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The big challenge with Farage’s anti-lock down party is that just 15% share that view – politicalbet
Latest polling conducted by Savanta ComRes , afte Johnson’s announcement, shows strong support for new four-week lockdown. Almost three quarters say they support the measures (72%), with just 15% saying that they oppose them.
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Let's see what Farage's magic touch does for Donald Trump, the ultimate anti-lockdowner. I suspect the results won't be pretty...
EDIT: this is a general observation, not an endorsement of the old blusterer. Though FWIW, absent a vaccine that can be deployed in very large quantities very very quickly, which we do not have, the latest lockdown is merely a classic example of (exorbitantly costly) can kicking.
In this case, I would think that nerdy, socially inept stay at homes, who would rather not go out in crowds ever, are ridiculously over represented in the sample
I wonder where the polls will go over the next few weeks, we've had our first larger Labour lead, was it just an outlier?
Biden 1.5
Trump 3
https://www.betfair.com/exchange/plus/politics/market/1.128151441
Anti-lockdown might really take off, but it only has any kind of medium term appeal if there is no vaccine next spring and we are still in Johnson's lockdown/unlockdown repeating trap.
More likely Farage will seek to use the hurt and anxiety around the economic depression that is coming to cause trouble.
With the shit coming down the tracks economically, he could be PM in 2024 on the back of real and widespread anger against the entire political class.
I mean, if we're lucky. It could be even worse.
Anyway, it was a graph intended to scare the public into supporting a lockdown just as the laughable ones we saw yesterday and the claims of 4,000 deaths per day. It was a news conference of lies and phantom statistical modelling.
"The modelling presented on Saturday night, which suggests deaths could reach 4,000 a day by December, is so out-of-date that it suggests daily deaths are now around 1,000 a day.
In fact, the daily average for the last week is 260, with a figure of 162 yesterday.
And the statistics unit at Cambridge University has produced far more up-to-date projections, with far lower figures, the Telegraph can reveal.
These forecasts, dated October 28 - three days before the Downing Street announcement - far more closely track the current situation, forecasting 240 daily deaths by next week, and around 500 later this month. "
It was a press conference of lies. We're going into a lockdown based on nothing but lies and out of date data models.
None of these scientists will ever have to live with the consequences of their decisions. Millions of people are facing desperate circumstances while they lie to the public and scare everyone into supporting unnecessary measures. They are a disgrace.
You can use something like Brave on the desktop as well, or add a custom filter to block Twitter posts.
@TSE again I ask, can you not just disable Twitter post replacement?
I suspect if you installed any browser with ad blocking you would find this website works a lot better, as I do.
How often is it that a Govt announces a major policy affecting the whole nation which has overwhelming and almost equal support from both Con and Lab voters?
Yet we have a very small, vociferous minority trying to create the impression there is substantial opposition to what's being done.
Well there isn't. Sure the Govt can be accused of incompetence on a massive scale. But whether they are incompetent or not, the public right across the board massively supports the lockdown.
The vociferous minority are doing mental gymnastics desperate to manipulate or distort data in a forlorn attempt to persuade people to support their view that the lockdown should be opposed due to a bizarre sense that it goes against their definition of "freedom".
The great British public, right across the political spectrum, has enough basic common sense to assess the situation.
And, as was alluded to on here earlier today, I wouldn't mind betting that if the vast majority of those opposing the lockdown were actually the PM taking the decision they would then go for a lockdown.
The risk for Starmer is that, when this all goes to shit, he doesn't look like the competent alternative to Boris, but as an enthusiastic collaborator who's largely indistinguishable on policy.
I don't think that my estimate of eight million unemployed by Easter is at all unrealistic. It's just where you get if you bulldoze some sectors, notably hospitality and the arts, and halve employment in retail. There'll be an awful lot of angry, destitute people ready to consider, if you'll forgive the allusion, voting for a "plague on all their houses" party.
Why would they want to do that? Sounds a bit tinfoil hat for me
I mean he is a skilled politician, amongst other things, but I doubt he would even claim that.
And while I certainly think questions around the data and how it is inpreted are absolutely fair game, the implication from some appears to be that top level latest analysis data should be public domain to be debated by the public before anything happens, and that just doesn't seem viable. They're scrambling around as it is without literally making policy in real time.
https://twitter.com/will_doran/status/1322609416173244416
THE GAMBLER
Don Schlitz (and made famous by Kenny Rogers)
On a warm summer's evening
On a train bound for nowhere
I met up with the gambler
We were both too tired to sleep
So we took turns a-starin'
Out the window at the darkness
The boredom overtook us
And he began to speak
He said, "on, I've made a life
Out of readin' people's faces
Knowin' what the cards were
By the way they held their eyes
So if you don't mind my sayin'
I can see you're out of aces
For a taste of your whiskey
I'll give you some advice"
So I handed him my bottle
And he drank down my last swallow
Then he bummed a cigarette
And asked me for a light
And the night got deathly quiet
And his face lost all expression
Said, If you're gonna play the game, boy
You gotta learn to play it right
You've got to know when to hold 'em
Know when to fold 'em
Know when to walk away
And know when to run
You never count your money
When you're sittin' at the table
There'll be time enough for countin'
When the dealin's done
Every gambler knows
That the secret to survivin'
Is knowin' what to throw away
And knowin' what to keep
Cause every hand's a winner
And every hand's a loser
And the best that you can hope for
Is to die in your sleep
And when he'd finished speakin'
He turned back toward the window
Crushed out his cigarette
Faded off to sleep
And somewhere in the darkness
The gambler he broke even
But in his final words
I found an ace that I could keep
You've got to know when to hold 'em
Know when to fold 'em
Know when to walk away
And know when to run
You never count your money
When you're sittin' at the table
There'll be time enough for countin'
When the dealin's done
Support for lockdown will decrease in line with the numbers of workers being sacked.
You're sounding a bit tinfoil hat there Max.
They get their lockdown, what do they want the lockdown for? To blow up the country? Cause jobs to be lost and homelessness? Get rid of the Tories?
What for?!?
I did point out earlier the two crucial charts were off. The strange shape of the error bands for deaths and hospital admissions from today forward. Either the model of models is totally unable to make any predictions or something else. Now we now what they did, they took the old model numbers and tacked them on.
Again PR exercise over science.
The problem is, because they're by scientists they are treated as fact, rather than not particularly reliable or accurate guesses.
Farage, though, is trying to get ahead of the game, since as you say support for lockdown will likely decrease, and he's waiting for that to come to him.
As many have stated before me, there is no loss for them to play it ultra cautious because they don't carry the can for consequences of lockdown but they do for virus deaths.
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/931775/Slides_to_accompany_coronavirus_press_conference-_CSA-__31_October_2020.pdf
This is deliberately misleading the public, when they know they have much more update to modelling numbers. Question is, did Boris and Co know this?
We've seen it with both waves in the initial denials that there would be waves.
At one point someone on here was suggesting that Boris was imposing a lockdown for the fun of it and because he got a kick out of it.
I'm sorry but that sort of thinking is moving into complete fantasyland.
The bottom line is that the vast, vast majority of scientists and medical experts think a lockdown isn't just necessary but that it is absolutely imperative.
And in opposition to them we have some people, most of whom have no technical expertise at all in the subject, doing some amateur data manipulation in an attempt to justify the result that they want - based entirely on their notion of "freedom".
Spring forward - Fall back. So we (or most of us in US) just fell back, so what is now 3.30pm PST today was 4.30 PDT yesterday.
So on the Left Coast we are now 17 hours behind Tokyo, 8 hours behind London, 3 hours behind New York, 2 hours behind Chicago, 1 hour behind Denver.
We've clearly got a LOT of catching up to do . . .
They literally lied to the nation to get support for their lockdown. The dimwitted politicians might fall for it, anyone who works with data modelling can see right through them.
The issue is actually about hospital capacity.
The reason for the lockdown is quite simply that just about all experts say that without it we will run out of hospital capacity.
It's as simple as that.
No one came close to matching his outstanding reporting on the Middle East over many decades. I have a number of his books on the shelf behind me right now including Pity the Nation which is one of the finest books on Lebanon I have ever read. I remember when The Independent launched in 1986, it was purely on the fact that Fisk was writing for them that I started reading it. A brilliant reporter who will be sadly missed.
It was said very clearly in the presentation that the R was falling.
I am not suggesting a massive tinfoil type thing, but the supposed straight shooting eggheads are deceiving the public in the way you expect of politicians, not scientists. Cherry picking the data, using a "not a prediction" chart which they know the dumb idiots in the media will spread as one.
Take a look at it this way. None of the data has been made available, the data models haven't been made available, they haven't been peer reviewed, that defies all basic scientific method. What are they trying to hide?
You're right that the public isn't clear about an economic whirlwind coming, but I'm not sure anyone is. A lot of Britain is functioning online, and quite a bit of the non-online services are not really essential in the short term - eating out, having haircuts, etc.: if we don't do them, the industries will need support, but will the economy suffer lasting damage from that? What's needed is a mechanism to shift money from people who are working normally from home to support people who can't, and the furlough scheme plus, I assume, taxation down the line, will do that.
What exactly do you expect? Gallopping inflation? Deep recession? Or what?
In any profession you have to produce a range of outcomes. They are usually known as P90/P50/P10 in industry. The point being that the P90 and P10 ratios are at the extremes of what is likely - it is into that area that the 4000 a day will have fallen. But it was made clear that this was not the advice that the Government used to make its decisions. Rather it was looking at the P50 and what that would mean for the NHS. When your P50 is enough that you will run out of hospital beds at the beginning of December you don't even have to look at the extremes to know you have to do something radical.
I do not know if the Lockdown is the right thing to do. Certainly if they don't have a plan in place to deal with the virus when we come out of lockdown in 4 weeks then all it will have done is delay the inevitable. But the Telegraph has long been part of the lunatic fringe when it comes to its Covid reporting and they have not shied away from misrepresenting both the scientists and the politicians when it suits their very partial agenda.
The impression left is that the South is now about to be hit. So it is now a serious issue which needed a national reesponse and phenomenal amounts of money chucked at it.
I've been in a number of US states - with various lockdown strategies - and I'm calling New Mexico the best.
Their strategy is:
- Universities/Colleges on-line only
- High School (13+ on-line)
- Masks in crowded places / public transport / shops
- Table service in bars and restaurants (and some capacity constraints, although these didn't seem that onerous)
- Hundreds of public hand sanitizer stations around
- Encourage (but don't require) working from home
And that's been pretty much it. Now, they're less crowded than the UK. But they've enforced these, and they seem to be broadly obeyed, and they don't really have a CV19 problem. The messaging is that the current restrictions will remain in-place until after either a vaccine is developed or the virus has been largely eliminated via other means.
Edit to add: the Santa Fe Opera appears to have been closed too.
Farage is also in touch with most of the other populist right parties in Europe, Lega in Italy, the AfD in Germany and Vox in Spain who also oppose further lockdowns as does the populist One Nation in Australia and the libertarian ACT Party in New Zealand and of course Trump
https://twitter.com/FrankLuntz/status/1323049012245663744?s=20
https://twitter.com/ronbodi/status/1323037505487360001?s=20
The average age of a covid death is higher than the average life expectancy so maybe you’re right on your second point
Personally think that AZ is going for Democrats this year, up & down the ballot. Et tu, (ro)brute?