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Rogue Lawyer – politicalbetting.com

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Comments

  • TimT said:

    Figures are a little late today

    So many daily tests, Excel COVID edition is taking longer to boot up?
    I did break Excel and the server this morning.

    I asked for a transactions report today, and instead of asking for a batched total report I accidentally asked it for every single transaction, which is 18 million transactions. Oops.
    How long did the printer take?
    I didn't make that rookie mistake, I asked for it in a CSV/Excel format.

    Had I have printed it I may have been responsible for the destruction of a few rainforests.
  • Philip_ThompsonPhilip_Thompson Posts: 65,826
    TimT said:

    Figures are a little late today

    So many daily tests, Excel COVID edition is taking longer to boot up?
    I did break Excel and the server this morning.

    I asked for a transactions report today, and instead of asking for a batched total report I accidentally asked it for every single transaction, which is 18 million transactions. Oops.
    How long did the printer take?
    Its being printed on a dot matrix.
  • PulpstarPulpstar Posts: 75,842
    I'd be surprised if we couldn't (pretty much) eliminate Covid from the UK at some point in the future given our massive appetite for vaccinations. This year isn't likely possible but with improved boosters and so forth in future years we'll get there.
    I assume the CMO has given the answer he has because most people asking this question aren't asking about how we'll be doing in 2023 or some such.
  • theProletheProle Posts: 948
    FPT (I wrote this, the realised I'd not refreshed the page for an hour - It's a important topic anyway!)
    kinabalu said:

    maaarsh said:

    theProle said:

    Excess deaths are over. The second wave is over.

    We should be rapidly unlocking at least back to the point we were at in July last year domestically, while keeping the border sealed to protect our gains domestically. That's the trade-off.

    Telling people to stay at home when nobody is dying is unforgiveable.

    Given what we know about the current strains, a full unlock now would quickly fill up ICU with 30-50 year olds.

    That is why the roadmap is linking levels of vaccination to reducing the levels of restrictions.
    I think that's a load of bollocks sorry.

    More than a fifth over 50s have been vaccinated already, the vulnerable under 50s. The majority of adults have been vaccinated now, which means they're much less likely to pass the virus on.

    With our level of vaccinations, even with the new variant, there's little reason why ICUs should escalate any more than they did last July.
    Hospital admissions R is around 0.8

    Who are all these people being admitted to hospital - *now*?

    image

    If you let rip, it's not long before you are back at admissions R of 1.x and then we are in the same position as Europe.

    Hence a phased approach.
    There's a five week lag between the effect of new vaccinations on hospital admissions.

    How low do you think hospital admissions will be in five weeks ?
    Hopefully nice and low. Hopefully.

    We have a nice 0.8 (or so) R for hospitals at the moment. The issue is that 0.8 turns into 1.05 quite easily.

    I don't want to do this all over again. At this point a 5 weeks is not much to ask to get security - at that point we will (the fuckwits willing) have the over 50s done to a high level - including getting areas such as Newham to a better state....
    Actually 5 weeks for an entire country is an awful lot to ask. If we say that a life spent locked down is only getting 50% of its normal value (which I don't think is unreasonable), the 5 weeks of lockdown for the country represents about ~40,000 entire birth-death lifetimes lost, or 3 million years of life lost. That's the same loss of years of life as 300,000 covid deaths.
    If I told you that lifting lockdown now risks another 50k deaths (but its unlikely to be that bad, and there is a better than evens chance it's less than 10k), but retaining it for 5 weeks cost 300k deaths, this should be a no brainer.
    You can't say lockdown life is only worth 50%... because then you'd have to admit it's been a complete and utter mistake.

    500k lives saved (optimistically) with average 15 years of life left (very optimistic) gives 7.5m years of life saved.

    Set against 60m people locked down for over 6 months at 50% life value is >15m years of life spent.
    This analysis doesn't work because it assumes an alternative to lockdown in which, as the virus ran riot, people would have gone cheerfully about their daily lives as normal.

    It's the fallacy at the heart of most of this sentiment. It denies the harsh reality of covid and hence is known as covid denialism.
    I think there is a degree of middle ground available on this. Whilst people in places which haven't locked down have changed behaviour, a voluntary lockdown is a lot more satisfactory that a state mandated one. People can manage their own risk - so those at low risk continue mostly normal lives, those at high risk can go into hiding if they feel that is appropriate. People know what they value most, and actually have a pretty good idea of what's risky, and what isn't - governments are pretty useless at assessing both (see also the repeated insanity around people going to the beach or walking in the peak district).
    For example, for a three month block last year I didn't see the young lady I'm going out with, despite this being a trivial risk (she was working from home, living alone, not seeing anyone else). Without a lockdown, that would have been a non-issue, even if I'd been holding back on us going for dates in crowded pubs.

    Incidentally people argue that state mandated closures were required so that business financial support could be put in place. This is a barefaced lie - there are plenty of ways the government could have hosed money in the correct directions without mandating closure (e.g. they could have compared VAT returns before and after the pandemic, and then made up a percentage of missing turnover), and the furlough scheme has no direct connection with mandated closures at-all.

    If you said that life under lockdown was at 50% life value, and life with a pandemic but out a lockdown was 75% life value, then that still requires an incredibly optimistic view of the number of lives saved by the whole lockdown to work out on a cost benefit analysis.

    But it's even worse now, as it's likely the lockdown isn't actually saving many lives anyway with where we are in the vaccination program - so we're now burning up the equivalent of 1000 lifetimes a day purely so the government doesn't have to risk getting egg on it's face if cases rise a bit more than expected, and some measure need reimposing. Its absolute scandal, and if they had a brain between them HM opposition should be on about it night and day. But they won't be, because they are also worried about the risk of a bit of eggsplash if relaxing goes wrong.
  • Stark_DawningStark_Dawning Posts: 9,232

    And so back on topic.

    Love the thread header from Cyclefree and agree with everything she writes. Particularly like that superb quote from Chernobyl to finish.

    I am starting to become genuinely worried about this Government. I mean before I just didn't like Johnson and most of his cronies but that was because I saw them as foolish, self serving and incompetent. Now I see them as a malign (that word again) force that is slowly changing our laws in a way they would themselves be screaming blue murder about if it were being done by Labour. Banning protests, seeking to place the Government above the law, banning people from leaving the country. These are not the actions of a democratically minded open Government.

    I spent a lot of time in the early 2000s campaigning against the Civil Contingences Act and RIPA introduced by Labour. These actions by a Tory Government are just as bad, if not worse.

    Many of the lower ranks of the Tories refer to 'being on the beaches on D-Day'. Or similar.

    One does wonder sometimes which way their guns would been pointing!
    The reaction of some of the PB self-styled libertarians to these outrages has been informative - practically mute when all of a sudden it's friend Boris orchestrating the power grab.
  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 76,274
    edited March 2021
    Floater said:
    Comedy Dave at Disney land must be fun.....no Sir you can't come in at 8am, you didn't buy the early bird pass....I haven't made a mistake, it is you who have made a mistake, I demand entry now....and I won't be queuing for rides, as again you have made a mistake, making these rides too popular.
  • Floater said:
    He's such a coward, he's set this Tweet settings so only people he follows or mentions can reply to his tweet.
  • TimTTimT Posts: 6,328

    And so back on topic.

    Love the thread header from Cyclefree and agree with everything she writes. Particularly like that superb quote from Chernobyl to finish.

    I am starting to become genuinely worried about this Government. I mean before I just didn't like Johnson and most of his cronies but that was because I saw them as foolish, self serving and incompetent. Now I see them as a malign (that word again) force that is slowly changing our laws in a way they would themselves be screaming blue murder about if it were being done by Labour. Banning protests, seeking to place the Government above the law, banning people from leaving the country. These are not the actions of a democratically minded open Government.

    I spent a lot of time in the early 2000s campaigning against the Civil Contingences Act and RIPA introduced by Labour. These actions by a Tory Government are just as bad, if not worse.

    Many of the lower ranks of the Tories refer to 'being on the beaches on D-Day'. Or similar.

    One does wonder sometimes which way their guns would been pointing!
    The reaction of some of the PB self-styled libertarians to these outrages has been informative - practically mute when all of a sudden it's friend Boris orchestrating the power grab.
    You must have missed yesterday, then
  • North Britain not yet Eurofoamic (h/t Kinbalu) shock

    https://twitter.com/MSmithsonPB/status/1374756629342736385?s=20

    When Boris misspoke today about Douglas Ross the interesting thing he said was that there has been a referendum and this house now just wants to concentrate on covid and recovery and not with constitutional matters

    If the SNP seek a section 30 agreement Boris can just put it to a free vote in the HoC knowing it would be rejected by a large cross party majority

    And then how does the SNP achieve a legal referendum
  • This flag stuff isn't going away is it?

    https://twitter.com/PickardJE/status/1374760213954371584
  • dixiedeandixiedean Posts: 27,835
    Breaking Flag news.
    Union flag to be flown every day on government buildings says Oliver Dowden.
  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 76,274
    edited March 2021
    If I hadn't actually seen Comedy Dave on the moving picture box, I would have presumed he was some spoof creation from the likes of South Park guys.
  • isamisam Posts: 40,729
    Sir Keir vs EdM (first 128 Leader Ratings)

    Darker colours are Gross Satisfied, lighter shades are Net Satisfaction


  • Pagan2Pagan2 Posts: 8,629
    theProle said:

    FPT (I wrote this, the realised I'd not refreshed the page for an hour - It's a important topic anyway!)

    kinabalu said:

    maaarsh said:

    theProle said:

    Excess deaths are over. The second wave is over.

    We should be rapidly unlocking at least back to the point we were at in July last year domestically, while keeping the border sealed to protect our gains domestically. That's the trade-off.

    Telling people to stay at home when nobody is dying is unforgiveable.

    Given what we know about the current strains, a full unlock now would quickly fill up ICU with 30-50 year olds.

    That is why the roadmap is linking levels of vaccination to reducing the levels of restrictions.
    I think that's a load of bollocks sorry.

    More than a fifth over 50s have been vaccinated already, the vulnerable under 50s. The majority of adults have been vaccinated now, which means they're much less likely to pass the virus on.

    With our level of vaccinations, even with the new variant, there's little reason why ICUs should escalate any more than they did last July.
    Hospital admissions R is around 0.8

    Who are all these people being admitted to hospital - *now*?

    image

    If you let rip, it's not long before you are back at admissions R of 1.x and then we are in the same position as Europe.

    Hence a phased approach.
    There's a five week lag between the effect of new vaccinations on hospital admissions.

    How low do you think hospital admissions will be in five weeks ?
    Hopefully nice and low. Hopefully.

    We have a nice 0.8 (or so) R for hospitals at the moment. The issue is that 0.8 turns into 1.05 quite easily.

    I don't want to do this all over again. At this point a 5 weeks is not much to ask to get security - at that point we will (the fuckwits willing) have the over 50s done to a high level - including getting areas such as Newham to a better state....
    Actually 5 weeks for an entire country is an awful lot to ask. If we say that a life spent locked down is only getting 50% of its normal value (which I don't think is unreasonable), the 5 weeks of lockdown for the country represents about ~40,000 entire birth-death lifetimes lost, or 3 million years of life lost. That's the same loss of years of life as 300,000 covid deaths.
    If I told you that lifting lockdown now risks another 50k deaths (but its unlikely to be that bad, and there is a better than evens chance it's less than 10k), but retaining it for 5 weeks cost 300k deaths, this should be a no brainer.
    You can't say lockdown life is only worth 50%... because then you'd have to admit it's been a complete and utter mistake.

    500k lives saved (optimistically) with average 15 years of life left (very optimistic) gives 7.5m years of life saved.

    Set against 60m people locked down for over 6 months at 50% life value is >15m years of life spent.
    This analysis doesn't work because it assumes an alternative to lockdown in which, as the virus ran riot, people would have gone cheerfully about their daily lives as normal.

    It's the fallacy at the heart of most of this sentiment. It denies the harsh reality of covid and hence is known as covid denialism.
    I think there is a degree of middle ground available on this. Whilst people in places which haven't locked down have changed behaviour, a voluntary lockdown is a lot more satisfactory that a state mandated one. People can manage their own risk - so those at low risk continue mostly normal lives, those at high risk can go into hiding if they feel that is appropriate. People know what they value most, and actually have a pretty good idea of what's risky, and what isn't - governments are pretty useless at assessing both (see also the repeated insanity around people going to the beach or walking in the peak district).
    For example, for a three month block last year I didn't see the young lady I'm going out with, despite this being a trivial risk (she was working from home, living alone, not seeing anyone else). Without a lockdown, that would have been a non-issue, even if I'd been holding back on us going for dates in crowded pubs.

    Incidentally people argue that state mandated closures were required so that business financial support could be put in place. This is a barefaced lie - there are plenty of ways the government could have hosed money in the correct directions without mandating closure (e.g. they could have compared VAT returns before and after the pandemic, and then made up a percentage of missing turnover), and the furlough scheme has no direct connection with mandated closures at-all.

    If you said that life under lockdown was at 50% life value, and life with a pandemic but out a lockdown was 75% life value, then that still requires an incredibly optimistic view of the number of lives saved by the whole lockdown to work out on a cost benefit analysis.

    But it's even worse now, as it's likely the lockdown isn't actually saving many lives anyway with where we are in the vaccination program - so we're now burning up the equivalent of 1000 lifetimes a day purely so the government doesn't have to risk getting egg on it's face if cases rise a bit more than expected, and some measure need reimposing. Its absolute scandal, and if they had a brain between them HM opposition should be on about it night and day. But they won't be, because they are also worried about the risk of a bit of eggsplash if relaxing goes wrong.
    Where your argument fails is of course is because for a lot of people they might want to lock themselves down voluntarily but can't because of work. Without the furlough scheme most would not have been able to do other than carry on as normal and risk themselves.

    Nor does your argument make sense in as much as you can't add up number of people x time lost in lockdown and say that is the same as x00,000 deaths. People lost some time is all but they are mostly at least still alive
  • Floater said:
    Boris rising above the hari kari of the EU
  • Northern_AlNorthern_Al Posts: 7,459
    Sandpit said:

    Leon said:

    Compare and contrast with EU stripping naked, putting their pants on their head, screaming into the void while setting fire to everything in site, like one of the twats that the kill the bill protests.....

    ------

    The Indian factory churning out AstraZeneca's Covid vaccine has reportedly asked the country's government for permission to 'immediately' ship millions of doses to the UK.

    Boris Johnson this week sent two officials on a mission to India to smooth tensions over the supply chain. Lord Lister and international trade adviser David Quarrey were asked to visit to the Serum Institute to negotiate letting the shipment through.

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9397361/Coronavirus-Indian-AstraZeneca-vaccine-factory-urges-government-let-ship-UK.html

    Some weeks ago, due to Pfizer production difficulties, Canada received no vaccine for a week. None. Nada.

    Their response was polite concern, and a hope that things would improve.
    And not just Canada; Norway, Australia, New Zealand and I am sure many others. All have had issues with supply just like the EU and the UK. It is inevitable given the extraordinary timetable involved in rolling out these vaccines.

    This is what is missing from so much of the analysis. It is not the case of the UK and the EU behaving differently and this being driven by Brexit as some like to claim. It is the EU - and particularly some of its major countries - behaving like a spoiled brat whilst the rest of the world behaves like adults. It is shocking for those of us who saw the EU as a malign but clever entity to find out it is neither malign, nor clever, simply very very childish.
    It’s not childishness. It’s more a religious mindset challenged by deeply problematic truths.

    Put it another way, some of the EU elite reaction to the vaccine issue reminds me of ecclesiastical reaction to Darwin’s theories in the 19th century. A mixture of injured pride, ineffectual pomposity, terrible argumentation and bewildered denialism. ‘This simply cannot be true.’
    Isn't Darwin cancelled these days....racist, colonialist, etc.
    Martin Luther King is cancelled these days.

    Why on Earth should someone be treated according to the content of their character, rather than the colour of their skin?
    This wilful misunderstanding of MLK's speech is often repeated on here. What he said (among much else about racial injustice) was:

    I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

    The key words are 'dream' and 'will one day'; he makes it clear that this is an aspiration, not a reality. It's a statement of the bleeding obvious, with which only racists would disagree. But the point he is making is that the USA was a long way from achieving his dream. Despite much progress, I suspect most people would agree that skin colour still plays a part in how Americans are judged by a significant minority of their fellow citizens.
  • MarqueeMarkMarqueeMark Posts: 49,958

    Floater said:
    He's such a coward, he's set this Tweet settings so only people he follows or mentions can reply to his tweet.
    Wouldn't you, in his position?!
  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 76,274
    I wonder if Comedy Dave is aware of the amount of piss being ripped out of him on here?
  • TheuniondivvieTheuniondivvie Posts: 39,748

    North Britain not yet Eurofoamic (h/t Kinbalu) shock

    https://twitter.com/MSmithsonPB/status/1374756629342736385?s=20

    When Boris misspoke today about Douglas Ross the interesting thing he said was that there has been a referendum and this house now just wants to concentrate on covid and recovery and not with constitutional matters

    If the SNP seek a section 30 agreement Boris can just put it to a free vote in the HoC knowing it would be rejected by a large cross party majority

    And then how does the SNP achieve a legal referendum
    Misspoke, lol! Everyone knows he's Forres Gump.

    I see you've joined the HYUFD doesn't matter what Scots vote for faction, least surprising thing to happen since the SCons vonc turned out to be a pointless farce.
  • Andy_JSAndy_JS Posts: 26,279
    Leon said:

    Compare and contrast with EU stripping naked, putting their pants on their head, screaming into the void while setting fire to everything in site, like one of the twats that the kill the bill protests.....

    ------

    The Indian factory churning out AstraZeneca's Covid vaccine has reportedly asked the country's government for permission to 'immediately' ship millions of doses to the UK.

    Boris Johnson this week sent two officials on a mission to India to smooth tensions over the supply chain. Lord Lister and international trade adviser David Quarrey were asked to visit to the Serum Institute to negotiate letting the shipment through.

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9397361/Coronavirus-Indian-AstraZeneca-vaccine-factory-urges-government-let-ship-UK.html

    Some weeks ago, due to Pfizer production difficulties, Canada received no vaccine for a week. None. Nada.

    Their response was polite concern, and a hope that things would improve.
    And not just Canada; Norway, Australia, New Zealand and I am sure many others. All have had issues with supply just like the EU and the UK. It is inevitable given the extraordinary timetable involved in rolling out these vaccines.

    This is what is missing from so much of the analysis. It is not the case of the UK and the EU behaving differently and this being driven by Brexit as some like to claim. It is the EU - and particularly some of its major countries - behaving like a spoiled brat whilst the rest of the world behaves like adults. It is shocking for those of us who saw the EU as a malign but clever entity to find out it is neither malign, nor clever, simply very very childish.
    It’s not childishness. It’s more a religious mindset challenged by deeply problematic truths.

    Put it another way, some of the EU elite reaction to the vaccine issue reminds me of ecclesiastical reaction to Darwin’s theories in the 19th century. A mixture of injured pride, ineffectual pomposity, terrible argumentation and bewildered denialism. ‘This simply cannot be true.’
    A previous member of this site once came up with the phrase "flatulent pomposities".
  • Philip_ThompsonPhilip_Thompson Posts: 65,826
    isam said:

    Sir Keir vs EdM (first 128 Leader Ratings)

    Darker colours are Gross Satisfied, lighter shades are Net Satisfaction


    Sir Keir now with lower gross satisfaction than Red Ed had at this stage?
  • SandpitSandpit Posts: 49,614

    Figures are a little late today

    So many daily tests, Excel COVID edition is taking longer to boot up?
    I did break Excel and the server this morning.

    I asked for a transactions report today, and instead of asking for a batched total report I accidentally asked it for every single transaction, which is 18 million transactions. Oops.
    The server should have calculated the number of rows and then refused the batch. Not your fault, it's up to IT to stop the stupid users being stupid.
  • EndillionEndillion Posts: 4,960

    Sandpit said:

    Leon said:

    Compare and contrast with EU stripping naked, putting their pants on their head, screaming into the void while setting fire to everything in site, like one of the twats that the kill the bill protests.....

    ------

    The Indian factory churning out AstraZeneca's Covid vaccine has reportedly asked the country's government for permission to 'immediately' ship millions of doses to the UK.

    Boris Johnson this week sent two officials on a mission to India to smooth tensions over the supply chain. Lord Lister and international trade adviser David Quarrey were asked to visit to the Serum Institute to negotiate letting the shipment through.

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9397361/Coronavirus-Indian-AstraZeneca-vaccine-factory-urges-government-let-ship-UK.html

    Some weeks ago, due to Pfizer production difficulties, Canada received no vaccine for a week. None. Nada.

    Their response was polite concern, and a hope that things would improve.
    And not just Canada; Norway, Australia, New Zealand and I am sure many others. All have had issues with supply just like the EU and the UK. It is inevitable given the extraordinary timetable involved in rolling out these vaccines.

    This is what is missing from so much of the analysis. It is not the case of the UK and the EU behaving differently and this being driven by Brexit as some like to claim. It is the EU - and particularly some of its major countries - behaving like a spoiled brat whilst the rest of the world behaves like adults. It is shocking for those of us who saw the EU as a malign but clever entity to find out it is neither malign, nor clever, simply very very childish.
    It’s not childishness. It’s more a religious mindset challenged by deeply problematic truths.

    Put it another way, some of the EU elite reaction to the vaccine issue reminds me of ecclesiastical reaction to Darwin’s theories in the 19th century. A mixture of injured pride, ineffectual pomposity, terrible argumentation and bewildered denialism. ‘This simply cannot be true.’
    Isn't Darwin cancelled these days....racist, colonialist, etc.
    Martin Luther King is cancelled these days.

    Why on Earth should someone be treated according to the content of their character, rather than the colour of their skin?
    This wilful misunderstanding of MLK's speech is often repeated on here. What he said (among much else about racial injustice) was:

    I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

    The key words are 'dream' and 'will one day'; he makes it clear that this is an aspiration, not a reality. It's a statement of the bleeding obvious, with which only racists would disagree. But the point he is making is that the USA was a long way from achieving his dream. Despite much progress, I suspect most people would agree that skin colour still plays a part in how Americans are judged by a significant minority of their fellow citizens.
    I don't think you've understood the comment. The point being made is that many of today's Democrats are very keen to judge people based on the colour of their skin (eg this: https://nypost.com/2021/03/18/the-root-accused-of-racism-after-piece-declares-whiteness-is-a-pandemic/), rather than trying to move towards the aspiration outlined by MLK.
  • CookieCookie Posts: 11,183

    Sandpit said:

    Leon said:

    Compare and contrast with EU stripping naked, putting their pants on their head, screaming into the void while setting fire to everything in site, like one of the twats that the kill the bill protests.....

    ------

    The Indian factory churning out AstraZeneca's Covid vaccine has reportedly asked the country's government for permission to 'immediately' ship millions of doses to the UK.

    Boris Johnson this week sent two officials on a mission to India to smooth tensions over the supply chain. Lord Lister and international trade adviser David Quarrey were asked to visit to the Serum Institute to negotiate letting the shipment through.

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9397361/Coronavirus-Indian-AstraZeneca-vaccine-factory-urges-government-let-ship-UK.html

    Some weeks ago, due to Pfizer production difficulties, Canada received no vaccine for a week. None. Nada.

    Their response was polite concern, and a hope that things would improve.
    And not just Canada; Norway, Australia, New Zealand and I am sure many others. All have had issues with supply just like the EU and the UK. It is inevitable given the extraordinary timetable involved in rolling out these vaccines.

    This is what is missing from so much of the analysis. It is not the case of the UK and the EU behaving differently and this being driven by Brexit as some like to claim. It is the EU - and particularly some of its major countries - behaving like a spoiled brat whilst the rest of the world behaves like adults. It is shocking for those of us who saw the EU as a malign but clever entity to find out it is neither malign, nor clever, simply very very childish.
    It’s not childishness. It’s more a religious mindset challenged by deeply problematic truths.

    Put it another way, some of the EU elite reaction to the vaccine issue reminds me of ecclesiastical reaction to Darwin’s theories in the 19th century. A mixture of injured pride, ineffectual pomposity, terrible argumentation and bewildered denialism. ‘This simply cannot be true.’
    Isn't Darwin cancelled these days....racist, colonialist, etc.
    Martin Luther King is cancelled these days.

    Why on Earth should someone be treated according to the content of their character, rather than the colour of their skin?
    This wilful misunderstanding of MLK's speech is often repeated on here. What he said (among much else about racial injustice) was:

    I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

    The key words are 'dream' and 'will one day'; he makes it clear that this is an aspiration, not a reality. It's a statement of the bleeding obvious, with which only racists would disagree. But the point he is making is that the USA was a long way from achieving his dream. Despite much progress, I suspect most people would agree that skin colour still plays a part in how Americans are judged by a significant minority of their fellow citizens.
    Exactly.
    Many of us would see that as the way we would like things to be, even if they aren't.
    But there are a minority of the weird left for whom if your race trumps all other considerations: all black people are victims; the loyalty of black people should be primarily to other black people; all white people are racists. It doesn't seem particularly MLK-like.
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 61,571

    And so back on topic.

    Love the thread header from Cyclefree and agree with everything she writes. Particularly like that superb quote from Chernobyl to finish.

    I am starting to become genuinely worried about this Government. I mean before I just didn't like Johnson and most of his cronies but that was because I saw them as foolish, self serving and incompetent. Now I see them as a malign (that word again) force that is slowly changing our laws in a way they would themselves be screaming blue murder about if it were being done by Labour. Banning protests, seeking to place the Government above the law, banning people from leaving the country. These are not the actions of a democratically minded open Government.

    I spent a lot of time in the early 2000s campaigning against the Civil Contingences Act and RIPA introduced by Labour. These actions by a Tory Government are just as bad, if not worse.

    Agreed on all counts.
    That this is happening during the vaccine wars means that most voters won't even notice.
  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 76,274
    I am coming to the conclusion the government is just trolling on this stuff, because a load of people in the media / Labour rise to the bait every time and sets them off making a huge fuss over what most people see nothing.
  • TOPPINGTOPPING Posts: 40,950
    Pagan2 said:

    theProle said:

    FPT (I wrote this, the realised I'd not refreshed the page for an hour - It's a important topic anyway!)

    kinabalu said:

    maaarsh said:

    theProle said:

    Excess deaths are over. The second wave is over.

    We should be rapidly unlocking at least back to the point we were at in July last year domestically, while keeping the border sealed to protect our gains domestically. That's the trade-off.

    Telling people to stay at home when nobody is dying is unforgiveable.

    Given what we know about the current strains, a full unlock now would quickly fill up ICU with 30-50 year olds.

    That is why the roadmap is linking levels of vaccination to reducing the levels of restrictions.
    I think that's a load of bollocks sorry.

    More than a fifth over 50s have been vaccinated already, the vulnerable under 50s. The majority of adults have been vaccinated now, which means they're much less likely to pass the virus on.

    With our level of vaccinations, even with the new variant, there's little reason why ICUs should escalate any more than they did last July.
    Hospital admissions R is around 0.8

    Who are all these people being admitted to hospital - *now*?

    image

    If you let rip, it's not long before you are back at admissions R of 1.x and then we are in the same position as Europe.

    Hence a phased approach.
    There's a five week lag between the effect of new vaccinations on hospital admissions.

    How low do you think hospital admissions will be in five weeks ?
    Hopefully nice and low. Hopefully.

    We have a nice 0.8 (or so) R for hospitals at the moment. The issue is that 0.8 turns into 1.05 quite easily.

    I don't want to do this all over again. At this point a 5 weeks is not much to ask to get security - at that point we will (the fuckwits willing) have the over 50s done to a high level - including getting areas such as Newham to a better state....
    Actually 5 weeks for an entire country is an awful lot to ask. If we say that a life spent locked down is only getting 50% of its normal value (which I don't think is unreasonable), the 5 weeks of lockdown for the country represents about ~40,000 entire birth-death lifetimes lost, or 3 million years of life lost. That's the same loss of years of life as 300,000 covid deaths.
    If I told you that lifting lockdown now risks another 50k deaths (but its unlikely to be that bad, and there is a better than evens chance it's less than 10k), but retaining it for 5 weeks cost 300k deaths, this should be a no brainer.
    You can't say lockdown life is only worth 50%... because then you'd have to admit it's been a complete and utter mistake.

    500k lives saved (optimistically) with average 15 years of life left (very optimistic) gives 7.5m years of life saved.

    Set against 60m people locked down for over 6 months at 50% life value is >15m years of life spent.
    This analysis doesn't work because it assumes an alternative to lockdown in which, as the virus ran riot, people would have gone cheerfully about their daily lives as normal.

    It's the fallacy at the heart of most of this sentiment. It denies the harsh reality of covid and hence is known as covid denialism.
    I think there is a degree of middle ground available on this. Whilst people in places which haven't locked down have changed behaviour, a voluntary lockdown is a lot more satisfactory that a state mandated one. People can manage their own risk - so those at low risk continue mostly normal lives, those at high risk can go into hiding if they feel that is appropriate. People know what they value most, and actually have a pretty good idea of what's risky, and what isn't - governments are pretty useless at assessing both (see also the repeated insanity around people going to the beach or walking in the peak district).
    For example, for a three month block last year I didn't see the young lady I'm going out with, despite this being a trivial risk (she was working from home, living alone, not seeing anyone else). Without a lockdown, that would have been a non-issue, even if I'd been holding back on us going for dates in crowded pubs.

    Incidentally people argue that state mandated closures were required so that business financial support could be put in place. This is a barefaced lie - there are plenty of ways the government could have hosed money in the correct directions without mandating closure (e.g. they could have compared VAT returns before and after the pandemic, and then made up a percentage of missing turnover), and the furlough scheme has no direct connection with mandated closures at-all.

    If you said that life under lockdown was at 50% life value, and life with a pandemic but out a lockdown was 75% life value, then that still requires an incredibly optimistic view of the number of lives saved by the whole lockdown to work out on a cost benefit analysis.

    But it's even worse now, as it's likely the lockdown isn't actually saving many lives anyway with where we are in the vaccination program - so we're now burning up the equivalent of 1000 lifetimes a day purely so the government doesn't have to risk getting egg on it's face if cases rise a bit more than expected, and some measure need reimposing. Its absolute scandal, and if they had a brain between them HM opposition should be on about it night and day. But they won't be, because they are also worried about the risk of a bit of eggsplash if relaxing goes wrong.
    Where your argument fails is of course is because for a lot of people they might want to lock themselves down voluntarily but can't because of work. Without the furlough scheme most would not have been able to do other than carry on as normal and risk themselves.

    Nor does your argument make sense in as much as you can't add up number of people x time lost in lockdown and say that is the same as x00,000 deaths. People lost some time is all but they are mostly at least still alive
    On the first issue, what was to stop the govt introducing furlough regardless of lockdown?
  • Andy_JSAndy_JS Posts: 26,279
    edited March 2021
    theProle said:

    FPT (I wrote this, the realised I'd not refreshed the page for an hour - It's a important topic anyway!)

    kinabalu said:

    maaarsh said:

    theProle said:

    Excess deaths are over. The second wave is over.

    We should be rapidly unlocking at least back to the point we were at in July last year domestically, while keeping the border sealed to protect our gains domestically. That's the trade-off.

    Telling people to stay at home when nobody is dying is unforgiveable.

    Given what we know about the current strains, a full unlock now would quickly fill up ICU with 30-50 year olds.

    That is why the roadmap is linking levels of vaccination to reducing the levels of restrictions.
    I think that's a load of bollocks sorry.

    More than a fifth over 50s have been vaccinated already, the vulnerable under 50s. The majority of adults have been vaccinated now, which means they're much less likely to pass the virus on.

    With our level of vaccinations, even with the new variant, there's little reason why ICUs should escalate any more than they did last July.
    Hospital admissions R is around 0.8

    Who are all these people being admitted to hospital - *now*?

    image

    If you let rip, it's not long before you are back at admissions R of 1.x and then we are in the same position as Europe.

    Hence a phased approach.
    There's a five week lag between the effect of new vaccinations on hospital admissions.

    How low do you think hospital admissions will be in five weeks ?
    Hopefully nice and low. Hopefully.

    We have a nice 0.8 (or so) R for hospitals at the moment. The issue is that 0.8 turns into 1.05 quite easily.

    I don't want to do this all over again. At this point a 5 weeks is not much to ask to get security - at that point we will (the fuckwits willing) have the over 50s done to a high level - including getting areas such as Newham to a better state....
    Actually 5 weeks for an entire country is an awful lot to ask. If we say that a life spent locked down is only getting 50% of its normal value (which I don't think is unreasonable), the 5 weeks of lockdown for the country represents about ~40,000 entire birth-death lifetimes lost, or 3 million years of life lost. That's the same loss of years of life as 300,000 covid deaths.
    If I told you that lifting lockdown now risks another 50k deaths (but its unlikely to be that bad, and there is a better than evens chance it's less than 10k), but retaining it for 5 weeks cost 300k deaths, this should be a no brainer.
    You can't say lockdown life is only worth 50%... because then you'd have to admit it's been a complete and utter mistake.

    500k lives saved (optimistically) with average 15 years of life left (very optimistic) gives 7.5m years of life saved.

    Set against 60m people locked down for over 6 months at 50% life value is >15m years of life spent.
    This analysis doesn't work because it assumes an alternative to lockdown in which, as the virus ran riot, people would have gone cheerfully about their daily lives as normal.

    It's the fallacy at the heart of most of this sentiment. It denies the harsh reality of covid and hence is known as covid denialism.
    I think there is a degree of middle ground available on this. Whilst people in places which haven't locked down have changed behaviour, a voluntary lockdown is a lot more satisfactory that a state mandated one. People can manage their own risk - so those at low risk continue mostly normal lives, those at high risk can go into hiding if they feel that is appropriate. People know what they value most, and actually have a pretty good idea of what's risky, and what isn't - governments are pretty useless at assessing both (see also the repeated insanity around people going to the beach or walking in the peak district).
    For example, for a three month block last year I didn't see the young lady I'm going out with, despite this being a trivial risk (she was working from home, living alone, not seeing anyone else). Without a lockdown, that would have been a non-issue, even if I'd been holding back on us going for dates in crowded pubs.

    Incidentally people argue that state mandated closures were required so that business financial support could be put in place. This is a barefaced lie - there are plenty of ways the government could have hosed money in the correct directions without mandating closure (e.g. they could have compared VAT returns before and after the pandemic, and then made up a percentage of missing turnover), and the furlough scheme has no direct connection with mandated closures at-all.

    If you said that life under lockdown was at 50% life value, and life with a pandemic but out a lockdown was 75% life value, then that still requires an incredibly optimistic view of the number of lives saved by the whole lockdown to work out on a cost benefit analysis.

    But it's even worse now, as it's likely the lockdown isn't actually saving many lives anyway with where we are in the vaccination program - so we're now burning up the equivalent of 1000 lifetimes a day purely so the government doesn't have to risk getting egg on it's face if cases rise a bit more than expected, and some measure need reimposing. Its absolute scandal, and if they had a brain between them HM opposition should be on about it night and day. But they won't be, because they are also worried about the risk of a bit of eggsplash if relaxing goes wrong.
    "People can manage their own risk - so those at low risk continue mostly normal lives, those at high risk can go into hiding if they feel that is appropriate. People know what they value most, and actually have a pretty good idea of what's risky, and what isn't - governments are pretty useless at assessing both (see also the repeated insanity around people going to the beach or walking in the peak district)."

    Similar to what Lord Sumption has been arguing for the last 12 months.
  • North Britain not yet Eurofoamic (h/t Kinbalu) shock

    https://twitter.com/MSmithsonPB/status/1374756629342736385?s=20

    When Boris misspoke today about Douglas Ross the interesting thing he said was that there has been a referendum and this house now just wants to concentrate on covid and recovery and not with constitutional matters

    If the SNP seek a section 30 agreement Boris can just put it to a free vote in the HoC knowing it would be rejected by a large cross party majority

    And then how does the SNP achieve a legal referendum
    Misspoke, lol! Everyone knows he's Forres Gump.

    I see you've joined the HYUFD doesn't matter what Scots vote for faction, least surprising thing to happen since the SCons vonc turned out to be a pointless farce.
    You can prevaricate as much as you like but the SNP need to gain approval across the HOC for a section 30 agreement

    I have no problem with indyref2 as long as it is agreed legitimately
  • Sandpit said:

    Figures are a little late today

    So many daily tests, Excel COVID edition is taking longer to boot up?
    I did break Excel and the server this morning.

    I asked for a transactions report today, and instead of asking for a batched total report I accidentally asked it for every single transaction, which is 18 million transactions. Oops.
    The server should have calculated the number of rows and then refused the batch. Not your fault, it's up to IT to stop the stupid users being stupid.
    I am Head of Regulatory Affairs & Compliance, apparently I have unlimited power to check *everything* that goes on.
  • isamisam Posts: 40,729
    edited March 2021

    isam said:

    Sir Keir vs EdM (first 128 Leader Ratings)

    Darker colours are Gross Satisfied, lighter shades are Net Satisfaction


    Sir Keir now with lower gross satisfaction than Red Ed had at this stage?
    Yes indeed. Ed averages 33% for the next 25 polls (NS is -19%)

    And this is when it's going badly for Boris remember!!
  • SandpitSandpit Posts: 49,614

    Sandpit said:

    Leon said:

    Compare and contrast with EU stripping naked, putting their pants on their head, screaming into the void while setting fire to everything in site, like one of the twats that the kill the bill protests.....

    ------

    The Indian factory churning out AstraZeneca's Covid vaccine has reportedly asked the country's government for permission to 'immediately' ship millions of doses to the UK.

    Boris Johnson this week sent two officials on a mission to India to smooth tensions over the supply chain. Lord Lister and international trade adviser David Quarrey were asked to visit to the Serum Institute to negotiate letting the shipment through.

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9397361/Coronavirus-Indian-AstraZeneca-vaccine-factory-urges-government-let-ship-UK.html

    Some weeks ago, due to Pfizer production difficulties, Canada received no vaccine for a week. None. Nada.

    Their response was polite concern, and a hope that things would improve.
    And not just Canada; Norway, Australia, New Zealand and I am sure many others. All have had issues with supply just like the EU and the UK. It is inevitable given the extraordinary timetable involved in rolling out these vaccines.

    This is what is missing from so much of the analysis. It is not the case of the UK and the EU behaving differently and this being driven by Brexit as some like to claim. It is the EU - and particularly some of its major countries - behaving like a spoiled brat whilst the rest of the world behaves like adults. It is shocking for those of us who saw the EU as a malign but clever entity to find out it is neither malign, nor clever, simply very very childish.
    It’s not childishness. It’s more a religious mindset challenged by deeply problematic truths.

    Put it another way, some of the EU elite reaction to the vaccine issue reminds me of ecclesiastical reaction to Darwin’s theories in the 19th century. A mixture of injured pride, ineffectual pomposity, terrible argumentation and bewildered denialism. ‘This simply cannot be true.’
    Isn't Darwin cancelled these days....racist, colonialist, etc.
    Martin Luther King is cancelled these days.

    Why on Earth should someone be treated according to the content of their character, rather than the colour of their skin?
    This wilful misunderstanding of MLK's speech is often repeated on here. What he said (among much else about racial injustice) was:

    I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

    The key words are 'dream' and 'will one day'; he makes it clear that this is an aspiration, not a reality. It's a statement of the bleeding obvious, with which only racists would disagree. But the point he is making is that the USA was a long way from achieving his dream. Despite much progress, I suspect most people would agree that skin colour still plays a part in how Americans are judged by a significant minority of their fellow citizens.
    No. His point was that the USA should be moving towards his ideal of treating people as people, not by race.

    In recent years, the exact opposite has been the case, of America moving back towards treating people according to their race rather than their character.
  • I wonder if Comedy Dave is aware of the amount of piss being ripped out of him on here?

    I see he's getting published on The New Statesman, which mean he's at risk of taking Sion Simon's record for the most embarrassing set of predictions ever published on that site.
  • Andy_CookeAndy_Cooke Posts: 4,793
    Pagan2 said:

    theProle said:

    FPT (I wrote this, the realised I'd not refreshed the page for an hour - It's a important topic anyway!)

    kinabalu said:

    maaarsh said:

    theProle said:

    Excess deaths are over. The second wave is over.

    We should be rapidly unlocking at least back to the point we were at in July last year domestically, while keeping the border sealed to protect our gains domestically. That's the trade-off.

    Telling people to stay at home when nobody is dying is unforgiveable.

    Given what we know about the current strains, a full unlock now would quickly fill up ICU with 30-50 year olds.

    That is why the roadmap is linking levels of vaccination to reducing the levels of restrictions.
    I think that's a load of bollocks sorry.

    More than a fifth over 50s have been vaccinated already, the vulnerable under 50s. The majority of adults have been vaccinated now, which means they're much less likely to pass the virus on.

    With our level of vaccinations, even with the new variant, there's little reason why ICUs should escalate any more than they did last July.
    Hospital admissions R is around 0.8

    Who are all these people being admitted to hospital - *now*?

    image

    If you let rip, it's not long before you are back at admissions R of 1.x and then we are in the same position as Europe.

    Hence a phased approach.
    There's a five week lag between the effect of new vaccinations on hospital admissions.

    How low do you think hospital admissions will be in five weeks ?
    Hopefully nice and low. Hopefully.

    We have a nice 0.8 (or so) R for hospitals at the moment. The issue is that 0.8 turns into 1.05 quite easily.

    I don't want to do this all over again. At this point a 5 weeks is not much to ask to get security - at that point we will (the fuckwits willing) have the over 50s done to a high level - including getting areas such as Newham to a better state....
    Actually 5 weeks for an entire country is an awful lot to ask. If we say that a life spent locked down is only getting 50% of its normal value (which I don't think is unreasonable), the 5 weeks of lockdown for the country represents about ~40,000 entire birth-death lifetimes lost, or 3 million years of life lost. That's the same loss of years of life as 300,000 covid deaths.
    If I told you that lifting lockdown now risks another 50k deaths (but its unlikely to be that bad, and there is a better than evens chance it's less than 10k), but retaining it for 5 weeks cost 300k deaths, this should be a no brainer.
    You can't say lockdown life is only worth 50%... because then you'd have to admit it's been a complete and utter mistake.

    500k lives saved (optimistically) with average 15 years of life left (very optimistic) gives 7.5m years of life saved.

    Set against 60m people locked down for over 6 months at 50% life value is >15m years of life spent.
    This analysis doesn't work because it assumes an alternative to lockdown in which, as the virus ran riot, people would have gone cheerfully about their daily lives as normal.

    It's the fallacy at the heart of most of this sentiment. It denies the harsh reality of covid and hence is known as covid denialism.
    I think there is a degree of middle ground available on this. Whilst people in places which haven't locked down have changed behaviour, a voluntary lockdown is a lot more satisfactory that a state mandated one. People can manage their own risk - so those at low risk continue mostly normal lives, those at high risk can go into hiding if they feel that is appropriate. People know what they value most, and actually have a pretty good idea of what's risky, and what isn't - governments are pretty useless at assessing both (see also the repeated insanity around people going to the beach or walking in the peak district).
    For example, for a three month block last year I didn't see the young lady I'm going out with, despite this being a trivial risk (she was working from home, living alone, not seeing anyone else). Without a lockdown, that would have been a non-issue, even if I'd been holding back on us going for dates in crowded pubs.

    Incidentally people argue that state mandated closures were required so that business financial support could be put in place. This is a barefaced lie - there are plenty of ways the government could have hosed money in the correct directions without mandating closure (e.g. they could have compared VAT returns before and after the pandemic, and then made up a percentage of missing turnover), and the furlough scheme has no direct connection with mandated closures at-all.

    If you said that life under lockdown was at 50% life value, and life with a pandemic but out a lockdown was 75% life value, then that still requires an incredibly optimistic view of the number of lives saved by the whole lockdown to work out on a cost benefit analysis.

    But it's even worse now, as it's likely the lockdown isn't actually saving many lives anyway with where we are in the vaccination program - so we're now burning up the equivalent of 1000 lifetimes a day purely so the government doesn't have to risk getting egg on it's face if cases rise a bit more than expected, and some measure need reimposing. Its absolute scandal, and if they had a brain between them HM opposition should be on about it night and day. But they won't be, because they are also worried about the risk of a bit of eggsplash if relaxing goes wrong.
    Where your argument fails is of course is because for a lot of people they might want to lock themselves down voluntarily but can't because of work. Without the furlough scheme most would not have been able to do other than carry on as normal and risk themselves.

    Nor does your argument make sense in as much as you can't add up number of people x time lost in lockdown and say that is the same as x00,000 deaths. People lost some time is all but they are mostly at least still alive
    There's also the "people can decide how much risk to accept" myth.
    They can't - it's not just about risk coming in, but risk going out. They're deciding how much risk to put on everyone around them.
    Under that system, anyone more than averagely vulnerable would need to lock themselves away completely as the lower risk people mingled freely (and quite possibly blew out the hospitals, anyway, because someone had told them they were safer than they actually were).
    It's a rephrasing of "why should I care about them? I should be fine!"

    It's the Brazil solution, which isn't going well for the Brazilian healthcare system or the Brazilian people. But Bolsonaro should be a hero to the Lockdown Sceptics; he's the major leader most dedicated to following their ethos.
  • BluestBlueBluestBlue Posts: 4,556

    Sandpit said:

    Leon said:

    Compare and contrast with EU stripping naked, putting their pants on their head, screaming into the void while setting fire to everything in site, like one of the twats that the kill the bill protests.....

    ------

    The Indian factory churning out AstraZeneca's Covid vaccine has reportedly asked the country's government for permission to 'immediately' ship millions of doses to the UK.

    Boris Johnson this week sent two officials on a mission to India to smooth tensions over the supply chain. Lord Lister and international trade adviser David Quarrey were asked to visit to the Serum Institute to negotiate letting the shipment through.

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9397361/Coronavirus-Indian-AstraZeneca-vaccine-factory-urges-government-let-ship-UK.html

    Some weeks ago, due to Pfizer production difficulties, Canada received no vaccine for a week. None. Nada.

    Their response was polite concern, and a hope that things would improve.
    And not just Canada; Norway, Australia, New Zealand and I am sure many others. All have had issues with supply just like the EU and the UK. It is inevitable given the extraordinary timetable involved in rolling out these vaccines.

    This is what is missing from so much of the analysis. It is not the case of the UK and the EU behaving differently and this being driven by Brexit as some like to claim. It is the EU - and particularly some of its major countries - behaving like a spoiled brat whilst the rest of the world behaves like adults. It is shocking for those of us who saw the EU as a malign but clever entity to find out it is neither malign, nor clever, simply very very childish.
    It’s not childishness. It’s more a religious mindset challenged by deeply problematic truths.

    Put it another way, some of the EU elite reaction to the vaccine issue reminds me of ecclesiastical reaction to Darwin’s theories in the 19th century. A mixture of injured pride, ineffectual pomposity, terrible argumentation and bewildered denialism. ‘This simply cannot be true.’
    Isn't Darwin cancelled these days....racist, colonialist, etc.
    Martin Luther King is cancelled these days.

    Why on Earth should someone be treated according to the content of their character, rather than the colour of their skin?
    This wilful misunderstanding of MLK's speech is often repeated on here. What he said (among much else about racial injustice) was:

    I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

    The key words are 'dream' and 'will one day'; he makes it clear that this is an aspiration, not a reality. It's a statement of the bleeding obvious, with which only racists would disagree. But the point he is making is that the USA was a long way from achieving his dream. Despite much progress, I suspect most people would agree that skin colour still plays a part in how Americans are judged by a significant minority of their fellow citizens.
    The difference is that when King spoke those words, the left aspired to his vision; now they're more keen on segregating people by minute distinctions of race than the Dixiecrats were.
  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 76,274
    edited March 2021

    I wonder if Comedy Dave is aware of the amount of piss being ripped out of him on here?

    I see he's getting published on The New Statesman, which mean he's at risk of taking Sion Simon's record for the most embarrassing set of predictions ever published on that site.
    Are the New Statesman and the Spectator in competition who can get more ridiculous and ill informed people to write opinion pieces on COVID?
  • MaxPBMaxPB Posts: 37,603
    Flags on buildings is such a waste of everyone's time and resources. We've got actual serious issues to address in the next few years and the government distracting everyone with a few flags is just incredibly cynical.
  • I wonder if Comedy Dave is aware of the amount of piss being ripped out of him on here?

    I see he's getting published on The New Statesman, which mean he's at risk of taking Sion Simon's record for the most embarrassing set of predictions ever published on that site.
    Are the New Statesman and the Spectator in competition who can get more ridiculous and ill informed people to write opinion pieces on COVID?
    Yes.
  • felixfelix Posts: 15,124

    This flag stuff isn't going away is it?

    https://twitter.com/PickardJE/status/1374760213954371584

    Naga's gonna be livid - so job done! :smiley:
  • SandpitSandpit Posts: 49,614

    Sandpit said:

    Figures are a little late today

    So many daily tests, Excel COVID edition is taking longer to boot up?
    I did break Excel and the server this morning.

    I asked for a transactions report today, and instead of asking for a batched total report I accidentally asked it for every single transaction, which is 18 million transactions. Oops.
    The server should have calculated the number of rows and then refused the batch. Not your fault, it's up to IT to stop the stupid users being stupid.
    I am Head of Regulatory Affairs & Compliance, apparently I have unlimited power to check *everything* that goes on.
    You may have the authority to check stuff, but you still shouldn't be able to run a query directly on the server that causes it to hang up or go slow.

    If you need a much more detailled report, we'll run it overnight and it will be in your inbox in the morning.
  • Richard_TyndallRichard_Tyndall Posts: 30,846

    And so back on topic.

    Love the thread header from Cyclefree and agree with everything she writes. Particularly like that superb quote from Chernobyl to finish.

    I am starting to become genuinely worried about this Government. I mean before I just didn't like Johnson and most of his cronies but that was because I saw them as foolish, self serving and incompetent. Now I see them as a malign (that word again) force that is slowly changing our laws in a way they would themselves be screaming blue murder about if it were being done by Labour. Banning protests, seeking to place the Government above the law, banning people from leaving the country. These are not the actions of a democratically minded open Government.

    I spent a lot of time in the early 2000s campaigning against the Civil Contingences Act and RIPA introduced by Labour. These actions by a Tory Government are just as bad, if not worse.

    Many of the lower ranks of the Tories refer to 'being on the beaches on D-Day'. Or similar.

    One does wonder sometimes which way their guns would been pointing!
    The reaction of some of the PB self-styled libertarians to these outrages has been informative - practically mute when all of a sudden it's friend Boris orchestrating the power grab.
    LOL. That is perhaps one of the most factually inaccurate statements ever posted on these pages. People from all sides of the political spectrum have been rightly attacking the Government over a whole series of idiotic statist actions and proposals. Your EU supplied Rose Tinted Spectacles have clearly become Zaphod Beebelbrox's dark glasses hiding anything disagreeable that might disturb your niche world view.
  • OmniumOmnium Posts: 9,688

    SKS fans please explain

    Westminster voting intention:

    CON: 43% (+1)
    LAB: 34% (+1)
    GRN: 7% (+1)
    LDEM: 5% (-2)
    REFUK: 3% (-)

    via
    @YouGov
    , 18 - 19 Mar
    Chgs. w/ 10 Mar

    Not the only fanbase to have awkward questions to face. LDs have lost 28% of their support in just over a week!

    (I know it's margin of error stuff but 5% is as low as I recall seeing them)
  • MarqueeMarkMarqueeMark Posts: 49,958
    isam said:

    Satisfied Blue, Net Sat Orange


    The trend is not his friend.
  • Wulfrun_PhilWulfrun_Phil Posts: 4,572
    edited March 2021

    And so back on topic.

    Love the thread header from Cyclefree and agree with everything she writes. Particularly like that superb quote from Chernobyl to finish.

    I am starting to become genuinely worried about this Government. I mean before I just didn't like Johnson and most of his cronies but that was because I saw them as foolish, self serving and incompetent. Now I see them as a malign (that word again) force that is slowly changing our laws in a way they would themselves be screaming blue murder about if it were being done by Labour. Banning protests, seeking to place the Government above the law, banning people from leaving the country. These are not the actions of a democratically minded open Government.

    I spent a lot of time in the early 2000s campaigning against the Civil Contingences Act and RIPA introduced by Labour. These actions by a Tory Government are just as bad, if not worse.

    I agree, there are now genuine grounds for concern.

    The emergency powers that the Government wants to extend were originally approved on 6th January for 12 weeks, a period which was itself controversial but at least justified by the context. Case numbers were at record levels and still (apparently) rising, deaths were clearly going to exceed previous record levels and hospitals were on the brink of being overwhelmed

    Now the situation is largely under control, especially deaths which are already back to levels last experienced in mid June 2020 and still falling rapidly (touchwood). Yet these emergency powers are to be extended for more than double the original period, just in case there might be a resurgence by the Autumn which vaccines might prove incapable of dealing with.

    I could live with another extension for a couple of months, followed by a further vote if things had not gone according to plan. But 6 months more now? No. It is out of proportion and as such demonstrates a complete contempt for democratic norms and basic liberties.
  • Sandpit said:

    Sandpit said:

    Figures are a little late today

    So many daily tests, Excel COVID edition is taking longer to boot up?
    I did break Excel and the server this morning.

    I asked for a transactions report today, and instead of asking for a batched total report I accidentally asked it for every single transaction, which is 18 million transactions. Oops.
    The server should have calculated the number of rows and then refused the batch. Not your fault, it's up to IT to stop the stupid users being stupid.
    I am Head of Regulatory Affairs & Compliance, apparently I have unlimited power to check *everything* that goes on.
    You may have the authority to check stuff, but you still shouldn't be able to run a query directly on the server that causes it to hang up or go slow.

    If you need a much more detailled report, we'll run it overnight and it will be in your inbox in the morning.
    We had a software upgrade last weekend and I think it wiped everyone's default settings, mine was 'batch totals by type and selected time period'

    Now it has removed the batch total to all transactions.
  • @Richard_Tyndall one of the very few users actually prepared to look at this Government remotely objectively. As a Tory - from what I can recall - his contribution is possibly the most insightful here.
  • SandpitSandpit Posts: 49,614

    Sandpit said:

    Sandpit said:

    Figures are a little late today

    So many daily tests, Excel COVID edition is taking longer to boot up?
    I did break Excel and the server this morning.

    I asked for a transactions report today, and instead of asking for a batched total report I accidentally asked it for every single transaction, which is 18 million transactions. Oops.
    The server should have calculated the number of rows and then refused the batch. Not your fault, it's up to IT to stop the stupid users being stupid.
    I am Head of Regulatory Affairs & Compliance, apparently I have unlimited power to check *everything* that goes on.
    You may have the authority to check stuff, but you still shouldn't be able to run a query directly on the server that causes it to hang up or go slow.

    If you need a much more detailled report, we'll run it overnight and it will be in your inbox in the morning.
    We had a software upgrade last weekend and I think it wiped everyone's default settings, mine was 'batch totals by type and selected time period'

    Now it has removed the batch total to all transactions.
    Whoops!
  • Northern_AlNorthern_Al Posts: 7,459
    Endillion said:

    Sandpit said:

    Leon said:

    Compare and contrast with EU stripping naked, putting their pants on their head, screaming into the void while setting fire to everything in site, like one of the twats that the kill the bill protests.....

    ------

    The Indian factory churning out AstraZeneca's Covid vaccine has reportedly asked the country's government for permission to 'immediately' ship millions of doses to the UK.

    Boris Johnson this week sent two officials on a mission to India to smooth tensions over the supply chain. Lord Lister and international trade adviser David Quarrey were asked to visit to the Serum Institute to negotiate letting the shipment through.

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9397361/Coronavirus-Indian-AstraZeneca-vaccine-factory-urges-government-let-ship-UK.html

    Some weeks ago, due to Pfizer production difficulties, Canada received no vaccine for a week. None. Nada.

    Their response was polite concern, and a hope that things would improve.
    And not just Canada; Norway, Australia, New Zealand and I am sure many others. All have had issues with supply just like the EU and the UK. It is inevitable given the extraordinary timetable involved in rolling out these vaccines.

    This is what is missing from so much of the analysis. It is not the case of the UK and the EU behaving differently and this being driven by Brexit as some like to claim. It is the EU - and particularly some of its major countries - behaving like a spoiled brat whilst the rest of the world behaves like adults. It is shocking for those of us who saw the EU as a malign but clever entity to find out it is neither malign, nor clever, simply very very childish.
    It’s not childishness. It’s more a religious mindset challenged by deeply problematic truths.

    Put it another way, some of the EU elite reaction to the vaccine issue reminds me of ecclesiastical reaction to Darwin’s theories in the 19th century. A mixture of injured pride, ineffectual pomposity, terrible argumentation and bewildered denialism. ‘This simply cannot be true.’
    Isn't Darwin cancelled these days....racist, colonialist, etc.
    Martin Luther King is cancelled these days.

    Why on Earth should someone be treated according to the content of their character, rather than the colour of their skin?
    This wilful misunderstanding of MLK's speech is often repeated on here. What he said (among much else about racial injustice) was:

    I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

    The key words are 'dream' and 'will one day'; he makes it clear that this is an aspiration, not a reality. It's a statement of the bleeding obvious, with which only racists would disagree. But the point he is making is that the USA was a long way from achieving his dream. Despite much progress, I suspect most people would agree that skin colour still plays a part in how Americans are judged by a significant minority of their fellow citizens.
    I don't think you've understood the comment. The point being made is that many of today's Democrats are very keen to judge people based on the colour of their skin (eg this: https://nypost.com/2021/03/18/the-root-accused-of-racism-after-piece-declares-whiteness-is-a-pandemic/), rather than trying to move towards the aspiration outlined by MLK.
    I understood the comment very well, thanks. I just don't appreciate MLK being appropriated by those of a right-wing persuasion to make a banal point. I'm pretty confident that if MLK were still with us he'd be more concerned about the structural racial injustice that still pervades the USA than about a fringe debate on what some Democrats may or may not say.
  • AnabobazinaAnabobazina Posts: 19,604
    Anyone know where today's covid stats are?
  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 76,274
    John Lewis announces eight store closures

    https://www.bbc.com/news/business-56511374

    Ed Miliband's favourite business model is f##ked isn't it.
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 61,571
    algarkirk said:

    TimT said:

    kinabalu said:

    I like the quote at the end of the header. There's a similar one from the Buddha -

    "Three things cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth."

    I like this one too but I'm not sure how true it is. Let's see what happens in Hartlepool.

    And, from Chaucer, but presumably a popular saying at the time, "The truth will out"
    'Truth will out' is Shakespeare

    'Murder will out' is Chaucer...
    Shakespeare killed both birds with one stone.
    ...truth will come
    to light; murder cannot be hid long; a man's son
    may, but at the length truth will out.
  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 76,274
    China hopes to vaccinate 40% of its 1.4 billion population by the end of June - about 560 million vaccinations in just over three months.
  • EndillionEndillion Posts: 4,960

    I am coming to the conclusion the government is just trolling on this stuff, because a load of people in the media / Labour rise to the bait every time and sets them off making a huge fuss over what most people see nothing.
    Possibly, although I am inclined to be more generous. As is often noted, pride in our national flag is something that has been somewhat taken over by certain groups on the fringes of normal political and social discourse. Personally, I think that's a shame, and would like to see the Union Jack and cross of St George "reclaimed" by moderates, and the latter especially treated more like the Scottish flag.

    As one of our fellow posters is fond of pointing out, Ms Thornberry wasn't entirely wrong when she mocked that house in Rochester - many of us would indeed draw negative conclusions about our neighbours based on putting up that quantity of flags, or even one of them. However, I would much rather live in a country where that wasn't the case.
  • Pagan2Pagan2 Posts: 8,629
    TOPPING said:

    Pagan2 said:

    theProle said:

    FPT (I wrote this, the realised I'd not refreshed the page for an hour - It's a important topic anyway!)

    kinabalu said:

    maaarsh said:

    theProle said:

    Excess deaths are over. The second wave is over.

    We should be rapidly unlocking at least back to the point we were at in July last year domestically, while keeping the border sealed to protect our gains domestically. That's the trade-off.

    Telling people to stay at home when nobody is dying is unforgiveable.

    Given what we know about the current strains, a full unlock now would quickly fill up ICU with 30-50 year olds.

    That is why the roadmap is linking levels of vaccination to reducing the levels of restrictions.
    I think that's a load of bollocks sorry.

    More than a fifth over 50s have been vaccinated already, the vulnerable under 50s. The majority of adults have been vaccinated now, which means they're much less likely to pass the virus on.

    With our level of vaccinations, even with the new variant, there's little reason why ICUs should escalate any more than they did last July.
    Hospital admissions R is around 0.8

    Who are all these people being admitted to hospital - *now*?

    image

    If you let rip, it's not long before you are back at admissions R of 1.x and then we are in the same position as Europe.

    Hence a phased approach.
    There's a five week lag between the effect of new vaccinations on hospital admissions.

    How low do you think hospital admissions will be in five weeks ?
    Hopefully nice and low. Hopefully.

    We have a nice 0.8 (or so) R for hospitals at the moment. The issue is that 0.8 turns into 1.05 quite easily.

    I don't want to do this all over again. At this point a 5 weeks is not much to ask to get security - at that point we will (the fuckwits willing) have the over 50s done to a high level - including getting areas such as Newham to a better state....
    Actually 5 weeks for an entire country is an awful lot to ask. If we say that a life spent locked down is only getting 50% of its normal value (which I don't think is unreasonable), the 5 weeks of lockdown for the country represents about ~40,000 entire birth-death lifetimes lost, or 3 million years of life lost. That's the same loss of years of life as 300,000 covid deaths.
    If I told you that lifting lockdown now risks another 50k deaths (but its unlikely to be that bad, and there is a better than evens chance it's less than 10k), but retaining it for 5 weeks cost 300k deaths, this should be a no brainer.
    You can't say lockdown life is only worth 50%... because then you'd have to admit it's been a complete and utter mistake.

    500k lives saved (optimistically) with average 15 years of life left (very optimistic) gives 7.5m years of life saved.

    Set against 60m people locked down for over 6 months at 50% life value is >15m years of life spent.
    This analysis doesn't work because it assumes an alternative to lockdown in which, as the virus ran riot, people would have gone cheerfully about their daily lives as normal.

    It's the fallacy at the heart of most of this sentiment. It denies the harsh reality of covid and hence is known as covid denialism.
    I think there is a degree of middle ground available on this. Whilst people in places which haven't locked down have changed behaviour, a voluntary lockdown is a lot more satisfactory that a state mandated one. People can manage their own risk - so those at low risk continue mostly normal lives, those at high risk can go into hiding if they feel that is appropriate. People know what they value most, and actually have a pretty good idea of what's risky, and what isn't - governments are pretty useless at assessing both (see also the repeated insanity around people going to the beach or walking in the peak district).
    For example, for a three month block last year I didn't see the young lady I'm going out with, despite this being a trivial risk (she was working from home, living alone, not seeing anyone else). Without a lockdown, that would have been a non-issue, even if I'd been holding back on us going for dates in crowded pubs.

    Incidentally people argue that state mandated closures were required so that business financial support could be put in place. This is a barefaced lie - there are plenty of ways the government could have hosed money in the correct directions without mandating closure (e.g. they could have compared VAT returns before and after the pandemic, and then made up a percentage of missing turnover), and the furlough scheme has no direct connection with mandated closures at-all.

    If you said that life under lockdown was at 50% life value, and life with a pandemic but out a lockdown was 75% life value, then that still requires an incredibly optimistic view of the number of lives saved by the whole lockdown to work out on a cost benefit analysis.

    But it's even worse now, as it's likely the lockdown isn't actually saving many lives anyway with where we are in the vaccination program - so we're now burning up the equivalent of 1000 lifetimes a day purely so the government doesn't have to risk getting egg on it's face if cases rise a bit more than expected, and some measure need reimposing. Its absolute scandal, and if they had a brain between them HM opposition should be on about it night and day. But they won't be, because they are also worried about the risk of a bit of eggsplash if relaxing goes wrong.
    Where your argument fails is of course is because for a lot of people they might want to lock themselves down voluntarily but can't because of work. Without the furlough scheme most would not have been able to do other than carry on as normal and risk themselves.

    Nor does your argument make sense in as much as you can't add up number of people x time lost in lockdown and say that is the same as x00,000 deaths. People lost some time is all but they are mostly at least still alive
    On the first issue, what was to stop the govt introducing furlough regardless of lockdown?
    Nothing but many companies would just have insisted people come to work rather than shut down for the interim
  • AnabobazinaAnabobazina Posts: 19,604
    Omnium said:

    SKS fans please explain

    Westminster voting intention:

    CON: 43% (+1)
    LAB: 34% (+1)
    GRN: 7% (+1)
    LDEM: 5% (-2)
    REFUK: 3% (-)

    via
    @YouGov
    , 18 - 19 Mar
    Chgs. w/ 10 Mar

    Not the only fanbase to have awkward questions to face. LDs have lost 28% of their support in just over a week!

    (I know it's margin of error stuff but 5% is as low as I recall seeing them)
    Meanwhile, there's a Green surge.

    New thread?
  • Northern_AlNorthern_Al Posts: 7,459
    Sandpit said:

    Sandpit said:

    Leon said:

    Compare and contrast with EU stripping naked, putting their pants on their head, screaming into the void while setting fire to everything in site, like one of the twats that the kill the bill protests.....

    ------

    The Indian factory churning out AstraZeneca's Covid vaccine has reportedly asked the country's government for permission to 'immediately' ship millions of doses to the UK.

    Boris Johnson this week sent two officials on a mission to India to smooth tensions over the supply chain. Lord Lister and international trade adviser David Quarrey were asked to visit to the Serum Institute to negotiate letting the shipment through.

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9397361/Coronavirus-Indian-AstraZeneca-vaccine-factory-urges-government-let-ship-UK.html

    Some weeks ago, due to Pfizer production difficulties, Canada received no vaccine for a week. None. Nada.

    Their response was polite concern, and a hope that things would improve.
    And not just Canada; Norway, Australia, New Zealand and I am sure many others. All have had issues with supply just like the EU and the UK. It is inevitable given the extraordinary timetable involved in rolling out these vaccines.

    This is what is missing from so much of the analysis. It is not the case of the UK and the EU behaving differently and this being driven by Brexit as some like to claim. It is the EU - and particularly some of its major countries - behaving like a spoiled brat whilst the rest of the world behaves like adults. It is shocking for those of us who saw the EU as a malign but clever entity to find out it is neither malign, nor clever, simply very very childish.
    It’s not childishness. It’s more a religious mindset challenged by deeply problematic truths.

    Put it another way, some of the EU elite reaction to the vaccine issue reminds me of ecclesiastical reaction to Darwin’s theories in the 19th century. A mixture of injured pride, ineffectual pomposity, terrible argumentation and bewildered denialism. ‘This simply cannot be true.’
    Isn't Darwin cancelled these days....racist, colonialist, etc.
    Martin Luther King is cancelled these days.

    Why on Earth should someone be treated according to the content of their character, rather than the colour of their skin?
    This wilful misunderstanding of MLK's speech is often repeated on here. What he said (among much else about racial injustice) was:

    I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

    The key words are 'dream' and 'will one day'; he makes it clear that this is an aspiration, not a reality. It's a statement of the bleeding obvious, with which only racists would disagree. But the point he is making is that the USA was a long way from achieving his dream. Despite much progress, I suspect most people would agree that skin colour still plays a part in how Americans are judged by a significant minority of their fellow citizens.
    No. His point was that the USA should be moving towards his ideal of treating people as people, not by race.

    In recent years, the exact opposite has been the case, of America moving back towards treating people according to their race rather than their character.
    No, I don't think they've moved back. Some of the USA police, and the criminal justice system, still treat people according to their race. As did the shooter last week who murdered eight Asian-Americans.
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 61,571

    This flag stuff isn't going away is it?

    https://twitter.com/PickardJE/status/1374760213954371584

    Rather gives the lie to the 'oh, we've always done that' line.
  • dixiedeandixiedean Posts: 27,835

    Pagan2 said:

    theProle said:

    FPT (I wrote this, the realised I'd not refreshed the page for an hour - It's a important topic anyway!)

    kinabalu said:

    maaarsh said:

    theProle said:

    Excess deaths are over. The second wave is over.

    We should be rapidly unlocking at least back to the point we were at in July last year domestically, while keeping the border sealed to protect our gains domestically. That's the trade-off.

    Telling people to stay at home when nobody is dying is unforgiveable.

    Given what we know about the current strains, a full unlock now would quickly fill up ICU with 30-50 year olds.

    That is why the roadmap is linking levels of vaccination to reducing the levels of restrictions.
    I think that's a load of bollocks sorry.

    More than a fifth over 50s have been vaccinated already, the vulnerable under 50s. The majority of adults have been vaccinated now, which means they're much less likely to pass the virus on.

    With our level of vaccinations, even with the new variant, there's little reason why ICUs should escalate any more than they did last July.
    Hospital admissions R is around 0.8

    Who are all these people being admitted to hospital - *now*?

    image

    If you let rip, it's not long before you are back at admissions R of 1.x and then we are in the same position as Europe.

    Hence a phased approach.
    There's a five week lag between the effect of new vaccinations on hospital admissions.

    How low do you think hospital admissions will be in five weeks ?
    Hopefully nice and low. Hopefully.

    We have a nice 0.8 (or so) R for hospitals at the moment. The issue is that 0.8 turns into 1.05 quite easily.

    I don't want to do this all over again. At this point a 5 weeks is not much to ask to get security - at that point we will (the fuckwits willing) have the over 50s done to a high level - including getting areas such as Newham to a better state....
    Actually 5 weeks for an entire country is an awful lot to ask. If we say that a life spent locked down is only getting 50% of its normal value (which I don't think is unreasonable), the 5 weeks of lockdown for the country represents about ~40,000 entire birth-death lifetimes lost, or 3 million years of life lost. That's the same loss of years of life as 300,000 covid deaths.
    If I told you that lifting lockdown now risks another 50k deaths (but its unlikely to be that bad, and there is a better than evens chance it's less than 10k), but retaining it for 5 weeks cost 300k deaths, this should be a no brainer.
    You can't say lockdown life is only worth 50%... because then you'd have to admit it's been a complete and utter mistake.

    500k lives saved (optimistically) with average 15 years of life left (very optimistic) gives 7.5m years of life saved.

    Set against 60m people locked down for over 6 months at 50% life value is >15m years of life spent.
    This analysis doesn't work because it assumes an alternative to lockdown in which, as the virus ran riot, people would have gone cheerfully about their daily lives as normal.

    It's the fallacy at the heart of most of this sentiment. It denies the harsh reality of covid and hence is known as covid denialism.
    I think there is a degree of middle ground available on this. Whilst people in places which haven't locked down have changed behaviour, a voluntary lockdown is a lot more satisfactory that a state mandated one. People can manage their own risk - so those at low risk continue mostly normal lives, those at high risk can go into hiding if they feel that is appropriate. People know what they value most, and actually have a pretty good idea of what's risky, and what isn't - governments are pretty useless at assessing both (see also the repeated insanity around people going to the beach or walking in the peak district).
    For example, for a three month block last year I didn't see the young lady I'm going out with, despite this being a trivial risk (she was working from home, living alone, not seeing anyone else). Without a lockdown, that would have been a non-issue, even if I'd been holding back on us going for dates in crowded pubs.

    Incidentally people argue that state mandated closures were required so that business financial support could be put in place. This is a barefaced lie - there are plenty of ways the government could have hosed money in the correct directions without mandating closure (e.g. they could have compared VAT returns before and after the pandemic, and then made up a percentage of missing turnover), and the furlough scheme has no direct connection with mandated closures at-all.

    If you said that life under lockdown was at 50% life value, and life with a pandemic but out a lockdown was 75% life value, then that still requires an incredibly optimistic view of the number of lives saved by the whole lockdown to work out on a cost benefit analysis.

    But it's even worse now, as it's likely the lockdown isn't actually saving many lives anyway with where we are in the vaccination program - so we're now burning up the equivalent of 1000 lifetimes a day purely so the government doesn't have to risk getting egg on it's face if cases rise a bit more than expected, and some measure need reimposing. Its absolute scandal, and if they had a brain between them HM opposition should be on about it night and day. But they won't be, because they are also worried about the risk of a bit of eggsplash if relaxing goes wrong.
    Where your argument fails is of course is because for a lot of people they might want to lock themselves down voluntarily but can't because of work. Without the furlough scheme most would not have been able to do other than carry on as normal and risk themselves.

    Nor does your argument make sense in as much as you can't add up number of people x time lost in lockdown and say that is the same as x00,000 deaths. People lost some time is all but they are mostly at least still alive
    There's also the "people can decide how much risk to accept" myth.
    They can't - it's not just about risk coming in, but risk going out. They're deciding how much risk to put on everyone around them.
    Under that system, anyone more than averagely vulnerable would need to lock themselves away completely as the lower risk people mingled freely (and quite possibly blew out the hospitals, anyway, because someone had told them they were safer than they actually were).
    It's a rephrasing of "why should I care about them? I should be fine!"

    It's the Brazil solution, which isn't going well for the Brazilian healthcare system or the Brazilian people. But Bolsonaro should be a hero to the Lockdown Sceptics; he's the major leader most dedicated to following their ethos.
    Many people can't manage their own risk.*
    And they are the ones who are foremost in putting others at risk.

    *Some of the signed off risk assessments I have seen are quite staggering. They suggest highly educated professionals who neither know the meaning of the words 'risk" or "assessment".
  • kle4kle4 Posts: 91,392

    This flag stuff isn't going away is it?

    https://twitter.com/PickardJE/status/1374760213954371584

    As an attempt to troll those who get worked up about flags its a bit direct. And may well backfire as they when the ones who do get worked up are still marginalised by the opposition leader, it just confirms the opposition are indeed just as patriotic.

    And I have to side with Chameleon on it not being sensible to not worry about people acting irrationally, when they have already acted irrationally. Sure, it may not end up happening, but it would no longer be a surprise.
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 38,850
    dixiedean said:

    kinabalu said:

    I like the quote at the end of the header. There's a similar one from the Buddha -

    "Three things cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth."

    I like this one too but I'm not sure how true it is. Let's see what happens in Hartlepool.

    Consulted fake Buddha quotes on that. (There are a great number around).
    Conclusion. Fake-ish. Inaccurate paraphrase.
    https://fakebuddhaquotes.com/three-things-cannot-be-long-hidden-the-sun-the-moon-and-the-truth/
    Ah ok. I thought it was pukka. I do regular meditations but you are far more clued in to this, I think.
  • John Lewis announces eight store closures

    https://www.bbc.com/news/business-56511374

    Ed Miliband's favourite business model is f##ked isn't it.

    I'm absolutely gutted, the Sheffield one is closing, I have so many happy memories there, going back to the time they were Cole Brothers.
  • kle4kle4 Posts: 91,392

    Sandpit said:

    Figures are a little late today

    So many daily tests, Excel COVID edition is taking longer to boot up?
    I did break Excel and the server this morning.

    I asked for a transactions report today, and instead of asking for a batched total report I accidentally asked it for every single transaction, which is 18 million transactions. Oops.
    The server should have calculated the number of rows and then refused the batch. Not your fault, it's up to IT to stop the stupid users being stupid.
    I am Head of Regulatory Affairs & Compliance, apparently I have unlimited power to check *everything* that goes on.
    Quis custodiet ipsos custodes. Who regulates your affairs and compliance?
  • dixiedeandixiedean Posts: 27,835

    Endillion said:

    Sandpit said:

    Leon said:

    Compare and contrast with EU stripping naked, putting their pants on their head, screaming into the void while setting fire to everything in site, like one of the twats that the kill the bill protests.....

    ------

    The Indian factory churning out AstraZeneca's Covid vaccine has reportedly asked the country's government for permission to 'immediately' ship millions of doses to the UK.

    Boris Johnson this week sent two officials on a mission to India to smooth tensions over the supply chain. Lord Lister and international trade adviser David Quarrey were asked to visit to the Serum Institute to negotiate letting the shipment through.

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9397361/Coronavirus-Indian-AstraZeneca-vaccine-factory-urges-government-let-ship-UK.html

    Some weeks ago, due to Pfizer production difficulties, Canada received no vaccine for a week. None. Nada.

    Their response was polite concern, and a hope that things would improve.
    And not just Canada; Norway, Australia, New Zealand and I am sure many others. All have had issues with supply just like the EU and the UK. It is inevitable given the extraordinary timetable involved in rolling out these vaccines.

    This is what is missing from so much of the analysis. It is not the case of the UK and the EU behaving differently and this being driven by Brexit as some like to claim. It is the EU - and particularly some of its major countries - behaving like a spoiled brat whilst the rest of the world behaves like adults. It is shocking for those of us who saw the EU as a malign but clever entity to find out it is neither malign, nor clever, simply very very childish.
    It’s not childishness. It’s more a religious mindset challenged by deeply problematic truths.

    Put it another way, some of the EU elite reaction to the vaccine issue reminds me of ecclesiastical reaction to Darwin’s theories in the 19th century. A mixture of injured pride, ineffectual pomposity, terrible argumentation and bewildered denialism. ‘This simply cannot be true.’
    Isn't Darwin cancelled these days....racist, colonialist, etc.
    Martin Luther King is cancelled these days.

    Why on Earth should someone be treated according to the content of their character, rather than the colour of their skin?
    This wilful misunderstanding of MLK's speech is often repeated on here. What he said (among much else about racial injustice) was:

    I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

    The key words are 'dream' and 'will one day'; he makes it clear that this is an aspiration, not a reality. It's a statement of the bleeding obvious, with which only racists would disagree. But the point he is making is that the USA was a long way from achieving his dream. Despite much progress, I suspect most people would agree that skin colour still plays a part in how Americans are judged by a significant minority of their fellow citizens.
    I don't think you've understood the comment. The point being made is that many of today's Democrats are very keen to judge people based on the colour of their skin (eg this: https://nypost.com/2021/03/18/the-root-accused-of-racism-after-piece-declares-whiteness-is-a-pandemic/), rather than trying to move towards the aspiration outlined by MLK.
    I understood the comment very well, thanks. I just don't appreciate MLK being appropriated by those of a right-wing persuasion to make a banal point. I'm pretty confident that if MLK were still with us he'd be more concerned about the structural racial injustice that still pervades the USA than about a fringe debate on what some Democrats may or may not say.
    I am sure his views on wealth redistribution would gladden the ears of those of a certain persuasion too.
  • kle4kle4 Posts: 91,392

    China hopes to vaccinate 40% of its 1.4 billion population by the end of June - about 560 million vaccinations in just over three months.

    No one has died of Covid there for nearly a year, they can probably afford to miss the target.
  • Richard_TyndallRichard_Tyndall Posts: 30,846
    algarkirk said:

    Banning protests, seeking to place the Government above the law, banning people from leaving the country. These are not the actions of a democratically minded open Government.

    Limiting protest to protect the rights of individuals from nuisance isn't banning protest. Try Hong Kong or Burman for what that looks like.

    The government will still be obliged to abide by its own laws. At least until we have clear examples of this not being the case from the Court of Appeal/SC who will be quick to say so.

    Banning leaving is a temporary measure to do with death causing illness, and concerns the medical dangers of acting on your right to return.

    1. It is not just limiting protest, it is giving the police such wide ranging powers that they could ban any protest if the felt like it. It is, in effect, an enabling act. There is unlikely to ever be protest march that someone does not find a nuisance, particularly when noise is one criteria. All this law does is allow the authorities to ban any protest they don't like.

    2. As Cyclefree has already pointed out the Government has clearly decided it is not obliged to abide by its own laws - see 'break the law in a limited and specific way' as one example. More importantly it has decided that the courts should not be allowed to decide on points of law as to whether or not they have broken said laws.

    3. Banning leaving the country is not in any way a proportionate reaction. It also sets a precedent - Governments love those things - for future, perhaps less obvious, situations. If they were that worried about people bringing disease back in they could have said people can leave but may not return until we know they are not infected. That would have been proportionate.

    You are trying to defend the indefensible.
  • EndillionEndillion Posts: 4,960

    Endillion said:

    Sandpit said:

    Leon said:

    Compare and contrast with EU stripping naked, putting their pants on their head, screaming into the void while setting fire to everything in site, like one of the twats that the kill the bill protests.....

    ------

    The Indian factory churning out AstraZeneca's Covid vaccine has reportedly asked the country's government for permission to 'immediately' ship millions of doses to the UK.

    Boris Johnson this week sent two officials on a mission to India to smooth tensions over the supply chain. Lord Lister and international trade adviser David Quarrey were asked to visit to the Serum Institute to negotiate letting the shipment through.

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9397361/Coronavirus-Indian-AstraZeneca-vaccine-factory-urges-government-let-ship-UK.html

    Some weeks ago, due to Pfizer production difficulties, Canada received no vaccine for a week. None. Nada.

    Their response was polite concern, and a hope that things would improve.
    And not just Canada; Norway, Australia, New Zealand and I am sure many others. All have had issues with supply just like the EU and the UK. It is inevitable given the extraordinary timetable involved in rolling out these vaccines.

    This is what is missing from so much of the analysis. It is not the case of the UK and the EU behaving differently and this being driven by Brexit as some like to claim. It is the EU - and particularly some of its major countries - behaving like a spoiled brat whilst the rest of the world behaves like adults. It is shocking for those of us who saw the EU as a malign but clever entity to find out it is neither malign, nor clever, simply very very childish.
    It’s not childishness. It’s more a religious mindset challenged by deeply problematic truths.

    Put it another way, some of the EU elite reaction to the vaccine issue reminds me of ecclesiastical reaction to Darwin’s theories in the 19th century. A mixture of injured pride, ineffectual pomposity, terrible argumentation and bewildered denialism. ‘This simply cannot be true.’
    Isn't Darwin cancelled these days....racist, colonialist, etc.
    Martin Luther King is cancelled these days.

    Why on Earth should someone be treated according to the content of their character, rather than the colour of their skin?
    This wilful misunderstanding of MLK's speech is often repeated on here. What he said (among much else about racial injustice) was:

    I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

    The key words are 'dream' and 'will one day'; he makes it clear that this is an aspiration, not a reality. It's a statement of the bleeding obvious, with which only racists would disagree. But the point he is making is that the USA was a long way from achieving his dream. Despite much progress, I suspect most people would agree that skin colour still plays a part in how Americans are judged by a significant minority of their fellow citizens.
    I don't think you've understood the comment. The point being made is that many of today's Democrats are very keen to judge people based on the colour of their skin (eg this: https://nypost.com/2021/03/18/the-root-accused-of-racism-after-piece-declares-whiteness-is-a-pandemic/), rather than trying to move towards the aspiration outlined by MLK.
    I understood the comment very well, thanks. I just don't appreciate MLK being appropriated by those of a right-wing persuasion to make a banal point. I'm pretty confident that if MLK were still with us he'd be more concerned about the structural racial injustice that still pervades the USA than about a fringe debate on what some Democrats may or may not say.
    Well, you're probably right there. The fact that mainstream Republican thought appears to be more in line with MLK than mainstream Democrat thought is possibly a sideshow, since there have to be some doubts as to whether the Republicans are genuine about it or just playing games.

    But the point was more that, if even the Democrats no longer aspire to that vision, then what chance it ever happening?
  • kle4kle4 Posts: 91,392
    It has an airport now, it's not remote enough for such a purpose.
  • OmniumOmnium Posts: 9,688
    edited March 2021

    Omnium said:

    SKS fans please explain

    Westminster voting intention:

    CON: 43% (+1)
    LAB: 34% (+1)
    GRN: 7% (+1)
    LDEM: 5% (-2)
    REFUK: 3% (-)

    via
    @YouGov
    , 18 - 19 Mar
    Chgs. w/ 10 Mar

    Not the only fanbase to have awkward questions to face. LDs have lost 28% of their support in just over a week!

    (I know it's margin of error stuff but 5% is as low as I recall seeing them)
    Meanwhile, there's a Green surge.

    New thread?
    Yes - very interesting to see if they continue to rise. If they had two sensible policies to rub together they might. They just trade on their name so far as I can see. Lucas is ok-ish, I don't like her at all, but she's not a total fool. So far as I can see the rest of them are though - the Australian lady who lead them in 2010 was appalling.

    The Green agenda more generally is clearly a huge theme, but I think (and actually I hope) that the mainstream parties have nicked their clothes while they weren't looking.

    PS. It'd be interesting to have a Green political thread - not sure I recall one.
  • Richard_TyndallRichard_Tyndall Posts: 30,846
    Lennon said:

    And so back on topic.

    Love the thread header from Cyclefree and agree with everything she writes. Particularly like that superb quote from Chernobyl to finish.

    I am starting to become genuinely worried about this Government. I mean before I just didn't like Johnson and most of his cronies but that was because I saw them as foolish, self serving and incompetent. Now I see them as a malign (that word again) force that is slowly changing our laws in a way they would themselves be screaming blue murder about if it were being done by Labour. Banning protests, seeking to place the Government above the law, banning people from leaving the country. These are not the actions of a democratically minded open Government.

    I spent a lot of time in the early 2000s campaigning against the Civil Contingences Act and RIPA introduced by Labour. These actions by a Tory Government are just as bad, if not worse.

    I agree with a lot of this and the thread header - and is part of why I became a Pirate for a while - but my great difficulty is 'what do I do with this information' / 'how can I campaign for change'. Join one of the major parties and try to change them from the inside - but how much notice do they take of individual members? Join a minor party and try to change the conversation? (Been there, and it's a lot of effort for what doesn't appear to be much reward) - Sit on forums like this and complain - well fine, but what's the impact / how does that change things?
    I have no idea. I have been on the losing side of so many campaigns against local and national government decisions, both Tory and Labour, that I have lost faith in my ability to really have any impact or change anything. Brexit of course was the one shining exception.

    I am reduced to the basic consideration of voting to punish Governments rather than because I think the alternative will be any better. That is very much how I view Johnson and the current administration.
  • kle4 said:

    Sandpit said:

    Figures are a little late today

    So many daily tests, Excel COVID edition is taking longer to boot up?
    I did break Excel and the server this morning.

    I asked for a transactions report today, and instead of asking for a batched total report I accidentally asked it for every single transaction, which is 18 million transactions. Oops.
    The server should have calculated the number of rows and then refused the batch. Not your fault, it's up to IT to stop the stupid users being stupid.
    I am Head of Regulatory Affairs & Compliance, apparently I have unlimited power to check *everything* that goes on.
    Quis custodiet ipsos custodes. Who regulates your affairs and compliance?
    The Prudential Regulatory Authority, The Financial Conduct Authority, The Bank of England, The Securities and Exchange Commission, The European Banking Authority, The European Securities and Markets Authority, The European Insurance and Occupational Pensions Authority, and The Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority

    There are a few others, but they are the main ones.
  • kle4kle4 Posts: 91,392

    kle4 said:

    Sandpit said:

    Figures are a little late today

    So many daily tests, Excel COVID edition is taking longer to boot up?
    I did break Excel and the server this morning.

    I asked for a transactions report today, and instead of asking for a batched total report I accidentally asked it for every single transaction, which is 18 million transactions. Oops.
    The server should have calculated the number of rows and then refused the batch. Not your fault, it's up to IT to stop the stupid users being stupid.
    I am Head of Regulatory Affairs & Compliance, apparently I have unlimited power to check *everything* that goes on.
    Quis custodiet ipsos custodes. Who regulates your affairs and compliance?
    The Prudential Regulatory Authority, The Financial Conduct Authority, The Bank of England, The Securities and Exchange Commission, The European Banking Authority, The European Securities and Markets Authority, The European Insurance and Occupational Pensions Authority, and The Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority

    There are a few others, but they are the main ones.
    Blimey, that's a lot of regulation and compliance, they must not trust anybody!
  • Richard_TyndallRichard_Tyndall Posts: 30,846

    @Richard_Tyndall one of the very few users actually prepared to look at this Government remotely objectively. As a Tory - from what I can recall - his contribution is possibly the most insightful here.

    Tory - or at least right of centre - in sympathies but not in actions. The last time I voted for a Conservative candidate was in 2001 and that was because he was a close friend.

    That turned out to be a very big mistake.

    Before that the last Conservative I voted for was Thatcher in 87.
  • TOPPINGTOPPING Posts: 40,950
    Pagan2 said:

    TOPPING said:

    Pagan2 said:

    theProle said:

    FPT (I wrote this, the realised I'd not refreshed the page for an hour - It's a important topic anyway!)

    kinabalu said:

    maaarsh said:

    theProle said:

    Excess deaths are over. The second wave is over.

    We should be rapidly unlocking at least back to the point we were at in July last year domestically, while keeping the border sealed to protect our gains domestically. That's the trade-off.

    Telling people to stay at home when nobody is dying is unforgiveable.

    Given what we know about the current strains, a full unlock now would quickly fill up ICU with 30-50 year olds.

    That is why the roadmap is linking levels of vaccination to reducing the levels of restrictions.
    I think that's a load of bollocks sorry.

    More than a fifth over 50s have been vaccinated already, the vulnerable under 50s. The majority of adults have been vaccinated now, which means they're much less likely to pass the virus on.

    With our level of vaccinations, even with the new variant, there's little reason why ICUs should escalate any more than they did last July.
    Hospital admissions R is around 0.8

    Who are all these people being admitted to hospital - *now*?

    image

    If you let rip, it's not long before you are back at admissions R of 1.x and then we are in the same position as Europe.

    Hence a phased approach.
    There's a five week lag between the effect of new vaccinations on hospital admissions.

    How low do you think hospital admissions will be in five weeks ?
    Hopefully nice and low. Hopefully.

    We have a nice 0.8 (or so) R for hospitals at the moment. The issue is that 0.8 turns into 1.05 quite easily.

    I don't want to do this all over again. At this point a 5 weeks is not much to ask to get security - at that point we will (the fuckwits willing) have the over 50s done to a high level - including getting areas such as Newham to a better state....
    Actually 5 weeks for an entire country is an awful lot to ask. If we say that a life spent locked down is only getting 50% of its normal value (which I don't think is unreasonable), the 5 weeks of lockdown for the country represents about ~40,000 entire birth-death lifetimes lost, or 3 million years of life lost. That's the same loss of years of life as 300,000 covid deaths.
    If I told you that lifting lockdown now risks another 50k deaths (but its unlikely to be that bad, and there is a better than evens chance it's less than 10k), but retaining it for 5 weeks cost 300k deaths, this should be a no brainer.
    You can't say lockdown life is only worth 50%... because then you'd have to admit it's been a complete and utter mistake.

    500k lives saved (optimistically) with average 15 years of life left (very optimistic) gives 7.5m years of life saved.

    Set against 60m people locked down for over 6 months at 50% life value is >15m years of life spent.
    This analysis doesn't work because it assumes an alternative to lockdown in which, as the virus ran riot, people would have gone cheerfully about their daily lives as normal.

    It's the fallacy at the heart of most of this sentiment. It denies the harsh reality of covid and hence is known as covid denialism.
    I think there is a degree of middle ground available on this. Whilst people in places which haven't locked down have changed behaviour, a voluntary lockdown is a lot more satisfactory that a state mandated one. People can manage their own risk - so those at low risk continue mostly normal lives, those at high risk can go into hiding if they feel that is appropriate. People know what they value most, and actually have a pretty good idea of what's risky, and what isn't - governments are pretty useless at assessing both (see also the repeated insanity around people going to the beach or walking in the peak district).
    For example, for a three month block last year I didn't see the young lady I'm going out with, despite this being a trivial risk (she was working from home, living alone, not seeing anyone else). Without a lockdown, that would have been a non-issue, even if I'd been holding back on us going for dates in crowded pubs.

    Incidentally people argue that state mandated closures were required so that business financial support could be put in place. This is a barefaced lie - there are plenty of ways the government could have hosed money in the correct directions without mandating closure (e.g. they could have compared VAT returns before and after the pandemic, and then made up a percentage of missing turnover), and the furlough scheme has no direct connection with mandated closures at-all.

    If you said that life under lockdown was at 50% life value, and life with a pandemic but out a lockdown was 75% life value, then that still requires an incredibly optimistic view of the number of lives saved by the whole lockdown to work out on a cost benefit analysis.

    But it's even worse now, as it's likely the lockdown isn't actually saving many lives anyway with where we are in the vaccination program - so we're now burning up the equivalent of 1000 lifetimes a day purely so the government doesn't have to risk getting egg on it's face if cases rise a bit more than expected, and some measure need reimposing. Its absolute scandal, and if they had a brain between them HM opposition should be on about it night and day. But they won't be, because they are also worried about the risk of a bit of eggsplash if relaxing goes wrong.
    Where your argument fails is of course is because for a lot of people they might want to lock themselves down voluntarily but can't because of work. Without the furlough scheme most would not have been able to do other than carry on as normal and risk themselves.

    Nor does your argument make sense in as much as you can't add up number of people x time lost in lockdown and say that is the same as x00,000 deaths. People lost some time is all but they are mostly at least still alive
    On the first issue, what was to stop the govt introducing furlough regardless of lockdown?
    Nothing but many companies would just have insisted people come to work rather than shut down for the interim
    Maybe maybe not. I'm sure something could have been devised with safeguards.
  • Northern_AlNorthern_Al Posts: 7,459
    Endillion said:

    Endillion said:

    Sandpit said:

    Leon said:

    Compare and contrast with EU stripping naked, putting their pants on their head, screaming into the void while setting fire to everything in site, like one of the twats that the kill the bill protests.....

    ------

    The Indian factory churning out AstraZeneca's Covid vaccine has reportedly asked the country's government for permission to 'immediately' ship millions of doses to the UK.

    Boris Johnson this week sent two officials on a mission to India to smooth tensions over the supply chain. Lord Lister and international trade adviser David Quarrey were asked to visit to the Serum Institute to negotiate letting the shipment through.

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9397361/Coronavirus-Indian-AstraZeneca-vaccine-factory-urges-government-let-ship-UK.html

    Some weeks ago, due to Pfizer production difficulties, Canada received no vaccine for a week. None. Nada.

    Their response was polite concern, and a hope that things would improve.
    And not just Canada; Norway, Australia, New Zealand and I am sure many others. All have had issues with supply just like the EU and the UK. It is inevitable given the extraordinary timetable involved in rolling out these vaccines.

    This is what is missing from so much of the analysis. It is not the case of the UK and the EU behaving differently and this being driven by Brexit as some like to claim. It is the EU - and particularly some of its major countries - behaving like a spoiled brat whilst the rest of the world behaves like adults. It is shocking for those of us who saw the EU as a malign but clever entity to find out it is neither malign, nor clever, simply very very childish.
    It’s not childishness. It’s more a religious mindset challenged by deeply problematic truths.

    Put it another way, some of the EU elite reaction to the vaccine issue reminds me of ecclesiastical reaction to Darwin’s theories in the 19th century. A mixture of injured pride, ineffectual pomposity, terrible argumentation and bewildered denialism. ‘This simply cannot be true.’
    Isn't Darwin cancelled these days....racist, colonialist, etc.
    Martin Luther King is cancelled these days.

    Why on Earth should someone be treated according to the content of their character, rather than the colour of their skin?
    This wilful misunderstanding of MLK's speech is often repeated on here. What he said (among much else about racial injustice) was:

    I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

    The key words are 'dream' and 'will one day'; he makes it clear that this is an aspiration, not a reality. It's a statement of the bleeding obvious, with which only racists would disagree. But the point he is making is that the USA was a long way from achieving his dream. Despite much progress, I suspect most people would agree that skin colour still plays a part in how Americans are judged by a significant minority of their fellow citizens.
    I don't think you've understood the comment. The point being made is that many of today's Democrats are very keen to judge people based on the colour of their skin (eg this: https://nypost.com/2021/03/18/the-root-accused-of-racism-after-piece-declares-whiteness-is-a-pandemic/), rather than trying to move towards the aspiration outlined by MLK.
    I understood the comment very well, thanks. I just don't appreciate MLK being appropriated by those of a right-wing persuasion to make a banal point. I'm pretty confident that if MLK were still with us he'd be more concerned about the structural racial injustice that still pervades the USA than about a fringe debate on what some Democrats may or may not say.
    Well, you're probably right there. The fact that mainstream Republican thought appears to be more in line with MLK than mainstream Democrat thought is possibly a sideshow, since there have to be some doubts as to whether the Republicans are genuine about it or just playing games.

    But the point was more that, if even the Democrats no longer aspire to that vision, then what chance it ever happening?
    But Democrats do aspire to MLK's vision. The current arguments are not about the ends, but the means: how do you achieve a society in which character is always more important than skin colour? Now you may think some of the left Democrats are going about it the wrong way, but I don't think you could argue that they don't want racial equality.

    Personally, I find it much more likely that the Democrats will find a way than the Republicans, especially those of a Trumpite persuasion. But we shall see.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 46,238
    Good. Let's hope this "vaccine ban" really was just absurdist theatre.
  • state_go_awaystate_go_away Posts: 5,415

    John Lewis announces eight store closures

    https://www.bbc.com/news/business-56511374

    Ed Miliband's favourite business model is f##ked isn't it.

    I'm absolutely gutted, the Sheffield one is closing, I have so many happy memories there, going back to the time they were Cole Brothers.
    It is a shame as it is a good business model in terms of being a workers cooperative. Not state owned , not shareholder owned but employee owned. Who can really not want that when practical?
  • dixiedeandixiedean Posts: 27,835
    kinabalu said:

    dixiedean said:

    kinabalu said:

    I like the quote at the end of the header. There's a similar one from the Buddha -

    "Three things cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth."

    I like this one too but I'm not sure how true it is. Let's see what happens in Hartlepool.

    Consulted fake Buddha quotes on that. (There are a great number around).
    Conclusion. Fake-ish. Inaccurate paraphrase.
    https://fakebuddhaquotes.com/three-things-cannot-be-long-hidden-the-sun-the-moon-and-the-truth/
    Ah ok. I thought it was pukka. I do regular meditations but you are far more clued in to this, I think.
    Fake Buddha quotes is a really interesting site. Top scholarship there.
    The problem with Buddhism, unlike most other religions, is that there is such a vast quantity of stuff. Buddha taught several times a day for 50+ years. He said a great many things. Plus, the Mahayana has humungous swathes of later texts as canon, too. No individual, however learned or devout, can memorise it all.
    Therefore, it is highly susceptible to "random hippy dippy inspirational banality quote." Signed The Buddha.
  • JohnLilburneJohnLilburne Posts: 5,997

    algarkirk said:

    Banning protests, seeking to place the Government above the law, banning people from leaving the country. These are not the actions of a democratically minded open Government.

    Limiting protest to protect the rights of individuals from nuisance isn't banning protest. Try Hong Kong or Burman for what that looks like.

    The government will still be obliged to abide by its own laws. At least until we have clear examples of this not being the case from the Court of Appeal/SC who will be quick to say so.

    Banning leaving is a temporary measure to do with death causing illness, and concerns the medical dangers of acting on your right to return.

    1. It is not just limiting protest, it is giving the police such wide ranging powers that they could ban any protest if the felt like it. It is, in effect, an enabling act. There is unlikely to ever be protest march that someone does not find a nuisance, particularly when noise is one criteria. All this law does is allow the authorities to ban any protest they don't like.

    2. As Cyclefree has already pointed out the Government has clearly decided it is not obliged to abide by its own laws - see 'break the law in a limited and specific way' as one example. More importantly it has decided that the courts should not be allowed to decide on points of law as to whether or not they have broken said laws.

    3. Banning leaving the country is not in any way a proportionate reaction. It also sets a precedent - Governments love those things - for future, perhaps less obvious, situations. If they were that worried about people bringing disease back in they could have said people can leave but may not return until we know they are not infected. That would have been proportionate.

    You are trying to defend the indefensible.
    To effectively stop people entering the country with COVID you have to prevent them from leaving in the first place. Unless they can demonstrate that they have no need to return for the foreseeable future, eg emigrating or living in a second home or with family. The major cause of people entering the country is that they recently left it. You need to attack the cause, not the symptom.
  • CookieCookie Posts: 11,183

    Pagan2 said:

    theProle said:

    FPT (I wrote this, the realised I'd not refreshed the page for an hour - It's a important topic anyway!)

    kinabalu said:

    maaarsh said:

    theProle said:

    Excess deaths are over. The second wave is over.

    We should be rapidly unlocking at least back to the point we were at in July last year domestically, while keeping the border sealed to protect our gains domestically. That's the trade-off.

    Telling people to stay at home when nobody is dying is unforgiveable.

    Given what we know about the current strains, a full unlock now would quickly fill up ICU with 30-50 year olds.

    That is why the roadmap is linking levels of vaccination to reducing the levels of restrictions.
    I think that's a load of bollocks sorry.

    More than a fifth over 50s have been vaccinated already, the vulnerable under 50s. The majority of adults have been vaccinated now, which means they're much less likely to pass the virus on.

    With our level of vaccinations, even with the new variant, there's little reason why ICUs should escalate any more than they did last July.
    Hospital admissions R is around 0.8

    Who are all these people being admitted to hospital - *now*?

    image

    If you let rip, it's not long before you are back at admissions R of 1.x and then we are in the same position as Europe.

    Hence a phased approach.
    There's a five week lag between the effect of new vaccinations on hospital admissions.

    How low do you think hospital admissions will be in five weeks ?
    Hopefully nice and low. Hopefully.

    We have a nice 0.8 (or so) R for hospitals at the moment. The issue is that 0.8 turns into 1.05 quite easily.

    I don't want to do this all over again. At this point a 5 weeks is not much to ask to get security - at that point we will (the fuckwits willing) have the over 50s done to a high level - including getting areas such as Newham to a better state....
    Actually 5 weeks for an entire country is an awful lot to ask. If we say that a life spent locked down is only getting 50% of its normal value (which I don't think is unreasonable), the 5 weeks of lockdown for the country represents about ~40,000 entire birth-death lifetimes lost, or 3 million years of life lost. That's the same loss of years of life as 300,000 covid deaths.
    If I told you that lifting lockdown now risks another 50k deaths (but its unlikely to be that bad, and there is a better than evens chance it's less than 10k), but retaining it for 5 weeks cost 300k deaths, this should be a no brainer.
    You can't say lockdown life is only worth 50%... because then you'd have to admit it's been a complete and utter mistake.

    500k lives saved (optimistically) with average 15 years of life left (very optimistic) gives 7.5m years of life saved.

    Set against 60m people locked down for over 6 months at 50% life value is >15m years of life spent.
    This analysis doesn't work because it assumes an alternative to lockdown in which, as the virus ran riot, people would have gone cheerfully about their daily lives as normal.

    It's the fallacy at the heart of most of this sentiment. It denies the harsh reality of covid and hence is known as covid denialism.
    I think there is a degree of middle ground available on this. Whilst people in places which haven't locked down have changed behaviour, a voluntary lockdown is a lot more satisfactory that a state mandated one. People can manage their own risk - so those at low risk continue mostly normal lives, those at high risk can go into hiding if they feel that is appropriate. People know what they value most, and actually have a pretty good idea of what's risky, and what isn't - governments are pretty useless at assessing both (see also the repeated insanity around people going to the beach or walking in the peak district).
    For example, for a three month block last year I didn't see the young lady I'm going out with, despite this being a trivial risk (she was working from home, living alone, not seeing anyone else). Without a lockdown, that would have been a non-issue, even if I'd been holding back on us going for dates in crowded pubs.

    Incidentally people argue that state mandated closures were required so that business financial support could be put in place. This is a barefaced lie - there are plenty of ways the government could have hosed money in the correct directions without mandating closure (e.g. they could have compared VAT returns before and after the pandemic, and then made up a percentage of missing turnover), and the furlough scheme has no direct connection with mandated closures at-all.

    If you said that life under lockdown was at 50% life value, and life with a pandemic but out a lockdown was 75% life value, then that still requires an incredibly optimistic view of the number of lives saved by the whole lockdown to work out on a cost benefit analysis.

    But it's even worse now, as it's likely the lockdown isn't actually saving many lives anyway with where we are in the vaccination program - so we're now burning up the equivalent of 1000 lifetimes a day purely so the government doesn't have to risk getting egg on it's face if cases rise a bit more than expected, and some measure need reimposing. Its absolute scandal, and if they had a brain between them HM opposition should be on about it night and day. But they won't be, because they are also worried about the risk of a bit of eggsplash if relaxing goes wrong.
    Where your argument fails is of course is because for a lot of people they might want to lock themselves down voluntarily but can't because of work. Without the furlough scheme most would not have been able to do other than carry on as normal and risk themselves.

    Nor does your argument make sense in as much as you can't add up number of people x time lost in lockdown and say that is the same as x00,000 deaths. People lost some time is all but they are mostly at least still alive
    There's also the "people can decide how much risk to accept" myth.
    They can't - it's not just about risk coming in, but risk going out. They're deciding how much risk to put on everyone around them.
    Under that system, anyone more than averagely vulnerable would need to lock themselves away completely as the lower risk people mingled freely (and quite possibly blew out the hospitals, anyway, because someone had told them they were safer than they actually were).
    It's a rephrasing of "why should I care about them? I should be fine!"

    It's the Brazil solution, which isn't going well for the Brazilian healthcare system or the Brazilian people. But Bolsonaro should be a hero to the Lockdown Sceptics; he's the major leader most dedicated to following their ethos.
    And yet, Peru and Ecuador locked down severely, with much the same results.

    The argument isn't that not locking down works, it's that lockdown doesn't. Or its effects are surprisingly marginal.
  • kle4 said:

    kle4 said:

    Sandpit said:

    Figures are a little late today

    So many daily tests, Excel COVID edition is taking longer to boot up?
    I did break Excel and the server this morning.

    I asked for a transactions report today, and instead of asking for a batched total report I accidentally asked it for every single transaction, which is 18 million transactions. Oops.
    The server should have calculated the number of rows and then refused the batch. Not your fault, it's up to IT to stop the stupid users being stupid.
    I am Head of Regulatory Affairs & Compliance, apparently I have unlimited power to check *everything* that goes on.
    Quis custodiet ipsos custodes. Who regulates your affairs and compliance?
    The Prudential Regulatory Authority, The Financial Conduct Authority, The Bank of England, The Securities and Exchange Commission, The European Banking Authority, The European Securities and Markets Authority, The European Insurance and Occupational Pensions Authority, and The Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority

    There are a few others, but they are the main ones.
    Blimey, that's a lot of regulation and compliance, they must not trust anybody!
    You know what the really fun thing is.

    There are situations where in one jurisdiction one (or a set of) transactions is completely legal whereas in another jurisdiction it is illegal.

    This is when theory meets reality.

    http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7843262.stm

    https://www.standard.co.uk/business/porsche-cleared-over-shortselling-profits-6899991.html
  • Richard_TyndallRichard_Tyndall Posts: 30,846

    John Lewis announces eight store closures

    https://www.bbc.com/news/business-56511374

    Ed Miliband's favourite business model is f##ked isn't it.

    I'm absolutely gutted, the Sheffield one is closing, I have so many happy memories there, going back to the time they were Cole Brothers.
    Relieved the Nottingham branch survives. I thought that one was very much at risk.
  • Richard_TyndallRichard_Tyndall Posts: 30,846

    algarkirk said:

    Banning protests, seeking to place the Government above the law, banning people from leaving the country. These are not the actions of a democratically minded open Government.

    Limiting protest to protect the rights of individuals from nuisance isn't banning protest. Try Hong Kong or Burman for what that looks like.

    The government will still be obliged to abide by its own laws. At least until we have clear examples of this not being the case from the Court of Appeal/SC who will be quick to say so.

    Banning leaving is a temporary measure to do with death causing illness, and concerns the medical dangers of acting on your right to return.

    1. It is not just limiting protest, it is giving the police such wide ranging powers that they could ban any protest if the felt like it. It is, in effect, an enabling act. There is unlikely to ever be protest march that someone does not find a nuisance, particularly when noise is one criteria. All this law does is allow the authorities to ban any protest they don't like.

    2. As Cyclefree has already pointed out the Government has clearly decided it is not obliged to abide by its own laws - see 'break the law in a limited and specific way' as one example. More importantly it has decided that the courts should not be allowed to decide on points of law as to whether or not they have broken said laws.

    3. Banning leaving the country is not in any way a proportionate reaction. It also sets a precedent - Governments love those things - for future, perhaps less obvious, situations. If they were that worried about people bringing disease back in they could have said people can leave but may not return until we know they are not infected. That would have been proportionate.

    You are trying to defend the indefensible.
    To effectively stop people entering the country with COVID you have to prevent them from leaving in the first place. Unless they can demonstrate that they have no need to return for the foreseeable future, eg emigrating or living in a second home or with family. The major cause of people entering the country is that they recently left it. You need to attack the cause, not the symptom.
    Nope. You just make it clear that if they do leave they can't come back until it is deemed safe. Then it is their choice.
  • TOPPINGTOPPING Posts: 40,950

    algarkirk said:

    Banning protests, seeking to place the Government above the law, banning people from leaving the country. These are not the actions of a democratically minded open Government.

    Limiting protest to protect the rights of individuals from nuisance isn't banning protest. Try Hong Kong or Burman for what that looks like.

    The government will still be obliged to abide by its own laws. At least until we have clear examples of this not being the case from the Court of Appeal/SC who will be quick to say so.

    Banning leaving is a temporary measure to do with death causing illness, and concerns the medical dangers of acting on your right to return.

    1. It is not just limiting protest, it is giving the police such wide ranging powers that they could ban any protest if the felt like it. It is, in effect, an enabling act. There is unlikely to ever be protest march that someone does not find a nuisance, particularly when noise is one criteria. All this law does is allow the authorities to ban any protest they don't like.

    2. As Cyclefree has already pointed out the Government has clearly decided it is not obliged to abide by its own laws - see 'break the law in a limited and specific way' as one example. More importantly it has decided that the courts should not be allowed to decide on points of law as to whether or not they have broken said laws.

    3. Banning leaving the country is not in any way a proportionate reaction. It also sets a precedent - Governments love those things - for future, perhaps less obvious, situations. If they were that worried about people bringing disease back in they could have said people can leave but may not return until we know they are not infected. That would have been proportionate.

    You are trying to defend the indefensible.
    Well done you Richard I misunderstood your recent post which stated, rhetorically, that a foreign holiday wasn't a human right. I took that to mean you were in favour of such regulation.
  • williamglennwilliamglenn Posts: 47,787
    UK: 5,605 new cases and 98 deaths
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 61,571
    edited March 2021
    It appears that the whole hydroxychloroquine thing was based on what could only be deliberate fraud in the French trial.
    And as the drug was prescribed to outpatients rather than those hospitalised, that too was illegal, as there was no regulatory authorisation for such prescriptions.

    https://twitter.com/amymaxmen/status/1374515585548128256

  • CookieCookie Posts: 11,183

    John Lewis announces eight store closures

    https://www.bbc.com/news/business-56511374

    Ed Miliband's favourite business model is f##ked isn't it.

    I'm absolutely gutted, the Sheffield one is closing, I have so many happy memories there, going back to the time they were Cole Brothers.
    It is a shame as it is a good business model in terms of being a workers cooperative. Not state owned , not shareholder owned but employee owned. Who can really not want that when practical?
    It's also quite worrying for Sheffield City Centre, for which it is a substantial anchor.
  • SandpitSandpit Posts: 49,614

    Endillion said:

    Endillion said:

    Sandpit said:

    Leon said:

    Compare and contrast with EU stripping naked, putting their pants on their head, screaming into the void while setting fire to everything in site, like one of the twats that the kill the bill protests.....

    ------

    The Indian factory churning out AstraZeneca's Covid vaccine has reportedly asked the country's government for permission to 'immediately' ship millions of doses to the UK.

    Boris Johnson this week sent two officials on a mission to India to smooth tensions over the supply chain. Lord Lister and international trade adviser David Quarrey were asked to visit to the Serum Institute to negotiate letting the shipment through.

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9397361/Coronavirus-Indian-AstraZeneca-vaccine-factory-urges-government-let-ship-UK.html

    Some weeks ago, due to Pfizer production difficulties, Canada received no vaccine for a week. None. Nada.

    Their response was polite concern, and a hope that things would improve.
    And not just Canada; Norway, Australia, New Zealand and I am sure many others. All have had issues with supply just like the EU and the UK. It is inevitable given the extraordinary timetable involved in rolling out these vaccines.

    This is what is missing from so much of the analysis. It is not the case of the UK and the EU behaving differently and this being driven by Brexit as some like to claim. It is the EU - and particularly some of its major countries - behaving like a spoiled brat whilst the rest of the world behaves like adults. It is shocking for those of us who saw the EU as a malign but clever entity to find out it is neither malign, nor clever, simply very very childish.
    It’s not childishness. It’s more a religious mindset challenged by deeply problematic truths.

    Put it another way, some of the EU elite reaction to the vaccine issue reminds me of ecclesiastical reaction to Darwin’s theories in the 19th century. A mixture of injured pride, ineffectual pomposity, terrible argumentation and bewildered denialism. ‘This simply cannot be true.’
    Isn't Darwin cancelled these days....racist, colonialist, etc.
    Martin Luther King is cancelled these days.

    Why on Earth should someone be treated according to the content of their character, rather than the colour of their skin?
    This wilful misunderstanding of MLK's speech is often repeated on here. What he said (among much else about racial injustice) was:

    I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

    The key words are 'dream' and 'will one day'; he makes it clear that this is an aspiration, not a reality. It's a statement of the bleeding obvious, with which only racists would disagree. But the point he is making is that the USA was a long way from achieving his dream. Despite much progress, I suspect most people would agree that skin colour still plays a part in how Americans are judged by a significant minority of their fellow citizens.
    I don't think you've understood the comment. The point being made is that many of today's Democrats are very keen to judge people based on the colour of their skin (eg this: https://nypost.com/2021/03/18/the-root-accused-of-racism-after-piece-declares-whiteness-is-a-pandemic/), rather than trying to move towards the aspiration outlined by MLK.
    I understood the comment very well, thanks. I just don't appreciate MLK being appropriated by those of a right-wing persuasion to make a banal point. I'm pretty confident that if MLK were still with us he'd be more concerned about the structural racial injustice that still pervades the USA than about a fringe debate on what some Democrats may or may not say.
    Well, you're probably right there. The fact that mainstream Republican thought appears to be more in line with MLK than mainstream Democrat thought is possibly a sideshow, since there have to be some doubts as to whether the Republicans are genuine about it or just playing games.

    But the point was more that, if even the Democrats no longer aspire to that vision, then what chance it ever happening?
    But Democrats do aspire to MLK's vision. The current arguments are not about the ends, but the means: how do you achieve a society in which character is always more important than skin colour? Now you may think some of the left Democrats are going about it the wrong way, but I don't think you could argue that they don't want racial equality.

    Personally, I find it much more likely that the Democrats will find a way than the Republicans, especially those of a Trumpite persuasion. But we shall see.
    See what that Democrat donor Bill Maher has to say on the subject:
    https://youtu.be/SgrZAPUvKyA?t=444
  • EndillionEndillion Posts: 4,960

    Endillion said:

    Endillion said:

    Sandpit said:

    Leon said:

    Compare and contrast with EU stripping naked, putting their pants on their head, screaming into the void while setting fire to everything in site, like one of the twats that the kill the bill protests.....

    ------

    The Indian factory churning out AstraZeneca's Covid vaccine has reportedly asked the country's government for permission to 'immediately' ship millions of doses to the UK.

    Boris Johnson this week sent two officials on a mission to India to smooth tensions over the supply chain. Lord Lister and international trade adviser David Quarrey were asked to visit to the Serum Institute to negotiate letting the shipment through.

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9397361/Coronavirus-Indian-AstraZeneca-vaccine-factory-urges-government-let-ship-UK.html

    Some weeks ago, due to Pfizer production difficulties, Canada received no vaccine for a week. None. Nada.

    Their response was polite concern, and a hope that things would improve.
    And not just Canada; Norway, Australia, New Zealand and I am sure many others. All have had issues with supply just like the EU and the UK. It is inevitable given the extraordinary timetable involved in rolling out these vaccines.

    This is what is missing from so much of the analysis. It is not the case of the UK and the EU behaving differently and this being driven by Brexit as some like to claim. It is the EU - and particularly some of its major countries - behaving like a spoiled brat whilst the rest of the world behaves like adults. It is shocking for those of us who saw the EU as a malign but clever entity to find out it is neither malign, nor clever, simply very very childish.
    It’s not childishness. It’s more a religious mindset challenged by deeply problematic truths.

    Put it another way, some of the EU elite reaction to the vaccine issue reminds me of ecclesiastical reaction to Darwin’s theories in the 19th century. A mixture of injured pride, ineffectual pomposity, terrible argumentation and bewildered denialism. ‘This simply cannot be true.’
    Isn't Darwin cancelled these days....racist, colonialist, etc.
    Martin Luther King is cancelled these days.

    Why on Earth should someone be treated according to the content of their character, rather than the colour of their skin?
    This wilful misunderstanding of MLK's speech is often repeated on here. What he said (among much else about racial injustice) was:

    I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

    The key words are 'dream' and 'will one day'; he makes it clear that this is an aspiration, not a reality. It's a statement of the bleeding obvious, with which only racists would disagree. But the point he is making is that the USA was a long way from achieving his dream. Despite much progress, I suspect most people would agree that skin colour still plays a part in how Americans are judged by a significant minority of their fellow citizens.
    I don't think you've understood the comment. The point being made is that many of today's Democrats are very keen to judge people based on the colour of their skin (eg this: https://nypost.com/2021/03/18/the-root-accused-of-racism-after-piece-declares-whiteness-is-a-pandemic/), rather than trying to move towards the aspiration outlined by MLK.
    I understood the comment very well, thanks. I just don't appreciate MLK being appropriated by those of a right-wing persuasion to make a banal point. I'm pretty confident that if MLK were still with us he'd be more concerned about the structural racial injustice that still pervades the USA than about a fringe debate on what some Democrats may or may not say.
    Well, you're probably right there. The fact that mainstream Republican thought appears to be more in line with MLK than mainstream Democrat thought is possibly a sideshow, since there have to be some doubts as to whether the Republicans are genuine about it or just playing games.

    But the point was more that, if even the Democrats no longer aspire to that vision, then what chance it ever happening?
    But Democrats do aspire to MLK's vision. The current arguments are not about the ends, but the means: how do you achieve a society in which character is always more important than skin colour? Now you may think some of the left Democrats are going about it the wrong way, but I don't think you could argue that they don't want racial equality.

    Personally, I find it much more likely that the Democrats will find a way than the Republicans, especially those of a Trumpite persuasion. But we shall see.
    No, I don't agree. I don't think the hard left Democrats want racial equality. In the same way as certain elements of the UK Labour party don't want equality, because it would restrict their ability to claim victimhood, and paint their political opponents as evil.

    There is an open question as to whether they really represent the "mainstream" of their particular movements. Certainly, in the UK's case, the grownups on the left are back in charge, although it is unclear how much control they really have over the activist base and fringe elements among their MPs. But in the US, the signs - admittedly from a distance - are much less positive.
  • eekeek Posts: 24,797

    John Lewis announces eight store closures

    https://www.bbc.com/news/business-56511374

    Ed Miliband's favourite business model is f##ked isn't it.

    I'm absolutely gutted, the Sheffield one is closing, I have so many happy memories there, going back to the time they were Cole Brothers.
    Relieved the Nottingham branch survives. I thought that one was very much at risk.
    Likewise Bainbridges (sorry John Lewis Newcastle).

This discussion has been closed.