A problem about enforcement remains Johnson’s failure to do anything about the Cummings lockdown bre
A problem about enforcement remains Johnson’s failure to do anything about the Cummings lockdown breach – politicalbetting.com
Boris Johnson: "There is nothing more frustrating for the vast majority who do comply, the law-abiding majority, than the sight of a few brazenly defying the rules". Quite right. pic.twitter.com/XziYIlMvAO
0
This discussion has been closed.
Comments
I had to say at the moment, yes, but, reality strikes, foreign travel will more than likely be restricted.
If people take this more seriously it should reduce R once more. It won't take much to bring R down to below 1 again as it was until recently.
Incidentally I went to Morrison's over the weekend and could see that social distancing seemed to have already become to be taken more seriously once more as well as the mask wearing. At the entrance there was a distanced queuing system to get in as there was during lockdown rather than a free for all as there had been until recently. Throughout as well people seemed to be behaving better again.
I think complacency had set in. If this acts as a wake up call it ought to be enough.
However, they don't really expect it to work, and in a few weeks we will get proper Lockdown the Second
You implement a consistent set of measures that minimise R, without shutting down economic activity:
- no nightclubs, karaoke, rock concerts, etc. Restrictions on the maximum number of people in pubs.
- proper quarantine procedures for people coming from overseas
- you continue to encourage working from home
- compulsory masks in places like public transport
Plus, you ramp up rapid testing for things like schools, so that flare ups can be shut down quickly.
Now, it means that Christmas parties are going to be more sedate this year. But it means they still happen. Most people are able to go about their lives with minimal disruption.
It doesn't get rid of CV19, but it manages it until a vaccine exists.
https://twitter.com/jamesrbuk/status/1272625988514562052
New PB rule, anyone who posts a Karol Sikora tweet on PB to support their argument is likely to be mocked mercilessly
I mean, if people want to disregard the rules and risk catching a potentially fatal disease because Dominic Cumming can be as stupid at some times as he is clever at others I am very tempted to encourage them to go ahead. After all, what's the worst that could happen?
https://mjtsai.com/blog/2020/04/17/chrome-vs-safari-energy-use-and-compatibility/
There can be few people in the country who hear, "There is nothing more frustrating for the vast majority who do comply, the law-abiding majority, than the sight of a few brazenly defying the rules" without thinking of Dominic Cumming and getting annoyed. That's simply a fundamental problem inherent in not having lanced the boil at the time - a bed Johnson made and must lie in.
R5L full of business owners realising they are going bust.
Things I didn't know. The wedding industry is bigger than the fishing.
Unviable with parties of 15.
The government did a terrible job of preparing for a second wave over the summer. We got notice from US states like Georgia that the virus could easily flare up again. And we could have invested in large quantities of rapid testing equipment.
Yet we did not.
We were also aware that many countries - like India, Brazil and Mexico - were doing a terrible job of controlling infections. We knew that Spain was following policies (like opening nightclubs) that would potentially cause R to skyrocket.
Yet we did nothing to shut down travel from these places. We did nothing to test people on arrival. And we did nothing to properly quarantine people, instead relying on a bizarre "stay home for two weeks after travelling home by public transport."
Both these issues were particularly serious because they presaged the reopening of schools in September. There was always going to be the potential for a rush of cases as children infected each other (social distancing in the playground is no easy thing), so this was a crucial time to be prepared.
And we were not.
If however new travel restrictions are introduced again within the UK ie do not travel beyond your city, town or village, then Cummings will be in trouble as the government will find it difficult to enforce with him still there
It remains a running sore
EDIT: To quote a doctor who was treating me, if there's pus about, get it out.
Cummings is the pus in this government.
The unknown is the return of universities, does anyone know how many students live at home when they go to university?
That could be the difference between a light touch and lockdown 2?
A lot have debts bigger than any comparable company would bear. Having captive incomes from season tickets and a permanent knowledge a rich bloke will step in.
That sheen wore off pretty quickly when it became clear that he didn't have a clue what he was on about. It didn't stop the daytime TV shows from continuing to book him for months though.
It deserves respect and to not be ignored.
But it's also a miniscule part of the British economy.
Anyway LauraK. swooning over Boris' speech on R4 WATO. I have to say it wasn't half bad, if he could only avoid apologising for implementing life saving precautions.
So why not just close the airports to most flights, send the police to escort people home, do what the Chinese did - very effectively.
It's so inept it is bizarre. I cannot work it out.
https://twitter.com/spencerstokestv/status/1308083595102375939
Travel, however, has been a mystery to me since February. Anyone travelling abroad should have been in mandatory quarantine away from their families on their return at their own cost for at least 10 days or two clear tests. Nothing else I can see would have reduced our R rate over the late summer by more.
When in fact YouTube channels are increasingly showing it is actually very popular to hear nuanced detailed fact based arguments.
They’re the one group whose behaviour comes across as actively malicious in dealing with the pandemic.
Weddings will (God willing) recommence, probably in greater numbers due to pent-up demand, later in 2021. So there will actually be strong demand. I do not know the detailed economics of the wedding industry, but are costs of entry so high that there won't essentially be a V-shaped recovery?
The businesses we want to worry about at the national level are businesses where demand won't pick up and/or the costs of entry are high. These won't have a V-shaped recovery, and are much more worrying.
They know how bad it is...
"Dominic Cumming can be as stupid at some times as he is clever at others" is sleight of hand. I'll go with stupid and add vain, conceited and overrated and above all - the most damning possible charge for a proxy PM - fundamentally lacking in judgement.
It doesn't matter how much evidence there is that they're linked, that it's not "either or" but "both or nothing," they'll insist on saying, "Well, I'd sacrifice public health for the economy, because it would be better in the long term."
No it wouldn't. Sacrifice public health and you ALSO sacrifice the economy. Preserve one, and you preserve the other.
And "let it rip" literally MEANS the worst of a "quasi lockdown" for longer than six months (or as long as it takes to get to a virus.
@LadyG : how many infections per day do you think we should sustain? Divide 40 million by that number to get the number of days we'd be going through it.
For every ten thousand infections per day you accept, put in 250 hospitalisations per day and 40 deaths per day. (So 50,000 is 1250 hospitalisations per day and 200 deaths per day, for example).
Don't just say "I've done the arithmetic." Actually do the arithmetic. Give us your result - in numbers: Total length of time taken, number of hospitalisations per day, number of deaths per day.
I'm not sure what the overall gain would have been but it would have to be at least overall doubling of capacity for a relatively small expenditure of resources.
There was plenty of time to do this, and little or no downside that I can see.
Imagine being able to test kids at the school gates every Monday morning. You'd find out who was infectious before they'd passed the disease on to 30 of their friends in the playground.
With rapid testing, you are able to isolate the infectious early. This is a disease where the fundamental problem is that you are most infectious in the week before you feel symptoms. Rapid testing means you identify people before they spread the disease.
If you checked 20 million people once a week, it would be $100m (before discounts) a week.
That's chump change.
https://twitter.com/Survation/status/1308389621986988032
No cross over from them.
I very much doubt people are thinking of the specifics of what Cummings did when his Barnard Castle stuff springs to mind. Many people have a generalised sense that the Cummings affair proved it's one rule for "them" and another for "us", and thus apply all COVID rules emanating from Government flexibly at best. That was the practical price of Johnson's loyalty to Cummings - in practice it makes it harder to reduce the R now, and that's that.
The cycle usually goes:
1. PM/Minister's press briefing/statement to Parliament with a simple change to the regulations e.g rule of six
2. The media immediately talk about "confusing new regulations" straight after said statement/press briefing ends, purely because it's not all or nothing
3. The media then speak to members of the public
4. The members of the public (who have watched the coverage including the media talking about how confusing it all is) complain about "how confusing all this is"
5. The media uses this as validation that the PM/Minister's announcement is unworkable and full of holes
Cycle repeats after each announcement.
Hence there is no more capacity so if they can't hold a wedding now then they can't make it up next year because next year is already booked up.
All that can happen is to raise prices which seems unfair on the weddingees.
Many wedding venues apply for a set number of weddings per year and hence there may be some scope to shift them to Fridays/deepest November but this is a limited option.
TOPPING, your wedding venue correspondent, out.
She won’t be voting Tory again while Boris is leading them. She thinks his totally weak and under Cummings thumb.
And could they really scale that up to 20m tests a week? My understanding is that the technology to do that reliably doesn't yet exist and is still being developed.
Otherwise ........not so much.
Basically, these measures lasting at least six months will kill my daughter’s business - along with many others.
From February half-term is when the new season starts. If pubs and restaurants cannot be open normally by the start of the 2021 season then they will lose a second season, having already lost most of this year’s one, and losing Xmas, music events, funeral teas, catering for local societies and other meetings and people wanting drinks at the bar, as well as restricted hours. They simply cannot do this without help.
France and Germany extended support for much much longer than this government is doing. Why can’t we?
Bye bye any levelling up in the North or in Cumbria. Levelling down is our future.
The Harvard guy has a similar paper strip antigen test, royalty free, which would probably come in around half that price in mass volumes. He's been trying to get someone to pick it up for months.
A regional proof of concept trial could have been done for a few million.
That, and get the university labs to be able to process shedloads of tests.
https://twitter.com/Survation/status/1308391255739715585
Give the volumes, travel within the UK is probably now the greater risk.
https://twitter.com/Survation/status/1308392238360264704
Their fall in GDP has been much less than ours - or France, Spain, Italy, etc. Because their lockdown was much less intense. Schools stayed open (allowing parents to work), restaurants also carried on, and so forth. Economic activity was reduced, but it wasn't decimated.
As a result we should now expect to see a huge surge as Sweden endures a second wave, right? As they have been more lax, and are not reimposing restrictions.
It just isn't happening.
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/sweden/
As their epidemiologist predicted, cases are bubbling along at about the same rate - way down on the peak. Deaths are minimal. Their health service is not swamped. Life goes on.
As nar as we can tell, Sweden has cracked it. It really is as simple as that. They said you just have to live with this virus, and that is what they are doing.
Keep cheering, boys...
This is the test here: https://www.abbott.com/corpnewsroom/product-and-innovation/upping-the-ante-on-COVID-19-antigen-testing.html
It needs no machine. You take a nasal swab, fold the card around it, add the reagent (which any half skilled technician or nurse or science teacher can do). And it takes 15 minutes to get a response.
It's an antigen test, so it will miss some positive results.
The US has just ordered 150 million units.
“Victor Mallet in Paris JUNE 8 2020
France’s “temporary unemployment” scheme to avert mass bankruptcies and lay-offs as a result of the coronavirus crisis will be extended, and is now expected to last up to two years, the country’s labour minister said.
....................
Muriel Pénicaud, the labour minister, said that at the end of April some 8.6m employees were benefiting from the French scheme, under which the state pays subsidies to companies to fund the salaries of those prevented from working.
“We are going to put in place a long-term partial-activity scheme,” Ms Pénicaud told Franceinfo radio, “through which employees could have fewer working hours and be partly supported by the state.” The scheme “is likely to last a year or two,” she added.
.........................
Ms Pénicaud did not say what share of wages the French government would continue to pay — currently 84-100 per cent of net salary for the lower paid — but that this was under discussion with employers and trade unions. She also said the government would make 50,000 inspections before the end of the summer to detect and punish fraudulent use of the scheme.
.............
“I think it makes sense even if the fiscal cost is going to be huge,” said Gilles Moec, Axa chief economist.
.........................“
See here for rest of article - https://www.ft.com/content/63b33ede-4463-4342-845a-26cf85a91d3d
Two years.
And yes it is indeed the market no idea why I put that bit in about fairness! It must be SKS' speech today making me go soft.