And decent old gentlemen who had experience of war and knew what it meant for others - I use an extended argument I saw long since about who were in th ereal Home Guard.
Our lot have experience of very little but PPE (whatever that includes), internship in political groups, and/or, possibly, of financial dealings which have little to do with the real creators of wealth. Hedge funds and private equity management, for example.
And decent old gentlemen who had experience of war and knew what it meant for others - I use an extended argument I saw long since about who were in th ereal Home Guard.
Our lot have experience of very little but PPE (whatever that includes), internship in political groups, and/or, possibly, of financial dealings which have little to do with the real creators of wealth. Hedge funds and private equity management, for example.
And of completely the wrong kind of PPE for the current situation at that.
I noted that at today's news conference that, when faced with a member of the public asking a question and saying as part of it that she had lost two close people to Covid, Boris just blustered into his answer in the usual way. It was left to Chris Witty do do the decent human thing and respond that he was sorry for her loss before addressing her question. I was unimpressed but not particularly surprised by the Prime Minister's lack of compassion. At least the Chief Medical Officer showed some.
Though they were either asleep or not listening in lectures. The EEC (as it then was) was a game-changer at trade conferences in the 60s. That's why our government back then was so keen to join, even if it meant throwing our former colonies under the bus.
I noted that at today's news conference that, when faced with a member of the public asking a question and saying as part of it that she had lost two close people to Covid, Boris just blustered into his answer in the usual way. It was left to Chris Witty do do the decent human thing and respond that he was sorry for her loss before addressing her question. I was unimpressed but not particularly surprised by the Prime Minister's lack of compassion. At least the Chief Medical Officer showed some.
Yes, good for Professor Whitty (but where's the engaging Professor Van Tam these days?).
You might be right Marvin, but it seems unfair. It's not like he had any real choice in the matter. It's the virus that's cancelled Christmas, not Johnson.
Mind you, there is no shortage of other things not to forgive Johnson for, including his handling of the pandemic generally.
If he'd had the courage to lock down harder earlier and the competence or integrity to run proper testing the virus might be under control.
(Most European countries are having trouble with a second wave. But we should be starting from a better place.)
If he'd had the courage to lock down harder earlier and the competence or integrity to run proper testing the virus might be under control.
(Most European countries are having trouble with a second wave. But we should be starting from a better place.)
This.
I'm in the South of England and the friends I was due to visit are in Midlands. She was lamenting being in Tier 3 whilst London etc was in Tier 2 and kept remarking "lucky you" to me ... but it never felt lucky. It felt unwise and I would have preferred a lockdown earlier, longer, harder and then perhaps have a chance at seeing loved ones at Christmas.
But that is just a social nice to have - there are people who are very sick and that is a far bigger concern.
I think he'd done that already. He's failed to get anything right re: coronavirus, he got lucky that a vaccine came through on his watch. He's failed to deliver the promised "oven ready" "easiest deal in history" agreement with the EU.
He is, I'm afraid, a 100% dithering incompetent, the wrong measures, the wrong timing, neither doing a deal with the EU months ago nor getting them to put the whole process on ice until Covid had gone, imposing extra Covid restrictions suddenly and at the last minute - we've had three different complicated sets of rule changes this week. I know as a Christian we are commanded to be loving and compassionate. I'm sorry if this offends but he's long since exhausted my capacity to be so. I confess that for me this is a serious spiritual problem.
And, I know this will sound old-fashioned to some shipmates, but I'm fairly sure that no previous prime minister, not even in the years before 1836, has openly kept his mistress and their love-child in his official residence.
I'd like to hope he's fouled up his chances of re-election, but if he can keep his party meanwhile from stabbing him in the back, he's got another four years to go. One of the two most depressing things about the UK's politics are that looking at the useless fodder he's got in his cabinet, can you see any better option? The other is that when the Scots go, the lumpenelectorate of rumpEngland and its corrupt electoral system may blame him for the break up of the Union, but are even less likely to vote in sufficient numbers for anyone else.
You might be right Marvin, but it seems unfair. It's not like he had any real choice in the matter. It's the virus that's cancelled Christmas, not Johnson.
Mind you, there is no shortage of other things not to forgive Johnson for, including his handling of the pandemic generally.
(Emphasis mine).
Umm... no not quite.
Whilst the decision yesterday was correct and unavoidable really. Hence, I will not criticise Johnson for this. However, if you take the wider view and ask how did we get here? Then it is inescapable that Johnson is hugely culpable. An explanation of how government decisions impact on the virus:
I need to update this but the second wave was not inevitable, it follows that had the first wave been managed properly, we would not be here now. I think the UK government is without excuse; all they had to do in the spring was look at Italy and Spain. When it became clear in September that we were in trouble,* they had time to act.
And Brexit is about to hit us.
AFZ
*second wave not going to be as devastating as first, I think, looking at the official data so far. I think.
No - he's too clever (and not in a good way) - I'd nominate Williamson or Jenrick.
The trouble with trying to match them up with the Dad's Army chaps is that they were all decent old gentlemen with the good of the country at heart, which is the exact opposite of the current Cabinet.
The Dad's Army crew were decent old patriots, bumbling along as best they could - you certainly could not call the present UK Cabinet patriots (although they are probably doing the best they're capable of).
You might be right Marvin, but it seems unfair. It's not like he had any real choice in the matter. It's the virus that's cancelled Christmas, not Johnson.
The numbers dictated a lockdown over Christmas -- that there was a new strain was neither here nor there wrt that decision, it merely provided the occasion for a u-turn. With hospitals near capacity, and deaths and case numbers high and trending upwards this was a foregone conclusion.
*second wave not going to be as devastating as first, I think, looking at the official data so far. I think.
I disagree, looking at the case and hospitalisation figures for E&W for the last few days. We've almost a week until the post-Christmas lockdown and way too many people are going to treat it like the night before the end of the world. If we don't see a new case figure above 50k and numbers in hospital north of 30k before New Year I'll be very surprised, with daily deaths peaking above 1000 by mid-January. Schools will be open by the 11th, and that will mean a longer tail even after the peak, particularly if this new strain is as transmissable as reports suggest.
Quite apart from policy making the pandemic worse, optimstically waving a relaxed Christmas period at people then taking it away was a stupid plan. He'd have been better approaching with caution and quietly hoping he could relax rules when it came to it. No loss of face if he then couldn't.
Rather a shit sandwich you know will be a shit sandwich than one you were intially told was chocolate spread.
Well, he’s just fucked his chances of re-election. Being the PM who cancelled Christmas is not something a lot of people are going to forgive.
Do you think the recent rises should have been ignored ?
No, they should have been anticipated because everyone was warning that the Christmas relaxation was dangerous and England had just come out of a 4 week lockdown.
No - he's too clever (and not in a good way) - I'd nominate Williamson or Jenrick.
The trouble with trying to match them up with the Dad's Army chaps is that they were all decent old gentlemen with the good of the country at heart, which is the exact opposite of the current Cabinet.
The Dad's Army crew were decent old patriots, bumbling along as best they could - you certainly could not call the present UK Cabinet patriots (although they are probably doing the best they're capable of).
This Cabinet are doing an incredibly good job of lining their friends' and families' pockets in a way that looks far from bumbling. Johnson is no doubt in the pocket of various hedge fund managers who are going to make a packet over Brexit and the lack of regulations thereafter. Lots of the posturing seems to be aiming to ensure that the ECJ* cannot rule on anything in the UK ever again.
Johnson had the herd immunity crew in his ear (there's a Guardian article somewhere) and undoubtedly Cummings with his views that reckon we can spare the old, the sick, the halt and the lame as they're just a drain on society. It looked as if some of this was deliberately cavalier. This crew are all "I'm all right Jack" and helping themselves to enough wealth now that they can pay for care when they need it.
No - he's too clever (and not in a good way) - I'd nominate Williamson or Jenrick.
The trouble with trying to match them up with the Dad's Army chaps is that they were all decent old gentlemen with the good of the country at heart, which is the exact opposite of the current Cabinet.
The Dad's Army crew were decent old patriots, bumbling along as best they could - you certainly could not call the present UK Cabinet patriots (although they are probably doing the best they're capable of).
This Cabinet are doing an incredibly good job of lining their friends' and families' pockets in a way that looks far from bumbling.
The Good Law project have done great work on exposing this, and it even made the NYTimes, complete with fancy infographics showing cash flows:
Well, he’s just fucked his chances of re-election. Being the PM who cancelled Christmas is not something a lot of people are going to forgive.
Do you think the recent rises should have been ignored ?
No, they should have been anticipated because everyone was warning that the Christmas relaxation was dangerous and England had just come out of a 4 week lockdown.
Everyone? Even those who deny there is any problem?
The graph is why I think things will be bad rather than catastrophic. However, two big worries:
1) because we don't have a full lock down, that plateau might take a long time to fall and hence the total deaths (= area under curve) will end up higher.
And 2) the relaxation of rules over Christmas +/- people decided they don't care for a multitude of reasons** could lead to a new acceleration - the curve can go up as well as down!!
The reason for me saying that I don't THINK it'll be as bad is because the chart shows a downward (but slow) trend. It's a close call, my range of likely scenarios goes in both directions...
My anger at the government is driven by the fact that they have catastrophically mismanaged this at every stage. It was obvious 3 weeks ago that the Christmas plan was dangerous. It was obvious by early October that we were in a second wave. It was obvious in August that test and trace was failing. It was obvious in May that unlocking without low enough case numbers AND effective tracing would make a second wave inevitable.
And it's obvious that the government's bluddenering has destroyed so much credibility such that public buy-in to vital measures is fatally undermined.
The Christmas u-turn is the right thing but too late.
A year ago I was posting about how totally unsuited Mr Johnson is to be Prime Minister. I do hate being right sometimes. I really would rather be wrong. But I'm not.
AFZ
*in my blog post, I linked to above I cover how to look at the different stats available.
**This is an abject failure of government leadership.
Everyone with any sense...so that rules out the *government*, I think.
The government is doing it's best. Why would they do otherwise.?
I'm not sure which thought is worse, that this might be the best the UK government is capable of, or that they've chosen to be less effective than they could have been. At the root of it, I think, is Johnson's cowardice. He doesn't like the tough decisions so he delays them, making the situation worse.
I agree about the death figures, @alienfromzog , but remember that the current death figures represent infections in the November lockdown, and that is the cause of the stability. That has since been relaxed, the case numbers are shooting up (35 000 today) and hospital numbers are climbing too. This is going to get worse before it gets better. The only things that will stop deaths going through the roof too are improved treatment protocols and the vaccination of the most vulnerable.
What is scary is that this shambles might, really be the best this bunch can do. I am reminded of what Sybil said of Basil Faulty (from memory) : "I've seen better organised creatures running around farmyards with their heads cut off, more intelligent creatures staring up at me from the bottom of ponds".
Or is all this their cunning plan to make a pile of dosh?
I agree about the death figures, @alienfromzog , but remember that the current death figures represent infections in the November lockdown, and that is the cause of the stability. That has since been relaxed, the case numbers are shooting up (35 000 today) and hospital numbers are climbing too. This is going to get worse before it gets better. The only things that will stop deaths going through the roof too are improved treatment protocols and the vaccination of the most vulnerable.
I tend to ignore the infection rate numbers because we don't have a good comparison with the spring as testing at that point was woeful. Similarly the hospital admission figures should be interpreted with caution because the admission threshold in the spring was really high and I don't think it's consistent.
You're right that the intervention in November was critical and that death figures have an in-built delay. That delay is probably 13 days (from peak infection to peak death) and so 20th December corresponds to a week after the restrictions were eased. Thus my interpretation (and I may well be wrong) is that the relaxation slowed the fall rather than led to an increase. 7 days is I THINK enough to see that... but... but... the confidence intervals are wide and a small difference now means a BIG difference in death rates over the next month. And that's before Christmas itself has an effect.
I wouldn't say I was cautiously optimistic but I am cautiously not totally pessimistic.
I agree about the death figures, @alienfromzog , but remember that the current death figures represent infections in the November lockdown, and that is the cause of the stability. That has since been relaxed, the case numbers are shooting up (35 000 today) and hospital numbers are climbing too. This is going to get worse before it gets better. The only things that will stop deaths going through the roof too are improved treatment protocols and the vaccination of the most vulnerable.
I tend to ignore the infection rate numbers because we don't have a good comparison with the spring as testing at that point was woeful. Similarly the hospital admission figures should be interpreted with caution because the admission threshold in the spring was really high and I don't think it's consistent.
You're right that the intervention in November was critical and that death figures have an in-built delay. That delay is probably 13 days (from peak infection to peak death) and so 20th December corresponds to a week after the restrictions were eased. Thus my interpretation (and I may well be wrong) is that the relaxation slowed the fall rather than led to an increase. 7 days is I THINK enough to see that... but... but... the confidence intervals are wide and a small difference now means a BIG difference in death rates over the next month. And that's before Christmas itself has an effect.
I wouldn't say I was cautiously optimistic but I am cautiously not totally pessimistic.
Sigh. Oh for a competent government.
AFZ
I wasn't directly comparing infection figures with spring but with where they were a 3-4 weeks ago, on the basis that the current death figures are a result of those positive tests (13 days seems a lot shorter than I understood; I thought it was closer to a month).
The government is doing it's best. Why would they do otherwise.?
They're awarding contracts without scrutiny to their friends and relations even where the NHS has relevant expertise and the friends and relatives have none. So: friends and relatives of the government are making more money than they would if the government were doing a better job. Does that suggest a reason why they may not be doing the best they can?
That said, they may genuinely be too incompetent to realise that doing the honest thing will lead to better results.
Also, Johnson has a track record of not doing his work and of putting off difficult decisions. Do you take that into account when deciding what the best he can do is?
I agree about the death figures, @alienfromzog , but remember that the current death figures represent infections in the November lockdown, and that is the cause of the stability. That has since been relaxed, the case numbers are shooting up (35 000 today) and hospital numbers are climbing too. This is going to get worse before it gets better. The only things that will stop deaths going through the roof too are improved treatment protocols and the vaccination of the most vulnerable.
I tend to ignore the infection rate numbers because we don't have a good comparison with the spring as testing at that point was woeful. Similarly the hospital admission figures should be interpreted with caution because the admission threshold in the spring was really high and I don't think it's consistent.
You're right that the intervention in November was critical and that death figures have an in-built delay. That delay is probably 13 days (from peak infection to peak death) and so 20th December corresponds to a week after the restrictions were eased. Thus my interpretation (and I may well be wrong) is that the relaxation slowed the fall rather than led to an increase. 7 days is I THINK enough to see that... but... but... the confidence intervals are wide and a small difference now means a BIG difference in death rates over the next month. And that's before Christmas itself has an effect.
I wouldn't say I was cautiously optimistic but I am cautiously not totally pessimistic.
Sigh. Oh for a competent government.
AFZ
I wasn't directly comparing infection figures with spring but with where they were a 3-4 weeks ago, on the basis that the current death figures are a result of those positive tests (13 days seems a lot shorter than I understood; I thought it was closer to a month).
You may be right. My attraction to the death figures is their robustness whilst infection rates depend on how many you're testing and if you're testing the right people/groups. Unless you have a test with a 100% sensitivity and specificity and you test literally everyone, there's going to be a risk of sampling error. How important that error is, is still not fully known. Mortality data does not have that problem.
The 13 day figure comes from day of lockdown to peak of death from the spring. However it is startlingly consistent across different countries. I don't think I can provide a link because it's in press but not actually published yet but a colleague of mine did an interesting analysis. He looked at the daily death figures from multiple countries in isolation and plotted the date on which deaths peaked. With incredible consistency this date turned out to be 13 days after the date of significant intervention (e.g. a lockdown of some description). This is credible because whilst some people with Covid-19 get symptoms some days after exposure, become gradually more ill and die after a prolonged stay on ITU, others deteriorate very quickly. The time from peak infection to peak death will be an average of these patterns.
I'll see if I can find the data in a way I can share.
Having said all that, that is simply how I arrived at that figure. A longer delay may be the reality, in which case my pontificating over these last few posts is overly optimistic.
The government is doing it's best. Why would they do otherwise.?
They're awarding contracts without scrutiny to their friends and relations even where the NHS has relevant expertise and the friends and relatives have none. So: friends and relatives of the government are making more money than they would if the government were doing a better job. Does that suggest a reason why they may not be doing the best they can?
That said, they may genuinely be too incompetent to realise that doing the honest thing will lead to better results.
Also, Johnson has a track record of not doing his work and of putting off difficult decisions. Do you take that into account when deciding what the best he can do is?
Sorry, quick update... I'd forgotten that the November lockdown ran 8th November - 6th December... so it's too soon to know the full effect of December relaxation.
OTOH, the peak was on 21st /22nd November... 13 days...
Everyone with any sense...so that rules out the *government*, I think.
The government is doing it's best. Why would they do otherwise.?
I'm not sure which thought is worse, that this might be the best the UK government is capable of, or that they've chosen to be less effective than they could have been. At the root of it, I think, is Johnson's cowardice. He doesn't like the tough decisions so he delays them, making the situation worse.
In Britain in the Spanish Flu crisis we had 228,000 dead. I can't find a record of anyone criticising the government of the day.
Sorry, quick update... I'd forgotten that the November lockdown ran 8th November - 6th December... so it's too soon to know the full effect of December relaxation.
OTOH, the peak was on 21st /22nd November... 13 days...
Your model is really helpful, thank you! It provides some assurance that while the new variant is more transmissible, it is likely not to be more deadly (if I understand correctly).
Which diminishes some of the turbo-level of worrying experienced since yesterday...
Everyone with any sense...so that rules out the *government*, I think.
The government is doing it's best. Why would they do otherwise.?
I'm not sure which thought is worse, that this might be the best the UK government is capable of, or that they've chosen to be less effective than they could have been. At the root of it, I think, is Johnson's cowardice. He doesn't like the tough decisions so he delays them, making the situation worse.
In Britain in the Spanish Flu crisis we had 228,000 dead. I can't find a record of anyone criticising the government of the day.
Emergency National Government required now. Without Dim Jon Sun. He must resign.
The Tories should appoint an Acting PM (no time for a leadership election) and Starmer should be Acting Deputy PM.
An Emergency Cabinet should be formed including the First Ministers of the devolved administrations.
My only objection is to the fact that there is no-one IMHO in the Tory party who is capable of acting as PM...
In Britain in the Spanish Flu crisis we had 228,000 dead. I can't find a record of anyone criticising the government of the day.
As a comparator, to put this is politely as I can, that is a preposterous one. As a starter selection from the numerous reasons why, try these:-
1. The UK and most of Europe were just finishing a major war in which huge numbers of people had been killed,, and in the aftermath of which, particularly in central Europe, there was widespread disruption and starvation. There was also civil war in Ireland.
2. During the war news media were controlled and censored.
3. The ability of medicine to treat or control disease then was much less than now. There was also a much weaker sense that this was a public matter, or something that the public weal was even capable of doing much about.
4. The disease was a variant of influenza which, like Covid, is a virus, but viruses themselves had hardly been discovered if at all. Infections at that date were largely assumed to be bacterial.
5. That 100+ years ago. It was before any broadcasting. It is also now before living memory. Very few of us, and I suspect that includes you @Telford, have access to newspapers, ephemera, oratory or conversation of the time. However much criticism there was or was not of the government of the day, neither you, nor I, nor any other shipmate is likely to know or to be able to comment.
6. One cannot legitimately claim that Mr Johnson and his clique are entitled to be given a free pass because a different government under different conditions might or might not have been given more tolerance by the public.
Emergency National Government required now. Without Dim Jon Sun. He must resign.
The Tories should appoint an Acting PM (no time for a leadership election) and Starmer should be Acting Deputy PM.
An Emergency Cabinet should be formed including the First Ministers of the devolved administrations.
My only objection is to the fact that there is no-one IMHO in the Tory party who is capable of acting as PM...
Reminder: The reason the Tories in Parliament are so short of 'talent' is that anyone showing a little intelligence or expertise or spirit or the courage to defy the leadership or honest desire to do their best for the country was shown the exit before the last election.
Comments
Our lot have experience of very little but PPE (whatever that includes), internship in political groups, and/or, possibly, of financial dealings which have little to do with the real creators of wealth. Hedge funds and private equity management, for example.
And of completely the wrong kind of PPE for the current situation at that.
Yes, good for Professor Whitty (but where's the engaging Professor Van Tam these days?).
Mind you, there is no shortage of other things not to forgive Johnson for, including his handling of the pandemic generally.
For ever.
(Most European countries are having trouble with a second wave. But we should be starting from a better place.)
This.
I'm in the South of England and the friends I was due to visit are in Midlands. She was lamenting being in Tier 3 whilst London etc was in Tier 2 and kept remarking "lucky you" to me ... but it never felt lucky. It felt unwise and I would have preferred a lockdown earlier, longer, harder and then perhaps have a chance at seeing loved ones at Christmas.
But that is just a social nice to have - there are people who are very sick and that is a far bigger concern.
I suppose every cloud has a silver lining.
And, I know this will sound old-fashioned to some shipmates, but I'm fairly sure that no previous prime minister, not even in the years before 1836, has openly kept his mistress and their love-child in his official residence.
I'd like to hope he's fouled up his chances of re-election, but if he can keep his party meanwhile from stabbing him in the back, he's got another four years to go. One of the two most depressing things about the UK's politics are that looking at the useless fodder he's got in his cabinet, can you see any better option? The other is that when the Scots go, the lumpenelectorate of rumpEngland and its corrupt electoral system may blame him for the break up of the Union, but are even less likely to vote in sufficient numbers for anyone else.
(Emphasis mine).
Umm... no not quite.
Whilst the decision yesterday was correct and unavoidable really. Hence, I will not criticise Johnson for this. However, if you take the wider view and ask how did we get here? Then it is inescapable that Johnson is hugely culpable. An explanation of how government decisions impact on the virus:
http://alienfromzog.blogspot.com/2020/09/covid-19-and-why-timing-of-lockdown.html
I need to update this but the second wave was not inevitable, it follows that had the first wave been managed properly, we would not be here now. I think the UK government is without excuse; all they had to do in the spring was look at Italy and Spain. When it became clear in September that we were in trouble,* they had time to act.
And Brexit is about to hit us.
AFZ
*second wave not going to be as devastating as first, I think, looking at the official data so far. I think.
The Dad's Army crew were decent old patriots, bumbling along as best they could - you certainly could not call the present UK Cabinet patriots (although they are probably doing the best they're capable of).
hellsbells thats an explanation not an excuse
The numbers dictated a lockdown over Christmas -- that there was a new strain was neither here nor there wrt that decision, it merely provided the occasion for a u-turn. With hospitals near capacity, and deaths and case numbers high and trending upwards this was a foregone conclusion.
I disagree, looking at the case and hospitalisation figures for E&W for the last few days. We've almost a week until the post-Christmas lockdown and way too many people are going to treat it like the night before the end of the world. If we don't see a new case figure above 50k and numbers in hospital north of 30k before New Year I'll be very surprised, with daily deaths peaking above 1000 by mid-January. Schools will be open by the 11th, and that will mean a longer tail even after the peak, particularly if this new strain is as transmissable as reports suggest.
Quite apart from policy making the pandemic worse, optimstically waving a relaxed Christmas period at people then taking it away was a stupid plan. He'd have been better approaching with caution and quietly hoping he could relax rules when it came to it. No loss of face if he then couldn't.
Rather a shit sandwich you know will be a shit sandwich than one you were intially told was chocolate spread.
Do you think the recent rises should have been ignored ?
No, they should have been anticipated because everyone was warning that the Christmas relaxation was dangerous and England had just come out of a 4 week lockdown.
The 'recent rises' date back to the second half of September https://www.gov.uk/guidance/the-r-number-in-the-uk
This was entirely predictable, and I suppose we should be grateful that the 'new strain' provided the political cover for the change in direction.
This Cabinet are doing an incredibly good job of lining their friends' and families' pockets in a way that looks far from bumbling. Johnson is no doubt in the pocket of various hedge fund managers who are going to make a packet over Brexit and the lack of regulations thereafter. Lots of the posturing seems to be aiming to ensure that the ECJ* cannot rule on anything in the UK ever again.
Johnson had the herd immunity crew in his ear (there's a Guardian article somewhere) and undoubtedly Cummings with his views that reckon we can spare the old, the sick, the halt and the lame as they're just a drain on society. It looked as if some of this was deliberately cavalier. This crew are all "I'm all right Jack" and helping themselves to enough wealth now that they can pay for care when they need it.
* ECJ - European Court of Justice
The Good Law project have done great work on exposing this, and it even made the NYTimes, complete with fancy infographics showing cash flows:
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/12/17/world/europe/britain-covid-contracts.html
Everyone? Even those who deny there is any problem?
The government is doing it's best. Why would they do otherwise.?
I'm not sure which thought is worse, that this might be the best the UK government is capable of, or that they've chosen to be less effective than they could have been. At the root of it, I think, is Johnson's cowardice. He doesn't like the tough decisions so he delays them, making the situation worse.
Or is all this their cunning plan to make a pile of dosh?
I tend to ignore the infection rate numbers because we don't have a good comparison with the spring as testing at that point was woeful. Similarly the hospital admission figures should be interpreted with caution because the admission threshold in the spring was really high and I don't think it's consistent.
You're right that the intervention in November was critical and that death figures have an in-built delay. That delay is probably 13 days (from peak infection to peak death) and so 20th December corresponds to a week after the restrictions were eased. Thus my interpretation (and I may well be wrong) is that the relaxation slowed the fall rather than led to an increase. 7 days is I THINK enough to see that... but... but... the confidence intervals are wide and a small difference now means a BIG difference in death rates over the next month. And that's before Christmas itself has an effect.
I wouldn't say I was cautiously optimistic but I am cautiously not totally pessimistic.
Sigh. Oh for a competent government.
AFZ
I wasn't directly comparing infection figures with spring but with where they were a 3-4 weeks ago, on the basis that the current death figures are a result of those positive tests (13 days seems a lot shorter than I understood; I thought it was closer to a month).
That said, they may genuinely be too incompetent to realise that doing the honest thing will lead to better results.
Also, Johnson has a track record of not doing his work and of putting off difficult decisions. Do you take that into account when deciding what the best he can do is?
You may be right. My attraction to the death figures is their robustness whilst infection rates depend on how many you're testing and if you're testing the right people/groups. Unless you have a test with a 100% sensitivity and specificity and you test literally everyone, there's going to be a risk of sampling error. How important that error is, is still not fully known. Mortality data does not have that problem.
The 13 day figure comes from day of lockdown to peak of death from the spring. However it is startlingly consistent across different countries. I don't think I can provide a link because it's in press but not actually published yet but a colleague of mine did an interesting analysis. He looked at the daily death figures from multiple countries in isolation and plotted the date on which deaths peaked. With incredible consistency this date turned out to be 13 days after the date of significant intervention (e.g. a lockdown of some description). This is credible because whilst some people with Covid-19 get symptoms some days after exposure, become gradually more ill and die after a prolonged stay on ITU, others deteriorate very quickly. The time from peak infection to peak death will be an average of these patterns.
I'll see if I can find the data in a way I can share.
Having said all that, that is simply how I arrived at that figure. A longer delay may be the reality, in which case my pontificating over these last few posts is overly optimistic.
AFZ
1000% this.
OTOH, the peak was on 21st /22nd November... 13 days...
In Britain in the Spanish Flu crisis we had 228,000 dead. I can't find a record of anyone criticising the government of the day.
This time we knew the right thing to do, and we have seen other governments do it while the UK government did not.
Your model is really helpful, thank you! It provides some assurance that while the new variant is more transmissible, it is likely not to be more deadly (if I understand correctly).
Which diminishes some of the turbo-level of worrying experienced since yesterday...
They weren't allowed to - censorship (it happened during World War I):
https://historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/HistoryofBritain/The-Spanish-Flu-pandemic-of-1918/
I repeat, two thousand and fucking seven.
Emergency National Government required now. Without Dim Jon Sun. He must resign.
The Tories should appoint an Acting PM (no time for a leadership election) and Starmer should be Acting Deputy PM.
An Emergency Cabinet should be formed including the First Ministers of the devolved administrations.
My only objection is to the fact that there is no-one IMHO in the Tory party who is capable of acting as PM...
1. The UK and most of Europe were just finishing a major war in which huge numbers of people had been killed,, and in the aftermath of which, particularly in central Europe, there was widespread disruption and starvation. There was also civil war in Ireland.
2. During the war news media were controlled and censored.
3. The ability of medicine to treat or control disease then was much less than now. There was also a much weaker sense that this was a public matter, or something that the public weal was even capable of doing much about.
4. The disease was a variant of influenza which, like Covid, is a virus, but viruses themselves had hardly been discovered if at all. Infections at that date were largely assumed to be bacterial.
5. That 100+ years ago. It was before any broadcasting. It is also now before living memory. Very few of us, and I suspect that includes you @Telford, have access to newspapers, ephemera, oratory or conversation of the time. However much criticism there was or was not of the government of the day, neither you, nor I, nor any other shipmate is likely to know or to be able to comment.
6. One cannot legitimately claim that Mr Johnson and his clique are entitled to be given a free pass because a different government under different conditions might or might not have been given more tolerance by the public.
Reminder: The reason the Tories in Parliament are so short of 'talent' is that anyone showing a little intelligence or expertise or spirit or the courage to defy the leadership or honest desire to do their best for the country was shown the exit before the last election.