It is perfectly legitimate for a government advisor to be present and even direct SAGE meetings.
But then the line has to be that we have listened to the advice and our policy is X. It can't be we're following the scientific advice. (What would the scientific advice be on smoking?)
Plus in all of this we (still) have Dom at the controls. Which matters because it's bad enough (but again perfectly legitimate) to have him running the show in normal times when there actually is a prime minister. But it's a lot worse when, as now, we don't have a prime minister.
If you want unbiased scientific advice you don't have a political fixer 'direct'ing the committe giving it.
Oh, so he's now 'directing' the entire committee?
Cummings must be quite a man brainwashing them. Maybe he's the Master.
And of course the other problem is perception. Even if Cummings is behaving impeccably at SAGE - if the truth is benign as per my first para - how can we know this. We can't.
But why would we, and why should we? Unless the entirety of government and government briefings was open and public, that would be case for any government, and any advisor/SPAD.
It ultimately boils down to 'we don't like this guy, and we don't like his influence', but his job is to advise, and therefore have influence on the PM, and that would be true for anyone.
Yes it's defensible - advisable even - on this basis.
But Cummings is not any old SPAD. We all remember Alastair Campbell and his impact on "impartial" experts.
I don't know. Tricky one. It's probably OK. You'd need to be an insider to know.
I think we have to determine whether we think the principle of a SPAD being present and participating or not is acceptable. If it is, then the fact he is 'not any old SPAD' is irrelevant as to whether it is ok. If it isn't, then him being 'not any old SPAD' is still irrelevant.
That he is more and, to many, worse than the others is a legitimate concern, but I think it is separate to this issue and there is too much blending of the concern about Cummings' influence and his position generally, and whether despite not liking that influence and position, his participation in this context was reasonable.
To me it IS about Cummings because therein lies the specific risk that people are worried about (if they are worried). The risk is that the active participation of the second most powerful person in government - a virtual in loco PM who is known to be iconoclastic and forceful - will distort the deliberations and output of a supposedly impartial group of experts in the direction of what he and Johnson want to hear. As happened on Iraq with Campbell (in loco Blair) and the intelligence officials.
I assume meetings are similarly distorted when the PM is present?
The point is about a specific situation - where the government is selling a policy on grounds that it is based on information from independent apolitical experts. The implication is that the information is free of political bias. For example, if senior intelligence officials report that Iraq has WMD, that this is not influenced by them being aware that the PM wishes it to be so.
Isn't that what they do for all crises where SAGE is involved? I don't buy the argument that Dominic Cummings is the only person capable of influencing the others on this panel to such a level that it distorts their reasoning.
It is not totally clear to me whether you understand the risk but judge it acceptably small or you do not understand the risk. If it's the first, please advise and we can stop. Because I'm not sure I disagree. If it's the second, also please advise and I will have another bash.
Presumably the furore would be even greater if the government hadn't sent anyone to the SAGE meetings? Or, even worse, sent a deputy assistant SPAD from the Department of Health (England branch).
Possibly. Certainly I can see the argument for Cummings being there. It's an efficiency argument. Then again, it's more efficient if the M&A dept of a bank talks to its trading arm. Yet there are rules to prevent this in certain circumstances - where it is deemed more important to prevent a conflict of interest, real or perceived.
The last conflict of interest problem SAGE had was with the scientists - over swine flu, 5 of them forgot to disclose links to pharma companies.
more relevantly, there are 20 odd big hitters in the room with Cummings, not by any means guaranteed to be tory by inclination, and not easily bullied. The dodgy dossier was compiled in private by nicking stuff off the internet; no one would get it past a proper committee like this one.
OK. But for me it revolves around 2 questions -
1. Is Cummings motivated to shape "the science" in a certain direction? 2. If he were, does participating in SAGE facilitate this?
If you think "no" and "no" this is a complete non-story. If you think "yes" and "yes" it's a scandal. If it's a "yes" and a "no" - either order - you will consider it a valid concern but not personally be too concerned. FWIW, which is not an enormous amount given I know little of the man or the SAGE process, I incline to this latter position.
I don’t think the issue anywhere near as binary as that.
Probably not. But which other key questions (other than those two) would you ask yourself to determine whether you feel it is a problem that Cummings contributes to SAGE?
Ferguson just said on the record he hasn't contributed, nor has any of the political figures that have attended as an observers to these meetings.
When asked, his statement was pretty categorical on the matter.
In my experience the biggest supporters of an extended lockdown are those with close families, big houses, large savings, and a big garden. Not those who are lonely, worried about finances, and in a tiny flat with no outside space. It comes from a position of privilege.
Better than being "lonely, worried about finances" and ill with coronavirus. Emotional arguments don't work on the virus.
Except they do. People will just break the lockdown, as they are doing now. If you’re depressed and lonely, you are not going to care about a virus you haven’t caught yet.
Exactly. I hit another midweek down spot, contacted my mate who is also struggling, organised a walk together. Was the first time all of this started that either of us had seen anyone other than our family at home or people in shops. And what of all those people in relationships that only work with a lot of space?
"You might catch the virus" vs "going absolutely crazy about to do something drastic now". Yes, emotional arguments don't work on the virus. But what about every other thing that affects us? They haven't all just gone away because CV19.
Do we need to start thinking about this as the 21st Century equivalent of TB or Polio or Smallpox? Be careful what you do or where you go as you could get infected. But go live your life.
Short answer: Yes.
Long answer: The politicians are, of course, right to warn the public that social distancing will have to continue for a long time, but the present lockdown has to be eased. We will sooner or later reach the point where the cumulative negative health effects of lockdown itself, and of the massive increase in poverty that we have coming as a result of its economic consequences, begin to outweigh those of the disease itself.
Therefore, not only should life return to as near to normal as we can reasonably achieve, it must do so.
I continue to maintain the suspicion that the Nightingale hospitals are still being completed in order to accommodate the controlled second wave that is expected when the lockdown is eased. If large numbers of new Covid cases are sent straight to them, then at least some ordinary hospital capacity can be devoted to getting the most urgent treatments back on track. If you're wanting any number of elective procedures, from hip replacement to IVF, then I think you're basically shafted for the next couple of years, but hopefully the NHS can at least restart cancer screening and treatment, for example.
Of course unless the Government is actively dishonest then life will certainly not return to anything approaching 'normal'. The majority of people are not going to return to pubs, clubs, cafes, cinemas or anything else that is non essential unless they are confident they will not contract the virus. The only possible way that, short of a vaccine, the Government can hope for a return to normal wold be to lie about the dangers.
I am sure you are right that a formal lockdown may well end but that won't save businesses and, if we then see a spike in cases as a result of ending the lockdown it will be political suicide for anyone who agreed to it.
That isn't true. Treatments and outcomes for Coronavirus could vastly improve, and then people would be pretty much out to get it and get immune ASAP. Improved treatments are far more likely in the short term than a vaccine. There's a great deal more emphasis on the first, perhaps wrongly.
From what I have seen there is as much chance of that happening in the next ear as there is of a successful vaccine - close to zero. But yes that would of course be a game changer. But simply telling people now that the lockdown was being eased and expecting them to accept that seems rather optimistic.
Regarding the seeming joy in which deaths in Sweden are greeted, I have to say I’m baffled... why doesn’t everybody hope that Sweden have got it right, and that there’s a way of dealing with covid-19 that doesn’t require such strict closure of society?
Surely people aren’t such fans of big state politics that they actively want the Swedes to fail, and to sneer at anyone rooting for them?
I, for one, have been rooting for Sweden all through this process.
Me too. I desperately want them to be right, for their own sake and mine. I just don't think they are.
They may be right for Sweden.
What is right for one country may not be right for another.
Given the fact that the fatality rate in Sweden is 6/7 times higher than in the best available comparators (their neighbours to the east and west) it really doesn't look like what they're doing is right for their own country.
The worst part is that they are still taking the same or a very similar economic hit to the nation's who have locked down. They really are in the worst of both worlds situation that we may have avoided, just enough people aren't following the voluntary lockdown measures that the R value hasn't fallen below 1 but enough people are that the economy has tanked.
Is this right? Sweden has not gained a (relative) economic advantage by "locking down" less than the rest?
They could end up having an economic disadvantage. Because pandemic-caused recessions are different from standard ones - the economic change isn't caused by "normal" underlying factors. Ideally, if you could "pause" the economy throughout the pandemic and avoid the health implications (eg through sufficient social distancing and government measures to preserve incomes and assets for companies and individuals), the bounce-back is 100%.
There's some evidence that failure to impose the restrictions can make economic recovery afterwards mroe difficult ("Economists have examined the differences in non-pharmaceutical pandemic interventions across different US cities during the Flu Pandemic of 1918.. The pandemic reduced US manufacturing by an estimated 18 percent making it a large recession indeed. Those cities that pushed earlier and more intensively on pandemic containment ended up bouncing back and having higher economic growth thereafter, and more exposed areas had a decline in economic activity that persisted.")
In essence, if your people end up dying or becoming health-limited, your economy is scarred and you don't get back as far or as fast. It turns a potentially temporary issue into a permanent one.
Regarding the seeming joy in which deaths in Sweden are greeted, I have to say I’m baffled... why doesn’t everybody hope that Sweden have got it right, and that there’s a way of dealing with covid-19 that doesn’t require such strict closure of society?
Surely people aren’t such fans of big state politics that they actively want the Swedes to fail, and to sneer at anyone rooting for them?
I, for one, have been rooting for Sweden all through this process.
Me too. I desperately want them to be right, for their own sake and mine. I just don't think they are.
They may be right for Sweden.
What is right for one country may not be right for another.
Given the fact that the fatality rate in Sweden is 6/7 times higher than in the best available comparators (their neighbours to the east and west) it really doesn't look like what they're doing is right for their own country.
The worst part is that they are still taking the same or a very similar economic hit to the nation's who have locked down. They really are in the worst of both worlds situation that we may have avoided, just enough people aren't following the voluntary lockdown measures that the R value hasn't fallen below 1 but enough people are that the economy has tanked.
There are going to be significant long-term mental health benefits in not confining people to their homes, for younger people especially. I do not envy teachers here the task of having to deal with children who have been stuck in a confined space for weeks on end with parents who do not get on with each other or who cannot be arsed to make them do schoolwork or who do not have access to the internet etc.
I think there's an element of projection in the "end lockdown now" stuff - people in houses with big gardens think that people in flats must be miserable, but plenty of people live in flats because they don't want big gardens. People who live in the countryside think that people in cities must be finding it unbearable to be able to have country walks, etc.
Obviously it's inconvenient for all of us, and horrible for people in particularly unpleasant circumstances, but the polls are pretty clear: most people only want lockdowns to ease when it's relatively safe. Crowded pubs, congregating at beauty spots, packed football matches - next year is soon enough.
I think you are right [I can't believe I just said that! ]. We are experiencing something unique in our lifetimes for most of us and pretty well wherever one lives we are frightened. Especially those of us of a 'certain age'. Living in my quiet part of Spain I could easily go for a walk and no-one would know but I don't out of respect for the majority who cannot. I will be content when the easing comes to drive somewhere deserted, sit in the car or have a stroll and then come back home. Until there is some form of effective treatment or vaccine I see no change before next year and maybe longer.
Regarding the seeming joy in which deaths in Sweden are greeted, I have to say I’m baffled... why doesn’t everybody hope that Sweden have got it right, and that there’s a way of dealing with covid-19 that doesn’t require such strict closure of society?
Surely people aren’t such fans of big state politics that they actively want the Swedes to fail, and to sneer at anyone rooting for them?
I, for one, have been rooting for Sweden all through this process.
Me too. I desperately want them to be right, for their own sake and mine. I just don't think they are.
They may be right for Sweden.
What is right for one country may not be right for another.
Given the fact that the fatality rate in Sweden is 6/7 times higher than in the best available comparators (their neighbours to the east and west) it really doesn't look like what they're doing is right for their own country.
The worst part is that they are still taking the same or a very similar economic hit to the nation's who have locked down. They really are in the worst of both worlds situation that we may have avoided, just enough people aren't following the voluntary lockdown measures that the R value hasn't fallen below 1 but enough people are that the economy has tanked.
There are going to be significant long-term mental health benefits in not confining people to their homes, for younger people especially. I do not envy teachers here the task of having to deal with children who have been stuck in a confined space for weeks on end with parents who do not get on with each other or who cannot be arsed to make them do schoolwork or who do not have access to the internet etc.
five apparent suicides in 24 hours on 16 April in Merseyside. The national *average* is 16 a day. May have been an outlier of course.
How is 5 worse than 16
Five on Merseyside only. 16 is the NATIONAL average.
I know that it is rather obvious, however they could have been the only 5 that day so the point is stupid in the extreme without knowing teh total for that day across the country. I can READ.
Ferguson just shot down Guardian story.....a number of political figures have attended these meetings as observers, but not interfered in anyway.
Made a big point of saying he basically only interacts with Witty and Vallance, who are apolitical.
So Ferguson shot down the story by confirming it while minimising its importance? This is the same pattern I observed last night: people in the loop were saying the story was insignificant, not that it was false. However, the trouble is the Guardian claims from SAGE sources that Cummings (and Warner, the data scientist) did participate.
But as @MaxPB suggested earlier, this may be acting as a dead cat story by distracting attention from more urgent issues.
Regarding the seeming joy in which deaths in Sweden are greeted, I have to say I’m baffled... why doesn’t everybody hope that Sweden have got it right, and that there’s a way of dealing with covid-19 that doesn’t require such strict closure of society?
Surely people aren’t such fans of big state politics that they actively want the Swedes to fail, and to sneer at anyone rooting for them?
I, for one, have been rooting for Sweden all through this process.
Me too. I desperately want them to be right, for their own sake and mine. I just don't think they are.
They may be right for Sweden.
What is right for one country may not be right for another.
Given the fact that the fatality rate in Sweden is 6/7 times higher than in the best available comparators (their neighbours to the east and west) it really doesn't look like what they're doing is right for their own country.
The worst part is that they are still taking the same or a very similar economic hit to the nation's who have locked down. They really are in the worst of both worlds situation that we may have avoided, just enough people aren't following the voluntary lockdown measures that the R value hasn't fallen below 1 but enough people are that the economy has tanked.
There are going to be significant long-term mental health benefits in not confining people to their homes, for younger people especially. I do not envy teachers here the task of having to deal with children who have been stuck in a confined space for weeks on end with parents who do not get on with each other or who cannot be arsed to make them do schoolwork or who do not have access to the internet etc.
Regarding the seeming joy in which deaths in Sweden are greeted, I have to say I’m baffled... why doesn’t everybody hope that Sweden have got it right, and that there’s a way of dealing with covid-19 that doesn’t require such strict closure of society?
Surely people aren’t such fans of big state politics that they actively want the Swedes to fail, and to sneer at anyone rooting for them?
Perhaps they realise that there isn't a one size fits all solution for different societies and cultures, and interpreting stats in another country to reflect one's hopes for one's own country isn't very useful.
Why would that stop them hoping that Sweden have got it right?
In glittery unicorns and sparkly rainbows world I hope all countries have to some degree got it 'right', unfortunately that's not going to be the case. I don't see why I should go along with various liberty or death loons and agree that a Swedish death rate much higher than those of their comparable neighbours means that they're getting it right.
What makes Denmark and Norway comparable with Sweden other than geographic location?
Which are you're favoured and appropriate comparators for Sweden?
I’m not trying to have an argument, actually. I’m asking a question because I’m interested in the answer
It wouldn't be much of a one if you were.
You went off on a line about folk not wanting Sweden to have got it right, I said that wasn't the case for me but pointed out that on comparisons with geographical neighbours with *some* similarities Sweden didn't seem to be getting it right. You then asked why should Sweden be compared to its neighbours, I asked you which countries should it be compared to (a q. the answer to which I'd be interested).
The last redoubt of the Sverigers, you can't compare Sweden to it's immediate neighbours, you should compare it to *inaudible mumble*.
Ferguson just shot down Guardian story....."a number of political figures have attended these meetings as observers, but have not interfered in anyway".
Made a big point of saying he basically only interacts with the likes of Witty and Vallance, who are apolitical.
Regarding the seeming joy in which deaths in Sweden are greeted, I have to say I’m baffled... why doesn’t everybody hope that Sweden have got it right, and that there’s a way of dealing with covid-19 that doesn’t require such strict closure of society?
Surely people aren’t such fans of big state politics that they actively want the Swedes to fail, and to sneer at anyone rooting for them?
I, for one, have been rooting for Sweden all through this process.
Me too. I desperately want them to be right, for their own sake and mine. I just don't think they are.
They may be right for Sweden.
What is right for one country may not be right for another.
Given the fact that the fatality rate in Sweden is 6/7 times higher than in the best available comparators (their neighbours to the east and west) it really doesn't look like what they're doing is right for their own country.
The worst part is that they are still taking the same or a very similar economic hit to the nation's who have locked down. They really are in the worst of both worlds situation that we may have avoided, just enough people aren't following the voluntary lockdown measures that the R value hasn't fallen below 1 but enough people are that the economy has tanked.
Is this right? Sweden has not gained a (relative) economic advantage by "locking down" less than the rest?
Yes, it's the difference between a 27% economic contraction and a 31% contraction. It's a disaster either way.
Gosh really? OK. Therefore the (tbc) advantage of the Swedish approach seems to boil down to the "liberty" argument. That they have a large death toll and a severely damaged economy, as we do, but have retained a greater degree of freedom of action for the individual.
I think there's an element of projection in the "end lockdown now" stuff - people in houses with big gardens think that people in flats must be miserable, but plenty of people live in flats because they don't want big gardens. People who live in the countryside think that people in cities must be finding it unbearable to be able to have country walks, etc.
Obviously it's inconvenient for all of us, and horrible for people in particularly unpleasant circumstances, but the polls are pretty clear: most people only want lockdowns to ease when it's relatively safe. Crowded pubs, congregating at beauty spots, packed football matches - next year is soon enough.
Both things can be true at once. I inhabit a flat and am coping reasonably well without outside space, though then again I (a) work in a manufacturing environment so still get to travel to work each day, and (b) make good use of my daily exercise allowance, which is aided enormously by the fact that I live in a small town and it is relatively easy both to avoid people when out running and enjoy a lot of fresh air and greenery.
If I were imprisoned in a flat in the middle of London or some such other awful place, and was either working from home or unemployed, I think I would go slowly mad. And I've got the advantage of a happy marriage - I'm not locked up with someone I loathe, or with energetic kiddies bouncing off the walls all day, or by myself.
Anyway, one would presume that the polls are being heavily influenced by fear of the virus outweighing all other considerations. If and when the effects of the lockdown lead to mass unemployment - when businesses decide things have got bad enough that there's no point in soldiering on regardless of the furlough scheme, or when the furlough scheme itself is withdrawn for whatever reason - then enthusiasm for sitting around on your arse whilst you struggle to keep the lights on and feed you and yours off Universal Credit will be short-lived.
I think the difference between working from home and being unemployed is colossal (Which you allude to later in your post). Working from home, if you're set up for it in a nice house is absolubtely living the dream right now.
I have done it for many years and bonus now is I do not need to travel at all, though the odd foreign trip was enjoyable.
Regarding the seeming joy in which deaths in Sweden are greeted, I have to say I’m baffled... why doesn’t everybody hope that Sweden have got it right, and that there’s a way of dealing with covid-19 that doesn’t require such strict closure of society?
Surely people aren’t such fans of big state politics that they actively want the Swedes to fail, and to sneer at anyone rooting for them?
I, for one, have been rooting for Sweden all through this process.
Me too. I desperately want them to be right, for their own sake and mine. I just don't think they are.
They may be right for Sweden.
What is right for one country may not be right for another.
Given the fact that the fatality rate in Sweden is 6/7 times higher than in the best available comparators (their neighbours to the east and west) it really doesn't look like what they're doing is right for their own country.
The worst part is that they are still taking the same or a very similar economic hit to the nation's who have locked down. They really are in the worst of both worlds situation that we may have avoided, just enough people aren't following the voluntary lockdown measures that the R value hasn't fallen below 1 but enough people are that the economy has tanked.
There are going to be significant long-term mental health benefits in not confining people to their homes, for younger people especially. I do not envy teachers here the task of having to deal with children who have been stuck in a confined space for weeks on end with parents who do not get on with each other or who cannot be arsed to make them do schoolwork or who do not have access to the internet etc.
Ferguson just shot down Guardian story.....a number of political figures have attended these meetings as observers, but not interfered in anyway.
Made a big point of saying he basically only interacts with Witty and Vallance, who are apolitical.
So Ferguson shot down the story by confirming it while minimising its importance? This is the same pattern I observed last night: people in the loop were saying the story was insignificant, not that it was false. However, the trouble is the Guardian claims from SAGE sources that Cummings (and Warner, the data scientist) did participate.
But as @MaxPB suggested earlier, this may be acting as a dead cat story by distracting attention from more urgent issues.
You have just contradicted yourself there. He said they didn't participate, the Guardian claimed they did.
Maybe he isn't telling the truth, but his statement was pretty categorical. He could have easily used very vague language. Seems a bit of a strange hill to die on if you are him.
He made a big point of saying he has limited interaction with any politician figures, his job is to present to Witty and Vallance and that is what he does. It is for them to brief politicians.
Regarding the seeming joy in which deaths in Sweden are greeted, I have to say I’m baffled... why doesn’t everybody hope that Sweden have got it right, and that there’s a way of dealing with covid-19 that doesn’t require such strict closure of society?
Surely people aren’t such fans of big state politics that they actively want the Swedes to fail, and to sneer at anyone rooting for them?
I, for one, have been rooting for Sweden all through this process.
Me too. I desperately want them to be right, for their own sake and mine. I just don't think they are.
They may be right for Sweden.
What is right for one country may not be right for another.
Given the fact that the fatality rate in Sweden is 6/7 times higher than in the best available comparators (their neighbours to the east and west) it really doesn't look like what they're doing is right for their own country.
The worst part is that they are still taking the same or a very similar economic hit to the nation's who have locked down. They really are in the worst of both worlds situation that we may have avoided, just enough people aren't following the voluntary lockdown measures that the R value hasn't fallen below 1 but enough people are that the economy has tanked.
There are going to be significant long-term mental health benefits in not confining people to their homes, for younger people especially. I do not envy teachers here the task of having to deal with children who have been stuck in a confined space for weeks on end with parents who do not get on with each other or who cannot be arsed to make them do schoolwork or who do not have access to the internet etc.
In my experience the biggest supporters of an extended lockdown are those with close families, big houses, large savings, and a big garden. Not those who are lonely, worried about finances, and in a tiny flat with no outside space. It comes from a position of privilege.
Better than being "lonely, worried about finances" and ill with coronavirus. Emotional arguments don't work on the virus.
Except they do. People will just break the lockdown, as they are doing now. If you’re depressed and lonely, you are not going to care about a virus you haven’t caught yet.
Exactly. I hit another midweek down spot, contacted my mate who is also struggling, organised a walk together. Was the first time all of this started that either of us had seen anyone other than our family at home or people in shops. And what of all those people in relationships that only work with a lot of space?
"You might catch the virus" vs "going absolutely crazy about to do something drastic now". Yes, emotional arguments don't work on the virus. But what about every other thing that affects us? They haven't all just gone away because CV19.
Do we need to start thinking about this as the 21st Century equivalent of TB or Polio or Smallpox? Be careful what you do or where you go as you could get infected. But go live your life.
Short answer: Yes.
Long answer: The politicians are, of course, right to warn the public that social distancing will have to continue for a long time, but the present lockdown has to be eased. We will sooner or later reach the point where the cumulative negative health effects of lockdown itself, and of the massive increase in poverty that we have coming as a result of its economic consequences, begin to outweigh those of the disease itself.
Therefore, not only should life return to as near to normal as we can reasonably achieve, it must do so.
I continue to maintain the suspicion that the Nightingale hospitals are still being completed in order to accommodate the controlled second wave that is expected when the lockdown is eased. If large numbers of new Covid cases are sent straight to them, then at least some ordinary hospital capacity can be devoted to getting the most urgent treatments back on track. If you're wanting any number of elective procedures, from hip replacement to IVF, then I think you're basically shafted for the next couple of years, but hopefully the NHS can at least restart cancer screening and treatment, for example.
Of course unless the Government is actively dishonest then life will certainly not return to anything approaching 'normal'. The majority of people are not going to return to pubs, clubs, cafes, cinemas or anything else that is non essential unless they are confident they will not contract the virus. The only possible way that, short of a vaccine, the Government can hope for a return to normal wold be to lie about the dangers.
I am sure you are right that a formal lockdown may well end but that won't save businesses and, if we then see a spike in cases as a result of ending the lockdown it will be political suicide for anyone who agreed to it.
That isn't true. Treatments and outcomes for Coronavirus could vastly improve, and then people would be pretty much out to get it and get immune ASAP. Improved treatments are far more likely in the short term than a vaccine. There's a great deal more emphasis on the first, perhaps wrongly.
From what I have seen there is as much chance of that happening in the next ear as there is of a successful vaccine - close to zero. But yes that would of course be a game changer. But simply telling people now that the lockdown was being eased and expecting them to accept that seems rather optimistic.
Some treatments (various different antibody designs) are actually quite likely to be successful, especially if given early in in an infection. The likelihood of their being available in quantities sufficient to treat a large slice of the population is correspondingly low. There are several more interesting potential antivirals yet to be trialled, and while their chances are more than zero, they’re undoubtedly long shots.
Regarding the seeming joy in which deaths in Sweden are greeted, I have to say I’m baffled... why doesn’t everybody hope that Sweden have got it right, and that there’s a way of dealing with covid-19 that doesn’t require such strict closure of society?
Surely people aren’t such fans of big state politics that they actively want the Swedes to fail, and to sneer at anyone rooting for them?
I, for one, have been rooting for Sweden all through this process.
Me too. I desperately want them to be right, for their own sake and mine. I just don't think they are.
They may be right for Sweden.
What is right for one country may not be right for another.
Given the fact that the fatality rate in Sweden is 6/7 times higher than in the best available comparators (their neighbours to the east and west) it really doesn't look like what they're doing is right for their own country.
The worst part is that they are still taking the same or a very similar economic hit to the nation's who have locked down. They really are in the worst of both worlds situation that we may have avoided, just enough people aren't following the voluntary lockdown measures that the R value hasn't fallen below 1 but enough people are that the economy has tanked.
There are going to be significant long-term mental health benefits in not confining people to their homes, for younger people especially. I do not envy teachers here the task of having to deal with children who have been stuck in a confined space for weeks on end with parents who do not get on with each other or who cannot be arsed to make them do schoolwork or who do not have access to the internet etc.
five apparent suicides in 24 hours on 16 April in Merseyside. The national *average* is 16 a day. May have been an outlier of course.
How is 5 worse than 16
5 in one city compared to 16 nationally.
However they were comparing 5 with a notional national average, who knows what the total for the country was that day , could easily have been below 16 and so the point was totally useless. Comparing apples with oranges
Regarding the seeming joy in which deaths in Sweden are greeted, I have to say I’m baffled... why doesn’t everybody hope that Sweden have got it right, and that there’s a way of dealing with covid-19 that doesn’t require such strict closure of society?
Surely people aren’t such fans of big state politics that they actively want the Swedes to fail, and to sneer at anyone rooting for them?
I, for one, have been rooting for Sweden all through this process.
Me too. I desperately want them to be right, for their own sake and mine. I just don't think they are.
They may be right for Sweden.
What is right for one country may not be right for another.
Given the fact that the fatality rate in Sweden is 6/7 times higher than in the best available comparators (their neighbours to the east and west) it really doesn't look like what they're doing is right for their own country.
The worst part is that they are still taking the same or a very similar economic hit to the nation's who have locked down. They really are in the worst of both worlds situation that we may have avoided, just enough people aren't following the voluntary lockdown measures that the R value hasn't fallen below 1 but enough people are that the economy has tanked.
There are going to be significant long-term mental health benefits in not confining people to their homes, for younger people especially. I do not envy teachers here the task of having to deal with children who have been stuck in a confined space for weeks on end with parents who do not get on with each other or who cannot be arsed to make them do schoolwork or who do not have access to the internet etc.
five apparent suicides in 24 hours on 16 April in Merseyside. The national *average* is 16 a day. May have been an outlier of course.
How is 5 worse than 16
Five on Merseyside only. 16 is the NATIONAL average.
I know that it is rather obvious, however they could have been the only 5 that day so the point is stupid in the extreme without knowing teh total for that day across the country. I can READ.
Ah ok sorry. I don't know is the answer; the ONS figures for 2019 are still provisional, and nothing at all about 2020.
Socially distancing queue at Morrisons this afternoon, somewhat distrait guy sitting begging at side. Big lad in too small shorts in front of me says he hasn't any change but gives him his half smoked fag, gratefully received by guy begging. I could even see the saliva wet nicotine stain on the filter as he handed it over.
I would like to emphasise I am taking no joy in Swedish deaths, not do I think the people pushing the "Swedish peak was on the 8th" are fools.
Quite the contrary.
I think, at this point they are both clever and very deliberate in what they are doing.
My wife is on the Shielding list. That means the whole family is in total lockdown. I would love nothing more than for it to turn out to be a massive fuss and over reaction.
But I can't wish it true by bending the numbers to an imaginary polynomial curve.
Ditto.
Unfortunately I suspect that this virus is a bastard we’ll have several more lockdowns over the next few years.
If we exit this one too early then the death toll will be significantly higher.
I actually rather optimistic that its transmissability far lower than people think, that we haven't quite got how it spreads person to person.
That is based mostly on hope and partly on the very different looking spread of infections in different parts of the world.
Regarding the seeming joy in which deaths in Sweden are greeted, I have to say I’m baffled... why doesn’t everybody hope that Sweden have got it right, and that there’s a way of dealing with covid-19 that doesn’t require such strict closure of society?
Surely people aren’t such fans of big state politics that they actively want the Swedes to fail, and to sneer at anyone rooting for them?
I, for one, have been rooting for Sweden all through this process.
Me too. I desperately want them to be right, for their own sake and mine. I just don't think they are.
They may be right for Sweden.
What is right for one country may not be right for another.
Given the fact that the fatality rate in Sweden is 6/7 times higher than in the best available comparators (their neighbours to the east and west) it really doesn't look like what they're doing is right for their own country.
The worst part is that they are still taking the same or a very similar economic hit to the nation's who have locked down. They really are in the worst of both worlds situation that we may have avoided, just enough people aren't following the voluntary lockdown measures that the R value hasn't fallen below 1 but enough people are that the economy has tanked.
There are going to be significant long-term mental health benefits in not confining people to their homes, for younger people especially. I do not envy teachers here the task of having to deal with children who have been stuck in a confined space for weeks on end with parents who do not get on with each other or who cannot be arsed to make them do schoolwork or who do not have access to the internet etc.
five apparent suicides in 24 hours on 16 April in Merseyside. The national *average* is 16 a day. May have been an outlier of course.
How is 5 worse than 16
Five on Merseyside only. 16 is the NATIONAL average.
I know that it is rather obvious, however they could have been the only 5 that day so the point is stupid in the extreme without knowing teh total for that day across the country. I can READ.
Calm down. Your own invective is far worse than this.
Ferguson just shot down Guardian story.....a number of political figures have attended these meetings as observers, but not interfered in anyway.
Made a big point of saying he basically only interacts with Witty and Vallance, who are apolitical.
So Ferguson shot down the story by confirming it while minimising its importance? This is the same pattern I observed last night: people in the loop were saying the story was insignificant, not that it was false. However, the trouble is the Guardian claims from SAGE sources that Cummings (and Warner, the data scientist) did participate.
But as @MaxPB suggested earlier, this may be acting as a dead cat story by distracting attention from more urgent issues.
You have just contradicted yourself there. He said they didn't participate, the Guardian claimed they did.
Maybe he isn't telling the truth, but his statement was pretty categorical. He could have easily used very vague language. Seems a bit of a strange hill to die on if you are him.
The Guardian really needs to find - and quickly - a credible source to back up their original claim, or they could be badly damaged.
Nah, it will be like the Sunday Times story that people remember the thrust, not the fact that one of the central claims was found to be untrue, from the mouth of the person who was supposed to so outraged he was objecting. Again made it very clear, he wasn't there, didn't see the evidence presented and thus only sensible thing is to accept the collective decision.
They just move on to the next thing.
The legend will remain that Big Dom was there ordering the egg-heads around, bow beating all 20 odd of them into submission. Not as it seems more likely, he sat there like some over-keen student, who got to ask a question at the end.
Detection of Nucleocapsid Antibody to SARS-CoV-2 is More Sensitive than Antibody to Spike Protein in COVID-19 Patients https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.20.20071423v1 ... Fifteen or more days after symptom onset, antibodies against SARS-CoV-2 nucleocapsid protein showed 100% sensitivity and 100% specificity, while antibodies to spike protein were detected with 91% sensitivity and 100% specificity. Neither antibody levels nor the rate of seropositivity were significantly reduced by heat inactivation of samples. Analysis of daily samples from six patients with COVID-19 showed anti-nucleocapsid and spike antibodies appearing between day 8 to day 14 after initial symptoms. Immunocompromised patients generally had a delayed antibody response to SARS-CoV-2 compared to immunocompetent patients. Conclusions: Antibody to the nucleocapsid protein of SARS-CoV-2 is more sensitive than spike protein antibody for detecting early infection. Analyzing heat-inactivated samples by LIPS is a safe and sensitive method for detecting SARS-CoV-2 antibodies....
These are the “useless” (in terms of targeting the immune system to attack the virus) antibodies the body produces in quantity against a bit of viral debris - a protein which is wholly enclosed within the viral membrane of an intact virus.
Regarding the seeming joy in which deaths in Sweden are greeted, I have to say I’m baffled... why doesn’t everybody hope that Sweden have got it right, and that there’s a way of dealing with covid-19 that doesn’t require such strict closure of society?
Surely people aren’t such fans of big state politics that they actively want the Swedes to fail, and to sneer at anyone rooting for them?
I, for one, have been rooting for Sweden all through this process.
Me too. I desperately want them to be right, for their own sake and mine. I just don't think they are.
They may be right for Sweden.
What is right for one country may not be right for another.
Given the fact that the fatality rate in Sweden is 6/7 times higher than in the best available comparators (their neighbours to the east and west) it really doesn't look like what they're doing is right for their own country.
The worst part is that they are still taking the same or a very similar economic hit to the nation's who have locked down. They really are in the worst of both worlds situation that we may have avoided, just enough people aren't following the voluntary lockdown measures that the R value hasn't fallen below 1 but enough people are that the economy has tanked.
There are going to be significant long-term mental health benefits in not confining people to their homes, for younger people especially. I do not envy teachers here the task of having to deal with children who have been stuck in a confined space for weeks on end with parents who do not get on with each other or who cannot be arsed to make them do schoolwork or who do not have access to the internet etc.
Regarding the seeming joy in which deaths in Sweden are greeted, I have to say I’m baffled... why doesn’t everybody hope that Sweden have got it right, and that there’s a way of dealing with covid-19 that doesn’t require such strict closure of society?
Surely people aren’t such fans of big state politics that they actively want the Swedes to fail, and to sneer at anyone rooting for them?
I, for one, have been rooting for Sweden all through this process.
Me too. I desperately want them to be right, for their own sake and mine. I just don't think they are.
They may be right for Sweden.
What is right for one country may not be right for another.
Given the fact that the fatality rate in Sweden is 6/7 times higher than in the best available comparators (their neighbours to the east and west) it really doesn't look like what they're doing is right for their own country.
The worst part is that they are still taking the same or a very similar economic hit to the nation's who have locked down. They really are in the worst of both worlds situation that we may have avoided, just enough people aren't following the voluntary lockdown measures that the R value hasn't fallen below 1 but enough people are that the economy has tanked.
There are going to be significant long-term mental health benefits in not confining people to their homes, for younger people especially. I do not envy teachers here the task of having to deal with children who have been stuck in a confined space for weeks on end with parents who do not get on with each other or who cannot be arsed to make them do schoolwork or who do not have access to the internet etc.
five apparent suicides in 24 hours on 16 April in Merseyside. The national *average* is 16 a day. May have been an outlier of course.
How is 5 worse than 16
Five on Merseyside only. 16 is the NATIONAL average.
I know that it is rather obvious, however they could have been the only 5 that day so the point is stupid in the extreme without knowing teh total for that day across the country. I can READ.
Calm down. Your own invective is far worse than this.
Your don't engage with malc project still going well, I see.
I would like to emphasise I am taking no joy in Swedish deaths, not do I think the people pushing the "Swedish peak was on the 8th" are fools.
Quite the contrary.
I think, at this point they are both clever and very deliberate in what they are doing.
My wife is on the Shielding list. That means the whole family is in total lockdown. I would love nothing more than for it to turn out to be a massive fuss and over reaction.
But I can't wish it true by bending the numbers to an imaginary polynomial curve.
Ditto.
Unfortunately I suspect that this virus is a bastard we’ll have several more lockdowns over the next few years.
If we exit this one too early then the death toll will be significantly higher.
I actually rather optimistic that its transmissability far lower than people think, that we haven't quite got how it spreads person to person.
That is based mostly on hope and partly on the very different looking spread of infections in different parts of the world.
People still seem to be attracted to gawp with each other closer than a two metre distance and constantly touch their face from what I've seen out here.
Detection of Nucleocapsid Antibody to SARS-CoV-2 is More Sensitive than Antibody to Spike Protein in COVID-19 Patients https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.20.20071423v1 ... Fifteen or more days after symptom onset, antibodies against SARS-CoV-2 nucleocapsid protein showed 100% sensitivity and 100% specificity, while antibodies to spike protein were detected with 91% sensitivity and 100% specificity. Neither antibody levels nor the rate of seropositivity were significantly reduced by heat inactivation of samples. Analysis of daily samples from six patients with COVID-19 showed anti-nucleocapsid and spike antibodies appearing between day 8 to day 14 after initial symptoms. Immunocompromised patients generally had a delayed antibody response to SARS-CoV-2 compared to immunocompetent patients. Conclusions: Antibody to the nucleocapsid protein of SARS-CoV-2 is more sensitive than spike protein antibody for detecting early infection. Analyzing heat-inactivated samples by LIPS is a safe and sensitive method for detecting SARS-CoV-2 antibodies....
These are the “useless” (in terms of targeting the immune system to attack the virus) antibodies the body produces in quantity against a bit of viral debris - a protein which is wholly enclosed within the viral membrane of an intact virus.
Prof Farzan was talking about this in that lecture from the other day.
Regarding the seeming joy in which deaths in Sweden are greeted, I have to say I’m baffled... why doesn’t everybody hope that Sweden have got it right, and that there’s a way of dealing with covid-19 that doesn’t require such strict closure of society?
Surely people aren’t such fans of big state politics that they actively want the Swedes to fail, and to sneer at anyone rooting for them?
I, for one, have been rooting for Sweden all through this process.
Me too. I desperately want them to be right, for their own sake and mine. I just don't think they are.
They may be right for Sweden.
What is right for one country may not be right for another.
Given the fact that the fatality rate in Sweden is 6/7 times higher than in the best available comparators (their neighbours to the east and west) it really doesn't look like what they're doing is right for their own country.
The worst part is that they are still taking the same or a very similar economic hit to the nation's who have locked down. They really are in the worst of both worlds situation that we may have avoided, just enough people aren't following the voluntary lockdown measures that the R value hasn't fallen below 1 but enough people are that the economy has tanked.
There are going to be significant long-term mental health benefits in not confining people to their homes, for younger people especially. I do not envy teachers here the task of having to deal with children who have been stuck in a confined space for weeks on end with parents who do not get on with each other or who cannot be arsed to make them do schoolwork or who do not have access to the internet etc.
five apparent suicides in 24 hours on 16 April in Merseyside. The national *average* is 16 a day. May have been an outlier of course.
How is 5 worse than 16
Five on Merseyside only. 16 is the NATIONAL average.
I know that it is rather obvious, however they could have been the only 5 that day so the point is stupid in the extreme without knowing teh total for that day across the country. I can READ.
Calm down. Your own invective is far worse than this.
Your don't engage with malc project still going well, I see.
Did I say that? Weeks feel like months at the moment
Regarding the seeming joy in which deaths in Sweden are greeted, I have to say I’m baffled... why doesn’t everybody hope that Sweden have got it right, and that there’s a way of dealing with covid-19 that doesn’t require such strict closure of society?
Surely people aren’t such fans of big state politics that they actively want the Swedes to fail, and to sneer at anyone rooting for them?
I, for one, have been rooting for Sweden all through this process.
Me too. I desperately want them to be right, for their own sake and mine. I just don't think they are.
They may be right for Sweden.
What is right for one country may not be right for another.
Given the fact that the fatality rate in Sweden is 6/7 times higher than in the best available comparators (their neighbours to the east and west) it really doesn't look like what they're doing is right for their own country.
The worst part is that they are still taking the same or a very similar economic hit to the nation's who have locked down. They really are in the worst of both worlds situation that we may have avoided, just enough people aren't following the voluntary lockdown measures that the R value hasn't fallen below 1 but enough people are that the economy has tanked.
Is this right? Sweden has not gained a (relative) economic advantage by "locking down" less than the rest?
They could end up having an economic disadvantage. Because pandemic-caused recessions are different from standard ones - the economic change isn't caused by "normal" underlying factors. Ideally, if you could "pause" the economy throughout the pandemic and avoid the health implications (eg through sufficient social distancing and government measures to preserve incomes and assets for companies and individuals), the bounce-back is 100%.
There's some evidence that failure to impose the restrictions can make economic recovery afterwards mroe difficult ("Economists have examined the differences in non-pharmaceutical pandemic interventions across different US cities during the Flu Pandemic of 1918.. The pandemic reduced US manufacturing by an estimated 18 percent making it a large recession indeed. Those cities that pushed earlier and more intensively on pandemic containment ended up bouncing back and having higher economic growth thereafter, and more exposed areas had a decline in economic activity that persisted.")
In essence, if your people end up dying or becoming health-limited, your economy is scarred and you don't get back as far or as fast. It turns a potentially temporary issue into a permanent one.
95% of Covid deaths in Sweden have been aged 60 or over though. Over 60% 80 or over
Regarding the seeming joy in which deaths in Sweden are greeted, I have to say I’m baffled... why doesn’t everybody hope that Sweden have got it right, and that there’s a way of dealing with covid-19 that doesn’t require such strict closure of society?
Surely people aren’t such fans of big state politics that they actively want the Swedes to fail, and to sneer at anyone rooting for them?
I, for one, have been rooting for Sweden all through this process.
Me too. I desperately want them to be right, for their own sake and mine. I just don't think they are.
They may be right for Sweden.
What is right for one country may not be right for another.
Given the fact that the fatality rate in Sweden is 6/7 times higher than in the best available comparators (their neighbours to the east and west) it really doesn't look like what they're doing is right for their own country.
The worst part is that they are still taking the same or a very similar economic hit to the nation's who have locked down. They really are in the worst of both worlds situation that we may have avoided, just enough people aren't following the voluntary lockdown measures that the R value hasn't fallen below 1 but enough people are that the economy has tanked.
There are going to be significant long-term mental health benefits in not confining people to their homes, for younger people especially. I do not envy teachers here the task of having to deal with children who have been stuck in a confined space for weeks on end with parents who do not get on with each other or who cannot be arsed to make them do schoolwork or who do not have access to the internet etc.
five apparent suicides in 24 hours on 16 April in Merseyside. The national *average* is 16 a day. May have been an outlier of course.
How is 5 worse than 16
5 Merseyside vs. 16 national average?
I understand that , what was his point though, comparing TWO totally different things is absolutely meaningless. As per other posts there could have been ZERO other cases across the country that day and it would have been a wonderful result.
Regarding the seeming joy in which deaths in Sweden are greeted, I have to say I’m baffled... why doesn’t everybody hope that Sweden have got it right, and that there’s a way of dealing with covid-19 that doesn’t require such strict closure of society?
Surely people aren’t such fans of big state politics that they actively want the Swedes to fail, and to sneer at anyone rooting for them?
I, for one, have been rooting for Sweden all through this process.
Me too. I desperately want them to be right, for their own sake and mine. I just don't think they are.
They may be right for Sweden.
What is right for one country may not be right for another.
Given the fact that the fatality rate in Sweden is 6/7 times higher than in the best available comparators (their neighbours to the east and west) it really doesn't look like what they're doing is right for their own country.
The worst part is that they are still taking the same or a very similar economic hit to the nation's who have locked down. They really are in the worst of both worlds situation that we may have avoided, just enough people aren't following the voluntary lockdown measures that the R value hasn't fallen below 1 but enough people are that the economy has tanked.
There are going to be significant long-term mental health benefits in not confining people to their homes, for younger people especially. I do not envy teachers here the task of having to deal with children who have been stuck in a confined space for weeks on end with parents who do not get on with each other or who cannot be arsed to make them do schoolwork or who do not have access to the internet etc.
five apparent suicides in 24 hours on 16 April in Merseyside. The national *average* is 16 a day. May have been an outlier of course.
How is 5 worse than 16
Five on Merseyside only. 16 is the NATIONAL average.
I know that it is rather obvious, however they could have been the only 5 that day so the point is stupid in the extreme without knowing teh total for that day across the country. I can READ.
Ah ok sorry. I don't know is the answer; the ONS figures for 2019 are still provisional, and nothing at all about 2020.
Cheers , that was all I meant , hard to tell from that whether it was a good day or a bad day , apart from being a bad day for Merseyside.
Ferguson just shot down Guardian story.....a number of political figures have attended these meetings as observers, but not interfered in anyway.
Made a big point of saying he basically only interacts with Witty and Vallance, who are apolitical.
So Ferguson shot down the story by confirming it while minimising its importance? This is the same pattern I observed last night: people in the loop were saying the story was insignificant, not that it was false. However, the trouble is the Guardian claims from SAGE sources that Cummings (and Warner, the data scientist) did participate.
But as @MaxPB suggested earlier, this may be acting as a dead cat story by distracting attention from more urgent issues.
You have just contradicted yourself there. He said they didn't participate, the Guardian claimed they did.
Maybe he isn't telling the truth, but his statement was pretty categorical. He could have easily used very vague language. Seems a bit of a strange hill to die on if you are him.
The Guardian really needs to find - and quickly - a credible source to back up their original claim, or they could be badly damaged.
Nah, it will be like the Sunday Times story that people remember the thrust, not the fact that one of the central claims was found to be untrue, from the mouth of the person who was supposed to so outraged he was objecting. Again made it very clear, he wasn't there, didn't see the evidence presented and thus only sensible thing is to accept the collective decision.
They just move on to the next thing.
The legend will remain that Big Dom was there ordering the egg-heads around, bow beating all 20 odd of them into submission.
It’s all turning a bit I was present but not involved but quite honestly if a pandemic happened under Dave’s watch or Tony Blair’s watch then I fully expect that Ed Llewellyn and Jonathan Powell to attend meetings like this.
Regarding the seeming joy in which deaths in Sweden are greeted, I have to say I’m baffled... why doesn’t everybody hope that Sweden have got it right, and that there’s a way of dealing with covid-19 that doesn’t require such strict closure of society?
Surely people aren’t such fans of big state politics that they actively want the Swedes to fail, and to sneer at anyone rooting for them?
I, for one, have been rooting for Sweden all through this process.
Me too. I desperately want them to be right, for their own sake and mine. I just don't think they are.
They may be right for Sweden.
What is right for one country may not be right for another.
Given the fact that the fatality rate in Sweden is 6/7 times higher than in the best available comparators (their neighbours to the east and west) it really doesn't look like what they're doing is right for their own country.
The worst part is that they are still taking the same or a very similar economic hit to the nation's who have locked down. They really are in the worst of both worlds situation that we may have avoided, just enough people aren't following the voluntary lockdown measures that the R value hasn't fallen below 1 but enough people are that the economy has tanked.
Is this right? Sweden has not gained a (relative) economic advantage by "locking down" less than the rest?
They could end up having an economic disadvantage. Because pandemic-caused recessions are different from standard ones - the economic change isn't caused by "normal" underlying factors. Ideally, if you could "pause" the economy throughout the pandemic and avoid the health implications (eg through sufficient social distancing and government measures to preserve incomes and assets for companies and individuals), the bounce-back is 100%.
There's some evidence that failure to impose the restrictions can make economic recovery afterwards mroe difficult ("Economists have examined the differences in non-pharmaceutical pandemic interventions across different US cities during the Flu Pandemic of 1918.. The pandemic reduced US manufacturing by an estimated 18 percent making it a large recession indeed. Those cities that pushed earlier and more intensively on pandemic containment ended up bouncing back and having higher economic growth thereafter, and more exposed areas had a decline in economic activity that persisted.")
In essence, if your people end up dying or becoming health-limited, your economy is scarred and you don't get back as far or as fast. It turns a potentially temporary issue into a permanent one.
95% of Covid deaths in Sweden have been aged 60 or over though. Over 60% 80 or over
Which impairs the demand in the economy. Although it being tilted towards the elderly would mean that recovery from the "scarring" would be a bit quicker (to put it harshly, in 25 years, the majority of the demand from that sector would have gone already - although the temporary stunting of demand there would damage the prospects for companies providing goods and services to them in the interim - it wouldn't be economic for some activities that otherwise would have been)
Regarding the seeming joy in which deaths in Sweden are greeted, I have to say I’m baffled... why doesn’t everybody hope that Sweden have got it right, and that there’s a way of dealing with covid-19 that doesn’t require such strict closure of society?
Surely people aren’t such fans of big state politics that they actively want the Swedes to fail, and to sneer at anyone rooting for them?
I, for one, have been rooting for Sweden all through this process.
Me too. I desperately want them to be right, for their own sake and mine. I just don't think they are.
They may be right for Sweden.
What is right for one country may not be right for another.
Given the fact that the fatality rate in Sweden is 6/7 times higher than in the best available comparators (their neighbours to the east and west) it really doesn't look like what they're doing is right for their own country.
The worst part is that they are still taking the same or a very similar economic hit to the nation's who have locked down. They really are in the worst of both worlds situation that we may have avoided, just enough people aren't following the voluntary lockdown measures that the R value hasn't fallen below 1 but enough people are that the economy has tanked.
There are going to be significant long-term mental health benefits in not confining people to their homes, for younger people especially. I do not envy teachers here the task of having to deal with children who have been stuck in a confined space for weeks on end with parents who do not get on with each other or who cannot be arsed to make them do schoolwork or who do not have access to the internet etc.
five apparent suicides in 24 hours on 16 April in Merseyside. The national *average* is 16 a day. May have been an outlier of course.
How is 5 worse than 16
Five on Merseyside only. 16 is the NATIONAL average.
I know that it is rather obvious, however they could have been the only 5 that day so the point is stupid in the extreme without knowing teh total for that day across the country. I can READ.
Calm down. Your own invective is far worse than this.
Your don't engage with malc project still going well, I see.
Did I say that? Weeks feel like months at the moment
Yes , think you need to get a life. How dare I ask a question on someones statistics.
That report dates from less than two years ago. I seem to recall reading elsewhere that NHS trusts have now been prohibited from buying new fax machines and told to phase out the old ones, but I'm assuming that they most likely haven't got around to getting rid of most of the things just yet. Organisations, especially old and very large ones, can be rather resistant to change.
Regarding the seeming joy in which deaths in Sweden are greeted, I have to say I’m baffled... why doesn’t everybody hope that Sweden have got it right, and that there’s a way of dealing with covid-19 that doesn’t require such strict closure of society?
Surely people aren’t such fans of big state politics that they actively want the Swedes to fail, and to sneer at anyone rooting for them?
I, for one, have been rooting for Sweden all through this process.
Me too. I desperately want them to be right, for their own sake and mine. I just don't think they are.
The crucial thing about the Swedish approach is that they shouldn't encounter further waves, whereas everywhere else might do. With the 1918 flu epidemic, for example, the second peak was far worse than the first.
Ferguson just shot down Guardian story.....a number of political figures have attended these meetings as observers, but not interfered in anyway.
Made a big point of saying he basically only interacts with Witty and Vallance, who are apolitical.
So Ferguson shot down the story by confirming it while minimising its importance? This is the same pattern I observed last night: people in the loop were saying the story was insignificant, not that it was false. However, the trouble is the Guardian claims from SAGE sources that Cummings (and Warner, the data scientist) did participate.
But as @MaxPB suggested earlier, this may be acting as a dead cat story by distracting attention from more urgent issues.
You have just contradicted yourself there. He said they didn't participate, the Guardian claimed they did.
Maybe he isn't telling the truth, but his statement was pretty categorical. He could have easily used very vague language. Seems a bit of a strange hill to die on if you are him.
The Guardian really needs to find - and quickly - a credible source to back up their original claim, or they could be badly damaged.
Nah, it will be like the Sunday Times story that people remember the thrust, not the fact that one of the central claims was found to be untrue, from the mouth of the person who was supposed to so outraged he was objecting. Again made it very clear, he wasn't there, didn't see the evidence presented and thus only sensible thing is to accept the collective decision.
They just move on to the next thing.
The legend will remain that Big Dom was there ordering the egg-heads around, bow beating all 20 odd of them into submission.
It’s all turning a bit I was present but not involved but quite honestly if a pandemic happened under Dave’s watch or Tony Blair’s watch then I fully expect that Ed Llewellyn and Jonathan Powell to attend meetings like this.
Well if it was true that Big Dom was there saying right Witty shut up, Ferguson show me your model, and why have you adjusted the coefficients in this part of the SIR model, that clearly bollocks, go back and redo your assignment....that would be big news.
Him sitting here being a girly swot listening to the egg-heads discuss the science and having the priviledge to ask a question isn't.
The Guardian's "scoop" was a massive pile of irresponsible, hysterical pantyfluff.
Shame on them, shame on the editor who ran it. They've lost the plot.
And yet. Look at the past couple of threads. It reminds me of the David Cameron initiation ceremony story. So many Tory sources saying it is false and it does not matter anyway. So why keep reviving it? Why not let the story die?
Either it is significant, or it is being used cynically to distract the media's attention from other issues.
Regarding the seeming joy in which deaths in Sweden are greeted, I have to say I’m baffled... why doesn’t everybody hope that Sweden have got it right, and that there’s a way of dealing with covid-19 that doesn’t require such strict closure of society?
Surely people aren’t such fans of big state politics that they actively want the Swedes to fail, and to sneer at anyone rooting for them?
I, for one, have been rooting for Sweden all through this process.
Me too. I desperately want them to be right, for their own sake and mine. I just don't think they are.
They may be right for Sweden.
What is right for one country may not be right for another.
Given the fact that the fatality rate in Sweden is 6/7 times higher than in the best available comparators (their neighbours to the east and west) it really doesn't look like what they're doing is right for their own country.
The worst part is that they are still taking the same or a very similar economic hit to the nation's who have locked down. They really are in the worst of both worlds situation that we may have avoided, just enough people aren't following the voluntary lockdown measures that the R value hasn't fallen below 1 but enough people are that the economy has tanked.
There are going to be significant long-term mental health benefits in not confining people to their homes, for younger people especially. I do not envy teachers here the task of having to deal with children who have been stuck in a confined space for weeks on end with parents who do not get on with each other or who cannot be arsed to make them do schoolwork or who do not have access to the internet etc.
As an aside, if (and it's a big IF) those Rt estimates are correct, then the degree to which we could lift some restrictions will be very dependent on how many people have already been infected - because herd immunity levels (and thus the point below which infections don't take off like a rocket) mean that Rt levels slightly above 1 are sustainable.
And knowing the degree by which people are now immune (if at all) is pretty crucial.
If 5% are immune, we can sustain an Rt of 1.05 If 9% are immune, Rt of 1.10 is sustainable If 13% are immune, an Rt of 1.15 If 17% are immune, an Rt of 1.20 If 20% are immune, an Rt of 1.25 is sustainable.
(well, keeping it below that number will make the infection toll keep decreasing. The closer it is to the threshold, the longer it will take to dwindle.
If we have, under current restrictions, an Rt of 0.68, then a partial lifting of restrictions such that interpersonal contacts are up by 50% would keep us below 1.05. An increase of 70% keeps us at around 1.15.
And so on.
Which means that every few days we stay in the current lockdown keeps the diminishment at maximum rate and gets the starting point down such that if we misjudge it, we have more leeway to rectify the matter, and means that the slowed rate of diminishment doesn't cause as many extra deaths as it could. And means that the sustainable Rt we could manage is a little higher and the freedoms we can re-initiate are a little more.
I agree with this analysis. Herd immunity is something gradual, not suddenly attained when 60% of the population have become immune. I would prefer to wait for the situation to gradually become clearer. For example there is a big debate about how well or badly Sweden is doing. I think it requires much less effort to just wait a few months and see what happens, by which time public understanding of the Swedish situation will have sorted itself out one way or another.
Regarding the seeming joy in which deaths in Sweden are greeted, I have to say I’m baffled... why doesn’t everybody hope that Sweden have got it right, and that there’s a way of dealing with covid-19 that doesn’t require such strict closure of society?
Surely people aren’t such fans of big state politics that they actively want the Swedes to fail, and to sneer at anyone rooting for them?
I, for one, have been rooting for Sweden all through this process.
Me too. I desperately want them to be right, for their own sake and mine. I just don't think they are.
They may be right for Sweden.
What is right for one country may not be right for another.
Given the fact that the fatality rate in Sweden is 6/7 times higher than in the best available comparators (their neighbours to the east and west) it really doesn't look like what they're doing is right for their own country.
The worst part is that they are still taking the same or a very similar economic hit to the nation's who have locked down. They really are in the worst of both worlds situation that we may have avoided, just enough people aren't following the voluntary lockdown measures that the R value hasn't fallen below 1 but enough people are that the economy has tanked.
There are going to be significant long-term mental health benefits in not confining people to their homes, for younger people especially. I do not envy teachers here the task of having to deal with children who have been stuck in a confined space for weeks on end with parents who do not get on with each other or who cannot be arsed to make them do schoolwork or who do not have access to the internet etc.
Regarding the seeming joy in which deaths in Sweden are greeted, I have to say I’m baffled... why doesn’t everybody hope that Sweden have got it right, and that there’s a way of dealing with covid-19 that doesn’t require such strict closure of society?
Surely people aren’t such fans of big state politics that they actively want the Swedes to fail, and to sneer at anyone rooting for them?
I, for one, have been rooting for Sweden all through this process.
Me too. I desperately want them to be right, for their own sake and mine. I just don't think they are.
They may be right for Sweden.
What is right for one country may not be right for another.
Given the fact that the fatality rate in Sweden is 6/7 times higher than in the best available comparators (their neighbours to the east and west) it really doesn't look like what they're doing is right for their own country.
The worst part is that they are still taking the same or a very similar economic hit to the nation's who have locked down. They really are in the worst of both worlds situation that we may have avoided, just enough people aren't following the voluntary lockdown measures that the R value hasn't fallen below 1 but enough people are that the economy has tanked.
There are going to be significant long-term mental health benefits in not confining people to their homes, for younger people especially. I do not envy teachers here the task of having to deal with children who have been stuck in a confined space for weeks on end with parents who do not get on with each other or who cannot be arsed to make them do schoolwork or who do not have access to the internet etc.
five apparent suicides in 24 hours on 16 April in Merseyside. The national *average* is 16 a day. May have been an outlier of course.
How is 5 worse than 16
Five on Merseyside only. 16 is the NATIONAL average.
I know that it is rather obvious, however they could have been the only 5 that day so the point is stupid in the extreme without knowing teh total for that day across the country. I can READ.
Ah ok sorry. I don't know is the answer; the ONS figures for 2019 are still provisional, and nothing at all about 2020.
Do they have any data as to how many days are higher/lower than average
Ferguson just shot down Guardian story.....a number of political figures have attended these meetings as observers, but not interfered in anyway.
Made a big point of saying he basically only interacts with Witty and Vallance, who are apolitical.
So Ferguson shot down the story by confirming it while minimising its importance? This is the same pattern I observed last night: people in the loop were saying the story was insignificant, not that it was false. However, the trouble is the Guardian claims from SAGE sources that Cummings (and Warner, the data scientist) did participate.
But as @MaxPB suggested earlier, this may be acting as a dead cat story by distracting attention from more urgent issues.
You have just contradicted yourself there. He said they didn't participate, the Guardian claimed they did.
Maybe he isn't telling the truth, but his statement was pretty categorical. He could have easily used very vague language. Seems a bit of a strange hill to die on if you are him.
The Guardian really needs to find - and quickly - a credible source to back up their original claim, or they could be badly damaged.
Nah. The Graun's customer base are lefties who will automatically assume the worst of the Government, and will still believe the worst of the Government regardless of the evidence presented. If they made unsubstantiated claims to the effect that the Cabinet barbecued the babies of the poor and ate them for lunch after every weekly meeting then their readership wouldn't be outraged or even suspicious. They'd be thrilled.
The Guardian's "scoop" was a massive pile of irresponsible, hysterical pantyfluff.
Shame on them, shame on the editor who ran it. They've lost the plot.
And yet. Look at the past couple of threads. It reminds me of the David Cameron initiation ceremony story. So many Tory sources saying it is false and it does not matter anyway. So why keep reviving it? Why not let the story die?
Either it is significant, or it is being used cynically to distract the media's attention from other issues.
Tories caught with hand in the till as usual and just shout liar liar , look at that squirrel over there.
Regarding the seeming joy in which deaths in Sweden are greeted, I have to say I’m baffled... why doesn’t everybody hope that Sweden have got it right, and that there’s a way of dealing with covid-19 that doesn’t require such strict closure of society?
Surely people aren’t such fans of big state politics that they actively want the Swedes to fail, and to sneer at anyone rooting for them?
I, for one, have been rooting for Sweden all through this process.
Me too. I desperately want them to be right, for their own sake and mine. I just don't think they are.
They may be right for Sweden.
What is right for one country may not be right for another.
Given the fact that the fatality rate in Sweden is 6/7 times higher than in the best available comparators (their neighbours to the east and west) it really doesn't look like what they're doing is right for their own country.
The worst part is that they are still taking the same or a very similar economic hit to the nation's who have locked down. They really are in the worst of both worlds situation that we may have avoided, just enough people aren't following the voluntary lockdown measures that the R value hasn't fallen below 1 but enough people are that the economy has tanked.
There are going to be significant long-term mental health benefits in not confining people to their homes, for younger people especially. I do not envy teachers here the task of having to deal with children who have been stuck in a confined space for weeks on end with parents who do not get on with each other or who cannot be arsed to make them do schoolwork or who do not have access to the internet etc.
five apparent suicides in 24 hours on 16 April in Merseyside. The national *average* is 16 a day. May have been an outlier of course.
How is 5 worse than 16
Five on Merseyside only. 16 is the NATIONAL average.
I know that it is rather obvious, however they could have been the only 5 that day so the point is stupid in the extreme without knowing teh total for that day across the country. I can READ.
Calm down. Your own invective is far worse than this.
Your don't engage with malc project still going well, I see.
Did I say that? Weeks feel like months at the moment
Yes , think you need to get a life. How dare I ask a question on someones statistics.
The typical Trump-style comment rage manifesting itself in your misspelling of “the” and your angry “I can READ” at the end that prompted my comment - rather than intrinsic merit (or lack there of) in your underlying point. Chill, smoke a doobie, meditate, do something involving less anger directed at a computer screen.
Regarding the seeming joy in which deaths in Sweden are greeted, I have to say I’m baffled... why doesn’t everybody hope that Sweden have got it right, and that there’s a way of dealing with covid-19 that doesn’t require such strict closure of society?
Surely people aren’t such fans of big state politics that they actively want the Swedes to fail, and to sneer at anyone rooting for them?
I, for one, have been rooting for Sweden all through this process.
Me too. I desperately want them to be right, for their own sake and mine. I just don't think they are.
They may be right for Sweden.
What is right for one country may not be right for another.
Given the fact that the fatality rate in Sweden is 6/7 times higher than in the best available comparators (their neighbours to the east and west) it really doesn't look like what they're doing is right for their own country.
The worst part is that they are still taking the same or a very similar economic hit to the nation's who have locked down. They really are in the worst of both worlds situation that we may have avoided, just enough people aren't following the voluntary lockdown measures that the R value hasn't fallen below 1 but enough people are that the economy has tanked.
There are going to be significant long-term mental health benefits in not confining people to their homes, for younger people especially. I do not envy teachers here the task of having to deal with children who have been stuck in a confined space for weeks on end with parents who do not get on with each other or who cannot be arsed to make them do schoolwork or who do not have access to the internet etc.
five apparent suicides in 24 hours on 16 April in Merseyside. The national *average* is 16 a day. May have been an outlier of course.
How is 5 worse than 16
Five on Merseyside only. 16 is the NATIONAL average.
I know that it is rather obvious, however they could have been the only 5 that day so the point is stupid in the extreme without knowing teh total for that day across the country. I can READ.
Calm down. Your own invective is far worse than this.
Your don't engage with malc project still going well, I see.
Did I say that? Weeks feel like months at the moment
The Guardian's "scoop" was a massive pile of irresponsible, hysterical pantyfluff.
Shame on them, shame on the editor who ran it. They've lost the plot.
And yet. Look at the past couple of threads. It reminds me of the David Cameron initiation ceremony story. So many Tory sources saying it is false and it does not matter anyway. So why keep reviving it? Why not let the story die?
Either it is significant, or it is being used cynically to distract the media's attention from other issues.
No one has been reviving anything. The story is on the front pages today!
They already done this...When Sky were shown the site of a production facility that will be able to create 10 millions of doses of a vaccine by next year, and which has been fast tracked to be finished years ahead of schedule.
The immediate question was why will it still take 12 months...
FWIW the Uni of Washington Covid model, as used by the US govt, now predicts Sweden will have the worst per capita death rate in the world (as far as I can tell)
However Belgium is very close behind, with 8.130 deaths in a population of 11.5m
The model is much improved but is still, in places, spaffing out mad data. It predicts an Italian total first wave death toll of 26,500 or so, a figure which will probably be exceeded by this coming Monday
Less of a prediction model now and more of a tracker.
As an aside, if (and it's a big IF) those Rt estimates are correct, then the degree to which we could lift some restrictions will be very dependent on how many people have already been infected - because herd immunity levels (and thus the point below which infections don't take off like a rocket) mean that Rt levels slightly above 1 are sustainable.
And knowing the degree by which people are now immune (if at all) is pretty crucial.
If 5% are immune, we can sustain an Rt of 1.05 If 9% are immune, Rt of 1.10 is sustainable If 13% are immune, an Rt of 1.15 If 17% are immune, an Rt of 1.20 If 20% are immune, an Rt of 1.25 is sustainable.
(well, keeping it below that number will make the infection toll keep decreasing. The closer it is to the threshold, the longer it will take to dwindle.
If we have, under current restrictions, an Rt of 0.68, then a partial lifting of restrictions such that interpersonal contacts are up by 50% would keep us below 1.05. An increase of 70% keeps us at around 1.15.
And so on.
Which means that every few days we stay in the current lockdown keeps the diminishment at maximum rate and gets the starting point down such that if we misjudge it, we have more leeway to rectify the matter, and means that the slowed rate of diminishment doesn't cause as many extra deaths as it could. And means that the sustainable Rt we could manage is a little higher and the freedoms we can re-initiate are a little more.
I agree with this analysis. Herd immunity is something gradual, not suddenly attained when 60% of the population have become immune. I would prefer to wait for the situation to gradually become clearer. For example there is a big debate about how well or badly Sweden is doing. I think it requires much less effort to just wait a few months and see what happens, by which time public understanding of the Swedish situation will have sorted itself out one way or another.
Sweden is not going for herd....it is asking people to be sensible on distancing....which is sort of working....
At most, after this first wave, we might have 5% who have been affected....and you still not be immune...and the antibody tests are useless, so you probably won't know anyway.....
Regarding the seeming joy in which deaths in Sweden are greeted, I have to say I’m baffled... why doesn’t everybody hope that Sweden have got it right, and that there’s a way of dealing with covid-19 that doesn’t require such strict closure of society?
Surely people aren’t such fans of big state politics that they actively want the Swedes to fail, and to sneer at anyone rooting for them?
I, for one, have been rooting for Sweden all through this process.
Me too. I desperately want them to be right, for their own sake and mine. I just don't think they are.
They may be right for Sweden.
What is right for one country may not be right for another.
Given the fact that the fatality rate in Sweden is 6/7 times higher than in the best available comparators (their neighbours to the east and west) it really doesn't look like what they're doing is right for their own country.
The worst part is that they are still taking the same or a very similar economic hit to the nation's who have locked down. They really are in the worst of both worlds situation that we may have avoided, just enough people aren't following the voluntary lockdown measures that the R value hasn't fallen below 1 but enough people are that the economy has tanked.
There are going to be significant long-term mental health benefits in not confining people to their homes, for younger people especially. I do not envy teachers here the task of having to deal with children who have been stuck in a confined space for weeks on end with parents who do not get on with each other or who cannot be arsed to make them do schoolwork or who do not have access to the internet etc.
five apparent suicides in 24 hours on 16 April in Merseyside. The national *average* is 16 a day. May have been an outlier of course.
How is 5 worse than 16
Five on Merseyside only. 16 is the NATIONAL average.
I know that it is rather obvious, however they could have been the only 5 that day so the point is stupid in the extreme without knowing teh total for that day across the country. I can READ.
Calm down. Your own invective is far worse than this.
Your don't engage with malc project still going well, I see.
Did I say that? Weeks feel like months at the moment
Yes , think you need to get a life. How dare I ask a question on someones statistics.
The typical Trump-style comment rage manifesting itself in your misspelling of “the” and your angry “I can READ” at the end that prompted my comment - rather than intrinsic merit (or lack there of) in your underlying point. Chill, smoke a doobie, meditate, do something involving less anger directed at a computer screen.
Dear Dear, I have no need of drugs to be serene and calm, you do seem to be "Mr Angry" recently. Bizarre assumption on me being angry and your justification certainly gave me a real laugh. You need to take your own advice or go out and find someone to have a chat, calm your frustrations a bit. Meanwhile I will continue to lounge in my garden , a chilled IPA in hand and listen to the birds.
Ferguson just shot down Guardian story.....a number of political figures have attended these meetings as observers, but not interfered in anyway.
Made a big point of saying he basically only interacts with Witty and Vallance, who are apolitical.
So Ferguson shot down the story by confirming it while minimising its importance? This is the same pattern I observed last night: people in the loop were saying the story was insignificant, not that it was false. However, the trouble is the Guardian claims from SAGE sources that Cummings (and Warner, the data scientist) did participate.
But as @MaxPB suggested earlier, this may be acting as a dead cat story by distracting attention from more urgent issues.
You have just contradicted yourself there. He said they didn't participate, the Guardian claimed they did.
Maybe he isn't telling the truth, but his statement was pretty categorical. He could have easily used very vague language. Seems a bit of a strange hill to die on if you are him.
The Guardian really needs to find - and quickly - a credible source to back up their original claim, or they could be badly damaged.
Nah. The Graun's customer base are lefties who will automatically assume the worst of the Government, and will still believe the worst of the Government regardless of the evidence presented. If they made unsubstantiated claims to the effect that the Cabinet barbecued the babies of the poor and ate them for lunch after every weekly meeting then their readership wouldn't be outraged or even suspicious. They'd be thrilled.
Normally that would be true. But these are not normal times. I suspect they might regret this story, in months to come, if they can't stand it up
My suspicion is somebody who was disgruntled that they doesn't get to ask questions in the moment and that Big Dom does.
FWIW the Uni of Washington Covid model, as used by the US govt, now predicts Sweden will have the worst per capita death rate in the world (as far as I can tell)
However Belgium is very close behind, with 8.130 deaths in a population of 11.5m
The model is much improved but is still, in places, spaffing out mad data. It predicts an Italian total first wave death toll of 26,500 or so, a figure which will probably be exceeded by this coming Monday
The dodgy thing about that model is that it assumes deaths will go down to zero by July no matter what.
FWIW the Uni of Washington Covid model, as used by the US govt, now predicts Sweden will have the worst per capita death rate in the world (as far as I can tell)
However Belgium is very close behind, with 8.130 deaths in a population of 11.5m
The model is much improved but is still, in places, spaffing out mad data. It predicts an Italian total first wave death toll of 26,500 or so, a figure which will probably be exceeded by this coming Monday
The dodgy thing about that model is that it assumes deaths will go down to zero by July no matter what.
Rephrase that...one dodgy thing...the other is how unconfident their model is about predicting tomorrow or the next day, but way into the future, they are Mystic Meg. How can any model worth its salt have f##k all idea about the immediate future, its the whole damn point of modelling.
Ferguson just shot down Guardian story.....a number of political figures have attended these meetings as observers, but not interfered in anyway.
Made a big point of saying he basically only interacts with Witty and Vallance, who are apolitical.
So Ferguson shot down the story by confirming it while minimising its importance? This is the same pattern I observed last night: people in the loop were saying the story was insignificant, not that it was false. However, the trouble is the Guardian claims from SAGE sources that Cummings (and Warner, the data scientist) did participate.
But as @MaxPB suggested earlier, this may be acting as a dead cat story by distracting attention from more urgent issues.
You have just contradicted yourself there. He said they didn't participate, the Guardian claimed they did.
Maybe he isn't telling the truth, but his statement was pretty categorical. He could have easily used very vague language. Seems a bit of a strange hill to die on if you are him.
The Guardian really needs to find - and quickly - a credible source to back up their original claim, or they could be badly damaged.
Nah. The Graun's customer base are lefties who will automatically assume the worst of the Government, and will still believe the worst of the Government regardless of the evidence presented. If they made unsubstantiated claims to the effect that the Cabinet barbecued the babies of the poor and ate them for lunch after every weekly meeting then their readership wouldn't be outraged or even suspicious. They'd be thrilled.
Normally that would be true. But these are not normal times. I suspect they might regret this story, in months to come, if they can't stand it up
How can they not stand it up, even the perfidious Tories had to admit Gollum was at the meetings. Their lame excuse that he was not chairing it /setting the policy is up for debate.
FWIW the Uni of Washington Covid model, as used by the US govt, now predicts Sweden will have the worst per capita death rate in the world (as far as I can tell)
However Belgium is very close behind, with 8.130 deaths in a population of 11.5m
The model is much improved but is still, in places, spaffing out mad data. It predicts an Italian total first wave death toll of 26,500 or so, a figure which will probably be exceeded by this coming Monday
The dodgy thing about that model is that it assumes deaths will go down to zero by July no matter what.
There is some tentative good news there, however: the percentage of positive tests is 'only' ~21%, which is the lowest it has been for quite some time. Also, when comparing this number to other countries (e.g., Italy), I think they report the number of tests and not people I think (not totally clear from their website) so perhaps when seeing how much the epidemics are slowing down we should use the total number of tests as the denominator, which would reduce the % of positives to 17%.
The Guardian's "scoop" was a massive pile of irresponsible, hysterical pantyfluff.
Shame on them, shame on the editor who ran it. They've lost the plot.
And yet. Look at the past couple of threads. It reminds me of the David Cameron initiation ceremony story. So many Tory sources saying it is false and it does not matter anyway. So why keep reviving it? Why not let the story die?
Either it is significant, or it is being used cynically to distract the media's attention from other issues.
No one has been reviving anything. The story is on the front pages today!
Yes, the topic seems to have become very partisan. Let's just remind ourselves of the core issue. Those handling the pandemic should take advantage of unbiased scientific advice, there's no reason why a political advisor should be there. Just look at Trump https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BalDN6iGYpE
"The government’s former chief scientific adviser Sir David King said he was “shocked” to discover there were political advisers on Sage. “If you are giving science advice, your advice should be free of any political bias,” he said. “That is just so critically important.” ... King said political advisers were never on the equivalent committees of Sage when he chaired them and argued that Cummings, who is not a scientist, could report his own interpretation of Sage advice back to the prime minister. Other former members of Sage also said they could not recall political appointees being on previous committees. David Lidington, a former Cabinet Office minister and de facto deputy to Theresa May when she was prime minister, said: “I’m not aware of any minister or special adviser, certainly not in Theresa May’s time, ever having been involved in the scientific advisory panels.”
FWIW the Uni of Washington Covid model, as used by the US govt, now predicts Sweden will have the worst per capita death rate in the world (as far as I can tell)
However Belgium is very close behind, with 8.130 deaths in a population of 11.5m
The model is much improved but is still, in places, spaffing out mad data. It predicts an Italian total first wave death toll of 26,500 or so, a figure which will probably be exceeded by this coming Monday
The dodgy thing about that model is that it assumes deaths will go down to zero by July no matter what.
maybe the virus has its holidays booked.
It'll certainly be on thousands of flights for msny years to come.
The Guardian's "scoop" was a massive pile of irresponsible, hysterical pantyfluff.
Shame on them, shame on the editor who ran it. They've lost the plot.
And yet. Look at the past couple of threads. It reminds me of the David Cameron initiation ceremony story. So many Tory sources saying it is false and it does not matter anyway. So why keep reviving it? Why not let the story die?
Either it is significant, or it is being used cynically to distract the media's attention from other issues.
No one has been reviving anything. The story is on the front pages today!
Yes, the topic seems to have become very partisan. Let's just remind ourselves of the core issue. Those handling the pandemic should take advantage of unbiased scientific advice, there's no reason why a political advisor should be there. Just look at Trump www.youtube.com/watch?v=BalDN6iGYpE
"The government’s former chief scientific adviser Sir David King said he was “shocked” to discover there were political advisers on Sage. “If you are giving science advice, your advice should be free of any political bias,” he said. “That is just so critically important.” ... King said political advisers were never on the equivalent committees of Sage when he chaired them and argued that Cummings, who is not a scientist, could report his own interpretation of Sage advice back to the prime minister. Other former members of Sage also said they could not recall political appointees being on previous committees. David Lidington, a former Cabinet Office minister and de facto deputy to Theresa May when she was prime minister, said: “I’m not aware of any minister or special adviser, certainly not in Theresa May’s time, ever having been involved in the scientific advisory panels.”
The quotes refer to being "ON SAGE"....Ferguson making it clear he isn't.
Ferguson just shot down Guardian story.....a number of political figures have attended these meetings as observers, but not interfered in anyway.
Made a big point of saying he basically only interacts with Witty and Vallance, who are apolitical.
So Ferguson shot down the story by confirming it while minimising its importance? This is the same pattern I observed last night: people in the loop were saying the story was insignificant, not that it was false. However, the trouble is the Guardian claims from SAGE sources that Cummings (and Warner, the data scientist) did participate.
But as @MaxPB suggested earlier, this may be acting as a dead cat story by distracting attention from more urgent issues.
You have just contradicted yourself there. He said they didn't participate, the Guardian claimed they did.
Maybe he isn't telling the truth, but his statement was pretty categorical. He could have easily used very vague language. Seems a bit of a strange hill to die on if you are him.
The Guardian really needs to find - and quickly - a credible source to back up their original claim, or they could be badly damaged.
Nah. The Graun's customer base are lefties who will automatically assume the worst of the Government, and will still believe the worst of the Government regardless of the evidence presented. If they made unsubstantiated claims to the effect that the Cabinet barbecued the babies of the poor and ate them for lunch after every weekly meeting then their readership wouldn't be outraged or even suspicious. They'd be thrilled.
Normally that would be true. But these are not normal times. I suspect they might regret this story, in months to come, if they can't stand it up
What has the Guardian said that isn't true? Information about Cummings's attendance was leaked, they reported the leak and the government has conceded he did indeed attend. What's your gripe? They should have suppressed the story? Or published it with the caveat that it's much ado about nothing and Boris and Dom are still jolly good eggs?
Regarding the seeming joy in which deaths in Sweden are greeted, I have to say I’m baffled... why doesn’t everybody hope that Sweden have got it right, and that there’s a way of dealing with covid-19 that doesn’t require such strict closure of society?
Surely people aren’t such fans of big state politics that they actively want the Swedes to fail, and to sneer at anyone rooting for them?
I, for one, have been rooting for Sweden all through this process.
Me too. I desperately want them to be right, for their own sake and mine. I just don't think they are.
They may be right for Sweden.
What is right for one country may not be right for another.
Given the fact that the fatality rate in Sweden is 6/7 times higher than in the best available comparators (their neighbours to the east and west) it really doesn't look like what they're doing is right for their own country.
The worst part is that they are still taking the same or a very similar economic hit to the nation's who have locked down. They really are in the worst of both worlds situation that we may have avoided, just enough people aren't following the voluntary lockdown measures that the R value hasn't fallen below 1 but enough people are that the economy has tanked.
Is this right? Sweden has not gained a (relative) economic advantage by "locking down" less than the rest?
They could end up having an economic disadvantage. Because pandemic-caused recessions are different from standard ones - the economic change isn't caused by "normal" underlying factors. Ideally, if you could "pause" the economy throughout the pandemic and avoid the health implications (eg through sufficient social distancing and government measures to preserve incomes and assets for companies and individuals), the bounce-back is 100%.
There's some evidence that failure to impose the restrictions can make economic recovery afterwards mroe difficult ("Economists have examined the differences in non-pharmaceutical pandemic interventions across different US cities during the Flu Pandemic of 1918.. The pandemic reduced US manufacturing by an estimated 18 percent making it a large recession indeed. Those cities that pushed earlier and more intensively on pandemic containment ended up bouncing back and having higher economic growth thereafter, and more exposed areas had a decline in economic activity that persisted.")
In essence, if your people end up dying or becoming health-limited, your economy is scarred and you don't get back as far or as fast. It turns a potentially temporary issue into a permanent one.
Which means that the Swedish benefit - other than less "nanny state" to enforce distancing - would be the absence of a second wave.
But the conundrum with this is that avoiding a second wave implies mass immunity - and mass immunity comes at a heavy price in terms of sickness and death.
So is it not the case that Sweden first has to fail - i.e. look dreadful - in order to ultimately succeed?
Ferguson just shot down Guardian story.....a number of political figures have attended these meetings as observers, but not interfered in anyway.
Made a big point of saying he basically only interacts with Witty and Vallance, who are apolitical.
So Ferguson shot down the story by confirming it while minimising its importance? This is the same pattern I observed last night: people in the loop were saying the story was insignificant, not that it was false. However, the trouble is the Guardian claims from SAGE sources that Cummings (and Warner, the data scientist) did participate.
But as @MaxPB suggested earlier, this may be acting as a dead cat story by distracting attention from more urgent issues.
You have just contradicted yourself there. He said they didn't participate, the Guardian claimed they did.
Maybe he isn't telling the truth, but his statement was pretty categorical. He could have easily used very vague language. Seems a bit of a strange hill to die on if you are him.
The Guardian really needs to find - and quickly - a credible source to back up their original claim, or they could be badly damaged.
Nah. The Graun's customer base are lefties who will automatically assume the worst of the Government, and will still believe the worst of the Government regardless of the evidence presented. If they made unsubstantiated claims to the effect that the Cabinet barbecued the babies of the poor and ate them for lunch after every weekly meeting then their readership wouldn't be outraged or even suspicious. They'd be thrilled.
Normally that would be true. But these are not normal times. I suspect they might regret this story, in months to come, if they can't stand it up
What has the Guardian said that isn't true? Information about Cummings's attendance was leaked, they reported the leak and the government has conceded he did indeed attend. What's your gripe? They should have suppressed the story? Or published it with the caveat that it's much ado about nothing and Boris and Dom are still jolly good eggs?
"Various attendees of Sage told the Guardian that both Cummings and Warner had been taking part in meetings of the group as far back as February and had not merely observed but actively participated in discussions about the formation of advice."
Regarding the seeming joy in which deaths in Sweden are greeted, I have to say I’m baffled... why doesn’t everybody hope that Sweden have got it right, and that there’s a way of dealing with covid-19 that doesn’t require such strict closure of society?
Surely people aren’t such fans of big state politics that they actively want the Swedes to fail, and to sneer at anyone rooting for them?
I, for one, have been rooting for Sweden all through this process.
Me too. I desperately want them to be right, for their own sake and mine. I just don't think they are.
They may be right for Sweden.
What is right for one country may not be right for another.
Given the fact that the fatality rate in Sweden is 6/7 times higher than in the best available comparators (their neighbours to the east and west) it really doesn't look like what they're doing is right for their own country.
The worst part is that they are still taking the same or a very similar economic hit to the nation's who have locked down. They really are in the worst of both worlds situation that we may have avoided, just enough people aren't following the voluntary lockdown measures that the R value hasn't fallen below 1 but enough people are that the economy has tanked.
Is this right? Sweden has not gained a (relative) economic advantage by "locking down" less than the rest?
They could end up having an economic disadvantage. Because pandemic-caused recessions are different from standard ones - the economic change isn't caused by "normal" underlying factors. Ideally, if you could "pause" the economy throughout the pandemic and avoid the health implications (eg through sufficient social distancing and government measures to preserve incomes and assets for companies and individuals), the bounce-back is 100%.
There's some evidence that failure to impose the restrictions can make economic recovery afterwards mroe difficult ("Economists have examined the differences in non-pharmaceutical pandemic interventions across different US cities during the Flu Pandemic of 1918.. The pandemic reduced US manufacturing by an estimated 18 percent making it a large recession indeed. Those cities that pushed earlier and more intensively on pandemic containment ended up bouncing back and having higher economic growth thereafter, and more exposed areas had a decline in economic activity that persisted.")
In essence, if your people end up dying or becoming health-limited, your economy is scarred and you don't get back as far or as fast. It turns a potentially temporary issue into a permanent one.
Which means that the Swedish benefit - other than less "nanny state" to enforce distancing - would be the absence of a second wave.
But the conundrum with this is that avoiding a second wave implies mass immunity - and mass immunity comes at a heavy price in terms of sickness of death.
So is it not the case that Sweden first has to fail - i.e. look dreadful - in order to ultimately succeed?
It also depends on immunity-conferring antibodies resulting from having had the virus, still a moot point as I understand it?
I think there's an element of projection in the "end lockdown now" stuff - people in houses with big gardens think that people in flats must be miserable, but plenty of people live in flats because they don't want big gardens. People who live in the countryside think that people in cities must be finding it unbearable to be able to have country walks, etc.
Obviously it's inconvenient for all of us, and horrible for people in particularly unpleasant circumstances, but the polls are pretty clear: most people only want lockdowns to ease when it's relatively safe. Crowded pubs, congregating at beauty spots, packed football matches - next year is soon enough.
You're putting it as though it's a question of black and white. In practice I think opinion is more nuanced than that, supporting a lockdown in general without every specific measure within it. I agree that relatively few want a return in the near future to the extreme scenarios of crowded pubs and packed football matches. On the other hand, there is an active debate about other activities.
There seems to me to be some which were initially caught by the broad brush of restrictions which with hindsight seem increasingly counter intuitive eg.: - if it's ok to go on a cycle ride or jog (involving movement past other people) why is it not OK to sit well away from people in the open air for hours on end, and activity which by definition involves much less proximity to people moving around? - why restrict the ability of people to travel say 10 miles out of a city to an uncrowded area when the consequence is that you end up with people congregating more closely in the only green space within spitting distance of where they live? - given that there has been a clamour to open up golf courses for the general public to wander around for exercise, why am I otherwise unable to wander around my golf course course while gaining added exercise by carrying and using a set of equipment? - given that the most dangerous form of "leisure" activity at the moment is shopping, isn't the closing down of just about every other form of leisure activity other than running and cycling only going to tempt more people to find an excuse to get out of the house to indulge in that most dangerous activity in the absence of being denied the opportunity to do anything safer?
So there are I think areas where the lockdown could be eased now with absolutely no risk. In fact failure to do so will carry its own risk, because the effectiveness of the lockdown rests on public consent which might otherwise start to fragment.
Regarding the seeming joy in which deaths in Sweden are greeted, I have to say I’m baffled... why doesn’t everybody hope that Sweden have got it right, and that there’s a way of dealing with covid-19 that doesn’t require such strict closure of society?
Surely people aren’t such fans of big state politics that they actively want the Swedes to fail, and to sneer at anyone rooting for them?
I, for one, have been rooting for Sweden all through this process.
Me too. I desperately want them to be right, for their own sake and mine. I just don't think they are.
They may be right for Sweden.
What is right for one country may not be right for another.
Given the fact that the fatality rate in Sweden is 6/7 times higher than in the best available comparators (their neighbours to the east and west) it really doesn't look like what they're doing is right for their own country.
The worst part is that they are still taking the same or a very similar economic hit to the nation's who have locked down. They really are in the worst of both worlds situation that we may have avoided, just enough people aren't following the voluntary lockdown measures that the R value hasn't fallen below 1 but enough people are that the economy has tanked.
There are going to be significant long-term mental health benefits in not confining people to their homes, for younger people especially. I do not envy teachers here the task of having to deal with children who have been stuck in a confined space for weeks on end with parents who do not get on with each other or who cannot be arsed to make them do schoolwork or who do not have access to the internet etc.
Weeks? We'll be talking about many months before this is all over. It's an educational mass catastrophe. There are already mutterings to the effect that years 10 and 12 may have lost so much time by the end of all this that they all have to be kept back to repeat the year. Although God alone knows how the secondaries are meant suddenly to accommodate nine instead of seven age cohorts (which would also mean one year in which the universities had no first year undergrads and then two further years in which they had twice the normal number to contend with.) It's a gargantuan mess and no mistake.
Permanently change the school/university year to match the calendar year. Use whatever time may exist out of lockdown for the rest of the year to complete year ten and twelve and extend years below that. Similarly for primary but they can be more flexible. The new school year starts January 2021 with exams in October. Universities then start in January 2022 with their next cohort.
We’ll be pretty much finished by July, whatever happens but schools without the benefits that we have would likely need the extra time to catch back up. We can easily have extension work to fill that time.
It might work, although it does rest on the (heroic?) assumption that there will be any significant resumption of schooling this calendar year.
Given some of the objections that have already been raised - to the extreme difficulty of introducing social distancing to schools, for example, and the risk of kids mixing and then taking the illness back home with them - how long do we think that the schools might end up being shut for? We also have the small matter of the teaching unions already starting to make noises about the requirement for PPE.
It seems to me that the Department for Education will have a huge enough task on its hands equipping every teacher in the land with goggles and a constant supply of, at the minimum, medical-grade masks and nitrile gloves and/or hand sanitiser. If similar kit is also needed for all the children then we might as well give up now.
Sorry, just went out to post something.*
Well. it's the children who it is more needed for. As they may get it and not show symptoms they are the ones who need the masks to keep them from infecting each other and us. I presume you've seen the NEU and NASUWT statements, that just sets out what I was suggesting earlier.
With Birbalsingh (probably the most hardline disciplinary teacher there is with a public profile) saying that social distancing is a joke in schools I hope that is now understood. To have it means having at the most half of students (if not more for schools whose staffing is to the bone) in school at any time. So what happens for the days they aren't? Parents can't mind them if they are told to go back to work. Are they going to roam the streets? Socialise with their mates? Get up to no good? Get the virus then come back to school the next week and the whole carousel begins again? Maybe just year ten and twelve and the rest are still taught online? That frees some parents but maybe they aren't the 'right' ones. Thinking through it all I think that moving the school year might be our best current option.
I'm teaching full time at the moment. Setting work online and marking it, live lessons via Google, acting as tech support for my classes (I nearly got to the 'try turning it off and switching it on again' point with one of them). We have online assemblies etc. We have maybe 10% who are not as fully engaged but, for a lot, that's down to timezones and certain countries mysterious blocking of certain websites.
I do understand how some teachers are not doing much of that and, therefore those schools will need to catch up. The technology initiatives should hopefully help. There's sadly been an unfortunate desire from successive governments for schools to act as social services and we are seeing the danger of that. Yes, we can draw attention to this but dumping the problem on schools is not the answer.
*Horrendous, first time I've been out for six weeks or so during daylight hours. Just like a normal Saturday, no wonder my area isn't see any curve like London. Back to my 'not before 10pm' rule I think.
It is perfectly legitimate for a government advisor to be present and even direct SAGE meetings.
But then the line has to be that we have listened to the advice and our policy is X. It can't be we're following the scientific advice. (What would the scientific advice be on smoking?)
Plus in all of this we (still) have Dom at the controls. Which matters because it's bad enough (but again perfectly legitimate) to have him running the show in normal times when there actually is a prime minister. But it's a lot worse when, as now, we don't have a prime minister.
If you want unbiased scientific advice you don't have a political fixer 'direct'ing the committe giving it.
Oh, so he's now 'directing' the entire committee?
Cummings must be quite a man brainwashing them. Maybe he's the Master.
And of course the other problem is perception. Even if Cummings is behaving impeccably at SAGE - if the truth is benign as per my first para - how can we know this. We can't.
But why would we, and why should we? Unless the entirety of government and government briefings was open and public, that would be case for any government, and any advisor/SPAD.
It ultimately boils down to 'we don't like this guy, and we don't like his influence', but his job is to advise, and therefore have influence on the PM, and that would be true for anyone.
Yes it's defensible - advisable even - on this basis.
But Cummings is not any old SPAD. We all remember Alastair Campbell and his impact on "impartial" experts.
I don't know. Tricky one. It's probably OK. You'd need to be an insider to know.
I think we have to determine whether we think the principle of a SPAD being present and participating or not is acceptable. If it is, then the fact he is 'not any old SPAD' is irrelevant as to whether it is ok. If it isn't, then him being 'not any old SPAD' is still irrelevant.
That he is more and, to many, worse than the others is a legitimate concern, but I think it is separate to this issue and there is too much blending of the concern about Cummings' influence and his position generally, and whether despite not liking that influence and position, his participation in this context was reasonable.
To me it IS about Cummings because therein lies the specific risk that people are worried about (if they are worried). The risk is that the active participation of the second most powerful person in government - a virtual in loco PM who is known to be iconoclastic and forceful - will distort the deliberations and output of a supposedly impartial group of experts in the direction of what he and Johnson want to hear. As happened on Iraq with Campbell (in loco Blair) and the intelligence officials.
I assume meetings are similarly distorted when the PM is present?
The point is about a specific situation - where the government is selling a policy on grounds that it is based on information from independent apolitical experts. The implication is that the information is free of political bias. For example, if senior intelligence officials report that Iraq has WMD, that this is not influenced by them being aware that the PM wishes it to be so.
Isn't that what they do for all crises where SAGE is involved? I don't buy the argument that Dominic Cummings is the only person capable of influencing the others on this panel to such a level that it distorts their reasoning.
It is not totally clear to me whether you understand the risk but judge it acceptably small or you do not understand the risk. If it's the first, please advise and we can stop. Because I'm not sure I disagree. If it's the second, also please advise and I will have another bash.
Presumably the furore would be even greater if the government hadn't sent anyone to the SAGE meetings? Or, even worse, sent a deputy assistant SPAD from the Department of Health (England branch).
Possibly. Certainly I can see the argument for Cummings being there. It's an efficiency argument. Then again, it's more efficient if the M&A dept of a bank talks to its trading arm. Yet there are rules to prevent this in certain circumstances - where it is deemed more important to prevent a conflict of interest, real or perceived.
The last conflict of interest problem SAGE had was with the scientists - over swine flu, 5 of them forgot to disclose links to pharma companies.
more relevantly, there are 20 odd big hitters in the room with Cummings, not by any means guaranteed to be tory by inclination, and not easily bullied. The dodgy dossier was compiled in private by nicking stuff off the internet; no one would get it past a proper committee like this one.
OK. But for me it revolves around 2 questions -
1. Is Cummings motivated to shape "the science" in a certain direction? 2. If he were, does participating in SAGE facilitate this?
If you think "no" and "no" this is a complete non-story. If you think "yes" and "yes" it's a scandal. If it's a "yes" and a "no" - either order - you will consider it a valid concern but not personally be too concerned. FWIW, which is not an enormous amount given I know little of the man or the SAGE process, I incline to this latter position.
I don’t think the issue anywhere near as binary as that.
Probably not. But which other key questions (other than those two) would you ask yourself to determine whether you feel it is a problem that Cummings contributes to SAGE?
Ferguson just said on the record he hasn't contributed, nor has any of the political figures that have attended as an observers to these meetings.
When asked, his statement was pretty categorical on the matter.
Regarding the seeming joy in which deaths in Sweden are greeted, I have to say I’m baffled... why doesn’t everybody hope that Sweden have got it right, and that there’s a way of dealing with covid-19 that doesn’t require such strict closure of society?
Surely people aren’t such fans of big state politics that they actively want the Swedes to fail, and to sneer at anyone rooting for them?
I, for one, have been rooting for Sweden all through this process.
Me too. I desperately want them to be right, for their own sake and mine. I just don't think they are.
They may be right for Sweden.
What is right for one country may not be right for another.
Given the fact that the fatality rate in Sweden is 6/7 times higher than in the best available comparators (their neighbours to the east and west) it really doesn't look like what they're doing is right for their own country.
The worst part is that they are still taking the same or a very similar economic hit to the nation's who have locked down. They really are in the worst of both worlds situation that we may have avoided, just enough people aren't following the voluntary lockdown measures that the R value hasn't fallen below 1 but enough people are that the economy has tanked.
Is this right? Sweden has not gained a (relative) economic advantage by "locking down" less than the rest?
They could end up having an economic disadvantage. Because pandemic-caused recessions are different from standard ones - the economic change isn't caused by "normal" underlying factors. Ideally, if you could "pause" the economy throughout the pandemic and avoid the health implications (eg through sufficient social distancing and government measures to preserve incomes and assets for companies and individuals), the bounce-back is 100%.
There's some evidence that failure to impose the restrictions can make economic recovery afterwards mroe difficult ("Economists have examined the differences in non-pharmaceutical pandemic interventions across different US cities during the Flu Pandemic of 1918.. The pandemic reduced US manufacturing by an estimated 18 percent making it a large recession indeed. Those cities that pushed earlier and more intensively on pandemic containment ended up bouncing back and having higher economic growth thereafter, and more exposed areas had a decline in economic activity that persisted.")
In essence, if your people end up dying or becoming health-limited, your economy is scarred and you don't get back as far or as fast. It turns a potentially temporary issue into a permanent one.
Which means that the Swedish benefit - other than less "nanny state" to enforce distancing - would be the absence of a second wave.
But the conundrum with this is that avoiding a second wave implies mass immunity - and mass immunity comes at a heavy price in terms of sickness of death.
So is it not the case that Sweden first has to fail - i.e. look dreadful - in order to ultimately succeed?
It also depends on immunity-conferring antibodies resulting from having had the virus, still a moot point as I understand it?
I think it's not so much the fact that they will confer immunity but more how long for. In the short term it will almost surely provide immunity but it can wain depending on several factors, (e.g., mutation rate of the virus) which are still somewhat unclear.
21.2% +ve test rate, lowest it's been for a good while ?
Probably inevitable when the number of people tested has near-doubled in the last few days I think.
What worries me about the increase in testing is that the form of testing is now being driven by the political imperitive to get the numbers up regardless of who is tested.
Effectively the system has been opened up to 10 million or so people to chose to test themselves, or even more given that there seems to be no effective means to screen who is putting themselves forward. And given that it's on a first come, first served basis with limited capacity, that comes at the expense of ensuring that those who are first in the queue are those at most risk of spreading the disease to people at greatest risk, most obviously care home staff.
It is perfectly legitimate for a government advisor to be present and even direct SAGE meetings.
But then the line has to be that we have listened to the advice and our policy is X. It can't be we're following the scientific advice. (What would the scientific advice be on smoking?)
Plus in all of this we (still) have Dom at the controls. Which matters because it's bad enough (but again perfectly legitimate) to have him running the show in normal times when there actually is a prime minister. But it's a lot worse when, as now, we don't have a prime minister.
If you want unbiased scientific advice you don't have a political fixer 'direct'ing the committe giving it.
Oh, so he's now 'directing' the entire committee?
Cummings must be quite a man brainwashing them. Maybe he's the Master.
And of course the other problem is perception. Even if Cummings is behaving impeccably at SAGE - if the truth is benign as per my first para - how can we know this. We can't.
But why would we, and why should we? Unless the entirety of government and government briefings was open and public, that would be case for any government, and any advisor/SPAD.
It ultimately boils down to 'we don't like this guy, and we don't like his influence', but his job is to advise, and therefore have influence on the PM, and that would be true for anyone.
Yes it's defensible - advisable even - on this basis.
But Cummings is not any old SPAD. We all remember Alastair Campbell and his impact on "impartial" experts.
I don't know. Tricky one. It's probably OK. You'd need to be an insider to know.
I think we have to determine whether we think the principle of a SPAD being present and participating or not is acceptable. If it is, then the fact he is 'not any old SPAD' is irrelevant as to whether it is ok. If it isn't, then him being 'not any old SPAD' is still irrelevant.
That he is more and, to many, worse than the others is a legitimate concern, but I think it is separate to this issue and there is too much blending of the concern about Cummings' influence and his position generally, and whether despite not liking that influence and position, his participation in this context was reasonable.
To me it IS about Cummings because therein lies the specific risk that people are worried about (if they are worried). The risk is that the active participation of the second most powerful person in government - a virtual in loco PM who is known to be iconoclastic and forceful - will distort the deliberations and output of a supposedly impartial group of experts in the direction of what he and Johnson want to hear. As happened on Iraq with Campbell (in loco Blair) and the intelligence officials.
I assume meetings are similarly distorted when the PM is present?
The point is about a specific situation - where the government is selling a policy on grounds that it is based on information from independent apolitical experts. The implication is that the information is free of political bias. For example, if senior intelligence officials report that Iraq has WMD, that this is not influenced by them being aware that the PM wishes it to be so.
Isn't that what they do for all crises where SAGE is involved? I don't buy the argument that Dominic Cummings is the only person capable of influencing the others on this panel to such a level that it distorts their reasoning.
It is not totally clear to me whether you understand the risk but judge it acceptably small or you do not understand the risk. If it's the first, please advise and we can stop. Because I'm not sure I disagree. If it's the second, also please advise and I will have another bash.
Presumably the furore would be even greater if the government hadn't sent anyone to the SAGE meetings? Or, even worse, sent a deputy assistant SPAD from the Department of Health (England branch).
Possibly. Certainly I can see the argument for Cummings being there. It's an efficiency argument. Then again, it's more efficient if the M&A dept of a bank talks to its trading arm. Yet there are rules to prevent this in certain circumstances - where it is deemed more important to prevent a conflict of interest, real or perceived.
The last conflict of interest problem SAGE had was with the scientists - over swine flu, 5 of them forgot to disclose links to pharma companies.
more relevantly, there are 20 odd big hitters in the room with Cummings, not by any means guaranteed to be tory by inclination, and not easily bullied. The dodgy dossier was compiled in private by nicking stuff off the internet; no one would get it past a proper committee like this one.
OK. But for me it revolves around 2 questions -
1. Is Cummings motivated to shape "the science" in a certain direction? 2. If he were, does participating in SAGE facilitate this?
If you think "no" and "no" this is a complete non-story. If you think "yes" and "yes" it's a scandal. If it's a "yes" and a "no" - either order - you will consider it a valid concern but not personally be too concerned. FWIW, which is not an enormous amount given I know little of the man or the SAGE process, I incline to this latter position.
I don’t think the issue anywhere near as binary as that.
Probably not. But which other key questions (other than those two) would you ask yourself to determine whether you feel it is a problem that Cummings contributes to SAGE?
Ferguson just said on the record he hasn't contributed, nor has any of the political figures that have attended as an observers to these meetings.
When asked, his statement was pretty categorical on the matter.
So for you it's a non-story then?
If he sat there like a girly-swot fan boy listening in and gets to ask a question at the end. Just because it hasn't been done before, we haven't had to lock down the whole country before either, it isn't some mega scandal.
However, if he was there sticking his uninformed beak in trying to direct the meeting, arguing with the egg-heads, well that is a different matter.
The Guardian claim he was was, Ferguson said he wasn't. Ferguson also said numerous political figures were present at various times.
Ferguson just shot down Guardian story.....a number of political figures have attended these meetings as observers, but not interfered in anyway.
Made a big point of saying he basically only interacts with Witty and Vallance, who are apolitical.
So Ferguson shot down the story by confirming it while minimising its importance? This is the same pattern I observed last night: people in the loop were saying the story was insignificant, not that it was false. However, the trouble is the Guardian claims from SAGE sources that Cummings (and Warner, the data scientist) did participate.
But as @MaxPB suggested earlier, this may be acting as a dead cat story by distracting attention from more urgent issues.
You have just contradicted yourself there. He said they didn't participate, the Guardian claimed they did.
Maybe he isn't telling the truth, but his statement was pretty categorical. He could have easily used very vague language. Seems a bit of a strange hill to die on if you are him.
The Guardian really needs to find - and quickly - a credible source to back up their original claim, or they could be badly damaged.
Nah. The Graun's customer base are lefties who will automatically assume the worst of the Government, and will still believe the worst of the Government regardless of the evidence presented. If they made unsubstantiated claims to the effect that the Cabinet barbecued the babies of the poor and ate them for lunch after every weekly meeting then their readership wouldn't be outraged or even suspicious. They'd be thrilled.
Normally that would be true. But these are not normal times. I suspect they might regret this story, in months to come, if they can't stand it up
What has the Guardian said that isn't true? Information about Cummings's attendance was leaked, they reported the leak and the government has conceded he did indeed attend. What's your gripe? They should have suppressed the story? Or published it with the caveat that it's much ado about nothing and Boris and Dom are still jolly good eggs?
"Various attendees of Sage told the Guardian that both Cummings and Warner had been taking part in meetings of the group as far back as February and had not merely observed but actively participated in discussions about the formation of advice."
Regarding the seeming joy in which deaths in Sweden are greeted, I have to say I’m baffled... why doesn’t everybody hope that Sweden have got it right, and that there’s a way of dealing with covid-19 that doesn’t require such strict closure of society?
Surely people aren’t such fans of big state politics that they actively want the Swedes to fail, and to sneer at anyone rooting for them?
I, for one, have been rooting for Sweden all through this process.
Me too. I desperately want them to be right, for their own sake and mine. I just don't think they are.
They may be right for Sweden.
What is right for one country may not be right for another.
Given the fact that the fatality rate in Sweden is 6/7 times higher than in the best available comparators (their neighbours to the east and west) it really doesn't look like what they're doing is right for their own country.
The worst part is that they are still taking the same or a very similar economic hit to the nation's who have locked down. They really are in the worst of both worlds situation that we may have avoided, just enough people aren't following the voluntary lockdown measures that the R value hasn't fallen below 1 but enough people are that the economy has tanked.
Is this right? Sweden has not gained a (relative) economic advantage by "locking down" less than the rest?
They could end up having an economic disadvantage. Because pandemic-caused recessions are different from standard ones - the economic change isn't caused by "normal" underlying factors. Ideally, if you could "pause" the economy throughout the pandemic and avoid the health implications (eg through sufficient social distancing and government measures to preserve incomes and assets for companies and individuals), the bounce-back is 100%.
There's some evidence that failure to impose the restrictions can make economic recovery afterwards mroe difficult ("Economists have examined the differences in non-pharmaceutical pandemic interventions across different US cities during the Flu Pandemic of 1918.. The pandemic reduced US manufacturing by an estimated 18 percent making it a large recession indeed. Those cities that pushed earlier and more intensively on pandemic containment ended up bouncing back and having higher economic growth thereafter, and more exposed areas had a decline in economic activity that persisted.")
In essence, if your people end up dying or becoming health-limited, your economy is scarred and you don't get back as far or as fast. It turns a potentially temporary issue into a permanent one.
Which means that the Swedish benefit - other than less "nanny state" to enforce distancing - would be the absence of a second wave.
But the conundrum with this is that avoiding a second wave implies mass immunity - and mass immunity comes at a heavy price in terms of sickness of death.
So is it not the case that Sweden first has to fail - i.e. look dreadful - in order to ultimately succeed?
It also depends on immunity-conferring antibodies resulting from having had the virus, still a moot point as I understand it?
That is a massive question. After recovery can you get it again within a short period? This is something one would really need to know before going for mass immunity as a matter of policy.
Expecting them to drop to virtually zero by July looks optimistic in the extreme.
Been saying for a while we are headed for highest number of deaths in Europe.
I expect when we do so, the daily slides will change to measuring deaths on a per million population basis. That will for a while at least , not have us as worst.
Thirty less votes for Mr Trump then. (Assuming they were fatalities).
How many of the survivors will stick with him if they were merely hospitalised from his advice? Surely some give up at that point? Or does the faith stay til the bitter end?
Yesterday's UK hospital daily death rate of 768 was I think at least double the per capita daily rate of any other major country, with the exception of Belgium which seems to be in a league of its own.
Comments
When asked, his statement was pretty categorical on the matter.
Because pandemic-caused recessions are different from standard ones - the economic change isn't caused by "normal" underlying factors. Ideally, if you could "pause" the economy throughout the pandemic and avoid the health implications (eg through sufficient social distancing and government measures to preserve incomes and assets for companies and individuals), the bounce-back is 100%.
There's some evidence that failure to impose the restrictions can make economic recovery afterwards mroe difficult ("Economists have examined the differences in non-pharmaceutical pandemic interventions across different US cities during the Flu Pandemic of 1918.. The pandemic reduced US manufacturing by an estimated 18 percent making it a large recession indeed. Those cities that pushed earlier and more intensively on pandemic containment ended up bouncing back and having higher economic growth thereafter, and more exposed areas had a decline in economic activity that persisted.")
In essence, if your people end up dying or becoming health-limited, your economy is scarred and you don't get back as far or as fast. It turns a potentially temporary issue into a permanent one.
But as @MaxPB suggested earlier, this may be acting as a dead cat story by distracting attention from more urgent issues.
You went off on a line about folk not wanting Sweden to have got it right, I said that wasn't the case for me but pointed out that on comparisons with geographical neighbours with *some* similarities Sweden didn't seem to be getting it right. You then asked why should Sweden be compared to its neighbours, I asked you which countries should it be compared to (a q. the answer to which I'd be interested).
The last redoubt of the Sverigers, you can't compare Sweden to it's immediate neighbours, you should compare it to *inaudible mumble*.
Maybe he isn't telling the truth, but his statement was pretty categorical. He could have easily used very vague language. Seems a bit of a strange hill to die on if you are him.
He made a big point of saying he has limited interaction with any politician figures, his job is to present to Witty and Vallance and that is what he does. It is for them to brief politicians.
There are several more interesting potential antivirals yet to be trialled, and while their chances are more than zero, they’re undoubtedly long shots.
Socially distancing queue at Morrisons this afternoon, somewhat distrait guy sitting begging at side. Big lad in too small shorts in front of me says he hasn't any change but gives him his half smoked fag, gratefully received by guy begging. I could even see the saliva wet nicotine stain on the filter as he handed it over.
That is based mostly on hope and partly on the very different looking spread of infections in different parts of the world.
They just move on to the next thing.
The legend will remain that Big Dom was there ordering the egg-heads around, bow beating all 20 odd of them into submission. Not as it seems more likely, he sat there like some over-keen student, who got to ask a question at the end.
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.20.20071423v1
... Fifteen or more days after symptom onset, antibodies against SARS-CoV-2 nucleocapsid protein showed 100% sensitivity and 100% specificity, while antibodies to spike protein were detected with 91% sensitivity and 100% specificity. Neither antibody levels nor the rate of seropositivity were significantly reduced by heat inactivation of samples. Analysis of daily samples from six patients with COVID-19 showed anti-nucleocapsid and spike antibodies appearing between day 8 to day 14 after initial symptoms. Immunocompromised patients generally had a delayed antibody response to SARS-CoV-2 compared to immunocompetent patients. Conclusions: Antibody to the nucleocapsid protein of SARS-CoV-2 is more sensitive than spike protein antibody for detecting early infection. Analyzing heat-inactivated samples by LIPS is a safe and sensitive method for detecting SARS-CoV-2 antibodies....
These are the “useless” (in terms of targeting the immune system to attack the virus) antibodies the body produces in quantity against a bit of viral debris - a protein which is wholly enclosed within the viral membrane of an intact virus.
Although it being tilted towards the elderly would mean that recovery from the "scarring" would be a bit quicker (to put it harshly, in 25 years, the majority of the demand from that sector would have gone already - although the temporary stunting of demand there would damage the prospects for companies providing goods and services to them in the interim - it wouldn't be economic for some activities that otherwise would have been)
"Hospitals are still reliant on "archaic" fax machines with thousands still in use, a survey shows.
"Senior doctors said the continued use of the outdated technology was "ludicrous", and modern forms of communication were urgently needed.
"The poll, by the Royal College of Surgeons using freedom of information laws, revealed nearly 9,000 fax machines were in use across England.
"Newcastle upon Tyne NHS Trust topped the list, relying on 603 machines."
Source: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-44805849
That report dates from less than two years ago. I seem to recall reading elsewhere that NHS trusts have now been prohibited from buying new fax machines and told to phase out the old ones, but I'm assuming that they most likely haven't got around to getting rid of most of the things just yet. Organisations, especially old and very large ones, can be rather resistant to change.
Him sitting here being a girly swot listening to the egg-heads discuss the science and having the priviledge to ask a question isn't.
Either it is significant, or it is being used cynically to distract the media's attention from other issues.
https://twitter.com/JeffreyGuterman/status/1254021091191926790?s=20
The immediate question was why will it still take 12 months...
At most, after this first wave, we might have 5% who have been affected....and you still not be immune...and the antibody tests are useless, so you probably won't know anyway.....
Meanwhile I will continue to lounge in my garden , a chilled IPA in hand and listen to the birds.
https://twitter.com/DHSCgovuk/status/1254052435577970688?s=20
Just look at Trump
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BalDN6iGYpE
"The government’s former chief scientific adviser Sir David King said he was “shocked” to discover there were political advisers on Sage. “If you are giving science advice, your advice should be free of any political bias,” he said. “That is just so critically important.”
...
King said political advisers were never on the equivalent committees of Sage when he chaired them and argued that Cummings, who is not a scientist, could report his own interpretation of Sage advice back to the prime minister.
Other former members of Sage also said they could not recall political appointees being on previous committees. David Lidington, a former Cabinet Office minister and de facto deputy to Theresa May when she was prime minister, said: “I’m not aware of any minister or special adviser, certainly not in Theresa May’s time, ever having been involved in the scientific advisory panels.”
But the conundrum with this is that avoiding a second wave implies mass immunity - and mass immunity comes at a heavy price in terms of sickness and death.
So is it not the case that Sweden first has to fail - i.e. look dreadful - in order to ultimately succeed?
As twitter said 3 weeks back Good News there may be a vaccine by
September. Bad news Hanvock is in charge of distributing it.
The bloke is useless.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/25/bar-dominic-cummings-from-sage-coronavirus-meetings-labour-urges
Ferguson has just said this is untrue.
There seems to me to be some which were initially caught by the broad brush of restrictions which with hindsight seem increasingly counter intuitive eg.:
- if it's ok to go on a cycle ride or jog (involving movement past other people) why is it not OK to sit well away from people in the open air for hours on end, and activity which by definition involves much less proximity to people moving around?
- why restrict the ability of people to travel say 10 miles out of a city to an uncrowded area when the consequence is that you end up with people congregating more closely in the only green space within spitting distance of where they live?
- given that there has been a clamour to open up golf courses for the general public to wander around for exercise, why am I otherwise unable to wander around my golf course course while gaining added exercise by carrying and using a set of equipment?
- given that the most dangerous form of "leisure" activity at the moment is shopping, isn't the closing down of just about every other form of leisure activity other than running and cycling only going to tempt more people to find an excuse to get out of the house to indulge in that most dangerous activity in the absence of being denied the opportunity to do anything safer?
So there are I think areas where the lockdown could be eased now with absolutely no risk. In fact failure to do so will carry its own risk, because the effectiveness of the lockdown rests on public consent which might otherwise start to fragment.
Well. it's the children who it is more needed for. As they may get it and not show symptoms they are the ones who need the masks to keep them from infecting each other and us. I presume you've seen the NEU and NASUWT statements, that just sets out what I was suggesting earlier.
With Birbalsingh (probably the most hardline disciplinary teacher there is with a public profile) saying that social distancing is a joke in schools I hope that is now understood. To have it means having at the most half of students (if not more for schools whose staffing is to the bone) in school at any time. So what happens for the days they aren't? Parents can't mind them if they are told to go back to work. Are they going to roam the streets? Socialise with their mates? Get up to no good? Get the virus then come back to school the next week and the whole carousel begins again? Maybe just year ten and twelve and the rest are still taught online? That frees some parents but maybe they aren't the 'right' ones. Thinking through it all I think that moving the school year might be our best current option.
I'm teaching full time at the moment. Setting work online and marking it, live lessons via Google, acting as tech support for my classes (I nearly got to the 'try turning it off and switching it on again' point with one of them). We have online assemblies etc. We have maybe 10% who are not as fully engaged but, for a lot, that's down to timezones and certain countries mysterious blocking of certain websites.
I do understand how some teachers are not doing much of that and, therefore those schools will need to catch up. The technology initiatives should hopefully help. There's sadly been an unfortunate desire from successive governments for schools to act as social services and we are seeing the danger of that. Yes, we can draw attention to this but dumping the problem on schools is not the answer.
*Horrendous, first time I've been out for six weeks or so during daylight hours. Just like a normal Saturday, no wonder my area isn't see any curve like London. Back to my 'not before 10pm' rule I think.
Effectively the system has been opened up to 10 million or so people to chose to test themselves, or even more given that there seems to be no effective means to screen who is putting themselves forward. And given that it's on a first come, first served basis with limited capacity, that comes at the expense of ensuring that those who are first in the queue are those at most risk of spreading the disease to people at greatest risk, most obviously care home staff.
However, if he was there sticking his uninformed beak in trying to direct the meeting, arguing with the egg-heads, well that is a different matter.
The Guardian claim he was was, Ferguson said he wasn't. Ferguson also said numerous political figures were present at various times.
https://twitter.com/CDCgov/status/1253742258853199872
Expecting them to drop to virtually zero by July looks optimistic in the extreme.
Been saying for a while we are headed for highest number of deaths in Europe.
I expect when we do so, the daily slides will change to measuring deaths on a per million population basis.
That will for a while at least , not have us as worst.
Today's UK number is 813.