politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » A knighthood for Colonel Tom Moore?

Late Corbyn-Early Starmer, leader ratings wise, is very similar to late Brown-early Miliband I think? I could only find Browns to end of 2009 when he was -40, similar to latter day Corbyn. Starmer and Ed both seem to be high teens positive, Starmer a bit higher on average

@TheScreamingEagles ?

Actually Starmer is +17 on average so far, Ed was +12 at this stage

For raising £30 million he deserves one, absolutely.

For services to charity, yes.

FPT

eadric said:

Black_Rook said:

JohnLilburne said:

ukpaul said:

JohnLilburne said:

SandyRentool said:

RobD said:

SandyRentool said:

RobD said:

noneoftheabove said:

RobD said:

noneoftheabove said:

RobD said:

rottenborough said:

https://twitter.com/afneil/status/1256870611697176577

The Times article is wrong. It says that all over 70s have been instructed to shelter for twelve weeks. That's simply not true.

If you look at how it was reported back in March you can see why.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-51917562

"Pregnant women, people over the age of 70 and those with certain health conditions should consider the advice "particularly important", he (the PM) said.

People in at-risk groups will be asked within days to stay home for 12 weeks."

The natural assumption was that at risk groups were the above categories, yet those groups were defined differently but only by the following week.

My parents think they need to shelter for 12 weeks, presumably on that basis, and clearly they werent alone in that misunderstanding.

Those are two separate sentences, and classes of people.

Yes I can see that now, but specifying the first group one week before specifying the second group has clearly caused mass confusion, hence the Sunday Times article.

Little harm done by it as everyone is on lockdown now, but poor communication in explaining this from the govt (it has generally been good imo).

The formatting of a BBC article is hardly the fault of the government, the same with a times article. The advice is clearly stated on HMGs website. Those who needed the specific advice to stay at home for 12 weeks were each informed individually by letter.

When the formal advice came it was different to what had been trailed the week before. Fewer people were told to shield. However this change was not pointed out explicitly, so people who had paid more attention to the first announcement will have assumed that the initial criteria applied.

Wasn't the advice always that the most vulnerable would be the ones asked to shelter? I don't think they ever lumped all over-70s into that category.

They did include all over 70s in the pre announcement, but this changed by the time it was implemented.

Yes, I was worried it might apply to everyone who gets a flu jab on medical grounds, but for that group it became "follow social distancing especially stringently"

And the ridiculousness of basing it on influenza when we have seen how utterly different it is in its effect is still not being addressed. The lists have become a joke, bearing no real connection to the reality of this virus.

Research is being done, for example the growing realisation that pre-diabetics and the overweight (even people with a BMI as low as 30) can be at risk. A BMI of 40 and you're brown bread. In my case I'm hoping a cardiology appointment can give me an all-clear although how long it will take to organise one I don't know. I could probably afford to pay for a private consultation, but not for an angiogram if one is called for.

A BMI of 30 is the threshold at which "normal" folk (i.e. most people, except for muscular athletes for whom BMI is a very poor measure) transition from being merely overweight to obese. So 30 is not a low value; it's simply that the average person in the UK is now overweight, so it may not seem as excessive as it actually is. 40 is very obese and, based on my limited layman's knowledge, I would've thought there would be a good argument for getting anyone in that category to shield.

Or let Darwin do his work with the fatsos

BMI of 40 is ridiculous. This person does not want to live anyway

Disgusting comment.

People can be overweight not because of not wanting to live, but simply due to enjoying life a bit too much. Enjoying food too much.

BMI 40 may not be good for you, but that equates to about 18 stone for the average man - a lot and an unhealthy amount sure but not absurdly overweight to the point of can't live.

FPT:

eadric said:

Black_Rook said:

JohnLilburne said:

ukpaul said:

JohnLilburne said:

SandyRentool said:

RobD said:

SandyRentool said:

RobD said:

noneoftheabove said:

RobD said:

noneoftheabove said:

RobD said:

rottenborough said:

https://twitter.com/afneil/status/1256870611697176577

The Times article is wrong. It says that all over 70s have been instructed to shelter for twelve weeks. That's simply not true.

If you look at how it was reported back in March you can see why.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-51917562

"Pregnant women, people over the age of 70 and those with certain health conditions should consider the advice "particularly important", he (the PM) said.

People in at-risk groups will be asked within days to stay home for 12 weeks."

The natural assumption was that at risk groups were the above categories, yet those groups were defined differently but only by the following week.

My parents think they need to shelter for 12 weeks, presumably on that basis, and clearly they werent alone in that misunderstanding.

Those are two separate sentences, and classes of people.

Yes I can see that now, but specifying the first group one week before specifying the second group has clearly caused mass confusion, hence the Sunday Times article.

Little harm done by it as everyone is on lockdown now, but poor communication in explaining this from the govt (it has generally been good imo).

The formatting of a BBC article is hardly the fault of the government, the same with a times article. The advice is clearly stated on HMGs website. Those who needed the specific advice to stay at home for 12 weeks were each informed individually by letter.

When the formal advice came it was different to what had been trailed the week before. Fewer people were told to shield. However this change was not pointed out explicitly, so people who had paid more attention to the first announcement will have assumed that the initial criteria applied.

Wasn't the advice always that the most vulnerable would be the ones asked to shelter? I don't think they ever lumped all over-70s into that category.

They did include all over 70s in the pre announcement, but this changed by the time it was implemented.

Yes, I was worried it might apply to everyone who gets a flu jab on medical grounds, but for that group it became "follow social distancing especially stringently"

And the ridiculousness of basing it on influenza when we have seen how utterly different it is in its effect is still not being addressed. The lists have become a joke, bearing no real connection to the reality of this virus.

Research is being done, for example the growing realisation that pre-diabetics and the overweight (even people with a BMI as low as 30) can be at risk. A BMI of 40 and you're brown bread. In my case I'm hoping a cardiology appointment can give me an all-clear although how long it will take to organise one I don't know. I could probably afford to pay for a private consultation, but not for an angiogram if one is called for.

A BMI of 30 is the threshold at which "normal" folk (i.e. most people, except for muscular athletes for whom BMI is a very poor measure) transition from being merely overweight to obese. So 30 is not a low value; it's simply that the average person in the UK is now overweight, so it may not seem as excessive as it actually is. 40 is very obese and, based on my limited layman's knowledge, I would've thought there would be a good argument for getting anyone in that category to shield.

Or let Darwin do his work with the fatsos

BMI of 40 is ridiculous. This person does not want to live anyway

Contrary to popular wisdom, fat people aren't, generally speaking, wanton gluttons. Many also carry disabilities that make it difficult or impossible to do the kind of strenuous aerobic exercise that helps fit people to maintain a healthy weight, without having to endure the discipline of an endless low energy diet.

It's also very easy to get big and a bloody damned sight harder to get it back off again. I speak from experience in this matter.

Obesity, like poverty (with which it is commonly associated,) is typically a result of misfortune rather than moral deficiency.

Philip_Thompson said:

For raising £30 million he deserves one, absolutely.

Hell yes. The odds seem generous.

TheScreamingEagles said:

TimT said:

FPT @ TSE "(He doesn't expect a vaccine and but expects lots of new mutations of Covid-19.)"

On what basis and with what expertise does he predict no vaccine and lots of mutations? Or is this just more uninformed fearmongering?

There is plenty of justified fear without adding baseless stuff to it.

His speciality finance/banking area is the medicine/pharma sector.

It is based on talks with those who work in the sector.

You know the vaccine trial protocols, there's a fear that if we do get a vaccine we rush it out and there's complications down the line.

He's also basing it on disreputable leaders running key countries in this pandemic, the worry that China won't give us the full details lest it damages China.

Trump is working on what's best for him and his electoral chances which is an awful place for us all to be in.

I've had some experience with specialists in finance on various industries.

My favourite was the guy who did a whole presentation on SpaceX - on the basis that since they hadn't moved production to China, they would be rapidly outcompeted and wiped out - this was a few years ago,

When I talked to the guy, it became apparent he had never heard of ITAR*. Or knew much about the relative states of rocketry industry in China, the US and Europe.

*https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Traffic_in_Arms_Regulations - The short version is that if you are an American company and you *think* about transferring rocket manufacturing tech to a third country, you will be in Club Fed in minutes. Interestingly this is one law that gets savagely enforced on everyone.

FPT

isam said:

Late Corbyn-Early Starmer, leader ratings wise, is very similar to late Brown-early Miliband I think? I could only find Browns to end of 2009 when he was -40. Starmer and Ed both seem to be high teens positive, Starmer a bit higher on average

@TheScreamingEagles ?

The difference is that:
1. Starmer's positive +18 rating comes in spite of Labour being -18 behind in the polls. so a net difference of +36.
2. Miliband's personal ratings imploded after his first month. Just 2 months into his leadership, Miliband was polling -9 on YouGov's "well/badly" question, at a point when Labour and the Conservatives were tied in the polls.

Starmer is in my view a much more solid performer than Miliband, both in the HoC and in the media, and it is hard to see his ratings collapsing to anything like the same extent as Miliband's.

Mr. Rook, yes and no.

I always forget if it's hyperplastic or hypertropic obesity, but when children are overfed they create more adipocytes (fat cells) which then permanently increase their baseline 'fatness', which is not their fault and rather difficult to do much about.

That said, eating more and exercising less, all else being equal, makes one fat. It's not a wild variable unrelated to human behaviour for most people.

JohnLilburne said:

Apparently he should only be addressed as Colonel while fulfilling his honorary duties. We don't refer to Colonel Kelly Holmes or Colonel Jools Holland https://medium.com/@DefenceHQ/honorary-colonels-in-the-british-army-1b6c2070a689

I think his honorary duties cover lifting the morale of the nation, so Colonel Tom it is.

Philip_Thompson said:

FPT

eadric said:

Black_Rook said:

JohnLilburne said:

ukpaul said:

JohnLilburne said:

SandyRentool said:

RobD said:

SandyRentool said:

RobD said:

noneoftheabove said:

RobD said:

noneoftheabove said:

RobD said:

rottenborough said:

https://twitter.com/afneil/status/1256870611697176577

The Times article is wrong. It says that all over 70s have been instructed to shelter for twelve weeks. That's simply not true.

If you look at how it was reported back in March you can see why.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-51917562

"Pregnant women, people over the age of 70 and those with certain health conditions should consider the advice "particularly important", he (the PM) said.

People in at-risk groups will be asked within days to stay home for 12 weeks."

The natural assumption was that at risk groups were the above categories, yet those groups were defined differently but only by the following week.

My parents think they need to shelter for 12 weeks, presumably on that basis, and clearly they werent alone in that misunderstanding.

Those are two separate sentences, and classes of people.

Yes I can see that now, but specifying the first group one week before specifying the second group has clearly caused mass confusion, hence the Sunday Times article.

Little harm done by it as everyone is on lockdown now, but poor communication in explaining this from the govt (it has generally been good imo).

The formatting of a BBC article is hardly the fault of the government, the same with a times article. The advice is clearly stated on HMGs website. Those who needed the specific advice to stay at home for 12 weeks were each informed individually by letter.

When the formal advice came it was different to what had been trailed the week before. Fewer people were told to shield. However this change was not pointed out explicitly, so people who had paid more attention to the first announcement will have assumed that the initial criteria applied.

Wasn't the advice always that the most vulnerable would be the ones asked to shelter? I don't think they ever lumped all over-70s into that category.

They did include all over 70s in the pre announcement, but this changed by the time it was implemented.

Yes, I was worried it might apply to everyone who gets a flu jab on medical grounds, but for that group it became "follow social distancing especially stringently"

And the ridiculousness of basing it on influenza when we have seen how utterly different it is in its effect is still not being addressed. The lists have become a joke, bearing no real connection to the reality of this virus.

Research is being done, for example the growing realisation that pre-diabetics and the overweight (even people with a BMI as low as 30) can be at risk. A BMI of 40 and you're brown bread. In my case I'm hoping a cardiology appointment can give me an all-clear although how long it will take to organise one I don't know. I could probably afford to pay for a private consultation, but not for an angiogram if one is called for.

A BMI of 30 is the threshold at which "normal" folk (i.e. most people, except for muscular athletes for whom BMI is a very poor measure) transition from being merely overweight to obese. So 30 is not a low value; it's simply that the average person in the UK is now overweight, so it may not seem as excessive as it actually is. 40 is very obese and, based on my limited layman's knowledge, I would've thought there would be a good argument for getting anyone in that category to shield.

Or let Darwin do his work with the fatsos

BMI of 40 is ridiculous. This person does not want to live anyway

Disgusting comment.

People can be overweight not because of not wanting to live, but simply due to enjoying life a bit too much. Enjoying food too much.

BMI 40 may not be good for you, but that equates to about 18 stone for the average man - a lot and an unhealthy amount sure but not absurdly overweight to the point of can't live.

A BMI of 40 equates to a weight somewhere a little in excess of 19 stone for a man of average height. Being that heavy is a serious health risk. I was some distance short of being that big but I was still incapable of picking my feet up and running and starting to struggle walking up stairs or uphill by the time I finally cracked the tough nut of sustainable weight loss, and I was only in my early 40s at the time.

Weight gain typically has less to do with an excess of joie de vivre and rather more to do with ingrained bad habits, commonly made worse by ill health, depression and other stress factors.

JohnLilburne said:

Apparently he should only be addressed as Colonel while fulfilling his honorary duties. We don't refer to Colonel Kelly Holmes or Colonel Jools Holland https://medium.com/@DefenceHQ/honorary-colonels-in-the-british-army-1b6c2070a689

How does this relate to Emily Thornberry's controversial honorary colonel status?

FPT

JohnLilburne said:

ukpaul said:

JohnLilburne said:

SandyRentool said:

RobD said:

SandyRentool said:

RobD said:

noneoftheabove said:

RobD said:

noneoftheabove said:

RobD said:

rottenborough said:

https://twitter.com/afneil/status/1256870611697176577

The Times article is wrong. It says that all over 70s have been instructed to shelter for twelve weeks. That's simply not true.

If you look at how it was reported back in March you can see why.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-51917562

"Pregnant women, people over the age of 70 and those with certain health conditions should consider the advice "particularly important", he (the PM) said.

People in at-risk groups will be asked within days to stay home for 12 weeks."

The natural assumption was that at risk groups were the above categories, yet those groups were defined differently but only by the following week.

My parents think they need to shelter for 12 weeks, presumably on that basis, and clearly they werent alone in that misunderstanding.

Those are two separate sentences, and classes of people.

Yes I can see that now, but specifying the first group one week before specifying the second group has clearly caused mass confusion, hence the Sunday Times article.

Little harm done by it as everyone is on lockdown now, but poor communication in explaining this from the govt (it has generally been good imo).

The formatting of a BBC article is hardly the fault of the government, the same with a times article. The advice is clearly stated on HMGs website. Those who needed the specific advice to stay at home for 12 weeks were each informed individually by letter.

When the formal advice came it was different to what had been trailed the week before. Fewer people were told to shield. However this change was not pointed out explicitly, so people who had paid more attention to the first announcement will have assumed that the initial criteria applied.

Wasn't the advice always that the most vulnerable would be the ones asked to shelter? I don't think they ever lumped all over-70s into that category.

They did include all over 70s in the pre announcement, but this changed by the time it was implemented.

Yes, I was worried it might apply to everyone who gets a flu jab on medical grounds, but for that group it became "follow social distancing especially stringently"

And the ridiculousness of basing it on influenza when we have seen how utterly different it is in its effect is still not being addressed. The lists have become a joke, bearing no real connection to the reality of this virus.

Research is being done, for example the growing realisation that pre-diabetics and the overweight (even people with a BMI as low as 30) can be at risk. A BMI of 40 and you're brown bread. In my case I'm hoping a cardiology appointment can give me an all-clear although how long it will take to organise one I don't know. I could probably afford to pay for a private consultation, but not for an angiogram if one is called for.

So why are they dicking around by taking away one of the largest comorbidities? I get that younger people with high BP that is controlled are okay but here I am, fifties, had a high BP for twenty plus years which regularly gets out of control and apparently everything's tickety boo. I had an angiogram a couple of years ago which appeared not too bad (mostly pain from a chest wall injury we think), what it did show is that my heart is at a strange angle, though. It took them ages to get a proper look at it. Apparently it's pretty rare for them to see that.

Anyway, in the last twelve months, I had a hernia op, then a frozen shoulder partly as a result of the op and the lack of movement and steroid injection hasn't helped my BMI. It was around 35 (about 29 or so pre-op) and I'm trying to get it down but the last couple of months have been relatively pain free and now I'm not getting as much exercise!

So, no, I'm not happy. I've been keeping things together but the last few days my mental state has been crumbling.

FPT

The minority of people over 70 without any significant conditions are probably having their health damaged by not being able to do the amount of exercise and number of activities that they usually do which is probably precisely why they don't have the same health conditions as other over 70s. Being lockdowned as part of a blanket ban on the over 70s will be pushing them into the "significant health problems" category.

TimT said:

Philip_Thompson said:

Black_Rook said:

FPT:

eadric said:

Black_Rook said:

JohnLilburne said:

ukpaul said:

JohnLilburne said:

SandyRentool said:

RobD said:

SandyRentool said:

RobD said:

noneoftheabove said:

RobD said:

noneoftheabove said:

RobD said:

rottenborough said:

https://twitter.com/afneil/status/1256870611697176577

The Times article is wrong. It says that all over 70s have been instructed to shelter for twelve weeks. That's simply not true.

If you look at how it was reported back in March you can see why.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-51917562

"Pregnant women, people over the age of 70 and those with certain health conditions should consider the advice "particularly important", he (the PM) said.

People in at-risk groups will be asked within days to stay home for 12 weeks."

The natural assumption was that at risk groups were the above categories, yet those groups were defined differently but only by the following week.

My parents think they need to shelter for 12 weeks, presumably on that basis, and clearly they werent alone in that misunderstanding.

Those are two separate sentences, and classes of people.

Yes I can see that now, but specifying the first group one week before specifying the second group has clearly caused mass confusion, hence the Sunday Times article.

Little harm done by it as everyone is on lockdown now, but poor communication in explaining this from the govt (it has generally been good imo).

The formatting of a BBC article is hardly the fault of the government, the same with a times article. The advice is clearly stated on HMGs website. Those who needed the specific advice to stay at home for 12 weeks were each informed individually by letter.

When the formal advice came it was different to what had been trailed the week before. Fewer people were told to shield. However this change was not pointed out explicitly, so people who had paid more attention to the first announcement will have assumed that the initial criteria applied.

Wasn't the advice always that the most vulnerable would be the ones asked to shelter? I don't think they ever lumped all over-70s into that category.

They did include all over 70s in the pre announcement, but this changed by the time it was implemented.

Yes, I was worried it might apply to everyone who gets a flu jab on medical grounds, but for that group it became "follow social distancing especially stringently"

And the ridiculousness of basing it on influenza when we have seen how utterly different it is in its effect is still not being addressed. The lists have become a joke, bearing no real connection to the reality of this virus.

Research is being done, for example the growing realisation that pre-diabetics and the overweight (even people with a BMI as low as 30) can be at risk. A BMI of 40 and you're brown bread. In my case I'm hoping a cardiology appointment can give me an all-clear although how long it will take to organise one I don't know. I could probably afford to pay for a private consultation, but not for an angiogram if one is called for.

A BMI of 30 is the threshold at which "normal" folk (i.e. most people, except for muscular athletes for whom BMI is a very poor measure) transition from being merely overweight to obese. So 30 is not a low value; it's simply that the average person in the UK is now overweight, so it may not seem as excessive as it actually is. 40 is very obese and, based on my limited layman's knowledge, I would've thought there would be a good argument for getting anyone in that category to shield.

Or let Darwin do his work with the fatsos

BMI of 40 is ridiculous. This person does not want to live anyway

Contrary to popular wisdom, fat people aren't, generally speaking, wanton gluttons. Many also carry disabilities that make it difficult or impossible to do the kind of strenuous aerobic exercise that helps fit people to maintain a healthy weight, without having to endure the discipline of an endless low energy diet.

It's also very easy to get big and a bloody damned sight harder to get it back off again. I speak from experience in this matter.

Obesity, like poverty (with which it is commonly associated,) is typically a result of misfortune rather than moral deficiency.

Plus it can be related to working environments as well. There's a reason there's a lot of overweight chefs for instance and its not because they can't cook. A lot of people doing long shifts away from home can rely upon takeaways more than they'd like if they were doing a different job.

And the shift from long hours of anaerobic work (agriculture, construction without power tools, early industry) to a sedentary knowledge-based economy has contributed too.

Indeed and that can apply to people who undergo career/activity changes too.

EG I know a number of former Rugby players who became obese once they stopped playing Rugby. Suddenly burning a lot fewer calories while continuing to eat the same as you were before can lead to major weight gains that then becomes difficult to shift. If you replace the exercise you were doing with an activity that involves consuming calories (eg going to the pub to watch sport instead of competing yourself) then that can add fuel to the fire.

Same for people who worked in a highly anaerobic job who then goes to a sedentary job.

Andy_JS said:

FPT

The minority of people over 70 without any significant conditions are probably having their health damaged by not being able to do the amount of exercise and number of activities that they usually do which is probably precisely why they don't have the same health conditions as other over 70s. Being lockdowned as part of a blanket ban on the over 70s will be pushing them into the "significant health problems" category.

Well over 70 and I've had mild asthma as long as I can remember. Never been hospitalised, or needed oxygen, but stress accentuates it, and I'm feeling that now.
Can't do my gym trips of course, but i'm having at least half an hours walk a day. Sometimes an hour.

Morris_Dancer said:

Mr. Rook, yes and no.

I always forget if it's hyperplastic or hypertropic obesity, but when children are overfed they create more adipocytes (fat cells) which then permanently increase their baseline 'fatness', which is not their fault and rather difficult to do much about.

That said, eating more and exercising less, all else being equal, makes one fat. It's not a wild variable unrelated to human behaviour for most people.

I wasn't aware of those interesting issues relating specifically to children. I opine on the topic of obesity from the adult perspective.

The importance of exercise in maintaining a healthy weight is overstated, and it really needs to be approached as something that is beneficial in its own right for maintaining physical and mental wellbeing. Yes, it can and does help by allowing a bit more flexibility in the way of calorific treats, but I'd say the relative importance of a good diet versus plenty of exercise, both to losing excess weight and maintaining health weight, is around about 4:1.

Malmesbury said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

TimT said:

FPT @ TSE "(He doesn't expect a vaccine and but expects lots of new mutations of Covid-19.)"

On what basis and with what expertise does he predict no vaccine and lots of mutations? Or is this just more uninformed fearmongering?

There is plenty of justified fear without adding baseless stuff to it.

His speciality finance/banking area is the medicine/pharma sector.

It is based on talks with those who work in the sector.

You know the vaccine trial protocols, there's a fear that if we do get a vaccine we rush it out and there's complications down the line.

He's also basing it on disreputable leaders running key countries in this pandemic, the worry that China won't give us the full details lest it damages China.

Trump is working on what's best for him and his electoral chances which is an awful place for us all to be in.

I've had some experience with specialists in finance on various industries.

My favourite was the guy who did a whole presentation on SpaceX - on the basis that since they hadn't moved production to China, they would be rapidly outcompeted and wiped out - this was a few years ago,

When I talked to the guy, it became apparent he had never heard of ITAR*. Or knew much about the relative states of rocketry industry in China, the US and Europe.

*https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Traffic_in_Arms_Regulations - The short version is that if you are an American company and you *think* about transferring rocket manufacturing tech to a third country, you will be in Club Fed in minutes. Interestingly this is one law that gets savagely enforced on everyone.

"based on talks with those who work in the sector"

Well, I've been taken in over the years by quite a lot of bulls**t, especially those too dependent on govt grants - unlike former university funding, they come with strings attached - or with a commercial axe to grind. A journalist in need of a story may not always be selective and sceptical enough.

If big pharma didn't have a stranglehold over so many national healthcare systems more treatments with the ability to do some good in this crisis would be in use, e.g. IV vitamin C, vitamin D supplements (in the UK we should almost all be taking the latter, espec. those with brown or black skin).

Also we wouldn't be eating 50-100% junk food. Tom Watson ex-MP changed his diet. He recovered his health and cured his diabetes. As a result, he'll have a pretty strong immune system. That's what we all need; a vaccine if it's ever developed is just an extra layer of protection.

DecrepiterJohnL said:

Philip_Thompson said:

malcolmg said:

kle4 said:

malcolmg said:

SouthamObserver said:

DavidL said:

What is going to be essential for any sort of "return to normal" (and it won't be) is a substantial fall in the death rate. Yesterday's figures were highly discouraging in that respect. While Italy, Spain and France have all got themselves in the 200s we are still at 739. I appreciate that this has catch up and may well be more comprehensive etc etc but we are still very high. It will be difficult for the government to make substantial moves until the rate is under 100 a day and even then.... I think its a few weeks away yet although there may be some token gestures in the meantime.

We are just a few weeks from the PM nearly dying of this virus. It's all a bit raw right now. And the longer the deaths continue the more people there will be who will know colleagues, friends, relations etc who have been killed by it. That will also have an affect. We face a very tough road ahead. There is no way back to where we were before. New normal is a tired phrase, but it is spot on here. The world has changed irrevocably.

Boris was never near dying , he had four days in hospital ward and a couple in ICU as a precaution, if he had been close to dying he would not have been walking out of there after a couple of days. His next disaster will be hard brexit with no FTA, the man is an absolute bellend, a chancer who will exploit anything and anybody

Precaution or not he was in ICU, and I'll trust the medical professionals who thought it serious enough to warrant that over you malc, who essentially thought it was nothing but a PR hoax, even if you are more cirumspect now and merely talk about exploiting his stay there. You obviously thought at the time he was basically fine and it was mostly made up, so that puts your 'concerns' about him exploiting it now in a proper context.

He is a bellend and a chancer who will exploit anything, but you seemed awfully keen to exploit his stay in ICU by suggesting it was nothing. Is one exploitation ok and another not?

At the time they said he was not on oxygen to start with , when he went into ICU it was the same , they then said he was getting some oxygen but was sitting up talking , that is not someone near death or else the hospital spokespeople and his people were lying then. When you are close to death you will not be talking and on lots of oxygen, you do not need to be a doctor to know that. He was ill but has been well exaggerated for PR use, I am not convinced he was near death at all.

WTF? Key words surely were "to start with". He deteriorated they've made no secret of that. They didn't say he wasn't getting oxygen or anything like that once he was in ICU.

Its as if you have never heard of a patient deteriorating before. He wasn't on death's door when he went into the hospital, he was while he was in ICU. Do you really struggle to comprehend the difference?

It was denied that Boris was on a ventilator. So presumably his medical status in the ICU was somewhere between needs Oxygen and needs a ventilator. Is that near death? How long is a piece of string? Certainly Boris's plight has been used for PR but whether it has been exaggerated is another matter.

As I understand it there are a number of decision points. He obviously responded to oxygen. If he hadn't, the next stage would presumably have been intubation and we know what your chances are if you have been on a ventilator. So I would guess that that is the "could go either way" moment.

Whilst we're on the subject of value bets an SNP majority next year in the Scottish elections seems like value to me at 5/6 (17/20 boosted) with a max of £50 for the latter.

I'm on. DYOR.

So many of us are overweight. We eat and drink too much and much of what we eat is processed badness. We don't have massively physical existences. And so we all fat under our our skins...

Black_Rook said:

Morris_Dancer said:

Mr. Rook, yes and no.

I always forget if it's hyperplastic or hypertropic obesity, but when children are overfed they create more adipocytes (fat cells) which then permanently increase their baseline 'fatness', which is not their fault and rather difficult to do much about.

That said, eating more and exercising less, all else being equal, makes one fat. It's not a wild variable unrelated to human behaviour for most people.

I wasn't aware of those interesting issues relating specifically to children. I opine on the topic of obesity from the adult perspective.

The importance of exercise in maintaining a healthy weight is overstated, and it really needs to be approached as something that is beneficial in its own right for maintaining physical and mental wellbeing. Yes, it can and does help by allowing a bit more flexibility in the way of calorific treats, but I'd say the relative importance of a good diet versus plenty of exercise, both to losing excess weight and maintaining health weight, is around about 4:1.

There is an old runner's adage "you can't outrun a bad diet". You burn about 100 calories a mile, and it tends to make you hungry so you just eat more afterwards. However, once you have a stable, healthy weight then regular activity is invaluable in increasing the amount you need to eat.

Paddy power really do have some markets.

JohnLilburne said:

Black_Rook said:

A BMI of 40 equates to a weight somewhere a little in excess of 19 stone for a man of average height. Being that heavy is a serious health risk. I was some distance short of being that big but I was still incapable of picking my feet up and running and starting to struggle walking up stairs or uphill by the time I finally cracked the tough nut of sustainable weight loss, and I was only in my early 40s at the time.

Weight gain typically has less to do with an excess of joie de vivre and rather more to do with ingrained bad habits, commonly made worse by ill health, depression and other stress factors.

On the other hand, some people are going to need to address their attitude of living as they please, gaining weight and picking up metabolic medical conditions, while relying on our non-strenuous lifestyle and medical science to keep them functioning.

I absolutely agree that personal responsibility matters, but it's more complicated than that. A Government campaign to encourage people to lose weight that's half as effective as that promoting the lockdown (perhaps simply encouraging people to get fit to help the NHS) could have huge benefits, but we have to be extremely careful not to tip over into fat-shaming territory because that's wholly counter-productive. Obesity is often the product of misery, and making people feel worse about it will therefore do more harm than good.

FPT

OllyT said:

noneoftheabove said:

rottenborough said:

Hancock's Half Hour continues this morning:

https://twitter.com/jillongovt/status/1256872624849813505

If that wasn't the advice then nobody has told my parents, their friends or my over 70 year old neighbours who have all been in total lockdown for weeks.

Unrelated but interesting post from Steve Baker on that twitter link:

"Cummings opponents never learn that he uses controversy over numbers to keep the numbers in the news. So that the numbers are widely heard by the public."

Gives more context to the 100k tests, it does seem to work every time. Far more people will be impressed by the 100k than offended by the dodgy counting.

By the same token, in a couple of days when all the headlines are about the UK having more deaths than any other country in Europe isn't that what is going to stick in peoples' minds? It's the simple fact that more people have now died in the UK than in Italy, Spain, Germany or France that people will remember and talk about, not the sub-text that some countries count deaths differently etc etc.

In a reverse parallel with his success with getting the public focusing on the £350m a week figure re Brexit, Cummings is probably well aware that that is precisely the risk the government is running.

i.e. If your political opponents get a big, simple to understand claim out there (i.e. that the UK has the highest number of deaths in Europe and the 2nd highest in the world), then it doesn't really matter if people start to argue about the fine detail, that is whether it might be only £250m a week or whether we might be in fact 3rd if you count the figures consistently or on a per capita basis (with Belgium coming into the frame). Everyone's still focusing on precisely the issue you don't want them to focus on.

Despite the Government's attempts to downplay comparisons based on published figures, it doesn't seem that complicated. There are 5 countries in the world whose total deaths are way higher than anywhere else by a factor of more than 3: the US, Italy, UK, Spain, France. So because no other country is even close to the ball park, we can concentrate on them. The US is way out in front due to its size. We should already be above Italy, because while like us it counts all deaths which were tested, Italy has conducted twice the number of tests as the UK. We should be behind Spain, because Spain does not count deaths outside of hospitals, although we're still closing the gap and might yet overtake them. France has a wider definition than the UK, so we should be further ahead of them.

So in absolute terms, we're 3rd with a possibility of reaching 2nd, and will be there for the forseeable future. When we do eventually get excess deaths figures, you can expect much the same, for what we've seen so far for the UK certainly suggests that the community deaths based on testing alone are way understated.

Malmesbury said:

rural_voter said:

Malmesbury said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

TimT said:

FPT @ TSE "(He doesn't expect a vaccine and but expects lots of new mutations of Covid-19.)"

On what basis and with what expertise does he predict no vaccine and lots of mutations? Or is this just more uninformed fearmongering?

There is plenty of justified fear without adding baseless stuff to it.

His speciality finance/banking area is the medicine/pharma sector.

It is based on talks with those who work in the sector.

You know the vaccine trial protocols, there's a fear that if we do get a vaccine we rush it out and there's complications down the line.

He's also basing it on disreputable leaders running key countries in this pandemic, the worry that China won't give us the full details lest it damages China.

Trump is working on what's best for him and his electoral chances which is an awful place for us all to be in.

I've had some experience with specialists in finance on various industries.

My favourite was the guy who did a whole presentation on SpaceX - on the basis that since they hadn't moved production to China, they would be rapidly outcompeted and wiped out - this was a few years ago,

When I talked to the guy, it became apparent he had never heard of ITAR*. Or knew much about the relative states of rocketry industry in China, the US and Europe.

*https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Traffic_in_Arms_Regulations - The short version is that if you are an American company and you *think* about transferring rocket manufacturing tech to a third country, you will be in Club Fed in minutes. Interestingly this is one law that gets savagely enforced on everyone.

"based on talks with those who work in the sector"

Well, I've been taken in over the years by quite a lot of bulls**t, especially those too dependent on govt grants - unlike former university funding, they come with strings attached - or with a commercial axe to grind. A journalist in need of a story may not always be selective and sceptical enough.

If big pharma didn't have a stranglehold over so many national healthcare systems more treatments with the ability to do some good in this crisis would be in use, e.g. IV vitamin C, vitamin D supplements (in the UK we should almost all be taking the latter, espec. those with brown or black skin).

Also we wouldn't be eating 50-100% junk food. Tom Watson ex-MP changed his diet. He recovered his health and cured his diabetes. As a result, he'll have a pretty strong immune system. That's what we all need; a vaccine if it's ever developed is just an extra layer of protection.

?

Multivitamins are on sale in every pharmacy (well before this all started). Mega dose yourself with vitamin C etc for a couple of quid.

You can buy Vitamin D sperately, off the shelf - 20,000iu per pill, if you really want. That's the one where they seriously recommend not taking more than 1 per week.

Or you can go out in the sun for 15 minutes a day between April and October and eat plenty of eggs and oily fish in the winter. A balanced diet should obviate the need for supplements, and in any case there is plenty of evidence that vitamins and minerals are absorbed less well from supplements than from food.

TimT said:

Malmesbury said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

TimT said:

FPT @ TSE "(He doesn't expect a vaccine and but expects lots of new mutations of Covid-19.)"

On what basis and with what expertise does he predict no vaccine and lots of mutations? Or is this just more uninformed fearmongering?

There is plenty of justified fear without adding baseless stuff to it.

His speciality finance/banking area is the medicine/pharma sector.

It is based on talks with those who work in the sector.

You know the vaccine trial protocols, there's a fear that if we do get a vaccine we rush it out and there's complications down the line.

He's also basing it on disreputable leaders running key countries in this pandemic, the worry that China won't give us the full details lest it damages China.

Trump is working on what's best for him and his electoral chances which is an awful place for us all to be in.

I've had some experience with specialists in finance on various industries.

My favourite was the guy who did a whole presentation on SpaceX - on the basis that since they hadn't moved production to China, they would be rapidly outcompeted and wiped out - this was a few years ago,

When I talked to the guy, it became apparent he had never heard of ITAR*. Or knew much about the relative states of rocketry industry in China, the US and Europe.

*https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Traffic_in_Arms_Regulations - The short version is that if you are an American company and you *think* about transferring rocket manufacturing tech to a third country, you will be in Club Fed in minutes. Interestingly this is one law that gets savagely enforced on everyone.

The phrase "A little knowledge ..." comes to mind

This was a guy who was giving a very expensive seminar (I got a free ticket via a friend) for people investing in the space industry. It is possible to invest in SpaceX even though they are privately held...

He was the top guy on this from a tier 1 bank. I'm just some guy who reads stuff....

It really makes you think about the way the world works.

Pulpstar said:

eek said:

Morris_Dancer said:

Mr. Rook, interesting snippet I picked up at university.

Fruit and veg aren't terribly expensive. People choose what they eat, and how active they are.

Somewhat ironically, given this conversation, I'd like to gain a little weight.

Whenever there is discussions on weight I try to avoid them as while people won't believe it, sometimes weight is just down to genetics.

Mrs Eek weighs more than me and always has done, yet she eats less than I do but cannot shift weight with the easy that I do. It's often just down to genes.

Males have more lean body mass for the same body weigh as a female which shifts calories more easily.

That's absolutely true. My experience from attending a weight loss group reveals that most of the attendees are female but the men are, on average, more successful. This is partly down to the difference in body composition that you describe, but it's also believed to be down to male psychology. The theory is that blokes are more goal-driven, so the motivation to leap from one milestone to the next - say, from eighteen to seventeen to sixteen stone, and so on - is that much greater.

RochdalePioneers said:

So many of us are overweight. We eat and drink too much and much of what we eat is processed badness. We don't have massively physical existences. And so we all fat under our our skins...

I have to say I've lost wright in lock down primarily because I've avoided the processed foods. It's been home cooked all the way for the past five weeks - a little repetitive and thanks to my Covent Garden supplier I've become re-acquainted with beef cheek and am now acquiainted with nduja from the far south of Italy which is wonderful.

I miss my chinese takeaway and my cooked breakfast but my body doesn't.

SouthamObserver said:

Philip_Thompson said:

FPT

eadric said:

Black_Rook said:

JohnLilburne said:

ukpaul said:

JohnLilburne said:

SandyRentool said:

RobD said:

SandyRentool said:

RobD said:

noneoftheabove said:

RobD said:

noneoftheabove said:

RobD said:

rottenborough said:

https://twitter.com/afneil/status/1256870611697176577

The Times article is wrong. It says that all over 70s have been instructed to shelter for twelve weeks. That's simply not true.

If you look at how it was reported back in March you can see why.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-51917562

"Pregnant women, people over the age of 70 and those with certain health conditions should consider the advice "particularly important", he (the PM) said.

People in at-risk groups will be asked within days to stay home for 12 weeks."

The natural assumption was that at risk groups were the above categories, yet those groups were defined differently but only by the following week.

My parents think they need to shelter for 12 weeks, presumably on that basis, and clearly they werent alone in that misunderstanding.

Those are two separate sentences, and classes of people.

Yes I can see that now, but specifying the first group one week before specifying the second group has clearly caused mass confusion, hence the Sunday Times article.

Little harm done by it as everyone is on lockdown now, but poor communication in explaining this from the govt (it has generally been good imo).

The formatting of a BBC article is hardly the fault of the government, the same with a times article. The advice is clearly stated on HMGs website. Those who needed the specific advice to stay at home for 12 weeks were each informed individually by letter.

When the formal advice came it was different to what had been trailed the week before. Fewer people were told to shield. However this change was not pointed out explicitly, so people who had paid more attention to the first announcement will have assumed that the initial criteria applied.

Wasn't the advice always that the most vulnerable would be the ones asked to shelter? I don't think they ever lumped all over-70s into that category.

They did include all over 70s in the pre announcement, but this changed by the time it was implemented.

Yes, I was worried it might apply to everyone who gets a flu jab on medical grounds, but for that group it became "follow social distancing especially stringently"

And the ridiculousness of basing it on influenza when we have seen how utterly different it is in its effect is still not being addressed. The lists have become a joke, bearing no real connection to the reality of this virus.

Research is being done, for example the growing realisation that pre-diabetics and the overweight (even people with a BMI as low as 30) can be at risk. A BMI of 40 and you're brown bread. In my case I'm hoping a cardiology appointment can give me an all-clear although how long it will take to organise one I don't know. I could probably afford to pay for a private consultation, but not for an angiogram if one is called for.

A BMI of 30 is the threshold at which "normal" folk (i.e. most people, except for muscular athletes for whom BMI is a very poor measure) transition from being merely overweight to obese. So 30 is not a low value; it's simply that the average person in the UK is now overweight, so it may not seem as excessive as it actually is. 40 is very obese and, based on my limited layman's knowledge, I would've thought there would be a good argument for getting anyone in that category to shield.

Or let Darwin do his work with the fatsos

BMI of 40 is ridiculous. This person does not want to live anyway

Disgusting comment.

People can be overweight not because of not wanting to live, but simply due to enjoying life a bit too much. Enjoying food too much.

BMI 40 may not be good for you, but that equates to about 18 stone for the average man - a lot and an unhealthy amount sure but not absurdly overweight to the point of can't live.

I am seriously overweight and it is all down to alcohol and eating. I have enjoyed getting to where I am immensely. That said, I am also doing 65 press ups and sit ups every other day, as well as 75 squats and lounges. It is a horrific way to spend 20 minutes, but I think it helps!

Well said and well done for looking after yourself that way.

A good bottle of wine with cheese and biscuits can be a very pleasant way to spend an evening while consuming way too many calories.

JohnLilburne said:

Black_Rook said:

Morris_Dancer said:

Mr. Rook, yes and no.

I always forget if it's hyperplastic or hypertropic obesity, but when children are overfed they create more adipocytes (fat cells) which then permanently increase their baseline 'fatness', which is not their fault and rather difficult to do much about.

That said, eating more and exercising less, all else being equal, makes one fat. It's not a wild variable unrelated to human behaviour for most people.

I wasn't aware of those interesting issues relating specifically to children. I opine on the topic of obesity from the adult perspective.

The importance of exercise in maintaining a healthy weight is overstated, and it really needs to be approached as something that is beneficial in its own right for maintaining physical and mental wellbeing. Yes, it can and does help by allowing a bit more flexibility in the way of calorific treats, but I'd say the relative importance of a good diet versus plenty of exercise, both to losing excess weight and maintaining health weight, is around about 4:1.

There is an old runner's adage "you can't outrun a bad diet". You burn about 100 calories a mile, and it tends to make you hungry so you just eat more afterwards. However, once you have a stable, healthy weight then regular activity is invaluable in increasing the amount you need to eat.

That's absolutely my experience. My previous attempts to lose weight and keep it off were always defeated by my appalling diet, not by the willingness or motivation to exercise.

The weight only stayed off when I worked on my diet first, and then returned to the gym once the first stone had already come off.

JohnLilburne said:

Dura_Ace said:

JohnLilburne said:

Black_Rook said:

Morris_Dancer said:

Mr. Rook, yes and no.

I always forget if it's hyperplastic or hypertropic obesity, but when children are overfed they create more adipocytes (fat cells) which then permanently increase their baseline 'fatness', which is not their fault and rather difficult to do much about.

That said, eating more and exercising less, all else being equal, makes one fat. It's not a wild variable unrelated to human behaviour for most people.

I wasn't aware of those interesting issues relating specifically to children. I opine on the topic of obesity from the adult perspective.

The importance of exercise in maintaining a healthy weight is overstated, and it really needs to be approached as something that is beneficial in its own right for maintaining physical and mental wellbeing. Yes, it can and does help by allowing a bit more flexibility in the way of calorific treats, but I'd say the relative importance of a good diet versus plenty of exercise, both to losing excess weight and maintaining health weight, is around about 4:1.

There is an old runner's adage "you can't outrun a bad diet". You burn about 100 calories a mile, and it tends to make you hungry so you just eat more afterwards. However, once you have a stable, healthy weight then regular activity is invaluable in increasing the amount you need to eat.

I have seen many people join my cycling club to lose weight and none ever have. They just keep eating shit and guzzling alcohol so they can't ride into the red with any frequency or duration.

Cycling's rather low-impact as well, so difficult to burn much off at low levels of intensity.

I was overweight as a youth but then started cycling 25 miles a day (12.5 each way) to school and cycling touring in the holidays and day tours at weekends. Weight dropped remarkably.

Wulfrun_Phil said:

FPT


Despite the Government's attempts to downplay comparisons based on published figures, it doesn't seem that complicated. There are 5 countries in the world whose total deaths are way higher than anywhere else by a factor of more than 3: the US, Italy, UK, Spain, France. So because no other country is even close to the ball park, we can concentrate on them. The US is way out in front due to its size. We should already be above Italy, because while like us it counts all deaths which were tested, Italy has conducted twice the number of tests as the UK. We should be behind Spain, because Spain does not count deaths outside of hospitals, although we're still closing the gap and might yet overtake them. France has a wider definition than the UK, so we should be further ahead of them.

My guess is Italy will have a lot more than anywhere else in Europe. Excess mortality showed they were undercounting deaths by a factor of 2 in the hardest hit areas - you can add 7k from Lombardy alone, and that's on month old data.

Belgium/Netherlands/UK/Spain are all about the same on this method, in per capita terms. France maybe about 40% less - they were never quite as bad as the rest of us, just earlier at counting all deaths as you say.

https://twitter.com/britainelects/status/1256940332480172037?s=20

rottenborough said:

Interesting...

"Professor Neil Ferguson is a theoretical physicist by training."

Interesting in what way? Ferguson runs computer models of epidemics; he does not wield a stethoscope.

TimT said:

Philip_Thompson said:

Black_Rook said:

FPT:

eadric said:

Black_Rook said:

JohnLilburne said:

ukpaul said:

JohnLilburne said:

SandyRentool said:

RobD said:

SandyRentool said:

RobD said:

noneoftheabove said:

RobD said:

noneoftheabove said:

RobD said:

rottenborough said:

https://twitter.com/afneil/status/1256870611697176577

The Times article is wrong. It says that all over 70s have been instructed to shelter for twelve weeks. That's simply not true.

If you look at how it was reported back in March you can see why.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-51917562

"Pregnant women, people over the age of 70 and those with certain health conditions should consider the advice "particularly important", he (the PM) said.

People in at-risk groups will be asked within days to stay home for 12 weeks."

The natural assumption was that at risk groups were the above categories, yet those groups were defined differently but only by the following week.

My parents think they need to shelter for 12 weeks, presumably on that basis, and clearly they werent alone in that misunderstanding.

Those are two separate sentences, and classes of people.

Yes I can see that now, but specifying the first group one week before specifying the second group has clearly caused mass confusion, hence the Sunday Times article.

Little harm done by it as everyone is on lockdown now, but poor communication in explaining this from the govt (it has generally been good imo).

The formatting of a BBC article is hardly the fault of the government, the same with a times article. The advice is clearly stated on HMGs website. Those who needed the specific advice to stay at home for 12 weeks were each informed individually by letter.

When the formal advice came it was different to what had been trailed the week before. Fewer people were told to shield. However this change was not pointed out explicitly, so people who had paid more attention to the first announcement will have assumed that the initial criteria applied.

Wasn't the advice always that the most vulnerable would be the ones asked to shelter? I don't think they ever lumped all over-70s into that category.

They did include all over 70s in the pre announcement, but this changed by the time it was implemented.

Yes, I was worried it might apply to everyone who gets a flu jab on medical grounds, but for that group it became "follow social distancing especially stringently"

And the ridiculousness of basing it on influenza when we have seen how utterly different it is in its effect is still not being addressed. The lists have become a joke, bearing no real connection to the reality of this virus.

Research is being done, for example the growing realisation that pre-diabetics and the overweight (even people with a BMI as low as 30) can be at risk. A BMI of 40 and you're brown bread. In my case I'm hoping a cardiology appointment can give me an all-clear although how long it will take to organise one I don't know. I could probably afford to pay for a private consultation, but not for an angiogram if one is called for.

A BMI of 30 is the threshold at which "normal" folk (i.e. most people, except for muscular athletes for whom BMI is a very poor measure) transition from being merely overweight to obese. So 30 is not a low value; it's simply that the average person in the UK is now overweight, so it may not seem as excessive as it actually is. 40 is very obese and, based on my limited layman's knowledge, I would've thought there would be a good argument for getting anyone in that category to shield.

Or let Darwin do his work with the fatsos

BMI of 40 is ridiculous. This person does not want to live anyway

Contrary to popular wisdom, fat people aren't, generally speaking, wanton gluttons. Many also carry disabilities that make it difficult or impossible to do the kind of strenuous aerobic exercise that helps fit people to maintain a healthy weight, without having to endure the discipline of an endless low energy diet.

It's also very easy to get big and a bloody damned sight harder to get it back off again. I speak from experience in this matter.

Obesity, like poverty (with which it is commonly associated,) is typically a result of misfortune rather than moral deficiency.

Plus it can be related to working environments as well. There's a reason there's a lot of overweight chefs for instance and its not because they can't cook. A lot of people doing long shifts away from home can rely upon takeaways more than they'd like if they were doing a different job.

And the shift from long hours of anaerobic work (agriculture, construction without power tools, early industry) to a sedentary knowledge-based economy has contributed too.

Do you mean aerobic?

felix said:

Philip_Thompson said:

Black_Rook said:

Morris_Dancer said:

Mr. Rook, yes and no.

I always forget if it's hyperplastic or hypertropic obesity, but when children are overfed they create more adipocytes (fat cells) which then permanently increase their baseline 'fatness', which is not their fault and rather difficult to do much about.

That said, eating more and exercising less, all else being equal, makes one fat. It's not a wild variable unrelated to human behaviour for most people.

I wasn't aware of those interesting issues relating specifically to children. I opine on the topic of obesity from the adult perspective.

The importance of exercise in maintaining a healthy weight is overstated, and it really needs to be approached as something that is beneficial in its own right for maintaining physical and mental wellbeing. Yes, it can and does help by allowing a bit more flexibility in the way of calorific treats, but I'd say the relative importance of a good diet versus plenty of exercise, both to losing excess weight and maintaining health weight, is around about 4:1.

Since getting locked down I've almost never lost the house except to go shopping, not even to exercise (which I know is allowed but I'm trying to take over almost all childcare responsibilities in order to give my wife a break since she is working very hard as a key worker). As a result my average steps as measured by my watch have plummeted from doing 12k - 20k per day, to about 3k per day. On the other hand I've been cooking for myself more than I ever have before, now that I am actually finding time to do so and not needing to get takeaways. Since I locked down I've lost 22 pounds so far. That's doing 1/4 of the steps I was doing before.

To lose your house whilst exercising could be very annoying!

LOL bit of a typo!

"In some ways [in the outbreak in china was never] there was never any exponential growth. From the minute I started looking at it, there were never any two days that exactly the same growth rate, and they were getting slower. The growth was always sub-exponential."

Prof Michael Levitt

https://unherd.com/thepost/nobel-prize-winning-scientist-the-covid-19-epidemic-was-never-exponential/

Pulpstar said:

eek said:

Morris_Dancer said:

Mr. Rook, interesting snippet I picked up at university.

Fruit and veg aren't terribly expensive. People choose what they eat, and how active they are.

Somewhat ironically, given this conversation, I'd like to gain a little weight.

Whenever there is discussions on weight I try to avoid them as while people won't believe it, sometimes weight is just down to genetics.

Mrs Eek weighs more than me and always has done, yet she eats less than I do but cannot shift weight with the easy that I do. It's often just down to genes.

Males have more lean body mass for the same body weigh as a female which shifts calories more easily.

I've been 11 stone for ever...I can drink, eat and do whatever I want.....I often binge crisps (like 6 packs of walkers or a full box of Pringles) and biscuits and Bombay mix, washing it down with wine...and then have munchies in the middle of the night when I down a can of coke and raid the Bombay mix again and attack the sweet jar.....

I've never deliberately chosen anything based on calories...though do drink semi skinned milk

Gove up for the government today....

Philip_Thompson said:

One of the problems with "diet" is it is very confusing as to what exactly a healthy diet is. EG is something marked as "fat free" but is full of lots of carbs good or bad for you? A lot of it seems to vary depending upon whom you ask. Simply saying "eat less" or "eat better" isn't that meaningful.

Since locking down I've been trying to deliberately lose weight via changing my diet and have been cutting out almost all most processed carbs and processed meals with a diet bordering on a "keto" diet, though I hate fads. I didn't deliberately go for keto, I just cut out the processed carbs that my diabetic father was told he couldn't eat and that's what I ended up left with. So far its working better than I expected plus my appetite has vanished. I'm no longer hungry anything like the amount I used to be and am sometimes getting to 2pm and thinking "I should probably eat something". Whether that's due to my dietary changes or lack of exercise compared to what I had I'm not sure.

Whether it would be possible to keep up with this post-lockdown I don't know but if it wasn't for lockdown I'd have probably never had the time or inclination to learn more about cooking and diets than I'd ever paid attention to in the past. I've set myself a target of losing a third of my pre-lockdown body weight by November.

Going back to my opening paragraph, it seems there's next to no agreement online as to what is healthy and what is not. EG I'm currently eating 3-5 eggs a day and information online seems to be inconsistent depending upon where you read as to whether that is either very healthy or very dangerous.

There's an immense amount of guff online (as there is on a great many other popular subjects) about diet. But it's really not rocket science: a good variety of fresh fruit and veg, not too much salt and saturated fat, the right total energy intake (enough to balance your daily needs if a healthy weight, a bit less if you could do with losing a few lbs,) and avoiding things to which you know your body reacts poorly or which you've been told to avoid on medical grounds, and most people can't go too far wrong.

In terms of specific foods and nutrients, if in doubt refer to the NHS website. Some foods should only be consumed in limited amounts (there are detailed recommendations for fish, for example,) but no consumption limit is given for eggs.

Be interesting to see if there is a weekend dip in the testing numbers today or if they stay up high.

geoffw said:

TimT said:

Philip_Thompson said:

Black_Rook said:

FPT:

eadric said:

Black_Rook said:

JohnLilburne said:

ukpaul said:

JohnLilburne said:

SandyRentool said:

RobD said:

SandyRentool said:

RobD said:

noneoftheabove said:

RobD said:

noneoftheabove said:

RobD said:

rottenborough said:

https://twitter.com/afneil/status/1256870611697176577

The Times article is wrong. It says that all over 70s have been instructed to shelter for twelve weeks. That's simply not true.

If you look at how it was reported back in March you can see why.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-51917562

"Pregnant women, people over the age of 70 and those with certain health conditions should consider the advice "particularly important", he (the PM) said.

People in at-risk groups will be asked within days to stay home for 12 weeks."

The natural assumption was that at risk groups were the above categories, yet those groups were defined differently but only by the following week.

My parents think they need to shelter for 12 weeks, presumably on that basis, and clearly they werent alone in that misunderstanding.

Those are two separate sentences, and classes of people.

Yes I can see that now, but specifying the first group one week before specifying the second group has clearly caused mass confusion, hence the Sunday Times article.

Little harm done by it as everyone is on lockdown now, but poor communication in explaining this from the govt (it has generally been good imo).

The formatting of a BBC article is hardly the fault of the government, the same with a times article. The advice is clearly stated on HMGs website. Those who needed the specific advice to stay at home for 12 weeks were each informed individually by letter.

When the formal advice came it was different to what had been trailed the week before. Fewer people were told to shield. However this change was not pointed out explicitly, so people who had paid more attention to the first announcement will have assumed that the initial criteria applied.

Wasn't the advice always that the most vulnerable would be the ones asked to shelter? I don't think they ever lumped all over-70s into that category.

They did include all over 70s in the pre announcement, but this changed by the time it was implemented.

Yes, I was worried it might apply to everyone who gets a flu jab on medical grounds, but for that group it became "follow social distancing especially stringently"

And the ridiculousness of basing it on influenza when we have seen how utterly different it is in its effect is still not being addressed. The lists have become a joke, bearing no real connection to the reality of this virus.

Research is being done, for example the growing realisation that pre-diabetics and the overweight (even people with a BMI as low as 30) can be at risk. A BMI of 40 and you're brown bread. In my case I'm hoping a cardiology appointment can give me an all-clear although how long it will take to organise one I don't know. I could probably afford to pay for a private consultation, but not for an angiogram if one is called for.

A BMI of 30 is the threshold at which "normal" folk (i.e. most people, except for muscular athletes for whom BMI is a very poor measure) transition from being merely overweight to obese. So 30 is not a low value; it's simply that the average person in the UK is now overweight, so it may not seem as excessive as it actually is. 40 is very obese and, based on my limited layman's knowledge, I would've thought there would be a good argument for getting anyone in that category to shield.

Or let Darwin do his work with the fatsos

BMI of 40 is ridiculous. This person does not want to live anyway

Contrary to popular wisdom, fat people aren't, generally speaking, wanton gluttons. Many also carry disabilities that make it difficult or impossible to do the kind of strenuous aerobic exercise that helps fit people to maintain a healthy weight, without having to endure the discipline of an endless low energy diet.

It's also very easy to get big and a bloody damned sight harder to get it back off again. I speak from experience in this matter.

Obesity, like poverty (with which it is commonly associated,) is typically a result of misfortune rather than moral deficiency.

Plus it can be related to working environments as well. There's a reason there's a lot of overweight chefs for instance and its not because they can't cook. A lot of people doing long shifts away from home can rely upon takeaways more than they'd like if they were doing a different job.

And the shift from long hours of anaerobic work (agriculture, construction without power tools, early industry) to a sedentary knowledge-based economy has contributed too.

Do you mean aerobic?

He's digesting the argument.

On the subject of physical exertion.

https://twitter.com/DangerMindsBlog/status/1256962443269623810?s=20

tyson said:

Pulpstar said:

eek said:

Morris_Dancer said:

Mr. Rook, interesting snippet I picked up at university.

Fruit and veg aren't terribly expensive. People choose what they eat, and how active they are.

Somewhat ironically, given this conversation, I'd like to gain a little weight.

Whenever there is discussions on weight I try to avoid them as while people won't believe it, sometimes weight is just down to genetics.

Mrs Eek weighs more than me and always has done, yet she eats less than I do but cannot shift weight with the easy that I do. It's often just down to genes.

Males have more lean body mass for the same body weigh as a female which shifts calories more easily.

I've been 11 stone for ever...I can drink, eat and do whatever I want.....I often binge crisps (like 6 packs of walkers or a full box of Pringles) and biscuits and Bombay mix, washing it down with wine...and then have munchies in the middle of the night when I down a can of coke and raid the Bombay mix again and attack the sweet jar.....

I've never deliberately chosen anything based on calories...though do drink semi skinned milk

Some individuals are just genetically fortunate. That Horizon documentary the Beeb put out a couple of weeks back about the energy content of food included research suggesting that there was a significant genetic component to individuals' propensity to become fat.

That said, personal experience suggests that there aren't that many people who are genuinely able to get away with eating whatever they like without consequence.

OldKingCole said:

JohnLilburne said:

Dura_Ace said:

JohnLilburne said:

Black_Rook said:

Morris_Dancer said:

Mr. Rook, yes and no.

I always forget if it's hyperplastic or hypertropic obesity, but when children are overfed they create more adipocytes (fat cells) which then permanently increase their baseline 'fatness', which is not their fault and rather difficult to do much about.

That said, eating more and exercising less, all else being equal, makes one fat. It's not a wild variable unrelated to human behaviour for most people.

I wasn't aware of those interesting issues relating specifically to children. I opine on the topic of obesity from the adult perspective.

The importance of exercise in maintaining a healthy weight is overstated, and it really needs to be approached as something that is beneficial in its own right for maintaining physical and mental wellbeing. Yes, it can and does help by allowing a bit more flexibility in the way of calorific treats, but I'd say the relative importance of a good diet versus plenty of exercise, both to losing excess weight and maintaining health weight, is around about 4:1.

There is an old runner's adage "you can't outrun a bad diet". You burn about 100 calories a mile, and it tends to make you hungry so you just eat more afterwards. However, once you have a stable, healthy weight then regular activity is invaluable in increasing the amount you need to eat.

I have seen many people join my cycling club to lose weight and none ever have. They just keep eating shit and guzzling alcohol so they can't ride into the red with any frequency or duration.

Cycling's rather low-impact as well, so difficult to burn much off at low levels of intensity.

I was overweight as a youth but then started cycling 25 miles a day (12.5 each way) to school and cycling touring in the holidays and day tours at weekends. Weight dropped remarkably.

18 holes of golf twice a week carrying a full bag of clubs is excellent for the waistline.

It's bloody annoying the golf courses are all shut. OK, social distancing and all that, but TBH there's never been the slightest danger of me hitting a shot anywhere near other people unless they're coming down the opposite nine.

One of the problem areas for any resumption of anything approaching normal economic life is social distancing on public transport.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-52394835

Grant Shapps has come up with the helpful suggestion of staggering working hours. Whether he genuinely believes there is a "rush hour" any more I don't know but in my part of London the underground is busy from 6am to 9am heading into town.

MY guesstimate is the tube could run at 15% of normal passenger levels and that would allow reasonable social distancing but a lot more people use it. Re-opening construction sites will increase passenger numbers let alone other sectors which can't be governed by home working.

Currently on National Rail trains are running up and down the lines empty or nearly empty so there is capacity available but looking at the trains coming into Waterloo or Victoria of a morning and you see the social distancing issues.

London buses are now free and I'm told some of them are running pretty full as it is a useful way of those who either don't care about or believe they have no choice but to break the lock down are using them. Car traffic is around 40% of normal but has crept up slightly in the past week.

Theuniondivvie said:

On the subject of physical exertion.

https://twitter.com/DangerMindsBlog/status/1256962443269623810?s=20

That was a bit much...