Cwmcarn, Afan, FOD etc will be rammed from the second they re-open until winter. I’ll be avoiding them like the plague and heading to the remotest parts of the Beacons when we’re allowed out again. Which a shame as I love hitting Cwmcarn, Afan and the FOD on a regular basis.

I’m lucky to have a dry Epping forest nearby.  I went yesterday with Junior and they had massive closely space concrete blocks at the entrance exits and across car parks, you can only get in by bike.   I really hope it stays that way.

You lot in England are screwed! Do us a favour and stay out of the other bits of the UK, everything’s closed anyway.

I’ve formally declared my house an annexe of Scotland, will be following Nicola Sturgeon’s advice.

*pours Laphroaig in tribute*

So, to summarise:

Get back to work, you plebs!

The depot I work in is going into furlough and being mothballed on Friday, they’ve told us it’ll be a minimum of 6 weeks before they even think of re-opening it. Should be enough time for the second peak to make itself known and us all to be back at square 1.

So furlough payments stop tomorrow?

weeksy, it’s the absence of clarity and consistency; plus an attempt to move from state imposed diktat to asking people to take personal responsibility.
Personal responsibility is open to interpretation and, by definition, will be inconsistent.
At an absolute minimum, johnson should have discussed and agreed a unified approach with the devolved leaders; he didn’t.

On the plus side he didn’t suggest drinking bleach.

For all the people saying they’re doing it wrong, how would you have done it instead? What are the pitfalls? Benefit?

A good question, frankly it seems a lot of people just think it’s wrong because Boris said it.

He’s just a figure head for a huge number of no doubt very talented people carefully tying to work out how to follow a line between half a million dead from Corona and a 21st century Great Depression and associated mental health epidemic.

Honestly I’d be more concerned about the line to the effect of “economically more dynamic” post-Covid. That rarely bodes well for the masses when it comes from a Tory. Expect reductions in employment protections and industry regulations.

A good question, frankly it seems a lot of people just think it’s wrong because Boris said it.

That seems to be the case

At an absolute minimum, johnson should have discussed and agreed a unified approach with the devolved leaders;

I’d assume in simple terms, they disagreed. But he’s the boss so he gets the final say for ‘us’

Nice of Boris to offer England up as an experiment to watch the infection rate rise again.

Petri dish UK – come the Brexit he’ll be able to offer an expendable population with plenty of medical data and no pesky data privacy laws. It’s a bold way to fill the nations coffers.

I’d assume in simple terms, they disagreed.

There seemed to be some stories circulating he hadn’t or had deferred the meeting then let them know today. Allowing people to drive then gives the devolved governments a headache to sort out. Some might think that’s trying to bring them to heel.

So a year to eighteen months of fluctuating lockdown restrictions and relaxings to push ‘controlled’ waves of patients through, then?

Basically herd immunity by another name?

Hoping to reduce the severity of necessary measures with testing if we can pull our fingers out and do it….?

Since this whole thing started, the answer to the question ‘well how would you have done it?’ Has been ‘well, not like that’

Not tell people to go to work in the morning, give at least a few days to plan.

He didn’t say to go to work tomorrow.

I’m not sure if I’m more worried about what Boris said or what the social media world thinks he said

Driving to exercise was never banned, so this is just a slight relaxation of this.

Same with the ‘sitting in a park’ line – prior to today you could stop for a rest while exersising but going for a picnic wasn’t allowed (although that didn’t stop some people). Now that’s being relaxed a bit too.

Given that the lowest risk area, and the easiest area to keep 2m away from other people, is probbably the outdoors, it makes sense this would be the first thing to ‘open’ back up.

Not much will change for me, I can still work from home so that won’t change any time soon, I’ll still do my local runs and rides, I won’t be putting the MTB on the car at the weekend and going to ride an MTB spot 40 miles away.

How the general public will read this, is another matter – but I don’t see the mass exodus to Snowdown/Cornwall/peak district etc like some seem to think will happen.

how would you have done it instead?

I would have done exactly what Germany did. I would have explained how serious the situation was, told people to avoid contacts and isolate themselves and devolved testing. I would have done this just as Merkel did on March 18, but we had the opportunity to do this at least a week earlier….

“It depends on every person. We are not condemned to passively accepting the spread of this virus…Whoever avoids unnecessary encounters helps all those who have to deal with more cases in hospitals every day.”

Merkel urges Germans to stay home, no restrictive measures

Boris’ Churchill moment was the second week in MARCH not May. He failed miserably.

I would have done exactly what Germany did

Which may have worked here, but may not? How will we know?

Since this whole thing started, the answer to the question ‘well how would you have done it?’

Got rid of Boris?

This weekend, with hindsight, was always going to be chaotic. When they shuffled the dates and the next 3 week review looked like falling on the eve of VE Day I thought it would be a recipe for disaster. Boris giddy on nostalgia goes off on one and a weekend of misunderstanding and social mixing ensues. It seemed perfectly reasonable to make the announcements after the weekend.

In reality shake it all about Boris turned up at PMQs causing confusion before the weekend. Briefing it out Boris did a stint before the weekend sowing more confusion. If you were dealing with a small child you might reasonable think they were being petulant. And then we get to today…

Short of removing team Boris it seems there was no to avoid chaos.

All the bike parks Instagrams are batting off bellends saying Boris said we can do what we want from Wednesday, are you open

BPW already had to call in the police as people have been removing barriers and riding trails

Short of removing team Boris it seems there was no to avoid chaos

You’re aware that the UK society voted them in?

weeksy, johnson is only ‘the boss’ when it comes to reserved matters; health and social services are devolved in both scotland and wales.
This is one very good reason why he should have sought consensus.

weeksy, johnson is only ‘the boss’ when it comes to reserved matters; health and social services are devolved in both scotland and wales.
This is one very good reason why he should have sought consensus

What about if they couldn’t? Then what?

I would have done exactly what Germany did

Boris’ Churchill moment was the second week in MARCH not May. He failed miserably.

Yes but Churchill had the captured enigma machines and Bletchley Park, he new what the Germans were doing. Look at that video of Merkel, no subtitles, bloody underhand trick so we wouldn’t know what they were up to.

This is how we know weeksy – I produced this plot on March 16. Cases and Deaths looked exactly the same as the global average. UK cases also looked the same, but deaths were increasing faster.

weeksy
Subscriber

For all the people saying they’re doing it wrong, how would you have done it instead? What are the pitfalls? Benefit?

Unlimited travel for exercise is indefensible at this point, that’s an ideal way to spread it.

The wooly guidance on returning to work is poor, people need clarity and they need an assurance that they won’t be forced back to work in an unsafe situation. And the timing of course is just ridiculous, announcing something like that at 7pm on a sunday ffs.

Changing the messaging as they have is daft, things need to be coherent and well explained. They don’t have to be simple, they just have to be well delivered. That isn’t the case here. Even a couple of days ago Raaaaaab said he didn’t expect unlimited exercise frinstance. The last week has been an absolute fiasco.

In fact messaging is always one of the biggest problems, there have been times when they’ve made a sensible move but managed to communicate it in a way that caused confusion and failure. And there’s been times when they’ve made a daft move and also communicated it in a way that caused confusion and failure and make it even worse. The “travel to exercise” announcement is exactly that, in practice for most people it’s not a big change but it’s being seen as an opening of doors, as you can see already on bike park’s pages etc. 7 Stanes Forum is getting questions about travelling to glentress to ride ffs, and that’s not even in bloody England

Mostly though, it needs more time and it needs more reduction. The R rate has actually been going up but it’s not just that, they seem to have decided that below 1 is enough. It isn’t- it needs to be below 1, <after> the change, and that does not look likely. The new infection rate isn’t showing any dependable decline (though testing might be affecting that as ever) and remains in the 4-6000 band that it’s been since April.

Essentially the lockdown so far has done the job of stopping the exponential growth, but it’s still spreading and the level of infection is also still too high (R1 remember means only that we stand still; if you’ve got a low level of infection and a R of 1, that’s not too awful. But that’s not the UK, we need to see a sustained period well below 1 to get the number of active cases- the infected population- down substantially. The government’s earlier failures haven’t gone away and they’re the reason why we need to do more with the lockdown than other countries have. At the moment their most optimistic goal seems to be to keep the pool of covid in the UK population about the same, and it’s by no means clear that they’ll achieve that.

Germany is intensely worried about their R hovering around 1 after their relaxation, despite having about 1/3d as many new cases per day as we do. In fact our new cases per day is almost the same as there’s was a month ago, when they were just starting to get on top of it. But we’re treating a situation that is very comparable on the R rate, and much worse on the infections per capita, as if it’s time to relax, while they’re considering tightening the rules again.

You’re aware that the UK society voted them in?

I thought it was the Conservative party members that voted Team Boris in. The rest of us are just along for the ride.

Which may have worked here, but may not? How will we know?

Well as certain people are proving the difference to the numbers may have been the idiot quotient but Germany certainly exhibiting more success than us…….

You’re aware that the UK society voted them in?

Oh cool didn’t realise that once someone’s voted in that means you’re not allowed to criticise them.

I don’t think they are doing it wrong really,

Wait… what?!?

just that his messaging is so confused that everyone seems to be interpreting it however they like.

Oh, you do realise they’re doing it wrong then. Carry on…

@weeksy; a few things will show how well he did today.
One of them is the death toll.
Fingers crossed, Eh?

Just to be 100% crystal clear I am not riding my bike anymore then I already am until cafes are reopened!!

Thousands of Germans have been marching to protest about the lockdown measures apparently. There really is no easy answer to this problem.

There is a difference between actions and interpretation.
It is the ambiguity that allows variation in interpretation I have an issue with

Edit: just to be clear i have lots of issues with how the government have behaved up to now, my comment was specifically on this latest announcement

One of them is the death toll.

You really don’t want to see the analyses I’ve been looking at this afternoon 🙁

The next all-cause mortality data comes out on Tuesday for Week 18. I am hoping that this shows a clearly defined peak in excess deaths. I now have a methodology to predict total excess deaths from COVID19 hospital deaths. I will wait until that data before I release the analysis, because at the moment the epidemic tail looks awful. I’m hoping it get’s better with that extra week’s data!

He didn’t say to go to work tomorrow.

He said go to work next week, thats tomorrow!

How the general public will read this, is another matter – but I don’t see the mass exodus to Snowdown/Cornwall/peak district etc like some seem to think will happen.

I’m not so sure ,
Papers last week said lockdown over by monday
stay home save lives, is no longer official message
Paper
Johnson just said we can drive anywhere for unlimited exercise, parks
Back to work for manufacturing

I think it will be busy, especially if the weather is nice

Thousands of Germans have been marching to protest about the lockdown measures apparently.

5 folk turned up to aberdeens protest at lockdown.

Could have social distances then in a phone box.

. I now have a methodology to predict total excess deaths from COVID19 hospital deaths. I

Its easy you dumbo expert, just add the blue bit to the red bit, red is total deaths so far what 32k plus the blue so I reckon 90k..easy.

I thought it was the Conservative party members that voted Team Boris in. The rest of us are just along for the ride.

It was. Then we had a general election.

red is total deaths so far what 32k plus the blue so I reckon 90k

You bugger, you’ve sussed it already! And here was I trying to bootstrap my confidence limits for the sum from a non-linear mixed effects analysis of England and Wales NHS regions. The plots really are blue and red too 😉

Your guess is in the right ballpark too. But with numbers like this you want to have a bit more confidence.

Your guess is in the right ballpark too. But with numbers like this you want to have a bit more confidence.

I couldnt understand why they kept showing the graph, it was upsetting me, but I dont think they knew what it showed.