I have followed the governments advice from day one, ordered my parents to stay in, clapped for the NHS at the front door at 8pm tonight, the whole shebang... but am I really the only one on here who doesn’t have nagging doubts that the 24hr news cycle, the tabloid headlines, the way of human nature to be preoccupied with catastrophe might mean we are over reacting?
I feel slightly like one of the Peoples Temple folk who drank the pretend poison Jim Jones gave them to test their loyalty before the kool aid came out
Normalcy bias is very hard to shift. Even tho i first identified this bias here on PB, I still suffer from it. Sometimes I walk out of my door, and think, “WTF, let’s go back to London. Have a nice lunch. This is absurd.”
But this isn’t absurd. This is a virus with the potential to collapse societies, via their health systems. Those are the cold hard facts, as we see in Wuhan, Italy and Spain.
We cannot deny it.
Indeed.
If anything I think a lot of people are still in denial.
We're about to see a death surge, especially in London.
By the way, I know a lot of people who have it, or we assume so. No testing so no proof.
FWIW I'm horrified that a cordon sanitaire hasn't been thrown up around London - roadblocks, no trains in or out - simply to protect the provinces.
If the capital goes the way of Lombardy then the obvious risk is that panicked Londoners will try to flee - not just wealthy second home owners, but those with friends or family elsewhere who are willing to put them up - thus spreading the disease everywhere else.
I'm not one of these self-proclaimed experts and I may very well be wrong, but this does have the appearance of a catastrophe waiting to happen.
I have followed the governments advice from day one, ordered my parents to stay in, clapped for the NHS at the front door at 8pm tonight, the whole shebang... but am I really the only one on here who doesn’t have nagging doubts that the 24hr news cycle, the tabloid headlines, the way of human nature to be preoccupied with catastrophe might mean we are over reacting?
I feel slightly like one of the Peoples Temple folk who drank the pretend poison Jim Jones gave them to test their loyalty before the kool aid came out
Normalcy bias is very hard to shift. Even tho i first identified this bias here on PB, I still suffer from it. Sometimes I walk out of my door, and think, “WTF, let’s go back to London. Have a nice lunch. This is absurd.”
But this isn’t absurd. This is a virus with the potential to collapse societies, via their health systems. Those are the cold hard facts, as we see in Wuhan, Italy and Spain.
We cannot deny it.
Indeed.
If anything I think a lot of people are still in denial.
We're about to see a death surge, especially in London.
By the way, I know a lot of people who have it, or we assume so. No testing so no proof.
FWIW I'm horrified that a cordon sanitaire hasn't been thrown up around London - roadblocks, no trains in or out - simply to protect the provinces.
If the capital goes the way of Lombardy then the obvious risk is that panicked Londoners will try to flee - not just wealthy second home owners, but those with friends or family elsewhere who are willing to put them up - thus spreading the disease everywhere else.
I'm not one of these self-proclaimed experts and I may very well be wrong, but this does have the appearance of a catastrophe waiting to happen.
I have followed the governments advice from day one, ordered my parents to stay in, clapped for the NHS at the front door at 8pm tonight, the whole shebang... but am I really the only one on here who doesn’t have nagging doubts that the 24hr news cycle, the tabloid headlines, the way of human nature to be preoccupied with catastrophe might mean we are over reacting?
I feel slightly like one of the Peoples Temple folk who drank the pretend poison Jim Jones gave them to test their loyalty before the kool aid came out
Normalcy bias is very hard to shift. Even tho i first identified this bias here on PB, I still suffer from it. Sometimes I walk out of my door, and think, “WTF, let’s go back to London. Have a nice lunch. This is absurd.”
But this isn’t absurd. This is a virus with the potential to collapse societies, via their health systems. Those are the cold hard facts, as we see in Wuhan, Italy and Spain.
We cannot deny it.
Indeed.
If anything I think a lot of people are still in denial.
We're about to see a death surge, especially in London.
By the way, I know a lot of people who have it, or we assume so. No testing so no proof.
FWIW I'm horrified that a cordon sanitaire hasn't been thrown up around London - roadblocks, no trains in or out - simply to protect the provinces.
If the capital goes the way of Lombardy then the obvious risk is that panicked Londoners will try to flee - not just wealthy second home owners, but those with friends or family elsewhere who are willing to put them up - thus spreading the disease everywhere else.
I'm not one of these self-proclaimed experts and I may very well be wrong, but this does have the appearance of a catastrophe waiting to happen.
Those who can have already got out. Virtually every holiday home in Dartmouth is already occupied.
I have followed the governments advice from day one, ordered my parents to stay in, clapped for the NHS at the front door at 8pm tonight, the whole shebang... but am I really the only one on here who doesn’t have nagging doubts that the 24hr news cycle, the tabloid headlines, the way of human nature to be preoccupied with catastrophe might mean we are over reacting?
I feel slightly like one of the Peoples Temple folk who drank the pretend poison Jim Jones gave them to test their loyalty before the kool aid came out
Normalcy bias is very hard to shift. Even tho i first identified this bias here on PB, I still suffer from it. Sometimes I walk out of my door, and think, “WTF, let’s go back to London. Have a nice lunch. This is absurd.”
But this isn’t absurd. This is a virus with the potential to collapse societies, via their health systems. Those are the cold hard facts, as we see in Wuhan, Italy and Spain.
We cannot deny it.
Indeed.
If anything I think a lot of people are still in denial.
We're about to see a death surge, especially in London.
By the way, I know a lot of people who have it, or we assume so. No testing so no proof.
I'm not one of these self-proclaimed experts and I may very well be wrong, but this does have the appearance of a catastrophe waiting to happen.
I think you're right. And much as I'd love the economy to get going again (TGOF666) if this goes the way of Italy then the virus will still be in charge, not the economy.
I have followed the governments advice from day one, ordered my parents to stay in, clapped for the NHS at the front door at 8pm tonight, the whole shebang... but am I really the only one on here who doesn’t have nagging doubts that the 24hr news cycle, the tabloid headlines, the way of human nature to be preoccupied with catastrophe might mean we are over reacting?
I feel slightly like one of the Peoples Temple folk who drank the pretend poison Jim Jones gave them to test their loyalty before the kool aid came out
Normalcy bias is very hard to shift. Even tho i first identified this bias here on PB, I still suffer from it. Sometimes I walk out of my door, and think, “WTF, let’s go back to London. Have a nice lunch. This is absurd.”
But this isn’t absurd. This is a virus with the potential to collapse societies, via their health systems. Those are the cold hard facts, as we see in Wuhan, Italy and Spain.
We cannot deny it.
Indeed.
If anything I think a lot of people are still in denial.
We're about to see a death surge, especially in London.
By the way, I know a lot of people who have it, or we assume so. No testing so no proof.
FWIW I'm horrified that a cordon sanitaire hasn't been thrown up around London - roadblocks, no trains in or out - simply to protect the provinces.
If the capital goes the way of Lombardy then the obvious risk is that panicked Londoners will try to flee - not just wealthy second home owners, but those with friends or family elsewhere who are willing to put them up - thus spreading the disease everywhere else.
I'm not one of these self-proclaimed experts and I may very well be wrong, but this does have the appearance of a catastrophe waiting to happen.
Orange telecoms in France reckon from mobile usage data that 20% of Parisians have left Paris. I would not have guessed that more than say 2% had realistic options as to where to go. I don't think you can stop 20% of a city from leaving it without a full on shooting war.
Last post for a few hours (I can only take in so much of this at a time). For the past week I've been pretty favourable about Boris and the Gov't. I think they're handling this pretty well. Boris looks knackered, which is good because he should do. They're doing alright imho. Thumbs up from this leftie.
However, they clearly should have acted sooner. Allowing Cheltenham to go ahead, for instance, was pretty gobsmacking.
I have followed the governments advice from day one, ordered my parents to stay in, clapped for the NHS at the front door at 8pm tonight, the whole shebang... but am I really the only one on here who doesn’t have nagging doubts that the 24hr news cycle, the tabloid headlines, the way of human nature to be preoccupied with catastrophe might mean we are over reacting?
I feel slightly like one of the Peoples Temple folk who drank the pretend poison Jim Jones gave them to test their loyalty before the kool aid came out
Normalcy bias is very hard to shift. Even tho i first identified this bias here on PB, I still suffer from it. Sometimes I walk out of my door, and think, “WTF, let’s go back to London. Have a nice lunch. This is absurd.”
But this isn’t absurd. This is a virus with the potential to collapse societies, via their health systems. Those are the cold hard facts, as we see in Wuhan, Italy and Spain.
We cannot deny it.
Indeed.
If anything I think a lot of people are still in denial.
We're about to see a death surge, especially in London.
By the way, I know a lot of people who have it, or we assume so. No testing so no proof.
I'm not one of these self-proclaimed experts and I may very well be wrong, but this does have the appearance of a catastrophe waiting to happen.
I think you're right. And much as I'd love the economy to get going again (TGOF666) if this goes the way of Italy then the virus will still be in charge, not the economy.
Positivity! One of my sons does business with Chinese (and other) radio and TV stations, among others, and reports that his contacts and commercial prospects are starting up again. Texted yesterday to say he had a lot on; we asked work or family ..... and he replied 'both'. China, he reports, is back to work now. Which is good news.
If he can point to one country in the world which was able to be fully prepared for this I'll eat my hat. The fact is that we, just like everwhere else are taking extreme measures to maintain and protect our health systems at massive cost to personal freedom and the economy. Nowhere can operate at this level in normal times - twould be like putting snowploughs on every street corner every year in case we get more than 2cms of snow! The man is a complete tool who has done huge damage to the UK political system by failing to provide an effective opposition and to the moral fibre of the UK by his tolerance of institutional racism anong his supporters.
I have followed the governments advice from day one, ordered my parents to stay in, clapped for the NHS at the front door at 8pm tonight, the whole shebang... but am I really the only one on here who doesn’t have nagging doubts that the 24hr news cycle, the tabloid headlines, the way of human nature to be preoccupied with catastrophe might mean we are over reacting?
I feel slightly like one of the Peoples Temple folk who drank the pretend poison Jim Jones gave them to test their loyalty before the kool aid came out
Normalcy bias is very hard to shift. Even tho i first identified this bias here on PB, I still suffer from it. Sometimes I walk out of my door, and think, “WTF, let’s go back to London. Have a nice lunch. This is absurd.”
But this isn’t absurd. This is a virus with the potential to collapse societies, via their health systems. Those are the cold hard facts, as we see in Wuhan, Italy and Spain.
We cannot deny it.
Indeed.
If anything I think a lot of people are still in denial.
We're about to see a death surge, especially in London.
By the way, I know a lot of people who have it, or we assume so. No testing so no proof.
I'm not one of these self-proclaimed experts and I may very well be wrong, but this does have the appearance of a catastrophe waiting to happen.
I think you're right. And much as I'd love the economy to get going again (TGOF666) if this goes the way of Italy then the virus will still be in charge, not the economy.
Positivity! One of my sons does business with Chinese (and other) radio and TV stations, among others, and reports that his contacts and commercial prospects are starting up again. Texted yesterday to say he had a lot on; we asked work or family ..... and he replied 'both'. China, he reports, is back to work now. Which is good news.
That is good.
It's going to be 'interesting' to see if the UK and especially US can arrive at that stage anything like so quickly without China's phenomenally stringent lockdown. Which is a loaded way of saying, we can't and we won't.
I don’t see why there should be an exodus of Londoners. It is still the case and will remain that there is a difference between the numbers that are “horrific” for the ability of the NHS to cope, and numbers that basic maths suggest that individuals have a significant chance of catching this and getting seriously ill.
Furthermore most people are extreme social distancing and are therefore not at particular risk. People who are at greater risk are people who are not in a position to practice extreme distancing (mainly due to work). Given that these people are already at greater risk they are not likely to suddenly take decisions to flee.
It was disappointing and unless the EU changes course expect considerable lingering resentment. It does seem absurd as it can only both worsen and prolong the crisis.
I don’t see why there should be an exodus of Londoners. It is still the case and will remain that there is a difference between the numbers that are “horrific” for the ability of the NHS to cope, and numbers that basic maths suggest that individuals have a significant chance of catching this and getting seriously ill.
Furthermore most people are extreme social distancing and are therefore not at particular risk. People who are at greater risk are people who are not in a position to practice extreme distancing (mainly due to work). Given that these people are already at greater risk they are not likely to suddenly take decisions to flee.
Don’t confuse the matter with logic. Anyone who lives in an area with second homes has seen the Londoners flooding to them during the earlier part of this month. Thankfully they haven’t all been writing condescending articles for the Telegraph.
I have followed the governments advice from day one, ordered my parents to stay in, clapped for the NHS at the front door at 8pm tonight, the whole shebang... but am I really the only one on here who doesn’t have nagging doubts that the 24hr news cycle, the tabloid headlines, the way of human nature to be preoccupied with catastrophe might mean we are over reacting?
I feel slightly like one of the Peoples Temple folk who drank the pretend poison Jim Jones gave them to test their loyalty before the kool aid came out
Normalcy bias is very hard to shift. Even tho i first identified this bias here on PB, I still suffer from it. Sometimes I walk out of my door, and think, “WTF, let’s go back to London. Have a nice lunch. This is absurd.”
But this isn’t absurd. This is a virus with the potential to collapse societies, via their health systems. Those are the cold hard facts, as we see in Wuhan, Italy and Spain.
We cannot deny it.
Indeed.
If anything I think a lot of people are still in denial.
We're about to see a death surge, especially in London.
By the way, I know a lot of people who have it, or we assume so. No testing so no proof.
I'm not one of these self-proclaimed experts and I may very well be wrong, but this does have the appearance of a catastrophe waiting to happen.
I think you're right. And much as I'd love the economy to get going again (TGOF666) if this goes the way of Italy then the virus will still be in charge, not the economy.
Positivity! One of my sons does business with Chinese (and other) radio and TV stations, among others, and reports that his contacts and commercial prospects are starting up again. Texted yesterday to say he had a lot on; we asked work or family ..... and he replied 'both'. China, he reports, is back to work now. Which is good news.
That is good.
It's going to be 'interesting' to see if the UK and especially US can arrive at that stage anything like so quickly without China's phenomenally stringent lockdown. Which is a loaded way of saying, we can't and we won't.
However, if China is starting to tick again afte 4-5 weeks mid May should see us (that's Europe) moving back to normality. Whatever the new normality will be!
I don’t see why there should be an exodus of Londoners. It is still the case and will remain that there is a difference between the numbers that are “horrific” for the ability of the NHS to cope, and numbers that basic maths suggest that individuals have a significant chance of catching this and getting seriously ill.
Furthermore most people are extreme social distancing and are therefore not at particular risk. People who are at greater risk are people who are not in a position to practice extreme distancing (mainly due to work). Given that these people are already at greater risk they are not likely to suddenly take decisions to flee.
Don’t confuse the matter with logic. Anyone who lives in an area with second homes has seen the Londoners flooding to them during the earlier part of this month. Thankfully they haven’t all been writing condescending articles for the Telegraph.
Professor Barclay on Newsnight again making the point that the severity of your illness is influenced by the amount of virus you receive on first infection. She is a professor of infectious diseases so ought to know.
Hence the worryingly high proportion of reported cases in Spain found in the medical profession.
Now that most people are keeping their distance from each other and all the shops and workplaces that are still operational are getting better at implementing good hygiene and social distancing practices, one wonders if the proportion of very mild or asymptomatic cases might increase accordingly?
In a best case scenario, we might find after three months that a large chunk of the country has had this illness whilst being either wholly unaware of it, or having self-isolated without being at all certain that they were suffering from it. Though this can only be determined once the testing capacity is sufficient to check a representative sample of the general population, of course.
A really striking thing about Spain is the percentage of deaths there have been in private rest homes for the elderly - about a third of the total. These are required to provide affordable care, but also turn a profit. The resulting trade-offs are only now coming to light. You cannot do social care on the cheap.
I don’t see why there should be an exodus of Londoners. It is still the case and will remain that there is a difference between the numbers that are “horrific” for the ability of the NHS to cope, and numbers that basic maths suggest that individuals have a significant chance of catching this and getting seriously ill.
Furthermore most people are extreme social distancing and are therefore not at particular risk. People who are at greater risk are people who are not in a position to practice extreme distancing (mainly due to work). Given that these people are already at greater risk they are not likely to suddenly take decisions to flee.
Don’t confuse the matter with logic. Anyone who lives in an area with second homes has seen the Londoners flooding to them during the earlier part of this month. Thankfully they haven’t all been writing condescending articles for the Telegraph.
Such as Balmoral?
I haven’t seen any articles, condescending or otherwise, written by Balmoral.
I don’t see why there should be an exodus of Londoners. It is still the case and will remain that there is a difference between the numbers that are “horrific” for the ability of the NHS to cope, and numbers that basic maths suggest that individuals have a significant chance of catching this and getting seriously ill.
Furthermore most people are extreme social distancing and are therefore not at particular risk. People who are at greater risk are people who are not in a position to practice extreme distancing (mainly due to work). Given that these people are already at greater risk they are not likely to suddenly take decisions to flee.
Don’t confuse the matter with logic. Anyone who lives in an area with second homes has seen the Londoners flooding to them during the earlier part of this month. Thankfully they haven’t all been writing condescending articles for the Telegraph.
Yeah but my point is that anyone who is going has largely gone. There aren’t that many people with holiday homes.
I don’t see why there should be an exodus of Londoners. It is still the case and will remain that there is a difference between the numbers that are “horrific” for the ability of the NHS to cope, and numbers that basic maths suggest that individuals have a significant chance of catching this and getting seriously ill.
Furthermore most people are extreme social distancing and are therefore not at particular risk. People who are at greater risk are people who are not in a position to practice extreme distancing (mainly due to work). Given that these people are already at greater risk they are not likely to suddenly take decisions to flee.
Don’t confuse the matter with logic. Anyone who lives in an area with second homes has seen the Londoners flooding to them during the earlier part of this month. Thankfully they haven’t all been writing condescending articles for the Telegraph.
Such as Balmoral?
I haven’t seen any articles, condescending or otherwise, written by Balmoral.
Although it is not getting a lot of airtime, the Chancellor is already flagging that he is thinking about how to balance the books.
Harmonising self employed tax and NI with that of the employed clearly makes sense, and has been on the Treasury wish list for a while.
Was there ever a better time to make a bold move toward simplification and merge tax and NI altogether? Yes, there’ll be an extra burden on wealthier pensioners, but not an unreasonable one in the circumstances.
If he can point to one country in the world which was able to be fully prepared for this I'll eat my hat.
The word "fully" is doing a lot of work there. German hospitals seemed to have more icu beds, for instance, and should we ignore that because Germany was not "fully" prepared?
On the wider point, Boris himself was an austerity-sceptic and even before Covid-19 had won an election based on increasing investment in public services. Boris won not by being a better Theresa May but by being a better Jeremy Corbyn than Corbyn himself.
I have followed the governments advice from day one, ordered my parents to stay in, clapped for the NHS at the front door at 8pm tonight, the whole shebang... but am I really the only one on here who doesn’t have nagging doubts that the 24hr news cycle, the tabloid headlines, the way of human nature to be preoccupied with catastrophe might mean we are over reacting?
I feel slightly like one of the Peoples Temple folk who drank the pretend poison Jim Jones gave them to test their loyalty before the kool aid came out
Normalcy bias is very hard to shift. Even tho i first identified this bias here on PB, I still suffer from it. Sometimes I walk out of my door, and think, “WTF, let’s go back to London. Have a nice lunch. This is absurd.”
But this isn’t absurd. This is a virus with the potential to collapse societies, via their health systems. Those are the cold hard facts, as we see in Wuhan, Italy and Spain.
We cannot deny it.
Indeed.
If anything I think a lot of people are still in denial.
We're about to see a death surge, especially in London.
By the way, I know a lot of people who have it, or we assume so. No testing so no proof.
I'm not one of these self-proclaimed experts and I may very well be wrong, but this does have the appearance of a catastrophe waiting to happen.
I think you're right. And much as I'd love the economy to get going again (TGOF666) if this goes the way of Italy then the virus will still be in charge, not the economy.
Positivity! One of my sons does business with Chinese (and other) radio and TV stations, among others, and reports that his contacts and commercial prospects are starting up again. Texted yesterday to say he had a lot on; we asked work or family ..... and he replied 'both'. China, he reports, is back to work now. Which is good news.
That is good.
It's going to be 'interesting' to see if the UK and especially US can arrive at that stage anything like so quickly without China's phenomenally stringent lockdown. Which is a loaded way of saying, we can't and we won't.
However, if China is starting to tick again afte 4-5 weeks mid May should see us (that's Europe) moving back to normality. Whatever the new normality will be!
April will be grim. A lot of death. A lot of fear. A lot of businesses still falling over the edge.
But also a huge dropping off in numbers across Europe. USA - not so much.
May should see some optimism returning. The greatest challenge for Government in this whole crisis will be in handling this. Preventing a headlong rush to "normal" behaviour. Because everyone will be wanting to get out to their favourite pubs and restaurants and party like its 1999. Partly out of a desire to help them out and see them back in business. Partly because they have gone stir crazy.
And public health - your health in public - will be a Big Thing. Anyone with a summer cold will risk being beaten to a pulp by a mob. Coughing in public will be a capital offence, in the Court of Public Opinion. Temperature testing will be the norm before you are allowed in anywhere, on anything. I hope the Govt. has been sourcing these too, ready for their need as part of planning for the Time Afterwards.
Although it is not getting a lot of airtime, the Chancellor is already flagging that he is thinking about how to balance the books.
Harmonising self employed tax and NI with that of the employed clearly makes sense, and has been on the Treasury wish list for a while.
Was there ever a better time to make a bold move toward simplification and merge tax and NI altogether? Yes, there’ll be an extra burden on wealthier pensioners, but not an unreasonable one in the circumstances.
Absolutely right. The government is also going to have to find ways to secure ongoing, above inflation, funding for the NHS and finally get to grips with paying for social care. It’s the decisions it takes in the aftermath that will define it. Not what it does now.
Although it is not getting a lot of airtime, the Chancellor is already flagging that he is thinking about how to balance the books.
Harmonising self employed tax and NI with that of the employed clearly makes sense, and has been on the Treasury wish list for a while.
Was there ever a better time to make a bold move toward simplification and merge tax and NI altogether? Yes, there’ll be an extra burden on wealthier pensioners, but not an unreasonable one in the circumstances.
The economy has been tanked largely to save the elderly. The elderly are going to have to accept that there must be a price to pay for that.
The end of the triple lock for sure. We are going to be at risk of inflation. It has to go.
I don’t see why there should be an exodus of Londoners. It is still the case and will remain that there is a difference between the numbers that are “horrific” for the ability of the NHS to cope, and numbers that basic maths suggest that individuals have a significant chance of catching this and getting seriously ill.
Furthermore most people are extreme social distancing and are therefore not at particular risk. People who are at greater risk are people who are not in a position to practice extreme distancing (mainly due to work). Given that these people are already at greater risk they are not likely to suddenly take decisions to flee.
Don’t confuse the matter with logic. Anyone who lives in an area with second homes has seen the Londoners flooding to them during the earlier part of this month. Thankfully they haven’t all been writing condescending articles for the Telegraph.
Such as Balmoral?
Yes - although for the Queen to be whisked off to Windsor is understandable I feel sure she could have been very well protected at Buck Pal. OTOH - Windsor is her primary residence.
Professor Barclay on Newsnight again making the point that the severity of your illness is influenced by the amount of virus you receive on first infection. She is a professor of infectious diseases so ought to know.
I noticed that she used the phrase "almost certainly".
I have followed the governments advice from day one, ordered my parents to stay in, clapped for the NHS at the front door at 8pm tonight, the whole shebang... but am I really the only one on here who doesn’t have nagging doubts that the 24hr news cycle, the tabloid headlines, the way of human nature to be preoccupied with catastrophe might mean we are over reacting?
I feel slightly like one of the Peoples Temple folk who drank the pretend poison Jim Jones gave them to test their loyalty before the kool aid came out
Normalcy bias is very hard to shift. Even tho i first identified this bias here on PB, I still suffer from it. Sometimes I walk out of my door, and think, “WTF, let’s go back to London. Have a nice lunch. This is absurd.”
But this isn’t absurd. This is a virus with the potential to collapse societies, via their health systems. Those are the cold hard facts, as we see in Wuhan, Italy and Spain.
We cannot deny it.
Indeed.
If anything I think a lot of people are still in denial.
We're about to see a death surge, especially in London.
By the way, I know a lot of people who have it, or we assume so. No testing so no proof.
I'm not one of these self-proclaimed experts and I may very well be wrong, but this does have the appearance of a catastrophe waiting to happen.
I think you're right. And much as I'd love the economy to get going again (TGOF666) if this goes the way of Italy then the virus will still be in charge, not the economy.
Positivity! One of my sons does business with Chinese (and other) radio and TV stations, among others, and reports that his contacts and commercial prospects are starting up again. Texted yesterday to say he had a lot on; we asked work or family ..... and he replied 'both'. China, he reports, is back to work now. Which is good news.
That is good.
It's going to be 'interesting' to see if the UK and especially US can arrive at that stage anything like so quickly without China's phenomenally stringent lockdown. Which is a loaded way of saying, we can't and we won't.
However, if China is starting to tick again afte 4-5 weeks mid May should see us (that's Europe) moving back to normality. Whatever the new normality will be!
April will be grim. A lot of death. A lot of fear. A lot of businesses still falling over the edge.
But also a huge dropping off in numbers across Europe. USA - not so much.
May should see some optimism returning. The greatest challenge for Government in this whole crisis will be in handling this. Preventing a headlong rush to "normal" behaviour. Because everyone will be wanting to get out to their favourite pubs and restaurants and party like its 1999. Partly out of a desire to help them out and see them back in business. Partly because they have gone stir crazy.
And public health - your health in public - will be a Big Thing. Anyone with a summer cold will risk being beaten to a pulp by a mob. Coughing in public will be a capital offence, in the Court of Public Opinion. Temperature testing will be the norm before you are allowed in anywhere, on anything. I hope the Govt. has been sourcing these too, ready for their need as part of planning for the Time Afterwards.
Agree; notable that China is, according the Guardian, still being very careful about allowing much across it's borders. My son (see earlier in the thread) before all this started was doing some at least repeat business virtually; I expect that will continue.
I have followed the governments advice from day one, ordered my parents to stay in, clapped for the NHS at the front door at 8pm tonight, the whole shebang... but am I really the only one on here who doesn’t have nagging doubts that the 24hr news cycle, the tabloid headlines, the way of human nature to be preoccupied with catastrophe might mean we are over reacting?
I feel slightly like one of the Peoples Temple folk who drank the pretend poison Jim Jones gave them to test their loyalty before the kool aid came out
Normalcy bias is very hard to shift. Even tho i first identified this bias here on PB, I still suffer from it. Sometimes I walk out of my door, and think, “WTF, let’s go back to London. Have a nice lunch. This is absurd.”
But this isn’t absurd. This is a virus with the potential to collapse societies, via their health systems. Those are the cold hard facts, as we see in Wuhan, Italy and Spain.
We cannot deny it.
Indeed.
If anything I think a lot of people are still in denial.
We're about to see a death surge, especially in London.
By the way, I know a lot of people who have it, or we assume so. No testing so no proof.
I'm not one of these self-proclaimed experts and I may very well be wrong, but this does have the appearance of a catastrophe waiting to happen.
I think you're right. And much as I'd love the economy to get going again (TGOF666) if this goes the way of Italy then the virus will still be in charge, not the economy.
Positivity! One of my sons does business with Chinese (and other) radio and TV stations, among others, and reports that his contacts and commercial prospects are starting up again. Texted yesterday to say he had a lot on; we asked work or family ..... and he replied 'both'. China, he reports, is back to work now. Which is good news.
That is good.
It's going to be 'interesting' to see if the UK and especially US can arrive at that stage anything like so quickly without China's phenomenally stringent lockdown. Which is a loaded way of saying, we can't and we won't.
However, if China is starting to tick again afte 4-5 weeks mid May should see us (that's Europe) moving back to normality. Whatever the new normality will be!
April will be grim. A lot of death. A lot of fear. A lot of businesses still falling over the edge.
But also a huge dropping off in numbers across Europe. USA - not so much.
May should see some optimism returning. The greatest challenge for Government in this whole crisis will be in handling this. Preventing a headlong rush to "normal" behaviour. Because everyone will be wanting to get out to their favourite pubs and restaurants and party like its 1999. Partly out of a desire to help them out and see them back in business. Partly because they have gone stir crazy.
And public health - your health in public - will be a Big Thing. Anyone with a summer cold will risk being beaten to a pulp by a mob. Coughing in public will be a capital offence, in the Court of Public Opinion. Temperature testing will be the norm before you are allowed in anywhere, on anything. I hope the Govt. has been sourcing these too, ready for their need as part of planning for the Time Afterwards.
You can see travel bans to and from the US being in place long after they have ended elsewhere.
Professor Barclay on Newsnight again making the point that the severity of your illness is influenced by the amount of virus you receive on first infection. She is a professor of infectious diseases so ought to know.
Hence the worryingly high proportion of reported cases in Spain found in the medical profession.
Now that most people are keeping their distance from each other and all the shops and workplaces that are still operational are getting better at implementing good hygiene and social distancing practices, one wonders if the proportion of very mild or asymptomatic cases might increase accordingly?
In a best case scenario, we might find after three months that a large chunk of the country has had this illness whilst being either wholly unaware of it, or having self-isolated without being at all certain that they were suffering from it. Though this can only be determined once the testing capacity is sufficient to check a representative sample of the general population, of course.
A really striking thing about Spain is the percentage of deaths there have been in private rest homes for the elderly - about a third of the total. These are required to provide affordable care, but also turn a profit. The resulting trade-offs are only now coming to light. You cannot do social care on the cheap.
I'm not that close to the care home option personally yet I hope but it has made me consider my options for the future quite carefully. I think the Spanish generally show great care and respect for the elderly and pensions are very generous. Obviously care homes are going to be very vulnerable to this kind of disease but I think the scandals in Madrid is the exception rather tha normal.
I have followed the governments advice from day one, ordered my parents to stay in, clapped for the NHS at the front door at 8pm tonight, the whole shebang... but am I really the only one on here who doesn’t have nagging doubts that the 24hr news cycle, the tabloid headlines, the way of human nature to be preoccupied with catastrophe might mean we are over reacting?
I feel slightly like one of the Peoples Temple folk who drank the pretend poison Jim Jones gave them to test their loyalty before the kool aid came out
Normalcy bias is very hard to shift. Even tho i first identified this bias here on PB, I still suffer from it. Sometimes I walk out of my door, and think, “WTF, let’s go back to London. Have a nice lunch. This is absurd.”
But this isn’t absurd. This is a virus with the potential to collapse societies, via their health systems. Those are the cold hard facts, as we see in Wuhan, Italy and Spain.
We cannot deny it.
Indeed.
If anything I think a lot of people are still in denial.
We're about to see a death surge, especially in London.
By the way, I know a lot of people who have it, or we assume so. No testing so no proof.
I'm not one of these self-proclaimed experts and I may very well be wrong, but this does have the appearance of a catastrophe waiting to happen.
I think you're right. And much as I'd love the economy to get going again (TGOF666) if this goes the way of Italy then the virus will still be in charge, not the economy.
Positivity! One of my sons does business with Chinese (and other) radio and TV stations, among others, and reports that his contacts and commercial prospects are starting up again. Texted yesterday to say he had a lot on; we asked work or family ..... and he replied 'both'. China, he reports, is back to work now. Which is good news.
That is good.
It's going to be 'interesting' to see if the UK and especially US can arrive at that stage anything like so quickly without China's phenomenally stringent lockdown. Which is a loaded way of saying, we can't and we won't.
However, if China is starting to tick again afte 4-5 weeks mid May should see us (that's Europe) moving back to normality. Whatever the new normality will be!
April will be grim. A lot of death. A lot of fear. A lot of businesses still falling over the edge.
But also a huge dropping off in numbers across Europe. USA - not so much.
May should see some optimism returning. The greatest challenge for Government in this whole crisis will be in handling this. Preventing a headlong rush to "normal" behaviour. Because everyone will be wanting to get out to their favourite pubs and restaurants and party like its 1999. Partly out of a desire to help them out and see them back in business. Partly because they have gone stir crazy.
And public health - your health in public - will be a Big Thing. Anyone with a summer cold will risk being beaten to a pulp by a mob. Coughing in public will be a capital offence, in the Court of Public Opinion. Temperature testing will be the norm before you are allowed in anywhere, on anything. I hope the Govt. has been sourcing these too, ready for their need as part of planning for the Time Afterwards.
You can see travel bans to and from the US being in place long after they have ended elsewhere.
Which, somewhat absurdly, would suit the Orange One
Last post for a few hours (I can only take in so much of this at a time). For the past week I've been pretty favourable about Boris and the Gov't. I think they're handling this pretty well. Boris looks knackered, which is good because he should do. They're doing alright imho. Thumbs up from this leftie.
However, they clearly should have acted sooner. Allowing Cheltenham to go ahead, for instance, was pretty gobsmacking.
Still, they have my support.
Is Ireland showing a surge that could be attributed to Cheltenham? Not challenging you, just interested to know.
I have followed the governments advice from day one, ordered my parents to stay in, clapped for the NHS at the front door at 8pm tonight, the whole shebang... but am I really the only one on here who doesn’t have nagging doubts that the 24hr news cycle, the tabloid headlines, the way of human nature to be preoccupied with catastrophe might mean we are over reacting?
I feel slightly like one of the Peoples Temple folk who drank the pretend poison Jim Jones gave them to test their loyalty before the kool aid came out
Normalcy bias is very hard to shift. Even tho i first identified this bias here on PB, I still suffer from it. Sometimes I walk out of my door, and think, “WTF, let’s go back to London. Have a nice lunch. This is absurd.”
But this isn’t absurd. This is a virus with the potential to collapse societies, via their health systems. Those are the cold hard facts, as we see in Wuhan, Italy and Spain.
We cannot deny it.
Indeed.
If anything I think a lot of people are still in denial.
We're about to see a death surge, especially in London.
By the way, I know a lot of people who have it, or we assume so. No testing so no proof.
I'm not one of these self-proclaimed experts and I may very well be wrong, but this does have the appearance of a catastrophe waiting to happen.
I think you're right. And much as I'd love the economy to get going again (TGOF666) if this goes the way of Italy then the virus will still be in charge, not the economy.
Positivity! One of my sons does business with Chinese (and other) radio and TV stations, among others, and reports that his contacts and commercial prospects are starting up again. Texted yesterday to say he had a lot on; we asked work or family ..... and he replied 'both'. China, he reports, is back to work now. Which is good news.
That is good.
It's going to be 'interesting' to see if the UK and especially US can arrive at that stage anything like so quickly without China's phenomenally stringent lockdown. Which is a loaded way of saying, we can't and we won't.
However, if China is starting to tick again afte 4-5 weeks mid May should see us (that's Europe) moving back to normality. Whatever the new normality will be!
April will be grim. A lot of death. A lot of fear. A lot of businesses still falling over the edge.
But also a huge dropping off in numbers across Europe. USA - not so much.
May should see some optimism returning. The greatest challenge for Government in this whole crisis will be in handling this. Preventing a headlong rush to "normal" behaviour. Because everyone will be wanting to get out to their favourite pubs and restaurants and party like its 1999. Partly out of a desire to help them out and see them back in business. Partly because they have gone stir crazy.
And public health - your health in public - will be a Big Thing. Anyone with a summer cold will risk being beaten to a pulp by a mob. Coughing in public will be a capital offence, in the Court of Public Opinion. Temperature testing will be the norm before you are allowed in anywhere, on anything. I hope the Govt. has been sourcing these too, ready for their need as part of planning for the Time Afterwards.
You can see travel bans to and from the US being in place long after they have ended elsewhere.
Which, somewhat absurdly, would suit the Orange One
Particularly if it causes the Mexicans to finally build that wall...
I have followed the governments advice from day one, ordered my parents to stay in, clapped for the NHS at the front door at 8pm tonight, the whole shebang... but am I really the only one on here who doesn’t have nagging doubts that the 24hr news cycle, the tabloid headlines, the way of human nature to be preoccupied with catastrophe might mean we are over reacting?
I feel slightly like one of the Peoples Temple folk who drank the pretend poison Jim Jones gave them to test their loyalty before the kool aid came out
Normalcy bias is very hard to shift. Even tho i first identified this bias here on PB, I still suffer from it. Sometimes I walk out of my door, and think, “WTF, let’s go back to London. Have a nice lunch. This is absurd.”
But this isn’t absurd. This is a virus with the potential to collapse societies, via their health systems. Those are the cold hard facts, as we see in Wuhan, Italy and Spain.
We cannot deny it.
Indeed.
If anything I think a lot of people are still in denial.
We're about to see a death surge, especially in London.
By the way, I know a lot of people who have it, or we assume so. No testing so no proof.
I'm not one of these self-proclaimed experts and I may very well be wrong, but this does have the appearance of a catastrophe waiting to happen.
I think you're right. And much as I'd love the economy to get going again (TGOF666) if this goes the way of Italy then the virus will still be in charge, not the economy.
Positivity! One of my sons does business with Chinese (and other) radio and TV stations, among others, and reports that his contacts and commercial prospects are starting up again. Texted yesterday to say he had a lot on; we asked work or family ..... and he replied 'both'. China, he reports, is back to work now. Which is good news.
That is good.
It's going to be 'interesting' to see if the UK and especially US can arrive at that stage anything like so quickly without China's phenomenally stringent lockdown. Which is a loaded way of saying, we can't and we won't.
However, if China is starting to tick again afte 4-5 weeks mid May should see us (that's Europe) moving back to normality. Whatever the new normality will be!
April will be grim. A lot of death. A lot of fear. A lot of businesses still falling over the edge.
But also a huge dropping off in numbers across Europe. USA - not so much.
May should see some optimism returning. The greatest challenge for Government in this whole crisis will be in handling this. Preventing a headlong rush to "normal" behaviour. Because everyone will be wanting to get out to their favourite pubs and restaurants and party like its 1999. Partly out of a desire to help them out and see them back in business. Partly because they have gone stir crazy.
And public health - your health in public - will be a Big Thing. Anyone with a summer cold will risk being beaten to a pulp by a mob. Coughing in public will be a capital offence, in the Court of Public Opinion. Temperature testing will be the norm before you are allowed in anywhere, on anything. I hope the Govt. has been sourcing these too, ready for their need as part of planning for the Time Afterwards.
You can see travel bans to and from the US being in place long after they have ended elsewhere.
Which, somewhat absurdly, would suit the Orange One
Particularly if it causes the Mexicans to finally build that wall...
His prediction coming true because the Mexicans build and pay for a wall to keep infected Americans out would be the ultimate irony.
Although it is not getting a lot of airtime, the Chancellor is already flagging that he is thinking about how to balance the books.
Harmonising self employed tax and NI with that of the employed clearly makes sense, and has been on the Treasury wish list for a while.
Was there ever a better time to make a bold move toward simplification and merge tax and NI altogether? Yes, there’ll be an extra burden on wealthier pensioners, but not an unreasonable one in the circumstances.
The economy has been tanked largely to save the elderly. The elderly are going to have to accept that there must be a price to pay for that.
The end of the triple lock for sure. We are going to be at risk of inflation. It has to go.
I'm not sure. Not sure about the end of the triple lock; not sure there will be increased inflation; not sure that increased inflation would be the best time, politically, to end the triple lock.
We might see inflation where customers are bidding for scarce resources like skiing holidays but prices might fall if customers remain wary of foreign resorts. We can also expect less demand for consumer goods that have been stockpiled, like toilet rolls, pasta, and Waitrose plonk at £4.95 a bottle.
I have followed the governments advice from day one, ordered my parents to stay in, clapped for the NHS at the front door at 8pm tonight, the whole shebang... but am I really the only one on here who doesn’t have nagging doubts that the 24hr news cycle, the tabloid headlines, the way of human nature to be preoccupied with catastrophe might mean we are over reacting?
I feel slightly like one of the Peoples Temple folk who drank the pretend poison Jim Jones gave them to test their loyalty before the kool aid came out
Normalcy bias is very hard to shift. Even tho i first identified this bias here on PB, I still suffer from it. Sometimes I walk out of my door, and think, “WTF, let’s go back to London. Have a nice lunch. This is absurd.”
But this isn’t absurd. This is a virus with the potential to collapse societies, via their health systems. Those are the cold hard facts, as we see in Wuhan, Italy and Spain.
We cannot deny it.
Indeed.
If anything I think a lot of people are still in denial.
We're about to see a death surge, especially in London.
By the way, I know a lot of people who have it, or we assume so. No testing so no proof.
I'm not one of these self-proclaimed experts and I may very well be wrong, but this does have the appearance of a catastrophe waiting to happen.
I think you're right. And much as I'd love the economy to get going again (TGOF666) if this goes the way of Italy then the virus will still be in charge, not the economy.
Positivity! One of my sons does business with Chinese (and other) radio and TV stations, among others, and reports that his contacts and commercial prospects are starting up again. Texted yesterday to say he had a lot on; we asked work or family ..... and he replied 'both'. China, he reports, is back to work now. Which is good news.
I just need them to start playing sport there again, especially now Russia is going to shut down and Ukraine may follow.
Professor Barclay on Newsnight again making the point that the severity of your illness is influenced by the amount of virus you receive on first infection. She is a professor of infectious diseases so ought to know.
Hence the worryingly high proportion of reported cases in Spain found in the medical profession.
Now that most people are keeping their distance from each other and all the shops and workplaces that are still operational are getting better at implementing good hygiene and social distancing practices, one wonders if the proportion of very mild or asymptomatic cases might increase accordingly?
In a best case scenario, we might find after three months that a large chunk of the country has had this illness whilst being either wholly unaware of it, or having self-isolated without being at all certain that they were suffering from it. Though this can only be determined once the testing capacity is sufficient to check a representative sample of the general population, of course.
A really striking thing about Spain is the percentage of deaths there have been in private rest homes for the elderly - about a third of the total. These are required to provide affordable care, but also turn a profit. The resulting trade-offs are only now coming to light. You cannot do social care on the cheap.
I'm not that close to the care home option personally yet I hope but it has made me consider my options for the future quite carefully. I think the Spanish generally show great care and respect for the elderly and pensions are very generous. Obviously care homes are going to be very vulnerable to this kind of disease but I think the scandals in Madrid is the exception rather tha normal.
It is a tragedy that in Spain and Italy the way the elderly are cared for by their extended families, something that is unquestionably a wonderful thing, has ended up being a terrible killer in this instance.
I have followed the governments advice from day one, ordered my parents to stay in, clapped for the NHS at the front door at 8pm tonight, the whole shebang... but am I really the only one on here who doesn’t have nagging doubts that the 24hr news cycle, the tabloid headlines, the way of human nature to be preoccupied with catastrophe might mean we are over reacting?
I feel slightly like one of the Peoples Temple folk who drank the pretend poison Jim Jones gave them to test their loyalty before the kool aid came out
Normalcy bias is very hard to shift. Even tho i first identified this bias here on PB, I still suffer from it. Sometimes I walk out of my door, and think, “WTF, let’s go back to London. Have a nice lunch. This is absurd.”
But this isn’t absurd. This is a virus with the potential to collapse societies, via their health systems. Those are the cold hard facts, as we see in Wuhan, Italy and Spain.
We cannot deny it.
Indeed.
If anything I think a lot of people are still in denial.
We're about to see a death surge, especially in London.
By the way, I know a lot of people who have it, or we assume so. No testing so no proof.
I'm not one of these self-proclaimed experts and I may very well be wrong, but this does have the appearance of a catastrophe waiting to happen.
I think you're right. And much as I'd love the economy to get going again (TGOF666) if this goes the way of Italy then the virus will still be in charge, not the economy.
Positivity! One of my sons does business with Chinese (and other) radio and TV stations, among others, and reports that his contacts and commercial prospects are starting up again. Texted yesterday to say he had a lot on; we asked work or family ..... and he replied 'both'. China, he reports, is back to work now. Which is good news.
That is good.
It's going to be 'interesting' to see if the UK and especially US can arrive at that stage anything like so quickly without China's phenomenally stringent lockdown. Which is a loaded way of saying, we can't and we won't.
However, if China is starting to tick again afte 4-5 weeks mid May should see us (that's Europe) moving back to normality. Whatever the new normality will be!
April will be grim. A lot of death. A lot of fear. A lot of businesses still falling over the edge.
But also a huge dropping off in numbers across Europe. USA - not so much.
May should see some optimism returning. The greatest challenge for Government in this whole crisis will be in handling this. Preventing a headlong rush to "normal" behaviour. Because everyone will be wanting to get out to their favourite pubs and restaurants and party like its 1999. Partly out of a desire to help them out and see them back in business. Partly because they have gone stir crazy.
And public health - your health in public - will be a Big Thing. Anyone with a summer cold will risk being beaten to a pulp by a mob. Coughing in public will be a capital offence, in the Court of Public Opinion. Temperature testing will be the norm before you are allowed in anywhere, on anything. I hope the Govt. has been sourcing these too, ready for their need as part of planning for the Time Afterwards.
There is still no obvious, long-term exit strategy. Rebounds are likely.
Professor Barclay on Newsnight again making the point that the severity of your illness is influenced by the amount of virus you receive on first infection. She is a professor of infectious diseases so ought to know.
Hence the worryingly high proportion of reported cases in Spain found in the medical profession.
Now that most people are keeping their distance from each other and all the shops and workplaces that are still operational are getting better at implementing good hygiene and social distancing practices, one wonders if the proportion of very mild or asymptomatic cases might increase accordingly?
In a best case scenario, we might find after three months that a large chunk of the country has had this illness whilst being either wholly unaware of it, or having self-isolated without being at all certain that they were suffering from it. Though this can only be determined once the testing capacity is sufficient to check a representative sample of the general population, of course.
A really striking thing about Spain is the percentage of deaths there have been in private rest homes for the elderly - about a third of the total. These are required to provide affordable care, but also turn a profit. The resulting trade-offs are only now coming to light. You cannot do social care on the cheap.
I'm not that close to the care home option personally yet I hope but it has made me consider my options for the future quite carefully. I think the Spanish generally show great care and respect for the elderly and pensions are very generous. Obviously care homes are going to be very vulnerable to this kind of disease but I think the scandals in Madrid is the exception rather tha normal.
The stories coming out of Spain of care home staff legging it and the home is found unstaffed with dead or dying residents, aren't great.
If he can point to one country in the world which was able to be fully prepared for this I'll eat my hat.
The word "fully" is doing a lot of work there. German hospitals seemed to have more icu beds, for instance, and should we ignore that because Germany was not "fully" prepared?
On the wider point, Boris himself was an austerity-sceptic and even before Covid-19 had won an election based on increasing investment in public services. Boris won not by being a better Theresa May but by being a better Jeremy Corbyn than Corbyn himself.
The German system is paid for rather differently than that of the UK and while strong in respect of hospitals is apparently much less good in other respects. Either way if the numbers go up they too will need emergency hospitals/ventilators, etc. The German numbers so far - like our own - have not fully used the resources available so my point stands.
I know others have said it but it will make me feel better if i say it myself. Corbyn is appalling and totally unsuited to high office. His comments last night were beneath contempt
Although it is not getting a lot of airtime, the Chancellor is already flagging that he is thinking about how to balance the books.
Harmonising self employed tax and NI with that of the employed clearly makes sense, and has been on the Treasury wish list for a while.
Was there ever a better time to make a bold move toward simplification and merge tax and NI altogether? Yes, there’ll be an extra burden on wealthier pensioners, but not an unreasonable one in the circumstances.
The economy has been tanked largely to save the elderly. The elderly are going to have to accept that there must be a price to pay for that.
The end of the triple lock for sure. We are going to be at risk of inflation. It has to go.
I'm not sure. Not sure about the end of the triple lock; not sure there will be increased inflation; not sure that increased inflation would be the best time, politically, to end the triple lock.
We might see inflation where customers are bidding for scarce resources like skiing holidays but prices might fall if customers remain wary of foreign resorts. We can also expect less demand for consumer goods that have been stockpiled, like toilet rolls, pasta, and Waitrose plonk at £4.95 a bottle.
It is more that for the next month (plus) the government is dropping the earnings of millions into the economy, while the money that would normally have circulated to provide these earnings is accumulating in savings accounts of those with stable incomes. Sooner or later this wall of money will likely lead to inflation; potential supply shortages because of the economic standstill and trade disruption are then a multiplying factor.
You can see travel bans to and from the US being in place long after they have ended elsewhere.
International travel will be greatly curtailed everywhere through 2020.
Ditto sporting events. I just can't see the Govt. allowing forty, fifty thousand people coming together until the experts tell them this thing is beaten. I am quite expecting football, rugby, cricket, horse racing not to return until 2021. And if that is what it takes to secure the rest of the economy, so be it.
Professor Barclay on Newsnight again making the point that the severity of your illness is influenced by the amount of virus you receive on first infection. She is a professor of infectious diseases so ought to know.
Hence the worryingly high proportion of reported cases in Spain found in the medical profession.
Now that most people are keeping their distance from each other and all the shops and workplaces that are still operational are getting better at implementing good hygiene and social distancing practices, one wonders if the proportion of very mild or asymptomatic cases might increase accordingly?
In a best case scenario, we might find after three months that a large chunk of the country has had this illness whilst being either wholly unaware of it, or having self-isolated without being at all certain that they were suffering from it. Though this can only be determined once the testing capacity is sufficient to check a representative sample of the general population, of course.
A really striking thing about Spain is the percentage of deaths there have been in private rest homes for the elderly - about a third of the total. These are required to provide affordable care, but also turn a profit. The resulting trade-offs are only now coming to light. You cannot do social care on the cheap.
I'm not that close to the care home option personally yet I hope but it has made me consider my options for the future quite carefully. I think the Spanish generally show great care and respect for the elderly and pensions are very generous. Obviously care homes are going to be very vulnerable to this kind of disease but I think the scandals in Madrid is the exception rather tha normal.
The stories coming out of Spain of care home staff legging it and the home is found unstaffed with dead or dying residents, aren't great.
Indeed - but they don't reflect the norm I think - certainly where I live in the rural coastal south-east the respect for us 'ancianos' is a wonder to behold.
You can see travel bans to and from the US being in place long after they have ended elsewhere.
International travel will be greatly curtailed everywhere through 2020.
Ditto sporting events. I just can't see the Govt. allowing forty, fifty thousand people coming together until the experts tell them this thing is beaten. I am quite expecting football, rugby, cricket, horse racing not to return until 2021. And if that is what it takes to secure the rest of the economy, so be it.
I'm going to work from home for as long as I'm not allowed to go to football.
You can see travel bans to and from the US being in place long after they have ended elsewhere.
International travel will be greatly curtailed everywhere through 2020.
Ditto sporting events. I just can't see the Govt. allowing forty, fifty thousand people coming together until the experts tell them this thing is beaten. I am quite expecting football, rugby, cricket, horse racing not to return until 2021. And if that is what it takes to secure the rest of the economy, so be it.
Professor Barclay on Newsnight again making the point that the severity of your illness is influenced by the amount of virus you receive on first infection. She is a professor of infectious diseases so ought to know.
Hence the worryingly high proportion of reported cases in Spain found in the medical profession.
Now that most people are keeping their distance from each other and all the shops and workplaces that are still operational are getting better at implementing good hygiene and social distancing practices, one wonders if the proportion of very mild or asymptomatic cases might increase accordingly?
In a best case scenario, we might find after three months that a large chunk of the country has had this illness whilst being either wholly unaware of it, or having self-isolated without being at all certain that they were suffering from it. Though this can only be determined once the testing capacity is sufficient to check a representative sample of the general population, of course.
A really striking thing about Spain is the percentage of deaths there have been in private rest homes for the elderly - about a third of the total. These are required to provide affordable care, but also turn a profit. The resulting trade-offs are only now coming to light. You cannot do social care on the cheap.
I'm not that close to the care home option personally yet I hope but it has made me consider my options for the future quite carefully. I think the Spanish generally show great care and respect for the elderly and pensions are very generous. Obviously care homes are going to be very vulnerable to this kind of disease but I think the scandals in Madrid is the exception rather tha normal.
The stories coming out of Spain of care home staff legging it and the home is found unstaffed with dead or dying residents, aren't great.
Indeed - but they don't reflect the norm I think - certainly where I live in the rural coastal south-east the respect for us 'ancianos' is a wonder to behold.
Although it is not getting a lot of airtime, the Chancellor is already flagging that he is thinking about how to balance the books.
Harmonising self employed tax and NI with that of the employed clearly makes sense, and has been on the Treasury wish list for a while.
Was there ever a better time to make a bold move toward simplification and merge tax and NI altogether? Yes, there’ll be an extra burden on wealthier pensioners, but not an unreasonable one in the circumstances.
The economy has been tanked largely to save the elderly. The elderly are going to have to accept that there must be a price to pay for that.
The end of the triple lock for sure. We are going to be at risk of inflation. It has to go.
I'm not sure. Not sure about the end of the triple lock; not sure there will be increased inflation; not sure that increased inflation would be the best time, politically, to end the triple lock.
We might see inflation where customers are bidding for scarce resources like skiing holidays but prices might fall if customers remain wary of foreign resorts. We can also expect less demand for consumer goods that have been stockpiled, like toilet rolls, pasta, and Waitrose plonk at £4.95 a bottle.
It is more that for the next month (plus) the government is dropping the earnings of millions into the economy, while the money that would normally have circulated to provide these earnings is accumulating in savings accounts of those with stable incomes. Sooner or later this wall of money will likely lead to inflation; potential supply shortages because of the economic standstill and trade disruption are then a multiplying factor.
This wall of money might lead to inflation or it could remain as savings (which might be seen as leading to inflation in share prices, I suppose). You are right about supply side disruption, of course. My point is not that there will not be inflation but that there are so many moving parts that it is hard to predict, and we might see inflation in some sectors and falling prices elsewhere.
Although it is not getting a lot of airtime, the Chancellor is already flagging that he is thinking about how to balance the books.
Harmonising self employed tax and NI with that of the employed clearly makes sense, and has been on the Treasury wish list for a while.
Was there ever a better time to make a bold move toward simplification and merge tax and NI altogether? Yes, there’ll be an extra burden on wealthier pensioners, but not an unreasonable one in the circumstances.
The economy has been tanked largely to save the elderly. The elderly are going to have to accept that there must be a price to pay for that.
The end of the triple lock for sure. We are going to be at risk of inflation. It has to go.
Wasnt one of the issues of triple lock that very low inflation meant pensions went up by more? Higher inflation removes one lock.
You can see travel bans to and from the US being in place long after they have ended elsewhere.
International travel will be greatly curtailed everywhere through 2020.
Ditto sporting events. I just can't see the Govt. allowing forty, fifty thousand people coming together until the experts tell them this thing is beaten. I am quite expecting football, rugby, cricket, horse racing not to return until 2021. And if that is what it takes to secure the rest of the economy, so be it.
I fear so but this masks our ignorance of precisely how Covid-19 spreads in the real world. Is it spread amongst crowds in open air stadia? Perhaps, there are suggestions it crossed between Spain and Italy via football. But where is the work here showing its spread followed the Premier League fixture list? There have been a handful of reports linking infection to the Cheltenham Festival but this is anecdotal at best so far. There seems to be more evidence pointing to indoor religious ceremonies.
And another thing, I handle any deliveries with gloves on, take them into my outdoor room, wipe down the packaging with anti-bacterials, then dispose of the packaging before stripping down and washing.
You can see travel bans to and from the US being in place long after they have ended elsewhere.
International travel will be greatly curtailed everywhere through 2020.
Ditto sporting events. I just can't see the Govt. allowing forty, fifty thousand people coming together until the experts tell them this thing is beaten. I am quite expecting football, rugby, cricket, horse racing not to return until 2021. And if that is what it takes to secure the rest of the economy, so be it.
What changes in 2021?
A year of this will change behaviours. Some of it adopted by society, some of it enforced by law. Any form of fever, cough, anything that might even POSSIBLY be CV-19 will mean you and your family stay under lockdown for 14 days.
This forest fire will eventually run out of trees.
You can see travel bans to and from the US being in place long after they have ended elsewhere.
International travel will be greatly curtailed everywhere through 2020.
Ditto sporting events. I just can't see the Govt. allowing forty, fifty thousand people coming together until the experts tell them this thing is beaten. I am quite expecting football, rugby, cricket, horse racing not to return until 2021. And if that is what it takes to secure the rest of the economy, so be it.
What changes in 2021?
Public opinion might change in 2021. Did sport stop to prevent the spread of viruses or to assuage public opinion? Probably a little of each.
And another thing, I handle any deliveries with gloves on, take them into my outdoor room, wipe down the packaging with anti-bacterials, then dispose of the packaging before stripping down and washing.
And another thing, I handle any deliveries with gloves on, take them into my outdoor room, wipe down the packaging with anti-bacterials, then dispose of the packaging before stripping down and washing.
I know. I know.
You really need anti-virals.
Most of the anti-bacterial wipes I have been buying specify they also knock out H1N1 virus too. I assume that is going to do the job for Covid-19 too.
The aftermath for know nothing twats is going to be millennium bug V2. Except this time the no nothing twats, instead of not seeing the millions of person hours that went into fixing the problem as with the millennium bug, will have actually lived through and experienced the effort to stop half a million+ people dying and still go "load of fuss about nothing".
We know that social contact these days is out. We know that alcohol above 70% kills the virus. We know that hydroxychloroqin has proven an effective treatment in some cases and is a derivative of quinine. We now find out that lying on your front can stop you needing a ventilator. So really, the solution is to get sh*t-faced on maximum strength G&T, alone, and end up passing out face forward.
Although it is not getting a lot of airtime, the Chancellor is already flagging that he is thinking about how to balance the books.
Harmonising self employed tax and NI with that of the employed clearly makes sense, and has been on the Treasury wish list for a while.
Was there ever a better time to make a bold move toward simplification and merge tax and NI altogether? Yes, there’ll be an extra burden on wealthier pensioners, but not an unreasonable one in the circumstances.
The economy has been tanked largely to save the elderly. The elderly are going to have to accept that there must be a price to pay for that.
The end of the triple lock for sure. We are going to be at risk of inflation. It has to go.
I'm not sure. Not sure about the end of the triple lock; not sure there will be increased inflation; not sure that increased inflation would be the best time, politically, to end the triple lock.
We might see inflation where customers are bidding for scarce resources like skiing holidays but prices might fall if customers remain wary of foreign resorts. We can also expect less demand for consumer goods that have been stockpiled, like toilet rolls, pasta, and Waitrose plonk at £4.95 a bottle.
It is more that for the next month (plus) the government is dropping the earnings of millions into the economy, while the money that would normally have circulated to provide these earnings is accumulating in savings accounts of those with stable incomes. Sooner or later this wall of money will likely lead to inflation; potential supply shortages because of the economic standstill and trade disruption are then a multiplying factor.
This wall of money might lead to inflation or it could remain as savings (which might be seen as leading to inflation in share prices, I suppose). You are right about supply side disruption, of course. My point is not that there will not be inflation but that there are so many moving parts that it is hard to predict, and we might see inflation in some sectors and falling prices elsewhere.
For sure. Nobody really knows. If it carries on for a long time we could enter a deflationary slump as economic activity grinds to a standstill - people hoarding what money they have and not spending anything other than on food and essentials.
You can see travel bans to and from the US being in place long after they have ended elsewhere.
International travel will be greatly curtailed everywhere through 2020.
Ditto sporting events. I just can't see the Govt. allowing forty, fifty thousand people coming together until the experts tell them this thing is beaten. I am quite expecting football, rugby, cricket, horse racing not to return until 2021. And if that is what it takes to secure the rest of the economy, so be it.
What changes in 2021?
A year of this will change behaviours. Some of it adopted by society, some of it enforced by law. Any form of fever, cough, anything that might even POSSIBLY be CV-19 will mean you and your family stay under lockdown for 14 days.
This forest fire will eventually run out of trees.
The U.K. has a population of around 60M , depending on the model there have been hundreds of thousands of cases so far.
Ergo there are many, many more trees and without a vaccine this is here to stay for a while. 2021 might not be hugely different.
Although it is not getting a lot of airtime, the Chancellor is already flagging that he is thinking about how to balance the books.
Harmonising self employed tax and NI with that of the employed clearly makes sense, and has been on the Treasury wish list for a while.
Was there ever a better time to make a bold move toward simplification and merge tax and NI altogether? Yes, there’ll be an extra burden on wealthier pensioners, but not an unreasonable one in the circumstances.
The economy has been tanked largely to save the elderly. The elderly are going to have to accept that there must be a price to pay for that.
The end of the triple lock for sure. We are going to be at risk of inflation. It has to go.
Wasnt one of the issues of triple lock that very low inflation meant pensions went up by more? Higher inflation removes one lock.
Introduced in 2011 by the coalition government, the triple lock guarantees that the basic state pension will rise by a minimum of either 2.5%, the rate of inflation or average earnings growth, whichever is largest.
Professor Barclay on Newsnight again making the point that the severity of your illness is influenced by the amount of virus you receive on first infection. She is a professor of infectious diseases so ought to know.
Hence the worryingly high proportion of reported cases in Spain found in the medical profession.
Now that most people are keeping their distance from each other and all the shops and workplaces that are still operational are getting better at implementing good hygiene and social distancing practices, one wonders if the proportion of very mild or asymptomatic cases might increase accordingly?
In a best case scenario, we might find after three months that a large chunk of the country has had this illness whilst being either wholly unaware of it, or having self-isolated without being at all certain that they were suffering from it. Though this can only be determined once the testing capacity is sufficient to check a representative sample of the general population, of course.
A really striking thing about Spain is the percentage of deaths there have been in private rest homes for the elderly - about a third of the total. These are required to provide affordable care, but also turn a profit. The resulting trade-offs are only now coming to light. You cannot do social care on the cheap.
I'm not that close to the care home option personally yet I hope but it has made me consider my options for the future quite carefully. I think the Spanish generally show great care and respect for the elderly and pensions are very generous. Obviously care homes are going to be very vulnerable to this kind of disease but I think the scandals in Madrid is the exception rather tha normal.
The stories coming out of Spain of care home staff legging it and the home is found unstaffed with dead or dying residents, aren't great.
Indeed - but they don't reflect the norm I think - certainly where I live in the rural coastal south-east the respect for us 'ancianos' is a wonder to behold.
Near Roses?
If you mean Roses in Catalonia - that is in the far north-east - I am in the beautiful far south-east near Mojacar and the Tabernas desert [Europe's only one], where the westerns were made.
Professor Barclay on Newsnight again making the point that the severity of your illness is influenced by the amount of virus you receive on first infection. She is a professor of infectious diseases so ought to know.
Hence the worryingly high proportion of reported cases in Spain found in the medical profession.
Now that most people are keeping their distance from each other and all the shops and workplaces that are still operational are getting better at implementing good hygiene and social distancing practices, one wonders if the proportion of very mild or asymptomatic cases might increase accordingly?
In a best case scenario, we might find after three months that a large chunk of the country has had this illness whilst being either wholly unaware of it, or having self-isolated without being at all certain that they were suffering from it. Though this can only be determined once the testing capacity is sufficient to check a representative sample of the general population, of course.
A really striking thing about Spain is the percentage of deaths there have been in private rest homes for the elderly - about a third of the total. These are required to provide affordable care, but also turn a profit. The resulting trade-offs are only now coming to light. You cannot do social care on the cheap.
I'm not that close to the care home option personally yet I hope but it has made me consider my options for the future quite carefully. I think the Spanish generally show great care and respect for the elderly and pensions are very generous. Obviously care homes are going to be very vulnerable to this kind of disease but I think the scandals in Madrid is the exception rather tha normal.
The stories coming out of Spain of care home staff legging it and the home is found unstaffed with dead or dying residents, aren't great.
Indeed - but they don't reflect the norm I think - certainly where I live in the rural coastal south-east the respect for us 'ancianos' is a wonder to behold.
Although it is not getting a lot of airtime, the Chancellor is already flagging that he is thinking about how to balance the books.
Harmonising self employed tax and NI with that of the employed clearly makes sense, and has been on the Treasury wish list for a while.
Was there ever a better time to make a bold move toward simplification and merge tax and NI altogether? Yes, there’ll be an extra burden on wealthier pensioners, but not an unreasonable one in the circumstances.
The economy has been tanked largely to save the elderly. The elderly are going to have to accept that there must be a price to pay for that.
The end of the triple lock for sure. We are going to be at risk of inflation. It has to go.
Wasnt one of the issues of triple lock that very low inflation meant pensions went up by more? Higher inflation removes one lock.
Introduced in 2011 by the coalition government, the triple lock guarantees that the basic state pension will rise by a minimum of either 2.5%, the rate of inflation or average earnings growth, whichever is largest.
I have followed the governments advice from day one, ordered my parents to stay in, clapped for the NHS at the front door at 8pm tonight, the whole shebang... but am I really the only one on here who doesn’t have nagging doubts that the 24hr news cycle, the tabloid headlines, the way of human nature to be preoccupied with catastrophe might mean we are over reacting?
I feel slightly like one of the Peoples Temple folk who drank the pretend poison Jim Jones gave them to test their loyalty before the kool aid came out
See NYC....Mayor says they need to double the capacity of every hospital, they need 9 new field hospitals, they need as many hotel rooms as possible...and that won't be enough.
They are already stacking the bodies in refrigerated trucks, because the hospital morgue is full.
And this is in the most developed country in the world. The healthcare insurance system might be crap and inefficient, but they have huge capacity and the best tech in their hospitals.
And they haven't even got near the peak yet.
They are building a makeshift mortuary at the end of my road, in the car park of South Essex Crematorium, so obviously the authorities are preparing for some massive death spike. I don’t know, something still doesn’t feel right about it, I suppose that is just because it actually is incredible, unprecedented, it doesn’t feel real.
I certainly agree it is strange feeling. At the moment, we are waiting for tsunami to hit, it is the silence before the storm.
I am many miles away from any real population density so it is even stranger. I turn on the tv, see all the reports, look at the maths and see where it is predicted to go. Yet outside my door nothing looks any different from a few weeks ago.
We've heard about a tsunami coming and have moved in land. After the tsunami hits people are going to go, well I didn't get wet, fuss about nothing.
You can see travel bans to and from the US being in place long after they have ended elsewhere.
International travel will be greatly curtailed everywhere through 2020.
Ditto sporting events. I just can't see the Govt. allowing forty, fifty thousand people coming together until the experts tell them this thing is beaten. I am quite expecting football, rugby, cricket, horse racing not to return until 2021. And if that is what it takes to secure the rest of the economy, so be it.
What changes in 2021?
A year of this will change behaviours. Some of it adopted by society, some of it enforced by law. Any form of fever, cough, anything that might even POSSIBLY be CV-19 will mean you and your family stay under lockdown for 14 days.
This forest fire will eventually run out of trees.
Testing and test availablity will mean the need for these measures becomes less urgent.
You can see travel bans to and from the US being in place long after they have ended elsewhere.
International travel will be greatly curtailed everywhere through 2020.
Ditto sporting events. I just can't see the Govt. allowing forty, fifty thousand people coming together until the experts tell them this thing is beaten. I am quite expecting football, rugby, cricket, horse racing not to return until 2021. And if that is what it takes to secure the rest of the economy, so be it.
What changes in 2021?
A year of this will change behaviours. Some of it adopted by society, some of it enforced by law. Any form of fever, cough, anything that might even POSSIBLY be CV-19 will mean you and your family stay under lockdown for 14 days.
This forest fire will eventually run out of trees.
Testing and test availablity will mean the need for these measures becomes less urgent.
It has to be said that his opinion wasn't universally shared. I was going to join in the clapping, but my other half, who works for the NHS, said that she and most of her colleagues found such gestures condescending and shallow, and that they'd rather have a properly funded NHS. So I stayed inside and made her a cuppa.
Clapping is the new poppy. It's all bit too juche for me.
I have followed the governments advice from day one, ordered my parents to stay in, clapped for the NHS at the front door at 8pm tonight, the whole shebang... but am I really the only one on here who doesn’t have nagging doubts that the 24hr news cycle, the tabloid headlines, the way of human nature to be preoccupied with catastrophe might mean we are over reacting?
I feel slightly like one of the Peoples Temple folk who drank the pretend poison Jim Jones gave them to test their loyalty before the kool aid came out
Normalcy bias is very hard to shift. Even tho i first identified this bias here on PB, I still suffer from it. Sometimes I walk out of my door, and think, “WTF, let’s go back to London. Have a nice lunch. This is absurd.”
But this isn’t absurd. This is a virus with the potential to collapse societies, via their health systems. Those are the cold hard facts, as we see in Wuhan, Italy and Spain.
We cannot deny it.
Indeed.
If anything I think a lot of people are still in denial.
We're about to see a death surge, especially in London.
By the way, I know a lot of people who have it, or we assume so. No testing so no proof.
FWIW I'm horrified that a cordon sanitaire hasn't been thrown up around London - roadblocks, no trains in or out - simply to protect the provinces.
If the capital goes the way of Lombardy then the obvious risk is that panicked Londoners will try to flee - not just wealthy second home owners, but those with friends or family elsewhere who are willing to put them up - thus spreading the disease everywhere else.
I'm not one of these self-proclaimed experts and I may very well be wrong, but this does have the appearance of a catastrophe waiting to happen.
Orange telecoms in France reckon from mobile usage data that 20% of Parisians have left Paris. I would not have guessed that more than say 2% had realistic options as to where to go. I don't think you can stop 20% of a city from leaving it without a full on shooting war.
I believe many people who live and work in Paris have access to family homes elsewhere in France. A friend lives in the Cantal and says many houses are seasonally occupied.
Do we really believe that all those paid by government out of work will have jobs at the end of all this? Unemployment is going up.
What jobs are going to go in your opinion? There is going to be hella pent up demand...
Travel and tourism will be decimated. Not sure demand will be higher, everyone will be poorer.
Why would *everyone* be poorer? There's nothing to spend money on. Even working from home alone entails massive savings on transport, food and coffee.
Who is going to pay for the billions we are borrowing now? Many thousands of business have lost revenue. They will have less cash and be cautious. Individuals out of work are out of pocket even with government support.
You can see travel bans to and from the US being in place long after they have ended elsewhere.
International travel will be greatly curtailed everywhere through 2020.
Ditto sporting events. I just can't see the Govt. allowing forty, fifty thousand people coming together until the experts tell them this thing is beaten. I am quite expecting football, rugby, cricket, horse racing not to return until 2021. And if that is what it takes to secure the rest of the economy, so be it.
What changes in 2021?
A year of this will change behaviours. Some of it adopted by society, some of it enforced by law. Any form of fever, cough, anything that might even POSSIBLY be CV-19 will mean you and your family stay under lockdown for 14 days.
This forest fire will eventually run out of trees.
Testing and test availablity will mean the need for these measures becomes less urgent.
Sure. But that requires the testing to be available. And once tested, formalising a certificate (that cannot be forged) to show you are clean....
The negative effects could be many - in the rush to repair the economy a lot of social fabric could get torn up - the independent shop bought by the big chain with stockpiles of cash, the local pub robbed of revenue turned into flats, millions of small businesses/sole traders now seeking the security of a salary.
There needs a big push to begin to end this lock down as soon as possible to minimise permanent damage.
Ending a lockdown too soon is a recipe for a lockdown sandwich, with dead people in the middle.
However one thing the government could be doing that would fit right in its comfort zone would be liberalizing p2p lending, small investments and crowd-funding. With a few exceptions like Amazon, big companies are going to be bleeding cash just like small ones. However the difference is that they can borrow or issue stock more easily. So make it easier for people with local knowledge of smaller businesses that would be solid but for the shutdowns to invest in a little bit of money and keep them afloat in the hope of an eventual profit.
It has to be said that his opinion wasn't universally shared. I was going to join in the clapping, but my other half, who works for the NHS, said that she and most of her colleagues found such gestures condescending and shallow, and that they'd rather have a properly funded NHS. So I stayed inside and made her a cuppa.
Clapping is the new poppy. It's all bit too juche for me.
My wife appreciated the applause here in Cologne the other evening, tho we know nearly all the neighbours so it felt quite personal. But she would appreciate more a promise that she will actually get paid for some of the overtime she's doing...
She also gets slightly annoyed with the people having to stay home on full pay telling her how difficult it is for them. Usually saying "I'd quite like to have to stay at home at the moment" does the trick.
You can see travel bans to and from the US being in place long after they have ended elsewhere.
International travel will be greatly curtailed everywhere through 2020.
Ditto sporting events. I just can't see the Govt. allowing forty, fifty thousand people coming together until the experts tell them this thing is beaten. I am quite expecting football, rugby, cricket, horse racing not to return until 2021. And if that is what it takes to secure the rest of the economy, so be it.
What changes in 2021?
A year of this will change behaviours. Some of it adopted by society, some of it enforced by law. Any form of fever, cough, anything that might even POSSIBLY be CV-19 will mean you and your family stay under lockdown for 14 days.
This forest fire will eventually run out of trees.
Testing and test availablity will mean the need for these measures becomes less urgent.
Sure. But that requires the testing to be available. And once tested, formalising a certificate (that cannot be forged) to show you are clean....
What do the majority of people who have not had it yet do once tested? Do they lockdown or is there a lottery to determine who can come out and thereby throttle infection to a sustainable pace?
You can see travel bans to and from the US being in place long after they have ended elsewhere.
International travel will be greatly curtailed everywhere through 2020.
Ditto sporting events. I just can't see the Govt. allowing forty, fifty thousand people coming together until the experts tell them this thing is beaten. I am quite expecting football, rugby, cricket, horse racing not to return until 2021. And if that is what it takes to secure the rest of the economy, so be it.
What changes in 2021?
A year of this will change behaviours. Some of it adopted by society, some of it enforced by law. Any form of fever, cough, anything that might even POSSIBLY be CV-19 will mean you and your family stay under lockdown for 14 days.
This forest fire will eventually run out of trees.
Testing and test availablity will mean the need for these measures becomes less urgent.
Sure. But that requires the testing to be available. And once tested, formalising a certificate (that cannot be forged) to show you are clean....
What do the majority of people who have not had it yet do once tested? Do they lockdown or is there a lottery to determine who can come out and thereby throttle infection to a sustainable pace?
You would hope that the number of cases is reduced to the point where ANY possible infection gets immediately tested, with a lock down for 14 days where positive (and in any event, until the test result is known). Backed up by legislation that it is a notifiable disease with sanctions for those who do not notify their GP (or a new specialist department) of the mere possibility of having it.
We just have to treat it like smallpox, for the economic damage it can cause.
We know that social contact these days is out. We know that alcohol above 70% kills the virus. We know that hydroxychloroqin has proven an effective treatment in some cases and is a derivative of quinine. We now find out that lying on your front can stop you needing a ventilator. So really, the solution is to get sh*t-faced on maximum strength G&T, alone, and end up passing out face forward.
We do not know that chloroquine or hydroxychloroquine have been proven effective, though studies are ongoing. The Chinese study communicated yesterday showed no effect. In addition it can interfere with cardiac conduction, potentially an issue with COVID19 myocarditis. I appreciate there is a certain amount of levity in your comment, but would be cautious about the rush to judgement.
In terms of positioning, there is an interesting review of prone ventilation for ARDS here:
There are some benefits, and some downsides. The better oxygenation and reduced lung injury vs increased cardiac arrest.
We know that social contact these days is out. We know that alcohol above 70% kills the virus. We know that hydroxychloroqin has proven an effective treatment in some cases and is a derivative of quinine. We now find out that lying on your front can stop you needing a ventilator. So really, the solution is to get sh*t-faced on maximum strength G&T, alone, and end up passing out face forward.
We do not know that chloroquine or hydroxychloroquine have been proven effective, though studies are ongoing. The Chinese study communicated yesterday showed no effect. In addition it can interfere with cardiac conduction, potentially an issue with COVID19 myocarditis. I appreciate there is a certain amount of levity in your comment, but would be cautious about the rush to judgement.
In terms of positioning, there is an interesting review of prone ventilation for ARDS here:
There are some benefits, and some downsides. The better oxygenation and reduced lung injury vs increased cardiac arrest.
You can see travel bans to and from the US being in place long after they have ended elsewhere.
International travel will be greatly curtailed everywhere through 2020.
Ditto sporting events. I just can't see the Govt. allowing forty, fifty thousand people coming together until the experts tell them this thing is beaten. I am quite expecting football, rugby, cricket, horse racing not to return until 2021. And if that is what it takes to secure the rest of the economy, so be it.
What changes in 2021?
A year of this will change behaviours. Some of it adopted by society, some of it enforced by law. Any form of fever, cough, anything that might even POSSIBLY be CV-19 will mean you and your family stay under lockdown for 14 days.
This forest fire will eventually run out of trees.
Testing and test availablity will mean the need for these measures becomes less urgent.
Sure. But that requires the testing to be available. And once tested, formalising a certificate (that cannot be forged) to show you are clean....
What do the majority of people who have not had it yet do once tested? Do they lockdown or is there a lottery to determine who can come out and thereby throttle infection to a sustainable pace?
You would hope that the number of cases is reduced to the point where ANY possible infection gets immediately tested, with a lock down for 14 days where positive (and in any event, until the test result is known). Backed up by legislation that it is a notifiable disease with sanctions for those who do not notify their GP (or a new specialist department) of the mere possibility of having it.
We just have to treat it like smallpox, for the economic damage it can cause.
So we’re back to January/February and to a containment strategy? Whilst it might work better than last time, somehow I doubt it will work. It only takes one or two individuals to let the genie out of the bottle.
My spirits were also raised listening to Bill Gates yesterday talk about how this necessity will drive a whole wave of innovation and should result in rapid testing and cures for a whole range of diseases.
Well I would bloody well hope so, because as bad as things are this is NOT the doomsday virus. This is merely a preview of what can happen in our modern globalised world of free trade, open borders, and widespread air travel.
Apart from anything else, it’s going to massively drive down the seasonal flu figures for the next twelve months...
I bloody hope we adopt the Asian culture of wearing masks when you feel ill. It has to be the least you can do for everybody. When you think about it now, you really are an arsehole aren't you, sitting there on a bus coughing your guts up, spreading colds and flus everywhere.
I find this frustrating to the point of fury. WEAR A MASK
You don’t wear it because you will stop yourself catching it (tho it will help) you wear it because it will stop you SPREADING it. You can’t sneeze and cough so freely, through a surgical mask.
This alone counts for the huge difference between East Asian death/infection rates, and those we are now seeing in the West.
WEAR A MASK. ALWAYS.
Trouble is we all know you weren't wearing one to stop spreading anything, you were wearing one because you thought it would stop you catching the thing. You said as much on here numerous times.
Trying to pretend this was not the case now is just dishonest.
I’m not pretending anything! I readily admit to this.
I had my mask-OMG moment only about 10 days ago, when I was reading Twitter, and someone made this really quite obvious point. By wearing a mask, you reduce the risk of you getting infected, but way more efficiently you reduce the chances of YOU spreading it,
Wearing a mask is a social nicety in the same way you sneeze into a hand. Except it saves lives.
It’s that simple. In times of pandemic flu, everyone should wear a mask. They cost about 2p. Just do it. And we will be more like South Korea than Italy.
As has been pointed out, the WHO has not covered itself in glory with its advice on Coronavirus. And there is research which demonstrates the utility of masks in preventing the spread of viral infection. I’ll post a link to some when I’m no longer on my mobile.
Yep they obviously do help.
I have a really good mask with a high grade filtration system and replacable (washable) filters.
I wear it everywhere.
It also prevents me from putting my hands on my face, a point apparently lost on some.
Here's a paper on the efficacy of ordinary surgical masks: Influenza Virus Aerosols in Human Exhaled Breath: Particle Size, Culturability, and Effect of Surgical Masks https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3591312/
Although it is not getting a lot of airtime, the Chancellor is already flagging that he is thinking about how to balance the books.
Harmonising self employed tax and NI with that of the employed clearly makes sense, and has been on the Treasury wish list for a while.
Was there ever a better time to make a bold move toward simplification and merge tax and NI altogether? Yes, there’ll be an extra burden on wealthier pensioners, but not an unreasonable one in the circumstances.
The economy has been tanked largely to save the elderly. The elderly are going to have to accept that there must be a price to pay for that.
The end of the triple lock for sure. We are going to be at risk of inflation. It has to go.
Wasnt one of the issues of triple lock that very low inflation meant pensions went up by more? Higher inflation removes one lock.
Introduced in 2011 by the coalition government, the triple lock guarantees that the basic state pension will rise by a minimum of either 2.5%, the rate of inflation or average earnings growth, whichever is largest.
The triple lock is doomed.
You're understanding it backwards.
Increasing by the rate of inflation doesn't cost anything at all in real terms.
Increasing by 2.5% if inflation is extremely low is expensive in real terms.
May should see some optimism returning. The greatest challenge for Government in this whole crisis will be in handling this. Preventing a headlong rush to "normal" behaviour. Because everyone will be wanting to get out to their favourite pubs and restaurants and party like its 1999. Partly out of a desire to help them out and see them back in business. Partly because they have gone stir crazy.
Yup, we saw a bit of this in Japan. After it got stung by screwing up the cruise ship situation the government did some only moderately aggressive but very timely things like asking events to shut down and people to work from home, and stopped what had been quite a steep upward curve, albeit with shitty testing so we couldn't quite be sure how much they were missing. Then a week ago, with the curve flattened and starting to trend down, they announced that they'd be reopening schools.
When they announced reopening schools they didn't say, "OK, crisis over, everybody go ahead with your events and travel". But this came right before a three-day weekend, and a lot of people seem to have interpreted it like that. This was right when a bunch of infected people were showing up from Europe and the US. So we had three days with loads of social contact, at a really bad time. Then now a week later the governor of Tokyo has slammed on the brakes and gone to the opposite extreme of telling people not to leave their homes over the weekend, and we have to wait a couple of weeks before we know how much damage was done.
One thing they might want to do is that whenever they relax a big, blunt weapon of a measure like telling everybody to stay at home, also announce a bunch of stricter more targeted measures, like (pulling this out of my arse, not saying it's the most effective thing) permanently closing a load of pubs with poor ventilation. They really need the message to be "this is how we can make a permanent change to get our lives back while dealing with this threat", not "the threat is gone, everything can go back to normal".
Indeed! And to bring some semblance of normality I am sat at my desk in a 3 piece suit. #dressupfriday
With cufflinks like David Cameron or Jacob Rees-Mogg, or ordinary, buttoned single cuffs like our man-of-the-people, Eton and Oxford Prime Minister?
Double-cuff shirts are the only shirts. Lets have a bit of fucking decorum
Decorum? Aren't they so you can wipe your nose on the cuff and then fold it back with the debris inside. An innovation from Napoleonic France.
Ewwww. Double cuff plus cufflink does feel like overkill at the best of times, as does a tie. I don't need to wear a tie much any more, never mind a waistcoat. But at the end of a week where its been flat out every day and Groundhog Day every day, why not try and mix it up and try to go back to "normal" times.
My spirits were also raised listening to Bill Gates yesterday talk about how this necessity will drive a whole wave of innovation and should result in rapid testing and cures for a whole range of diseases.
Well I would bloody well hope so, because as bad as things are this is NOT the doomsday virus. This is merely a preview of what can happen in our modern globalised world of free trade, open borders, and widespread air travel.
Apart from anything else, it’s going to massively drive down the seasonal flu figures for the next twelve months...
I bloody hope we adopt the Asian culture of wearing masks when you feel ill. It has to be the least you can do for everybody. When you think about it now, you really are an arsehole aren't you, sitting there on a bus coughing your guts up, spreading colds and flus everywhere.
I find this frustrating to the point of fury. WEAR A MASK
You don’t wear it because you will stop yourself catching it (tho it will help) you wear it because it will stop you SPREADING it. You can’t sneeze and cough so freely, through a surgical mask.
This alone counts for the huge difference between East Asian death/infection rates, and those we are now seeing in the West.
WEAR A MASK. ALWAYS.
Trouble is we all know you weren't wearing one to stop spreading anything, you were wearing one because you thought it would stop you catching the thing. You said as much on here numerous times.
Trying to pretend this was not the case now is just dishonest.
I’m not pretending anything! I readily admit to this.
I had my mask-OMG moment only about 10 days ago, when I was reading Twitter, and someone made this really quite obvious point. By wearing a mask, you reduce the risk of you getting infected, but way more efficiently you reduce the chances of YOU spreading it,
Wearing a mask is a social nicety in the same way you sneeze into a hand. Except it saves lives.
It’s that simple. In times of pandemic flu, everyone should wear a mask. They cost about 2p. Just do it. And we will be more like South Korea than Italy.
As has been pointed out, the WHO has not covered itself in glory with its advice on Coronavirus. And there is research which demonstrates the utility of masks in preventing the spread of viral infection. I’ll post a link to some when I’m no longer on my mobile.
Yep they obviously do help.
I have a really good mask with a high grade filtration system and replacable (washable) filters.
I wear it everywhere.
It also prevents me from putting my hands on my face, a point apparently lost on some.
Here's a paper on the efficacy of ordinary surgical masks: Influenza Virus Aerosols in Human Exhaled Breath: Particle Size, Culturability, and Effect of Surgical Masks https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3591312/
The key phrase being "worn by infected persons".
Of course, we don't know who is and isn't.
But the way masks are being used by many almost certainly uninfected persons appears likely to increase rather than reduce their chances of infection. Which is why they aren't recommended for the general public.
Although it is not getting a lot of airtime, the Chancellor is already flagging that he is thinking about how to balance the books.
Harmonising self employed tax and NI with that of the employed clearly makes sense, and has been on the Treasury wish list for a while.
Was there ever a better time to make a bold move toward simplification and merge tax and NI altogether? Yes, there’ll be an extra burden on wealthier pensioners, but not an unreasonable one in the circumstances.
The economy has been tanked largely to save the elderly. The elderly are going to have to accept that there must be a price to pay for that.
The end of the triple lock for sure. We are going to be at risk of inflation. It has to go.
Wasnt one of the issues of triple lock that very low inflation meant pensions went up by more? Higher inflation removes one lock.
Introduced in 2011 by the coalition government, the triple lock guarantees that the basic state pension will rise by a minimum of either 2.5%, the rate of inflation or average earnings growth, whichever is largest.
The triple lock is doomed.
You're understanding it backwards.
Increasing by the rate of inflation doesn't cost anything at all in real terms.
Increasing by 2.5% if inflation is extremely low is expensive in real terms.
It depends if you're hoping to use inflation to reduce your costs, then having an outgoing index-linked stands in the way of that.
Comments
If the capital goes the way of Lombardy then the obvious risk is that panicked Londoners will try to flee - not just wealthy second home owners, but those with friends or family elsewhere who are willing to put them up - thus spreading the disease everywhere else.
I'm not one of these self-proclaimed experts and I may very well be wrong, but this does have the appearance of a catastrophe waiting to happen.
Panicked Londoners are already all over.
Bit gloomy.
However, they clearly should have acted sooner. Allowing Cheltenham to go ahead, for instance, was pretty gobsmacking.
Still, they have my support.
One of my sons does business with Chinese (and other) radio and TV stations, among others, and reports that his contacts and commercial prospects are starting up again. Texted yesterday to say he had a lot on; we asked work or family ..... and he replied 'both'.
China, he reports, is back to work now. Which is good news.
It's going to be 'interesting' to see if the UK and especially US can arrive at that stage anything like so quickly without China's phenomenally stringent lockdown. Which is a loaded way of saying, we can't and we won't.
Furthermore most people are extreme social distancing and are therefore not at particular risk. People who are at greater risk are people who are not in a position to practice extreme distancing (mainly due to work). Given that these people are already at greater risk they are not likely to suddenly take decisions to flee.
https://twitter.com/washingtonpost/status/1243323512833675271?s=21
Whatever the new normality will be!
Can German medicine cure our economy?
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/can-german-medicine-cure-our-economy-2tt530rgj
Harmonising self employed tax and NI with that of the employed clearly makes sense, and has been on the Treasury wish list for a while.
Was there ever a better time to make a bold move toward simplification and merge tax and NI altogether? Yes, there’ll be an extra burden on wealthier pensioners, but not an unreasonable one in the circumstances.
On the wider point, Boris himself was an austerity-sceptic and even before Covid-19 had won an election based on increasing investment in public services. Boris won not by being a better Theresa May but by being a better Jeremy Corbyn than Corbyn himself.
But also a huge dropping off in numbers across Europe. USA - not so much.
May should see some optimism returning. The greatest challenge for Government in this whole crisis will be in handling this. Preventing a headlong rush to "normal" behaviour. Because everyone will be wanting to get out to their favourite pubs and restaurants and party like its 1999. Partly out of a desire to help them out and see them back in business. Partly because they have gone stir crazy.
And public health - your health in public - will be a Big Thing. Anyone with a summer cold will risk being beaten to a pulp by a mob. Coughing in public will be a capital offence, in the Court of Public Opinion. Temperature testing will be the norm before you are allowed in anywhere, on anything. I hope the Govt. has been sourcing these too, ready for their need as part of planning for the Time Afterwards.
The end of the triple lock for sure. We are going to be at risk of inflation. It has to go.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-germany-refugees-idUSKBN21C2IG
We might see inflation where customers are bidding for scarce resources like skiing holidays but prices might fall if customers remain wary of foreign resorts. We can also expect less demand for consumer goods that have been stockpiled, like toilet rolls, pasta, and Waitrose plonk at £4.95 a bottle.
Ditto sporting events. I just can't see the Govt. allowing forty, fifty thousand people coming together until the experts tell them this thing is beaten. I am quite expecting football, rugby, cricket, horse racing not to return until 2021. And if that is what it takes to secure the rest of the economy, so be it.
This forest fire will eventually run out of trees.
Ergo there are many, many more trees and without a vaccine this is here to stay for a while. 2021 might not be hugely different.
The triple lock is doomed.
However one thing the government could be doing that would fit right in its comfort zone would be liberalizing p2p lending, small investments and crowd-funding. With a few exceptions like Amazon, big companies are going to be bleeding cash just like small ones. However the difference is that they can borrow or issue stock more easily. So make it easier for people with local knowledge of smaller businesses that would be solid but for the shutdowns to invest in a little bit of money and keep them afloat in the hope of an eventual profit.
She also gets slightly annoyed with the people having to stay home on full pay telling her how difficult it is for them. Usually saying "I'd quite like to have to stay at home at the moment" does the trick.
https://twitter.com/jeremycorbyn/status/1243284784903831554
We just have to treat it like smallpox, for the economic damage it can cause.
In terms of positioning, there is an interesting review of prone ventilation for ARDS here:
There are some benefits, and some downsides. The better oxygenation and reduced lung injury vs increased cardiac arrest.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4173887/
@GideonWise may be interested
Influenza Virus Aerosols in Human Exhaled Breath: Particle Size, Culturability, and Effect of Surgical Masks
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3591312/
Increasing by the rate of inflation doesn't cost anything at all in real terms.
Increasing by 2.5% if inflation is extremely low is expensive in real terms.
When they announced reopening schools they didn't say, "OK, crisis over, everybody go ahead with your events and travel". But this came right before a three-day weekend, and a lot of people seem to have interpreted it like that. This was right when a bunch of infected people were showing up from Europe and the US. So we had three days with loads of social contact, at a really bad time. Then now a week later the governor of Tokyo has slammed on the brakes and gone to the opposite extreme of telling people not to leave their homes over the weekend, and we have to wait a couple of weeks before we know how much damage was done.
One thing they might want to do is that whenever they relax a big, blunt weapon of a measure like telling everybody to stay at home, also announce a bunch of stricter more targeted measures, like (pulling this out of my arse, not saying it's the most effective thing) permanently closing a load of pubs with poor ventilation. They really need the message to be "this is how we can make a permanent change to get our lives back while dealing with this threat", not "the threat is gone, everything can go back to normal".
Of course, we don't know who is and isn't.
But the way masks are being used by many almost certainly uninfected persons appears likely to increase rather than reduce their chances of infection. Which is why they aren't recommended for the general public.