say what? Hands, Face, Space, reducing transmission and saving lives not obvious enough? It’s common bleedin’ sense.
https://twitter.com/hendopolis/status/1311404226195722240?s=09
Not quite sure what the constant comments about schools are driving at
The complete lack of social distancing.
TBH fire fighting IS a legitimate form of government when the problem is a fire, it's just that they're not actually fighting the fires- just running up to a fire, throwing a load of highly flammable exceptionalism cladding on it, then when people point out that it's got worse shouting "Look, another fire" and running away, in the hope that everyone forgets about the last fire. The fire moved the goalposts, but don't worry, Serco will make millions maintaining the fire at its current level, if only Keir Starmer will let them get on with it.
New Zealand's response was firefighting, actual firefighting. Holy shit, a fire, let's put it out straight away. Bet they wish they had a world class oven-ready fire like us.
kimbers, I wrote months ago that if I was feeling particularly generous johnson could be described as PM for the good times.
Even when he was elected there was no sign of good times - unless for those who believed that brexit led directly to their version of the promised land of...uk laws for uk people, white faces only but darker colours allowed to work in NHS and care homes, bountiful trade deals with countries around the globe.
Basking in the reflected glory of adulatory headlines in the mail and telegraph.
Our current problems - CV19 and no deal brexit - are so far beyond johnson's capabilities; he must be wishing he kept his mouth shut and kept his dick in his trousers.
Memo to johnson...be careful what you wish for.
In other news, Stanley Johnson says sorry, but he was only I the UK for one day at that point and hadn’t kept up with the current rules.
No fine as yet.
TBH fire fighting IS a legitimate form of government
In a crisis - yes - it's always messy but as what appears to be objective of re-structuring and shrinking the civil service. I'm not convinced, it's not Avengers Assemble, or which ever bit of fiction or children's programming Mr Cummings has drawn his inspiration from on this one.
It's not the immediate response it's the long term direction of travel. I would not be surprised to find Cummings has used this pandemic as a field trial of his ideology. Anecdotally the locking out of local government and civil service would suggest this.
he was only I the UK for one day at that point and hadn’t kept up with the current rules
Ignorance is no defence (it is apparently an election strategy though)
I wonder where he arrived from, to be out and about and not self-isolating?
He said himself that he had no excuse but obviously in the weasiliy way of using it as an excuse; “The fact this was my first day back in the UK after three weeks abroad is, I am sure, no excuse for not knowing the rules.”
Seems to be an Arsehole who gets treated as some sort of national treasure - madness
BBC News - Covid-19: Growth in cases may be slowing in England
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-54366478
I'm wary of lies, damn lies and statistics, and the way that they are interpreted by the public.
The rate or growth may be slowing but the number is still increasing - because we now have an estimated 1/200 infection rate. We know how exponentials work but at the same time if that was 1/5000 as per the threshold for extra measures (20/100,000) there's just less infections.
Reading that the infection growth rate is slowing is too easy to interpret as 'so we don't need to restrict ourselves as much any more' and that's so wide of the mark right now.
I find this quite a good read - an ex-colleague with a long history in measurement science and analysis, written in a digestible form.
https://protonsforbreakfast.wordpress.com/
Jeremy Corbyn is also expecting a fine for breaking the "rule of six" at a dinner party.
I wonder where he arrived from, to be out and about and not self-isolating?
Greece I think. But it depends on where it was.
hmmmm, from theotherjonv's link
<b>People who do not want economic restrictions </b>deliberately sow confusion that makes it hard for the general public to fully appreciate the basics of viral transmission and inevitable death toll from inaction.
In both cases, they seek to undermine expert opinion and scientific consensus, creating the illusion of real uncertainty in which inaction can be justified.
6. And finally…
People who minimise the importance of climate change tend to be people who also minimise the significance of the COVID-19 pandemic.
It looks like Liverpool and Merseyside are next in line for tougher restrictions
As the government have recently been heavily criticised for foisting measures on the North East with no notice or consultation, they avoided this by sending a government minister to consult with local MPs
That minister was the Minister for Care, Helen Whately
Can you imagine any situation where confidence in government would be improved by the presence of Helen Whately?
Even by the spectacularly inept standards of this cabinet, she stands out as being so dense that light bends around her. Out of her depth on a wet pavement.
Helen explains lockdown rules...
https://twitter.com/BorisJohnson_MP/status/1310477642349633537?s=20
I'm not sure who is writing the Imperial press releases, but you might like to look at the source data from the REACT study - here
Figure 2 shows that the slope WITHIN a survey period is indeed flatter for the REACT-5 sample, which was one week, but taken across the five surveys, the course of the trajectory is blatantly obvious! The rate is not slowing. Is one week long enough to measure the rate? The confidence interval for slope matches the continuous top plot of the same data. I'm not convinced by measurement of R.
And 1/188 people swabbed positive over that week. The highest level since REACT began.
EDIT: That data in full - choose which message you believe!
We know how exponentials work
We no longer have a highly susceptible population. You can't use exponentials to describe this because infected people are going to keep finding themselves meeting other people who are all now immune.
And hopefully we've also all now learned that if you're feeling under the weather, then soldiering on and going to your job at the care home is perhaps not a great idea.
We no longer have a highly susceptible population.
That is the alternative hypothesis. The null is that about 10% have experienced the infection, many, if not all of whom are currently immune to reinfection (certainly severe disease). I have seen little evidence (I don't count media interviews with Prof Gupta as evidence) to reject the null hypothesis. I have seen NO controlled prospective studies to see the effects of pre-existing T-cell cross-reactivity. I HAVE seen that when you increase contacts, transmission increases.
The fundamental problem is that the force of infection (rate of new cases) is proportional to the product of contact rate times fraction susceptible. Hence one political faction (the doom and gloomers) would like to think that changing the first has an effect (with economic consequences), whereas the second (the lockdown skeptics) think the course is down the reducing the latter (and herd immunity). The consequence of a wrong interpretation could be poor (a lot of body bags, if I am grim). The scientific method is about weighing the uncertainty rather than jumping to a conclusion - that is my day job.
What we do know, is that people who mount an antibody response have markedly lower viral loads that do not respond to exogenous antibody treatment (Regeneron announced their first trial data this week). Hence mounting a seropositive response is clearly important for protection, and it is likely that the seropositivity is meaningful.
@theotherjonv - that's a well written piece. But, in my opinion, there's a key part missing; I think we are all clear on what will happen if climate change continues unchecked - we will all die, all of us. What is less clear is what will happen if the current pandemic continues unchecked, yes, the data is clear, the maths is fairly clear - but what would the outcome be? Will we all die? Will some of us die? What?
Correlation between Climate Change deniers and Coronavirus ponderers is bollocks. IMO.
We no longer have a highly susceptible population.
Do you gave any data for this?
@TiRed do you have a TL;DR (or in this case Big Words; Too Dim) summary for your last post please?
RM.
Is anyone else getting frustrated by seemingly intelligent people in work / social groups starting to subscribe to conspiracy theories about testing (false positives) / mortality / prevalence etc?
While I wouldn't trust this Government to run a lemonade stand I find it unlikely that Chris Whitty, Patrick Vallance, and SAGE would encourage them down a course of action that results in thousands of needless deaths and a trashed economy.
I also think it unlikely that the Tory party would willingly send themselves down a line that makes them unelectable for a decade or more. How do you argue with people like this?
We no longer have a highly susceptible population.
I don't know where the hotspots were in the first wave, but are the areas currently in local lockdown areas that had low rates originally? That would corroborate that theory.
El Shalimo – is that a one-off tee?
If not, where can i get one?
https://ellieshirts.com/products/boris-arseholes-shirt/
[TL:DR] New infections are caused by contacts with people who can catch the infection. If you reduced contacts, then new infections go down. If you often meet people who can't catch it, new infections go down. Some believe you must reduce new contacts. Others believe that many more people than first thought can't catch the infection. There is firm evidence to support the first. There isn't much evidence to support the second.
Tar!
RM.
@TiRed - have we any figures or data that looks at illness / death rate outwith Cv19 as an impact of the focus on Cv19?
Listening to a few radio pieces up here over the last few weeks where doctors are anecdotally suggesting that the lack of cancer / disease / testing / rapid treatments / any treatment is now going to lead to a 'third wave' of ill-health and deaths, both now and in future year or more.
Some proper heartbreaking personal stories about diagnosis and treatments to happening or not soon enough to save folk.
It is too early to count mortality due to non-covid - the opportunity costs of protecting health services, since those deaths will occur over a longer time frame than the epidemic. I am sure that people are trying to estimate how many more (than typical) cardiovascular and cancer deaths we can expect over the next 18 months or so. I have not read them. CV deaths may be a good marker, since incidence of first stroke will be independent of healthcare resource (outcome may not be). Cancer deaths will come later due to diagnosis delays, I think that is expected.
[Anedote warning!] My FIL had a stroke at the peal of the epidemic and nothing bad happened...
I do look at all-cause mortality on a weekly basis in both UK and elsewhere. If little changes, we will meet out 10-year historic death count six weeks early this year.
Is anyone else getting frustrated by seemingly intelligent people in work / social groups starting to subscribe to conspiracy theories about testing (false positives) / mortality / prevalence etc?
Work wise? No... they are actually intelligent people. Social wise... yes. Not as bad as on here though, obvs... but I'm hoping a lot of that is people trying out ideas they know are might be nonsense... far better to have them explained away here, than "frustrate" people face to face.
[ edit : especially with TiRed being willing to help improve everyone's understanding here ]
Sorry to get political but along with Johnson Sr getting caught Corbyn got busted having dinner for 9
Labour want corbyn fined, but tories don't
Talk about mixed messages
https://twitter.com/joncstone/status/1311569768437231617?s=19
Allin-Khan is ace. Should a Labour politician be made an example of? Not if they apologise. A real apology, not a Cummings explanation non-apology.
but are the areas currently in local lockdown areas that had low rates originally?
Not here. South-East Wales (Newport and Torfaen I think) had some of the highest rates initially, and we're now a locked-down hotspot area. So there could be something about this particular area that increases transmission.
It could be because the Valleys are to some extend the hinterland of the main towns - Cardiff, Newport and Swansea. Lots of people come to them to shop and to work, possibly more so than in other areas.
Listening to a few radio pieces up here over the last few weeks where doctors are anecdotally suggesting that the lack of cancer / disease / testing / rapid treatments / any treatment is now going to lead to a ‘third wave’ of ill-health and deaths, both now and in future year or more.
Couple of potential examples among close friends and family so far, plus a few people affected by potentially life changing but not fatal conditions. It was always bound to happen, but as TiRed says, won't be properly recorded and analyzed for a few years.
We no longer have a highly susceptible population.
I don’t know where the hotspots were in the first wave, but are the areas currently in local lockdown areas that had low rates originally? That would corroborate that theory.
Not terribly convincing.
Looks like that's pretty much the whole of the North back in lockdown
https://twitter.com/LivEchonews/status/1311601082158780417?s=20
Listening to a few radio pieces up here over the last few weeks where doctors are anecdotally suggesting that the lack of cancer / disease / testing / rapid treatments / any treatment is now going to lead to a ‘third wave’ of ill-health and deaths, both now and in future year or more.
So people in their 40s/50s/60s are going to be dying in order to protect, by and large, people in their 70s/80s/90s.
That makes no sense.
deleted.
Remember, while control measures have restricted access to many health services, not having control measures would have meant both denying even more people of these services (because more of the settings in which they take place could not be made safe to use), and exposing more of those in need of those services to community transmission of a virus that could kill or seriously further impact on their health situation.
deleted
Still waiting for you to provide evidence for
We no longer have a highly susceptible population.
Listening to a few radio pieces up here over the last few weeks where doctors are anecdotally suggesting that the lack of cancer / disease / testing / rapid treatments / any treatment is now going to lead to a ‘third wave’ of ill-health and deaths, both now and in future year or more.
I can well believe it, "excess deaths" peaked in Apr and May, and even then people who had covid, but died weeks or months after recovery were still being counted as Covid deaths.
Whilst I'm sure the Docs will be talking about people who died 'young' because of missed Cancer appointments etc, a lot of people who were at the end of their lives died months or a few years earlier because of lack of heathcare. I'll have a little rant on behalf of District Nurses everywhere. At the start of the crisis two things happened, at least locally to us, Hospitals discharged thousands of old and sick people who would have usually stayed in to 'clear the decks' and to reduce the chances of in-hospital transmission and refereed them to District Nurses for care, at the same time GP surgeries closed their doors and referred their chronic patients to district Nurses for home care. My Wife hasn't been a DN for a couple of years after moving into a more specialist role, but was drafted back. In her Team in normal times they'd typically have 5-8 patients a day and 10-12 on a busy day in Winter, at the worst point they had the equivalent of 80-100 a day, which is of course impossible. Patients who were able to administer their own care, were asked to, others got seen a lot less often and normal procedures abandoned. Lots of patients died earlier than they would have otherwise and I'm sure people have died, who would have lived much longer with better care.
The situation seems, at the moment to be resolved, but my Wife is only just seeing her usual patients now for the first time in months, at a much reduced rate. Her clinic is starting again next week, but it's going to be fairly short-lived as she'll be joining the ART team doing Covid vaccinations as soon as they're ready.
So people in their 40s/50s/60s are going to be dying in order to protect, by and large, people in their 70s/80s/90s.
That makes no sense.
I suppose that's factually correct, but who would want to be the person to decides who lives and dies? Does the death of 1, 40-year-old with half their life to live equal 5 70-year-olds, 10, 15, 20?
More than that, how do you treat all the people in their 70s+ do you just let them fend for themselves, or admit them to Hospital, further spreading the virus and grinding the hospitals to a stop? I think that might have been the point of all the Nightingales, but then of course Boris took a while to work out that whilst Heaven and Earth can be moved to build field hospitals in weeks, you can't train doctors and nurses so quickly.
Really good read here about cluster tracing vs they type of contact tracing we are trying
but are the areas currently in local lockdown areas that had low rates originally?
Not here. South-East Wales (Newport and Torfaen I think) had some of the highest rates initially, and we’re now a locked-down hotspot area. So there could be something about this particular area that increases transmission.
It could be because the Valleys are to some extend the hinterland of the main towns – Cardiff, Newport and Swansea. Lots of people come to them to shop and to work, possibly more so than in other areas.
Wales has had the hotspots grow in the second wave nearly identically to how they happened the first time round. Doesn't point to any immunity effect at all for us.
This one showing that parents are protected from more severe effects by having >1 young kids at home
Would also hopefully mean teachers are protected too
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.09.21.20196428v1.full.pdf+html
So people in their 40s/50s/60s are going to be dying
I have said this many times. We focus on deaths because they are easily measured (in the trade we say it's the hardest endpoint). But the morbidity of this new human pathogen in the young has still not been investigated thoroughly. Anecdotally there are reports of fit young athletes who have been knocked down by infection. Morbidity is also to be managed. Management is about unknowns as well as knowns. The economic consequence in 10 years of an epidemic of coronary disease might be a thing.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41569-020-0413-9
We wary of people who know things with absolute confidence, it's my first measure of scientific credibility (and Richard Feynman's)
