We really need to treat these organisations with a bit of respect and stop dismissing them on totally fictional grounds. Apart from anything else how do you recruit good people if you treat them this way? Nobody with talent is going to want to replace Whitty, Vallance or Ferguson in this climate.
It's good if scientists do science and politicians do politics. The problem comes when you have crossover, like Comical Jenny talking about not needing to do testing, or Whitty (?) quoting Spiegelhalter's article out of context, or Van Tam saying - well - more or less anything. Likewise Ferguson - may be a philanderer and a careless person and a messy coder, but that doesn't make his science bad.
Major and meaningful lockdown release on sunday – unlikely.
There are far too many people who are scared to go out, think lockdown should be stricter, say they wont send their kids to school without a vaccine and so on.
The seeds of “get lockdown done” need to be sown, so when it does happen (hopefully at the correctly calculated time), most of us want it.
Whether Cummings has told the papers to do this or he’s just done some leaks knowing how they react is anyone’s guess.
He may be an unprincipled mercenary who’s current paymasters I am opposed to politically – but he is a genius and he always gets what he wants.
We will be lead by the nose & quite unknowingly too. In much the same way we were practically begging them to lock us down. Love him or hate him (& I’m with David Cameron - for the 1st & last time I hope - in calling him a psychopath....) Cummings is a genius in getting people to do what he wants..
On masks… it is intuitive, and compared to other measures, easy and visually reassuring. Tests in controlled settings show they work within given parameters. The fact that studies that take place in the real world, with real idiots, show them to be anywhere between ineffective and counterproductive, won’t stop us moving to using them. It’s not following the science, it’s about reassuring the public where other measures are too costly, difficult or overly restrictive.
It’s good if scientists do science
I don't do politics and I barely talk about it here (or on other threads - Brexit was probably my only slip). I also have no issues with the scientific information being public. As for membership - well the press seem to have a bit of an agenda here. But perhaps that is because they don't like the political decisions. I will commend the Government for making all data available. ONS could have suspended official death reporting, for example.
I was told by someone that has had a lot to do with one of the Nightingale Hospitals that they are not really for use now but for the second wave. They are in place but mothballed and can be operational in 4 days so ready when needed.
It made me wonder if the plan will be to dump all infected people at these during the second wave so the normal Hospitals can carry on as unaffected as possible. Part of the living alongside the virus but controlling it method?
During the same conversation I was told by another person with links to top Tories not to expect much to change on Sunday.
During the same conversation I was told by another person with links to top Tories not to expect much to change on Sunday.
Despite government sitting around allowing the press & social media to whip every ****er up into a beach & BBQ frenzy
It made me wonder if the plan will be to dump all infected people at these during the second wave so the normal Hospitals can carry on as unaffected as possible.
No. They are not normal wards. The are designed for people unconscious and receiving invasive intervention.
Now, dividing up other wards/hospitals between infected and non-infected for a year or so makes sense, and already occurs in a more limited way to what you suggest.
Despite government sitting around allowing the press & social media to whip every **** up into a beach & BBQ frenzy
Am I the only one thinking it is a mostly deliberate ploy to get a nice day of fun out in the sun in quick for the great unwashed on VE bank holiday, and then the gov/police/papers can do a slapped wrist on Monday/Tuesday with something along the lines of "we're still in lockdown for three weeks but a more businesses can open up somewhat"? Or did someone already do that and I missed it?
Publish their findings, and then we can engage with them. If we just get a select and carefully framed view of their advice, through gov spokespeople, then that doesn’t deserve respect beyond that which the government does. We only know who “SAGE” actually are now, thanks to some pushy journalism. Secret, cherry picked, politically driven and spun advice is hard to have respect for. Sorry. Not the fault of the majority of members, but the result of how this government chooses to work. And the same goes for the non-transparent way they have chosen their private sector partners to run testing centres and capture and analyse contact data. No respect for closed, secret government, especially when claiming to act on “The Science” and advice of “Experts”, when the data and people involved are hidden from us.
The problem comes when you have crossover, like Comical Jenny talking about not needing to do testing, or Whitty (?) quoting Spiegelhalter’s article out of context, or Van Tam saying – well – more or less anything. Likewise Ferguson – may be a philanderer and a careless person and a messy coder, but that doesn’t make his science bad.
Yup, you've both had enough of experts with organisations from acronyms saying that they know what is best and getting it consistently wrong.
David Belstein :“Premature relaxing of the rules”
What benchmark are we using here for “premature”
Welcome back to our cummings fanboy
This coming bank holiday may come to be remembered as Virus England day, it's likely to be one giant chickenpox party.
The conflation of Brexit with Victory in Europe is obscene. It's only possible because all those that actually fought in the war are no longer around, though they will be turning in their graves.
All “organisations” get things wrong, and don’t operate in a bubble. SAGE panels on the past have got things wrong. When their findings, data and personal are public, it’a easier for the wider scientific community to comment on it and help amend it in good time. Government ministers and their sidekicks delivering their view of what the “organisation” has recommended, shrouded in secrecy, is what we are dubious about.
And, I don’t consider SAGE an “organisation” in the strictest sense anyway, it is supposed to be a meeting of people from many differing organisations with their own specialisations and purposes and organisational structures and funding. Its usefulness is that it isn’t tightly bound to any one organisation… well, normally anyway.
It’s not following the science, it’s about reassuring the public where other measures are too costly, difficult or overly restrictive
+1
Telegraphed last week by Johnson. It's managing psychology not risk.
BBQs and picnics aren't the issue. We might as well be allowed them, it's not how the disease spreads (assuming people don't end up swapping bodily fluids with strangers in the sand-dunes).
Getting the economy up and running is the challenge.
+1
Telegraphed last week by Johnson.
What you did there, I see it.
Another entertaining view.
To be honest, I'd be surprised if most of Europe isn't just desperate for the UK to leave the EU so they can completely dissociate themselves from UK stupidity.
I only trust in the local exponential rate of change of cases and deaths. Back calculation of R tells you what was happening, not what is happening.
Another piece on the knock on consequences
“I have to say we look from the TB community in a sort of puzzled way because TB has been around for thousands of years,” Ditiu said. “For 100 years we have had a vaccine and we have two or three potential vaccines in the pipeline. We need around half a billion [people] to get the vaccine by 2027 and we look in amazement on a disease that … is 120 days old and it has 100 vaccine candidates in the pipeline. So I think this world, sorry for my French, is really ****ed up,” she said.“The fear we have in the community is that researchers are heading towards just developing a vaccine for Covid. That’s on the agenda of everyone now and very few remain focused on the others [diseases]. We don’t have a vaccine for TB, we don’t have a vaccine for HIV, we don’t have a vaccine for malaria and out of all this, TB is the oldest. So why this reaction? I think because we are a world of idiots. What can I say?”
I only trust in the local exponential rate of change of cases and deaths
How local can you be, can you strip out data to just look at care homes?
Also I saw the local news being excited that a pop up testing facility was coming to Newbury tomorrow, facebook seemed very happy, but surely they only go where needed which suggests we might have a local issue.
How local can you be, can you strip out data to just look at care homes?
Deaths in care homes is recorded and reported now, but local is down to UTLA area and NHS trust only.
I suppose we cant look at a care home curve with any use due to them having been ignored for so long.
I’ve been looking at “not Covid” instead. There are methods to remove normal deaths and reported Covid deaths. Of interest there is a considerable lag between hospital Covid deaths and all deaths. They’ve just peaked. It’s longer than the lag between hospital cases and deaths.
Just got off phone to my mum, having seen today's front pages was quite excited about hosting a birthday party for my neice next weekend.
I think she's so desperate to see her grandkids that she can't help but believe it (she laps up anything the Daily Mail tells her anyway)
Im not sure who thought it was a good idea to leak all that stuff to the press, whether it was deliberate nudge policy or what, but with a sunny bh weekend on the way, I could see it causing problems.
Looks like the govt is trying to manage people's expectations about the announcement on Sunday:
Government urges 'caution' on lockdown easing
Now is it a case of the media jumping the gun and the govt trying to limit the damage or, as I think, they used the papers to test the waters and are now having to backtrack incredibly quickly before the damage is done over the next few days? I think the reaction of the Scottish and Welsh Assemblies has pushed their hand slightly.
As I said, someone with better links than us told me there was no plan for big changes this weekend.
they used the papers to test the waters and are now having to backtrack incredibly quickly before the damage is done over the next few days
Pretty much this for me. All through this (even before) it's one of Cummings' favourite MOs. Leak something from 'sources close to the government' that isn't firm policy yet, see how it flies with the public (using the press to lead with the most extreme version), and only then make the decision and actual announcement (however deliberately vague that may be). Modern populism 101.
they used the papers to test the waters and are now having to backtrack incredibly quickly before the damage is done over the next few days?
I think that level of planning is probably a bit beyond them. More likely that the Dear Leader went way off-piste under questioning from Starmer, which was then loyally trumpeted by his state-backed media sycophants as an end to the lockdown, only for his scientific advisors and the Scottish and Welsh governments to tell him that he can't end the lockdown so he better get the message out that he was talking bollox.
The simple fact is, just like in the US, we're being led by an egotistic idiot who is making it up as he goes along and everyone else is running around trying to mop up the damage. TBH I wouldn't be surprised if Whitty and Vallance had threatened to walk if he didn't row back on relaxing the lockdown. Damage done now though irregardless. It'll be free for all this weekend and a second peak in a few weeeks time.
they used the papers to test the waters and are now having to backtrack incredibly quickly before the damage is done over the next few days
Too late for that. I wanted to cry today. ****ing idiots and ****ers are running and ruling everything.
The media are complicit. As always. Headlines talking about lockdown in past tense. Taking exercise I noticed many more cars out today, and people standing about everywhere talking in local town with more stores opening. Local chip shop reopened allowing ‘3 people in at a time’ and requesting customers ‘give each other 2 metres’. The queue-space is a gangway and a metre at most. Are they going to levitate over and around each other? First in never out?
Out exercising today on bike, made to wait in the road (I eventually detoured) while 5 or six middle-aged guys ****ed about in, out and around a gigantic touring-caravan,stopping mid-task showing each other pics on their phones
Thick as the proverbial and led as sheep via the press and the slick* ambiguity from No 10**. The Plan unfolds.
‘We will nevah nevahh nevahhhh beeeeeeeee, eeeeeeeeeee, eeeeeeeee...
....slaves’ *hic* GISAKISS THEN!
* Relatively speaking
Just got off phone to my mum, having seen today’s front pages was quite excited about hosting a birthday party for my neice next weekend.
I think she’s so desperate to see her grandkids that she can’t help but believe it (she laps up anything the Daily Mail tells her anyway)
Im not sure who thought it was a good idea to leak all that stuff to the press, whether it was deliberate nudge policy or what, but with a sunny bh weekend on the way, I could see it causing problems.
If it gets a few more DM readers turning on the Tories maybe some good can come of it?
It’ll be free for all this weekend and a second peak in a few weeeks time.
Sadly that's been pretty much my mantra in every C19 conversation I've had today. I hope I'm wrong.
On the other hand (tin foil hat time, and I don't think I really subscribe to this but Devil's Advocate and all that), maybe it's 'played for and got' with the longer term strategy if the ill-defined herd immunity idea is still afloat. Cheltenham Festival mk2 anyone?
If it gets a few more DM readers turning on the Tories maybe some good can come of it?
Nah you don't change sides in a culture war, it'll all be someone else's fault
Some really interesting discussion of where the risks lie:
https://erinbromage.wixsite.com/covid19/post/the-risks-know-them-avoid-them
colour noise
... maybe it’s ‘played for and got’ with the longer term strategy if the ill-defined herd immunity idea is still afloat. Cheltenham Festival mk2 anyone?
If instead of wearing a tin-foil hat, you simply judge them by their actions and not their words, it's hard not to come to that conclusion.
Interesting hypothesis that fits a lot of the facts (but fails to explain why so many people outside of Hospital in NY had it: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/04/23/new-antibody-testing-suggests-1-5-new-yorkers-already-had-covid/)
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/we-know-everything-and-nothing-about-covid
Can someone with a bit of medical knowledge confirm or refute this little snippet:
Children appear to have ACE2 receptors ... in their noses but not their lungs.
Importantly, of the countries performing contact tracing properly, only a single outbreak has been reported from an outdoor environment (less than 0.3% of traced infections). (ref)
The most pertinent point to me from oldnpastit’s link...
Well it looks like the papers have completely forgotten about the lockdown as a whole today, no mention of restrictions being lifted apart from the i saying people should use bikes instead of buses and trains to get to work and The Guardian saying the govt is in danger of losing control of the lockdown exit strategy.
I reckon someone's had a 'word' with the editors but they couldn't get anyone to print a headline to undo any damage. Either way I'm off out now early for a quick ride and beat the crowds.
I think the reaction of the Scottish and Welsh Assemblies has pushed their hand slightly.
I think this is a factor - the devolved governments are more cautious and Boris and the Tories would be properly exposed if they split ranks
Well it looks like the papers have completely forgotten about the lockdown as a whole today
However, the seed was planted yesterday. MIL is Daily Wail reader and is convinced we're coming out of lockdown...
https://erinbromage.wixsite.com/covid19/post/the-risks-know-them-avoid-them
/blockquote>Thanks @oldnpastit, the most practically useful article on CV I've seen so far.
Am I the only one thinking it is a mostly deliberate ploy to get a nice day of fun out in the sun in quick for the great unwashed on VE bank holiday, and then the gov/police/papers can do a slapped wrist on Monday/Tuesday with something along the lines of “we’re still in lockdown for three weeks but a more businesses can open up somewhat”? Or did someone already do that and I missed it?
That's my assumption too. Give the great unwashed enough rope. Then deploy the hair shirted curtain twitchers to bay for the continued 'lockdown'.
Nah you don’t change sides in a culture war, it’ll all be someone else’s fault
Never a truer word. Changing sides would mean admitting you were wrong, in any case
Can someone with a bit of medical knowledge confirm or refute this little snippet:
Hard to say from that spectator article
Frustratingly doesn't list a single source which is very shoddy journalism
There's some other interesting theories about why kids might be less likely to be infected/show symptoms
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7113798/
Frustratingly doesn’t list a single source which is very shoddy journalism
Agree. Any reference to any fact/quote needs either enough detail to easily google the source and preferably a link. You rarely get that. 🙁
Real reasons will probably remain a mystery fortunately because the number of infected children is too low to allow good-sized immunological studies.
The last line of that article says it all - we're never going to conclusively find out.
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fped.2020.00206/full
This doesn't appear to say they don't have the receptor, more that there are higher levels of circulating ace-2 in the blood in children.
I personally don't believe that the infection rate is much lower in children than adults, more that they fight it off so quickly it makes it very hard to detect.
From the link tired put on here yesterday, it might be worth at a later date looking for cd4+ t cell reactivity to sars-2 spike protein as that may be a better indicator of infection levels over antibody detection. Mainly as I wonder how long any antibody response will remain detectable
https://erinbromage.wixsite.com/covid19/post/the-risks-know-them-avoid-them
Thanks @oldnpastit, the most practically useful article on CV I’ve seen so far.
+1, some interesting data.
Sounds like enclosed buildings could be the enemy. As we head into summer I wonder if it may help getting schools/businesses to work outside where possible?
....Or if not possible ensure all windows/doors are opened.
