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I’ve a car with an MOT due this week. Can’t see anything stopping garages working this time …looks like I’ll need to get it booked and done then. that’s a shame.
Mine is booked in for Saturday. On the government website they talk about car showrooms being non essential, but no mention of MOTs or servicing.
Drac
He never visited a health facility.
Trip to hospital
The Guardian view on Dominic Cummings: time to go
Read more
Cummings revealed a previously unknown journey to hospital a few miles from his parents’ property. He said his son became ill and was taken there by ambulance, travelling along with his wife, and stayed overnight. The following day, when the boy’s condition improved, Cummings left isolation to pick both up, claiming he had no other option because there were no taxis available. He said he had stayed in the vehicle at all times.Cummings said he was feeling better by this point – although the night before he had been “barely able to stand up”. He acknowledged that the trip fell within his and Wakefield’s isolation period.
Shortly after the rose Garden press conference, Prof Colin Talbot, emeritus professor at the University of Manxhester, noted: “The Cummings/Wakefield family ended up in a hospital in Durham – 260 miles from home. That is precisely the reason the lockdown told people to stay at home if they get sick. So as not to spread the virus around the country.”
https://twitter.com/alexwickham/status/1322613432185749504
the pallet on the oh so clear graph today was the aptly named Viridis Inferno
Some of the excel quotes on Twitter made me laugh hard. And I can say that the JBC and academia are all wedded to R. So the heatmap will have used an R colour palate. Looked dreadful to me. Turning things into slides, well that’s not the job of the analyst, so I have no idea who’s making the excel plots. Excel conditional formatting is not a heatmap, but we’ve all done it for a quick data look 😉
Me, I like SAS, nice graphs (Since V9) and the best database bashing language bar none. You get what you pay for. But you can use it for free as well. I never touch a dataset or plot manually. Never. Always produced by a program, always reproducible.
The slides have been irredeemably hopeless for months. You need a 60 inch telly to even read the text, and the BBC chopped off half of it this time around so you couldn't even see the labelling on the axes. Even if you could read it all, the clutter and sheer quantity of information on each slide makes it meaningless to virtually the entire audience.
As someone who has spent half his professional life looking at stuff like this and attempting to turn it into comprehensible information for the public, it's a little depressing to see an opportunity for clear scientific communication to millions of people chucked away like that.
I think they do to deliberately. They can then argue that they gave the info to everyone but that we were too stupid to know what to do with it so we'd best leave the decision-making to the grown-ups.
The little people need to know their place after all.
After other briefings there has been a bunch of chat by data viz people I follow on twitter and the conclusion has always been the charts are from Tableau but maybe they were so short on time this time around they did dump it in Excel
Viridis is the new black, so to speak - perceptually uniform (no bright yellow in the middle) and prints properly in black and white.
Gove looking very shifty (even by his own standards) when asked by Marr if he leaked the new lockdown details
He also said 4 weeks time was a review date
I could maybe see the SW coming out of it in 4 weeks,
But it took 12 weeks to get from this many hospital admissions in March before they lifted lockdown last time and they also promised a review after a month then
Positive :
We're better at distancing & mask wearing is now normal & adhered to, +there shouldn't be a huge scrum for bog roll this tine
Negatives at same time schools & unis are staying open, which is another route of infection and the weather is much worse, meaning doing stuff outside is much harder
positives...
we are better at distancing... well distancing in some situations, clearly not behind closed doors and away from prying eyees.
mask wearing - although its having nil benefit
so, the only positive i agree with is that we have all learned to use a single sheet of recycled loo roll and/or still have massive stockpiles from march.
No mention of any increase to the 40% for self employed which they previously said was roughly comparable to the furlough payments. They actually said that when it was initially set at just 20%, 70% paye versus 20% self employed, never quite understood that one.
Lots of self employed working, servicing or supplying the business types that are most effected by lockdown as down. The collective voice just doesn’t seem loud enough to be heard for some reason.
if he leaked the new lockdown details
Is anyone honestly falling for the “investigating the leak” nonsense? The Cabinet Office briefing the media in advance is how this team work… pretending it is a ‘leak’ is just part of their gameplay. Put it this way, if yesterday’s announcement really was supposed to happen in the week, how would the furlough scheme and job support schemes be handled? End of furlough, a day or two of the new scheme together with thousands of more job losses, and then an announcement that the newly implemented scheme is scrapped and furlough is returning? It was… Cabinet Office leaks the plans… reaction gauged… presentation of the plans adjusted to fit the reaction to the plans. No mistakes, no unwanted leaks. Pretend to Tory MPs, Ministers, The Speaker and civil servants that it wasn’t intentional. None of them believe it, but (barely) plausible deniability is oh so clever. Right.
Just been to sainsburys to pick up a couple of bits for dinner. The bog roll aisle has been semi looted again. Expensive stuff seems to have been left.
One of my rules in life is to spend more on premium products for life’s cheaper essentials. Research costs money. Toilet paper and sellotape tape both fall into that category.
Totally agree. It's a literal fact that buying cheap toilet paper might end up with you getting poo on your hands
Why not combine your talents? What we need is some definitive research on the change in probability of poke-through for every extra pound you spend on a pack of bog roll.
I appreciate that you are not an engineer, so a deep dive into relative tensile strength properties at different states of saturation is not an option.
Same applies with washing up liquid - Fairy really is better and pretty cheap in the largest sizes. I just keep refilling the small one by the sink from the big one in the cupboard.
Gove is setting the stall out for extending the lockdown then. If it's not long enough before it's even started then why not just announce a longer timeframe yesterday?
Unions pushing for schools in uni closures still, will the lockdown look totally different by the time it gets Infront of parliament to what they fudged last night!?!
Going to be interesting in 4 weeks, BJ is not going to want to go down in history as the PM who cancelled Christmas, at a guess the north returns to tier 3++ whilst the South is allowed a family Christmas.
Toilet paper and sellotape tape both fall into that category.
Just don't confuse the two.....
Maajid Nawaz is on air at LBC at the moment singing the praises of Dr Gupta, apparently you cannot get put through on air if you ask "Put me through to that mouthy wee gobshite Maajid spreading misinformation", my fault......I may try a different tact next time...
The infection rates reported from the coezone app all seem to have been declining for the last few days.
Theu only give the data to people using the app, and the government.
There was a story the other day that they had "adjusted" the levels to improve sensitivity and response. Inevitable in the beta-testing phase....
The threshold score to tell you to isolate on the app was reduced from 900 to 180 in the latest update the other day.
It would have been reduced to a 120 trigger, but they apparently changed the coding to more accurately count time spent at different distances from the infected person who also had the app installed.
I had a "close encounter but don't worry" notification 15 days ago and I wouldn't put money on the software update retrospectively look at my incident and many others who had similar notices within a theoretical isolation period.
The threshold score to tell you to isolate on the app was reduced from 900 to 180 in the latest update the other day.It would have been reduced to a 120 trigger, but they apparently changed the coding to more accurately count time spent at different distances from the infected person who also had the app installed.
What do those 900 / 180 etc numbers refer to? Some sort of multiplication of time spent near someone and distance from them?
Yep, but no detail given at https://healthtech.blog.gov.uk/2020/10/29/how-the-nhs-covid-19-app-is-making-the-most-of-cutting-edge-global-technology/ that was given as a link from the BBC article midweek
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-54733534
Got the new threshold scores wrong way around, it was going to be 180, but now 120 with the "smarter" algorithm.
Apropos the app - I got a log of (as I understand it) the times my phone has seen another phone. Most of the time I was at home and no other phone this side of a concrete wall. Makes me question the value.
Does anybody me know the answer to this? Struggling to find out online.
Our childminder’s husband has been asked to isolate through track and trace after someone on his shift got Covid. He will be staying upstairs in their house despite having no symptoms, and he doesn’t have to get a test. Should our kid still be going for a couple of hours after school?
It's taken me a day of sifting through my old MSc Mathematical Modelling notes but I now understand why the @TiRed analysis yesterday was so frightening
He used a different distribution:
@thegreatape - only the husband has to self isolate, the rest of the household is a contact of a contact. Doesn't make sense to me but those are the rules
My wife (a nurse) and both my sons have had to self isolate but each time only the immediate contact.
Thanks eskay. I’m struggling to keep up with what one should and shouldn’t do!
Anyone seen the article about Slovakia? They had hardly anything first time, nothing all summer now they're being clobbered. They had a test day where they tested as many people as they could, got half the population tested (2.5m people) which isn't bad considering they didn't ask for kids under 10. Got a positive rate of 1%, and now most people in the country with the virus are in quarantine at the same time. Sounds pretty good! Also love this quote:
The prime minister, Igor Matovič, apologised for putting pressure on people to take part, but said the requirement was justified. “Freedom must go together with responsibility toward those who ... are the weakest among us, oncology patients, old people, people with other diseases,” he told a news conference.
^seems fair and well done if they pulled that off, sounds like a logistical nightmare. A good use of the army as well at peacetime rather than reliance on private companies @ mind blowing cost.
So… locally… in Calderdale… we’re now not going into Tier3 tonight.
It’s impossible to keep up with what the hell the rules/laws/guidance are in the next 24 hours, never mind next month. Ridiculous.
Same for Bradford
Give it a few days and it will change again.
🤦
Is there not because the tier set up has-been suspended pending Thursdays lockdown?.
Is there not because the tier set up has-been suspended pending Thursdays lockdown?.
Or perhaps the numbers are coming down already so no need.
So… locally… in Calderdale… we’re now not going into Tier3 tonight.It’s impossible to keep up with what the hell the rules/laws/guidance are in the next 24 hours, never mind next month. Ridiculous.
Yeah, the going into "proper" lockdown on Thursday with its furlough rules and whatever overrides the plan to go from one Tier to another. We're Tier 2 until Thursday as well.
Iain Duncan Smith made an ill-judged comment about going back into lockdown and how it was "giving in" to scientific advisors which got the appropriate sarcastic responses:
https://www.thepoke.co.uk/2020/11/02/iain-duncan-smith-says-government-gave-in-to-the-scientists/
Or perhaps the numbers are coming down already so no need.
Nope, this is because we're all going into lockdown anyway.
Bonfire night is going to be interesting. Already our a neighbour on our Whatsapp group for the road (where I live), is organising a firework party in a neighbour's front garden. Honestly you can't make this stuff up.
Having been told by a neighbour that I'm Judgemental during the last proper lock down, I'm keeping my thoughts to myself.
Or perhaps the numbers are coming down already so no need.
Most recent data:
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/coronavirus-briefing-situation-report-west-yorkshire-29-oct-2020
Hospital cases is an eye opener.
@BunnyHop - if they have a party once lockdown starts just phone the police
A reminder…
https://twitter.com/lewis_goodall/status/1323222744062853122?s=21
A late, longer, open ended, more costly lockdown was a political choice.
A late, longer, open ended, more costly lockdown was a political choice.
The North of England provided the ideal testing ground for a couple of months of local, minimal restrictions.
Luckily the results were in just in time to put a proper lockdown in place and save some lives in more important bits of the country.
Ex-party leader Iain Duncan Smith said the lockdown decision was a "body blow" and accused the government of "giving in" to scientific advisers.
How is giving in to the opinion of people who may actually know what they are talking about ever a bad thing?
That said...it's IDS so shouldn't be surprised he's coming out with such utter shite.
I thought this was a reasonable review of the Cambridge Model - basically it's probably good for about two weeks prediction. Very sensitive to some underlying parameters.
https://www.cebm.net/covid-19/the-innacuracoes-in-the-sage-models/
We will see whether there has been a flattening of the curve due to the "Northern Experiment". Northern Ireland is promising in that respect. A lot of anger on https://lockdownsceptics.org/ but some serious debate too. Of course some hate me I am sure. For the record, I'm neither a lockdown zealot nor sceptic. I think there is good evidence that contact restrictions have an effect on the course of the epidemic, and clearly these come at a financial and emotional cost. One can debate the economic side, and the lives saved, but the epidemic side is now reasonably clear to me.
A new virus more transmissible than flu, much less than measles and a bit less than chickenpox, but with up to four times the mortality rate of influenza, and no protective measures short of non-pharmaceutical interventions, will most likely perturb normal life for about 18 months but come under eventual control using measures that have previously proven successful (testing, treatment, vaccination, patient management).
I think my medium-term predictions have been pretty reasonable. Anything further than six weeks won't be valid anyway. I'd like to see deaths peak by December - that would be a success. Christmas will not be back to normal.
[tl:dr] I'm right 😉 - well I hope I am so proven. Deaths to peak relatively soon, Christmas in a bubble, some degree of normacy within a year. Holiday in the UK again next summer.
Holiday in the UK again next summer.
If that’s the case, I will either be saying “do you want fries with that”, “where to, Gov ?” Or “sign here” at work instead of “roger, roger, over Dover”
😩
Holiday in the UK again next summer.
There were a few months where foreign holidays were allowed this year. Are we thinking it will not be next year (sans quarantine) to our european neighbours?
Bugger, if it's uk holidays then camper prices won't drop for a bit
We'll be allowed to travel abroad next summer. Doesn't mean we should do. Same as this summer. We'll have to wait and see...
We’ll be allowed to travel abroad next summer.
I don't share your confidence but, as you say, we'll see.
I don’t share your confidence but, as you say, we’ll see.
I'm still utterly baffled by people who went abroad this summer (including close friends and relatives)... and I fully predict that even more people will do so next summer. I'm planning for staying in the UK though... we are very unlikely to have community wide vaccinations by the summer, and I don't want to be bringing the virus back on ferries or airplanes if that is the case. We'll be left to make our own call though... I don't see a blanket ban on foreign holidays next summer... just the same confusing shifting guidelines and weak measures as this summer. But in the unlikely event that we do have vaccinations for all... I'm taking a month off and getting the hell out of here.
We’ll be allowed to travel abroad next summer. Doesn’t mean we should do. Same as this summer. We’ll have to wait and see…
Not confident about foreign holidays next year at all, which is a real shame as I have a few things planned for next summer as I'm 40.
I'm still of the opinion that widespread vaccination is at least two years away.
That, combined with all too obvious evidence of 'great British common sense' in action, will continue to shape my attitude and behaviour.
I dont think international travel should be allowed again for recreational purposes unless we get the incoming arrivals screening right. We should be in a position to test every single person on arrival to the UK and quarantine (i.e lock away in a facility for a fortnight and guard it) anyone who tests positive like Asian countries are doing.
None of this sending people home to self isolate because most dont do it and nobody is willing to check on them and actually enforce it.
I agree. But this government will give people the nod to travel in the summer, and still have not bothered to implement any of what you say... (although they might have paid someone they know a hell of a lot of money to introduce something that sounds like what you propose, but is half arsed and infective).
If the current leading vaccine projects actually work then widespread vaccination should be possible for a good proportion of the population.
the dose production volumes are eye watering
We’ll be allowed to travel abroad next summer. Doesn’t mean we should do
This. I won't be traveling. Others may do so. But I don't see a huge difference to last year.
Whatever vaccine we have, I can't see past it being rolled out before next year's flu jab really. The most vulnerable and highest risk probably earlier and rightly so.
Antibody yields are in the tonne amounts! Say 3g per person per year - 15% of 66M vulnerable - 30 tonnes. Of protein! Vaccines had better do something - we need those human bioreactors.
On Saturday Boris was wibbling on about mass testing again but I've not seen any recent news in that area. I know a quick spit test was being trialled in Southampton (?) but how long before that can be rolled out at scale?
I'm going back to work in ITU as of Monday, so please don't be arses for the next month or two...
Good luck Crikey... and thank you.
What's more shocking is people not self isolating when they have been told they should be or even worse when they know they are positive
Can they afford to?
I’m going back to work in ITU as of Monday, so please don’t be arses for the next month or two…
Just watched the BBC News report from ICU at Liverpool. I honestly don't know how you guys get through day after day of that. Thanks again.
What’s more shocking is people not self isolating when they have been told they should be or even worse when they know they are positive
What Kelvin said! Us people on a salary can isolate no problem but someone paid by the hour on a zero hours contract with rent to pay, they don't really have much choice. Gotta go to work.
This was brought up a few months ago and Handcocks answer was well there is national sick pay or some nonsense which is like 30quid a week or something stupid.
@TiRed
3g per person per year?
Am assuming you are expecting a 2 shot dose more than once a year? 1.5g per dose is a lot for a vaccine isn't it?
We’ll be allowed to travel abroad next summer. Doesn’t mean we should do. Same as this summer. We’ll have to wait and see…
I think it was Devi Sridhar who was saying we had really brought virus levels to the point it could be eradicated at the start of the summer. Opening up and encouraging travel then imported the current mutation of the virus. If this is the case then those who are currently arguing for no lock down would also appear to be the ones who were shouting for global travel and removal of restrictions. A definite whiff of cakeism about that.
It does seem daft to bring things under control this winter and then just go for unleash the hoards again import the next mutation. Then we get to go through this all again.
Antibody yields are in the tonne amounts! Say 3g per person per year – 15% of 66M vulnerable – 30 tonnes. Of protein! Vaccines had better do something – we need those human bioreactors.
Is there a risk we can't vaccinate fast enough to deal with the mutations? We seem to have had three main variants in the uk (?) in less than a year.
The spike protein seems to be fairly stable so the vaccine should provide a good enough level of protection. But then who knows how the thing might change.
Not confident about foreign holidays next year at all, which is a real shame as I have a few things planned for next summer as I’m 40.
Brexit will have put paid to any quick cheap easy European getaways anyway.
But yeah, the whole "quarantine" thing was always a joke. No testing at airports other than filling in a form with your address on it (maybe), no follow up, no enforcement. Even if the app told you to self-isolate, there was no enforcement.
there was no enforcement
Mrs K just had conversations with M&S & Smyths who are both remaining open for "click and collect" at the door during lockdown. She asked the Smyths manager how she'd justify picking up a Toy as "essential Travel" and he shrugged his shoulders and said "who's going to check?"
3g per person per year?
Lilly and Regeneron doses are in that ballpark, yes. AZ may be lower as they should have much better residency in the body with their mutated antibody. Lilly gave 100 mg/kg in their clinical trial - That's 7g! It worked the same as their 10 mg/kg (0.7 g). Regeneron is 2 x 2.4 mg/kg per dose, maybe less for prophylaxis. It is a huge amount of protein to make.
I think it was Devi Sridhar who was saying we had really brought virus levels to the point it could be eradicated at the start of the summer
Eradication is not on any agenda. This is here for the long term. It is the fifth endemic coronavirus. People will go on skiing holidays again next year too...
Cheers. That is a massive amount. Let's hope the lower doses work then.
I agree that if we are allowed to travel next year, we shouldn't. And certainly not without enforced quarantine. Stupid to bring it back in when we were getting on top of it this year. If people are so ****ing desperate for a fortnight in the sun next year as "their right" they can spend a fortnight in a quarantine facility when they get back as "their responsibility"
LittleMissMC should have travelled to Iceland this summer with her gymnastics squad for Eurogym. It was put back to summer 2021. Last week Iceland said 'no", so it's now cancelled.
1
I’m still utterly baffled by people who went abroad this summer (including close friends and relatives)… and I fully predict that even more people will do so next summer.
From the moment that restrictions started to be eased, Ryanair and Easyjet were pinging offers through to my phone via the app every couple of days. Booking.com were sending emails every 2-3 days with offers.
At one point, looking at flights, I could have had a long weekend in Prague for £15 return flight. Oslo was £5 one way, Barcelona was £10. They were desperate to get people back on board.
And faced with the fact that most people had had their Easter break cancelled, summer break put back / looking uncertain, people were furloughed and bored, it's not really any wonder that a lot of people jumped at the chance.
Only 2 weeks ago, when the Canaries were removed from the list of countries that you had to quarantine on return, the offers came pinging through again - book your winter getaway now!
Can't really blame the airlines for trying to get back to business. This is the sort of thing that should have been sorted during the first lockdown and put in place as restrictions eased. Testing at all airports for all flights. Mandatory enforced quarantine on return if necessary. And as usual, the Government squandered the whole lot.
Crikey - Really wish you all the best. What a star you are.
We've decided not to ski this coming season, however I think prices will be very low, meaning many people will just take a winter holiday regardless of the fact that skiing really will spread this virus very quickly.
Ski resorts have always been breeding grounds for any lurgy flying around.