

TGOHF666 said:

AlastairMeeks said:

That wasn’t so difficult after all:

https://twitter.com/nickeardleybbc/status/1250817782024994818?s=21

No 5 is a bit tenuous.

4 seems to be a goal that is always just over the horizon.

18k tests yesterday

Also capacity apparently far higher, 35,000.

So only have to triple capacity and use it at nearly 100% in the next two weeks to reach the government target.

Well they have already tripled it in the previous two weeks.

Tests have been pretty static for the last 10 days.

Sorry, I was referring to capacity.

TGOHF666 said:

Next Q - does Raab's feel bad that the virus impacts BAME and old people more severely ?

Of course he doesn't, he is an evil uncaring baby eating immigrant hating Tory...or something like that.

rottenborough said:

TheWhiteRabbit said:

AlastairMeeks said:

The paleo-conservatives are not so much out of line with the British public as in a completely different queue:

https://twitter.com/yougov/status/1250807470655766529?s=21

By paleo-conservatives, do you mean Toby Young?

Except its not what he thinks.

Here he is in his own words on his new website:

"Although I believe the lockdown needs to be dialled back, I’m not absolutely certain of that and am open to having my mind changed."

So it... is what he thinks?

Pagan2 said:

Ok so inequality in education only matters to you when it is caused by money. Even though the other that you don't want to address is both much bigger and also impacts on the other kids who are trying to learn as children of those parents tend to be disruptive in the classroom and take up teacher time to deal with and make it more difficult for those to learn to do so?

By the way should someone tell Kinablu we changed thread so he achieves thread equality?

I'm here.

It's not that some people being better parents than others doesn't matter, it's just that the solution for this is worse than the problem. Are we going to have kids brought up 24/7 in identikit communes by standardized robots rather than at home by their own flesh & blood? No. Not for me. What we can do, however, is enact measures which will substantially reduce the impact of parental financial means on the formal educational opportunities of children. This is specifically and exclusively what I am arguing for. Of course I can argue other more extreme things but I'm not doing so here. Parents can continue to help their kids in a thousand different ways. But not by purchasing them a ticket for the schooling equivalent of a gilded gated community. And that is it. It's hardly Pol Pot.

I'm always astonished by the outrage. It says a lot about how entrenched this particular perk of the affluent is. Yet I rarely hear a serious argument overtly in favour of it - that the purchasing of educational privilege is a good thing and should be encouraged. All I tend to hear are either (i) lurid comparisons of my modestly progressive aspiration to the totalitarian USSR or (ii) various manifestations of "spocking" - a word I use here to mean the nitpicking of an idea to death using ostensibly logical but in fact ludicrously exaggerated assumptions of what would happen if it were implemented - or (iii) the rather sterile argument that something which will not eliminate all educational inequalities is somehow doomed to failure in eliminating any of them.

But anyway. Virus.

bigjohnowls said:

Sandpit said:

Can I be first to argue that the UK health system should be much more like Germany's?

Everyone opposed to the government’s response should agree.

https://www.businessinsider.nl/germany-why-coronavirus-death-rate-lower-italy-spain-test-healthcare-2020-3?international=true&r=US

The levels of investment should be similar.

They aren't

France has higher health spending than Germany.

BJO, do you have evidence that France is doing better than Germany?

FrancisUrquhart said:

TGOHF666 said:

Next Q - does Raab's feel bad that the virus impacts BAME and old people more severely ?

Of course he doesn't, he is an evil uncaring baby eating immigrant hating Tory...or something like that.

The boffins in CCHQ got the virus wrong, it wasn't supposed to target the old.

Big_G_NorthWales said:

rottenborough said:

Big_G_NorthWales said:

Laura Kunnesberg - give us an idea when the restrictions will be eased

Did she sleep through Raab address.

Not exactly that lass from CNN taking down Trump.

The CNN lass was excellent.

Kunnesberg is one of many journalists having a stinker in this crisis

Sam Coates, the next waste of space. Points to the 'debate' being important about when x will happen when it's him and his colleagues who are creating that debate. Good put down from Raab, though, getting close to saying 'what a stupid question'.

Interesting - sex, age and co-morbidities clearly linked to mortality, but ethnicity not as clear - so they're investigating it urgently.

BannedinnParis said:

TGOHF666 said:

Next Q - does Raab's feel bad that the virus impacts BAME and old people more severely ?

seriously?

that is laughably shit .

The correct answer is that the Lady Chakrabarti is to be commissioned to lead a Royal Commission into institutional racism on the part of COVID variant viruses.

A separate commission will handle the sexism issue.

BannedinnParis said:

TGOHF666 said:

Next Q - does Raab's feel bad that the virus impacts BAME and old people more severely ?

seriously?

that is laughably shit .

There must be a chat room where the journos egg each other on to ask the most inane question without actually getting fired. Although "feel bad" guy might just have gone too far and lost their job....

RobD said:

FrancisUrquhart said:

TGOHF666 said:

Next Q - does Raab's feel bad that the virus impacts BAME and old people more severely ?

Of course he doesn't, he is an evil uncaring baby eating immigrant hating Tory...or something like that.

The boffins in CCHQ got the virus wrong, it wasn't supposed to target the old.

Serves them right for buying a cheap knock-off Chinese virus like that.

Everyone knows that the best Evil Biological Weapons are made by the American Military - it's in all the movies.

Malmesbury said:

RobD said:

FrancisUrquhart said:

TGOHF666 said:

Next Q - does Raab's feel bad that the virus impacts BAME and old people more severely ?

Of course he doesn't, he is an evil uncaring baby eating immigrant hating Tory...or something like that.

The boffins in CCHQ got the virus wrong, it wasn't supposed to target the old.

Serves them right for buying a cheap knock-off Chinese virus like that.

Everyone knows that the best Evil Biological Weapons are made by the American Military - it's in all the movies.

And did you donate to the CCHQ war chest last year?

FrancisUrquhart said:

SouthamObserver said:

A bit niche, but we interviewed the head of the Oxford Univertsity tech transfer office who will be responsible for rolling out the covid-19 vaccine that was all over everywhere last weekend. It will be avaiable royalty-free, at least until the pandemic is over:
https://www.iam-media.com/coronavirus/exclusive-new-ip-policy-help-forge-partnerships-potential-uk-covid-19-vaccine

Can't we send your bod to the press conference instead? We might learn something then.

That would be bad journalism, then.

ukpaul said:

Big_G_NorthWales said:

rottenborough said:

Big_G_NorthWales said:

Laura Kunnesberg - give us an idea when the restrictions will be eased

Did she sleep through Raab address.

Not exactly that lass from CNN taking down Trump.

The CNN lass was excellent.

Kunnesberg is one of many journalists having a stinker in this crisis

Sam Coates, the next waste of space. Points to the 'debate' being important about when x will happen when it's him and his colleagues who are creating that debate. Good put down from Raab, though, getting close to saying 'what a stupid question'.

And it was stupid by Coates

You have to wonder with these widescale attacks on these journalists if someone in their media management are becoming concerned about their reputation for journalism

AlastairMeeks said:

Richard_Nabavi said:

Defending the government Part 2 (Don't worry, I return to the attack in my next post, Part 3):

It is not the case the financial responses has been 'lamentable', as Alastair posted upthread. It too has been pretty good. The only real criticism I would make was of the Potemkin budget of the 11th March. As I posted on the day (and I was one of very few people who made the criticism at that time), it was completely unrealistic in terms of what was already blindingly obvious on the economic impact of the pandemic. To giver the government their due, however, within a few days they had grasped the scale of the issue and have dealt with it super-fast. Those saying that the money has been too slow to appear are being totally unrealistic as to what is possible.

The ideas behind the financial response are pretty good, as I said. It’s the implementation that’s been lamentable.

I don’t agree on the ideas front: too focused on loans and the use of banks and the furlough scheme does not work for businesses which can continue to provide a reduced service. It encourages a shutdown. Better than nothing but if this lockdown is going to continue then the Treasury’s finest minds (ha!) need to rethink it. They should start by talking to some actual SMEs first.

https://twitter.com/clarkemicah/status/1250805637472292864?s=21

isam said:

https://twitter.com/clarkemicah/status/1250805637472292864?s=21

Thanks for sharing that, I would hate to have missed Peter Hitchens congratulating himself on having the courage to look like an idiot in public.

AlastairMeeks said:

The paleo-conservatives are not so much out of line with the British public as in a completely different queue:

https://twitter.com/yougov/status/1250807470655766529?s=21

If you are a paleo conservative you probably want to reverse all the Reform Acts since 1832 and go back to a 5% franchise, so on that basis you would then be in line with the new electorate!

Cyclefree said:

AlastairMeeks said:

Richard_Nabavi said:

Defending the government Part 2 (Don't worry, I return to the attack in my next post, Part 3):

It is not the case the financial responses has been 'lamentable', as Alastair posted upthread. It too has been pretty good. The only real criticism I would make was of the Potemkin budget of the 11th March. As I posted on the day (and I was one of very few people who made the criticism at that time), it was completely unrealistic in terms of what was already blindingly obvious on the economic impact of the pandemic. To giver the government their due, however, within a few days they had grasped the scale of the issue and have dealt with it super-fast. Those saying that the money has been too slow to appear are being totally unrealistic as to what is possible.

The ideas behind the financial response are pretty good, as I said. It’s the implementation that’s been lamentable.

I don’t agree on the ideas front: too focused on loans and the use of banks and the furlough scheme does not work for businesses which can continue to provide a reduced service. It encourages a shutdown. Better than nothing but if this lockdown is going to continue then the Treasury’s finest minds (ha!) need to rethink it. They should start by talking to some actual SMEs first.

The furlough scheme does work for quite a lot of businesses which can operate a reduced service (assuming they have more than one employee), but otherwise, I agree.

Anyway, sunbathing weather here.

The sky is cloudless, clear and very very blue.

I watched ewes which had just lambed and their lambs being moved by the farmer up the hill next to where I am living and they have all scrambled off to get the nice new grass there.

I have acquired a large variety of knitting wools and will be making lots of lovely things to wear. If anyone fancies a nice hand-knitted garment - not just wool but in cotton or silk or linen etc - then VM me.

I need to get a pair of really good binoculars and a book about birds so that I can recognise the many birds around here. The birdsong is wonderful.

HYUFD said:

AlastairMeeks said:

The paleo-conservatives are not so much out of line with the British public as in a completely different queue:

https://twitter.com/yougov/status/1250807470655766529?s=21

If you are a paleo conservative you probably want to reverse all the Reform Acts since 1832 and go back to a 5% franchise, so on that basis you would then be in line with the new electorate!

1832 - that ghastly howling democracy?

To be honest I have my doubts about the act of *1432* - 40 shillings of property lets peasants and villains vote by the score!

RobD said:

another_richard said:

RobD said:

another_richard said:

RobD said:

TGOHF666 said:

rottenborough said:

TGOHF666 said:

AlastairMeeks said:

That wasn’t so difficult after all:

https://twitter.com/nickeardleybbc/status/1250817782024994818?s=21

No 5 is a bit tenuous.

4 seems to be a goal that is always just over the horizon.

18k tests yesterday

Also capacity apparently far higher, 35,000.

So only have to triple capacity and use it at nearly 100% in the next two weeks to reach the government target.

Well they have already tripled it in the previous two weeks.

Tests have been pretty static for the last 10 days.

Sorry, I was referring to capacity.

Capacity is important, but insufficient on its own, you need to figure out whom to test, as well.

On the wider question of "when?" I'd like to repost an attempt of an answer that I first posted a week ago:


When can we begin - in a responsible way - to relax the lockdown?

There are 3 crucial factors:

1) The overall infection needs to subside. We need to be confident that a capable, representative testing regime shows a substantial decline in new infections.
Bringing it down to zero would require maintaining an even tighter lockdown until Christmas. That's not practically feasible. We need to accept that some infectious carriers will still be around, that new community transmission will occur, new clusters forming.
There are several lags, both statistically and in real terms. Fatalities lag infections, but the release of hospital patients lags even more. Some people need more than a month to recover, even the "fat blond Jesus" has been lingering for a couple of weeks already. That's why point 2 is important.

2) There are currently some health care capacities in abundance where the virus hasn't yet shown up, but we need to mind the weakest link of the chain. Even current hotspots will see new infections. We must be sure that all health care facilities are back to a sufficient level of free capacity, stocks of PPE, etc. are replenished.

3) We need to have an extensive and efficient testing regime in place that can deal with the expected multitude of newly forming infection clusters. That means not only test kits, reagents, lab capacity and staff, but beyond that - maybe even more importantly - we need intelligence, we need to know whom to test.
A major weakness of the British response seems to have been an early breakdown of contact tracing. The legwork, interviewing the infected and tracking down the contacts, is immensely personnel-intensive. The competent authorities in the UK had been overwhelmed quickly. Ramping up the numbers of staff and instructing them is essential but presumably not sufficient. They need to be assisted by data collecting and processing. The wider population needs to be introduced to the fact that anonymised and secure apps are being developed for that and that the participation of everyone is absolutely crucial for the whole scheme to work. People need to be explained that the relatively minor infringement of their data protection is worth the saving of so many lives.

The relaxing of the lockdown will be sequential, incremental, possibly with regional or local variations. It will also probably not be linear but oscillating between loosening and tightening again. But until we have a vaccine available the strategy depicted above is without any realistic, responsible alternative.

£15m, journos.....

kinabalu said:

Pagan2 said:

Ok so inequality in education only matters to you when it is caused by money. Even though the other that you don't want to address is both much bigger and also impacts on the other kids who are trying to learn as children of those parents tend to be disruptive in the classroom and take up teacher time to deal with and make it more difficult for those to learn to do so?

By the way should someone tell Kinablu we changed thread so he achieves thread equality?

I'm here.

It's not that some people being better parents than others doesn't matter, it's just that the solution for this is worse than the problem. Are we going to have kids brought up 24/7 in identikit communes by standardized robots rather than at home by their own flesh & blood? No. Not for me. What we can do, however, is enact measures which will substantially reduce the impact of parental financial means on the formal educational opportunities of children. This is specifically and exclusively what I am arguing for. Of course I can argue other more extreme things but I'm not doing so here. Parents can continue to help their kids in a thousand different ways. But not by purchasing them a ticket for the schooling equivalent of a gilded gated community. And that is it. It's hardly Pol Pot.

I'm always astonished by the outrage. It says a lot about how entrenched this particular perk of the affluent is..

But anyway. Virus.

I have no skin in the game as couldn't afford private for my son. However the point I keep making and you consistently fail to answer is even if you ban all private schools it won't stop people using money to buy advantage

They will if really wealthy have them educated abroad, if not really wealthy they will hire private tutors. I can see many teaming up one set hires a maths tutor, one hires an english etc....hmmm sounds almost like an unofficial private school there doesnt it. They will also use financial advantage and buy houses in good school areas and guess what that will crowd the poor out whereas now where many send their kids private they have no reason to buy up all the housing in good school areas so poorer people have more chance. Your solution I suspect is that it would condemn even more of the poorest to the failing schools and all because leftie ideological theory doesn't ever work when put into practise

@matthiasfromhamburg - true about testing. I think ramping up capacity is more important for the next wave, rather than this one.

matthiasfromhamburg said:

RobD said:

another_richard said:

RobD said:

another_richard said:

RobD said:

TGOHF666 said:

rottenborough said:

TGOHF666 said:

AlastairMeeks said:

That wasn’t so difficult after all:

https://twitter.com/nickeardleybbc/status/1250817782024994818?s=21

No 5 is a bit tenuous.

4 seems to be a goal that is always just over the horizon.

18k tests yesterday

Also capacity apparently far higher, 35,000.

So only have to triple capacity and use it at nearly 100% in the next two weeks to reach the government target.

Well they have already tripled it in the previous two weeks.

Tests have been pretty static for the last 10 days.

Sorry, I was referring to capacity.

Capacity is important, but insufficient on its own, you need to figure out whom to test, as well.

On the wider question of "when?" I'd like to repost an attempt of an answer that I first posted a week ago:


When can we begin - in a responsible way - to relax the lockdown?

There are 3 crucial factors:

1) The overall infection needs to subside. We need to be confident that a capable, representative testing regime shows a substantial decline in new infections.
Bringing it down to zero would require maintaining an even tighter lockdown until Christmas. That's not practically feasible. We need to accept that some infectious carriers will still be around, that new community transmission will occur, new clusters forming.
There are several lags, both statistically and in real terms. Fatalities lag infections, but the release of hospital patients lags even more. Some people need more than a month to recover, even the "fat blond Jesus" has been lingering for a couple of weeks already. That's why point 2 is important.

2) There are currently some health care capacities in abundance where the virus hasn't yet shown up, but we need to mind the weakest link of the chain. Even current hotspots will see new infections. We must be sure that all health care facilities are back to a sufficient level of free capacity, stocks of PPE, etc. are replenished.

3) We need to have an extensive and efficient testing regime in place that can deal with the expected multitude of newly forming infection clusters. That means not only test kits, reagents, lab capacity and staff, but beyond that - maybe even more importantly - we need intelligence, we need to know whom to test.
A major weakness of the British response seems to have been an early breakdown of contact tracing. The legwork, interviewing the infected and tracking down the contacts, is immensely personnel-intensive. The competent authorities in the UK had been overwhelmed quickly. Ramping up the numbers of staff and instructing them is essential but presumably not sufficient. They need to be assisted by data collecting and processing. The wider population needs to be introduced to the fact that anonymised and secure apps are being developed for that and that the participation of everyone is absolutely crucial for the whole scheme to work. People need to be explained that the relatively minor infringement of their data protection is worth the saving of so many lives.

The relaxing of the lockdown will be sequential, incremental, possibly with regional or local variations. It will also probably not be linear but oscillating between loosening and tightening again. But until we have a vaccine available the strategy depicted above is without any realistic, responsible alternative.

"The relaxing of the lockdown will be sequential, incremental, possibly with regional or local variations. It will also probably not be linear but oscillating between loosening and tightening again."

You're naughty - you just want to see Peston's head explode, don't you?

Nigelb said:

Cyclefree said:

AlastairMeeks said:

Richard_Nabavi said:

Defending the government Part 2 (Don't worry, I return to the attack in my next post, Part 3):

It is not the case the financial responses has been 'lamentable', as Alastair posted upthread. It too has been pretty good. The only real criticism I would make was of the Potemkin budget of the 11th March. As I posted on the day (and I was one of very few people who made the criticism at that time), it was completely unrealistic in terms of what was already blindingly obvious on the economic impact of the pandemic. To giver the government their due, however, within a few days they had grasped the scale of the issue and have dealt with it super-fast. Those saying that the money has been too slow to appear are being totally unrealistic as to what is possible.

The ideas behind the financial response are pretty good, as I said. It’s the implementation that’s been lamentable.

I don’t agree on the ideas front: too focused on loans and the use of banks and the furlough scheme does not work for businesses which can continue to provide a reduced service. It encourages a shutdown. Better than nothing but if this lockdown is going to continue then the Treasury’s finest minds (ha!) need to rethink it. They should start by talking to some actual SMEs first.

The furlough scheme does work for quite a lot of businesses which can operate a reduced service (assuming they have more than one employee), but otherwise, I agree.

Yes, quite. In addition Ms Cyclefree is wrong on the suggestion that help should not have gone through banks. It would be utterly impractical to do it any other way: the civil service simply doesn't have thousands of loan officers sitting around to process claims from businesses, whereas the banks already have the infrastructure and systems in place.

She's also wrong about them not talking to SMEs. They did.

Overall it's a good package. The main hole in it was help to medium-sized companies, but they've tweaked that now. The other obvious hole was no help to contractors incorporated as one-person businesses, but that was intentional.

Surely the EU will request an extension?

david_herdson said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

david_herdson said:

kamski said:

david_herdson said:

The reason why Britain didn't lock down earlier is the same reason that people are agitating for it to be lifted now. People would not buy into that kind of action unless it was clearly necessary - and it wasn't so clearly necessary until the deaths started mounting up - and it couldn't be enforced until legislation was in place, and I doubt that could have been pushed through any earlier.

And yet many other countries managed to lock down when they had far fewer deaths per capita than the UK did when it locked down.
Of course it could have been "pushed through" earlier.

You say "of course" it (the legislation) could have been pushed through earlier. Was it even ready? In an ideal world, the government would have introduced the Bill before - or at least at the same time as - it brought in the lock-down. That the initial phase had no legal basis suggests that the very lengthy Bill might well have still been being drafted at the time.

They could have made use of the Civil Contingecies act. That would not have required any sort of Parliamentary scrutiny at that point and could then have been superceded by a properly considered act a week or two later

They could. But the very fact that it wouldn't have required any parliamentary scrutiny is good reason to be very wary of using it. I wouldn't argue that the response to Covid-19 has been perfect by any means but decisions always look easier in retrospect and an instinct not to massively disrupt people's lives (Brexit apart, and that's a bloody big exception), is not usually a bad thing.

And all this discussion is retrospective. We can't stay in lockdown for 12 months so something approximating to life as normalish is going to have to return while Covid-19 is still out there, circulating and infecting. Discussion and policy options have to think about the future too.

I agree with the entirety of your comment.

But the point being made was that there HAD to be delays because the necessary legislation could not get through Parliament quickly enough. This is clearly not true because the Civil Contingencies act is there on the statute books and, if necessary, could have been used. Indeed, for all that I detest the act and think it should be repealed at the earliest opportunity because of its scope for abuse, if ever there was a situation that could have called for it to be used this was it.

matthiasfromhamburg said:

RobD said:

another_richard said:

RobD said:

another_richard said:

RobD said:

TGOHF666 said:

rottenborough said:

TGOHF666 said:

AlastairMeeks said:

That wasn’t so difficult after all:

https://twitter.com/nickeardleybbc/status/1250817782024994818?s=21

No 5 is a bit tenuous.

4 seems to be a goal that is always just over the horizon.

18k tests yesterday

Also capacity apparently far higher, 35,000.

So only have to triple capacity and use it at nearly 100% in the next two weeks to reach the government target.

Well they have already tripled it in the previous two weeks.

Tests have been pretty static for the last 10 days.

Sorry, I was referring to capacity.

Capacity is important, but insufficient on its own, you need to figure out whom to test, as well.

On the wider question of "when?" I'd like to repost an attempt of an answer that I first posted a week ago:


When can we begin - in a responsible way - to relax the lockdown?

There are 3 crucial factors:

1) The overall infection needs to subside. We need to be confident that a capable, representative testing regime shows a substantial decline in new infections.
Bringing it down to zero would require maintaining an even tighter lockdown until Christmas. That's not practically feasible. We need to accept that some infectious carriers will still be around, that new community transmission will occur, new clusters forming.
There are several lags, both statistically and in real terms. Fatalities lag infections, but the release of hospital patients lags even more. Some people need more than a month to recover, even the "fat blond Jesus" has been lingering for a couple of weeks already. That's why point 2 is important.

2) There are currently some health care capacities in abundance where the virus hasn't yet shown up, but we need to mind the weakest link of the chain. Even current hotspots will see new infections. We must be sure that all health care facilities are back to a sufficient level of free capacity, stocks of PPE, etc. are replenished.

3) We need to have an extensive and efficient testing regime in place that can deal with the expected multitude of newly forming infection clusters. That means not only test kits, reagents, lab capacity and staff, but beyond that - maybe even more importantly - we need intelligence, we need to know whom to test.
A major weakness of the British response seems to have been an early breakdown of contact tracing. The legwork, interviewing the infected and tracking down the contacts, is immensely personnel-intensive. The competent authorities in the UK had been overwhelmed quickly. Ramping up the numbers of staff and instructing them is essential but presumably not sufficient. They need to be assisted by data collecting and processing. The wider population needs to be introduced to the fact that anonymised and secure apps are being developed for that and that the participation of everyone is absolutely crucial for the whole scheme to work. People need to be explained that the relatively minor infringement of their data protection is worth the saving of so many lives.

The relaxing of the lockdown will be sequential, incremental, possibly with regional or local variations. It will also probably not be linear but oscillating between loosening and tightening again. But until we have a vaccine available the strategy depicted above is without any realistic, responsible alternative.

Agreed.
But you don't start explaining things to the wider population by saying talking about plans for what we do post lockdown is a "distraction".
That is both patronising and stupid.

bigjohnowls said:

Big_G_NorthWales said:

bigjohnowls said:

HYUFD said:

bigjohnowls said:

On Topic

Yes

and when we finally add in Care home deaths we pass France to move to 3rd in the shittest outcome in Europe league table and to me looks more and more like we will end up with most deaths in Europe.

I blame Jeremy Corbyn

We have the 3rd biggest population in Europe so that would be about par

So you think the Govt response is distinctly average.

I will get back to you in 4 weeks.

Do you really think that in 4 weeks time we will be able to assess how individual countries have performed in covid 19.

It will be months, even years, before any real lessons will be obvious

So in my books Germany, S Korea have handled this really well.

Trumps handling has been appalling.

We are far closer to which in our outcomes?

You keep saying it's not easy. I agree why do you think Germany and S Korea appear to have found it much easier than the UK?

South Korea have had SARs and MERS, and spent years developing a technological response to this, that includes infringements on our civil liberties that many in the west aren't comfortable with.

Even now I don't foresee the UK public being happy with the state being able to spy on our every move, purchase and interaction.

Germany, have long been comfortable with the use of the private sector when it comes to health care. Its something that many on the left in the UK don't like the idea of and any suggestion of utilising it gets tarred with "privatising the NHS" e.g. I presume you weren't a fan of Tony Blair desire to extend healthcare capacity via the use of private sector providers?

Part of the reason for our inability to ramp up testing is because all of the sort of testing required in the England goes through PHE. Now we are finally starting to make use of the private sector to increase capacity.

contrarian said:

Vallance made the point that the medics considered the long term implications of what they are doing and the potentially deleterious affect on health when weighing up their recommendations/

Sorry, but how can he? he isn't an economist, much less a politician he doesn't have the first idea of how much the economy is going to shrink, how big a hit that contraction will give to tax revenues, and what the government might do in response.

Raab has effectively delegated the running of the country to the unqualified, unelected and unaccountable

Terrifying.

Luckily such experts exist in the civil service.

rottenborough said:

Whatever you think of Johnson's teams performance over the virus, they are being utter twats over this:

https://twitter.com/steverichards14/status/1250821284247867393

As they do not want to suffer the fate May did when she delayed Brexit by extending the transition period and seeing Leavers again defect from the Tories to the Brexit Party

https://twitter.com/YouGov/status/1250692097205841920?s=19

Monkeys said:

Surely the EU will request an extension?

UK spokesman claims even if EU requests one we will say 'no'.

Deranged.

2nd wave virus next winter, combined with No Deal Brexit?

Hello PM Starmer in 2024 and for the next decade.

RobD said:

contrarian said:

Vallance made the point that the medics considered the long term implications of what they are doing and the potentially deleterious affect on health when weighing up their recommendations/

Sorry, but how can he? he isn't an economist, much less a politician he doesn't have the first idea of how much the economy is going to shrink, how big a hit that contraction will give to tax revenues, and what the government might do in response.

Raab has effectively delegated the running of the country to the unqualified, unelected and unaccountable

Terrifying.

Luckily such experts exist in the civil service.

Raab's five tests show he isn;t listening to any of them. He is in thrall to SAGE. Completely.

Presumably because he thinks that's the best way of covering his hide.

Monkeys said:

Surely the EU will request an extension?

Yes, of course. It's the responsible thing to do in circumstances like the current ones.

Cyclefree said:

Anyway, sunbathing weather here.

The sky is cloudless, clear and very very blue.

I watched ewes which had just lambed and their lambs being moved by the farmer up the hill next to where I am living and they have all scrambled off to get the nice new grass there.

I have acquired a large variety of knitting wools and will be making lots of lovely things to wear. If anyone fancies a nice hand-knitted garment - not just wool but in cotton or silk or linen etc - then VM me.

I need to get a pair of really good binoculars and a book about birds so that I can recognise the many birds around here. The birdsong is wonderful.

I’m jealous! It’s been cloudy and cool here on Tyneside, I was hoping to top-up my tan from the last few days.

Gallowgate said:

Cyclefree said:

Anyway, sunbathing weather here.

The sky is cloudless, clear and very very blue.

I watched ewes which had just lambed and their lambs being moved by the farmer up the hill next to where I am living and they have all scrambled off to get the nice new grass there.

I have acquired a large variety of knitting wools and will be making lots of lovely things to wear. If anyone fancies a nice hand-knitted garment - not just wool but in cotton or silk or linen etc - then VM me.

I need to get a pair of really good binoculars and a book about birds so that I can recognise the many birds around here. The birdsong is wonderful.

I’m jealous! It’s been cloudy and cool here on Tyneside, I was hoping to top-up my tan from the last few days.

I thought the only opportunity for a Geordie to top up their tan without going abroad was via a sunbed or spray tan?

https://twitter.com/jakubkrupa/status/1250831617351913474?s=21

Richard_Nabavi said:

Nigelb said:

Cyclefree said:

AlastairMeeks said:

Richard_Nabavi said:

Defending the government Part 2 (Don't worry, I return to the attack in my next post, Part 3):

It is not the case the financial responses has been 'lamentable', as Alastair posted upthread. It too has been pretty good. The only real criticism I would make was of the Potemkin budget of the 11th March. As I posted on the day (and I was one of very few people who made the criticism at that time), it was completely unrealistic in terms of what was already blindingly obvious on the economic impact of the pandemic. To giver the government their due, however, within a few days they had grasped the scale of the issue and have dealt with it super-fast. Those saying that the money has been too slow to appear are being totally unrealistic as to what is possible.

The ideas behind the financial response are pretty good, as I said. It’s the implementation that’s been lamentable.

I don’t agree on the ideas front: too focused on loans and the use of banks and the furlough scheme does not work for businesses which can continue to provide a reduced service. It encourages a shutdown. Better than nothing but if this lockdown is going to continue then the Treasury’s finest minds (ha!) need to rethink it. They should start by talking to some actual SMEs first.

The furlough scheme does work for quite a lot of businesses which can operate a reduced service (assuming they have more than one employee), but otherwise, I agree.

Yes, quite. In addition Ms Cyclefree is wrong on the suggestion that help should not have gone through banks. It would be utterly impractical to do it any other way: the civil service simply doesn't have thousands of loan officers sitting around to process claims from businesses, whereas the banks already have the infrastructure and systems in place.

She's also wrong about them not talking to SMEs. They did.

Overall it's a good package. The main hole in it was help to medium-sized companies, but they've tweaked that now. The other obvious hole was no help to contractors incorporated as one-person businesses, but that was intentional.

As I have said multiple times, I think loans are the wrong way to go. The government should expand the grants side of the package. A loan is no good to a business which has no income and will not be able to replace the lost income when it reopens.

Richard_Nabavi said:

Cyclefree said:

I have acquired a large variety of knitting wools and will be making lots of lovely things to wear. If anyone fancies a nice hand-knitted garment - not just wool but in cotton or silk or linen etc - then VM me.

Do you do facemasks?

A new Cyclefree business is born! Stylish covers to put over proper masks. They could match your scarf and hat - also knitted by me.

I can see the presentation on Dragon’s Den already......

HYUFD said:

rottenborough said:

2nd wave virus next winter, combined with No Deal Brexit?

Hello PM Starmer in 2024 and for the next decade.

What would guarantee PM Starmer is splitting the vote on the right and seeing Leavers defect from the Tories to the Brexit Party under FPTP by extending the transition indefinitely.

As Yougov showed it is Remainers who strongly support extending the transition and the vast majority of them are already voting for Starmer's Labour Party or the LDs, most Leavers are still voting Tory and oppose extending the transition

That opinion polling has no relevance what so ever. Brexit is STILL an abstract concept considering nothing has actually changed yet. It will cease to be an abstract concept in such a scenario referenced above.