Coronavirus

[phart]

 

[phart]

 

[Orraloon]

1 hour ago, phart said:

 

That's a bit mental. They should be doing everything they can to encourage use of face masks. Care homes will claim the VAT back, but it would be much easier if they didn't have to pay it in the first place.

 

[TDYER63]

On the Douglas Ross free school meals stooshie, am I right in thinking that because the motion was defeated in England then Scotland need to find the money from their coffers as they will not receive any funding ?  
 Ross is in support of free school meals in Scotland but he abstained in the vote in England knowing it would mean Scotland would get no funding if the bill failed ? 

[phart]

2 hours ago, Orraloon said:

That's a bit mental. They should be doing everything they can to encourage use of face masks. Care homes will claim the VAT back, but it would be much easier if they didn't have to pay it in the first place.

 

 

[thplinth]

Unreal...

https://www.sundaypost.com/fp/first-minister-i-did-not-know-positive-patients-were-being-sent-to-care-homes/amp/?__twitter_impression=true

Imagine sending people who had tested positive into places stuffed with the most vulnerable people. 

[TDYER63]

On 10/23/2020 at 1:00 PM, TDYER63 said:

Can someone explain why the chancellor can give extra cash to England for businesses but not the devolved governments ? I assume there must be a justifiable reason ? I read that £700 million had been given to Scotland already , was that money that nowhere in England got ? 

 

On 10/25/2020 at 10:35 AM, TDYER63 said:

On the Douglas Ross free school meals stooshie, am I right in thinking that because the motion was defeated in England then Scotland need to find the money from their coffers as they will not receive any funding ?  
 Ross is in support of free school meals in Scotland but he abstained in the vote in England knowing it would mean Scotland would get no funding if the bill failed ? 

Can anyone answer these ? Sorry if the answers are obvious but they are genuine questions. 

[SteveHFC]

Edinburgh to be in Tier 3 says a leaked report. 

Wonder if Glasgow and the surrounding areas will be in Tier 4. 

[phart]

57 minutes ago, SteveHFC said:

Edinburgh to be in Tier 3 says a leaked report. 

Wonder if Glasgow and the surrounding areas will be in Tier 4. 

From Edinburgh live

Edinburgh will be placed in tier three restriction in the Scottish Government's new tiered lockdown alert system, Edinburgh's local democracy reporter has learned.

Joseph Anderson reported that a briefing by the umbrella body for Scottish council's indicated the city would be in tier three restrictions, the second highest level.

[TDYER63]

Heard on Clyde 1 news that leaked doc suggests Glasgow will be in Tier 3 but that North and South Lanarkshire could be in Tier 4.  

[exile]

2 hours ago, TDYER63 said:

Heard on Clyde 1 news that leaked doc suggests Glasgow will be in Tier 3 but that North and South Lanarkshire could be in Tier 4.  

I guess this would be why

[exile]

 

It seems there is an investigation on care homes to be published later this week.

In the meantime... there have been rebuttals suggesting care home deaths linked to agency staff, e.g.

Care home deaths:The lies that will not die,

How many more times son? It was not the hospital discharges

 

Edited October 26, 2020 by exile

[thplinth]

http://www.hideoutnow.com/2020/10/we-need-miracle-czech-pm-admits.html

That was a country that had a full lockdown very early and squashed it pretty successfully.

Now it is the worst in Europe by far.

Check out the graph of new cases - you can barely see the bump in March and April when they went into lockdown the last time versus recent weeks. 

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/czech-republic/

It makes me wonder what is the point of the lockdowns. I wonder if it was the onset of spring / summer that contained it and now we are seeing it coming back with a vengeance as we hit autumn / winter.

Cant see how the UK will be any better.

Not looking good.

[PapofGlencoe]

17 hours ago, exile said:

 

It seems there is an investigation on care homes to be published later this week.

In the meantime... there have been rebuttals suggesting care home deaths linked to agency staff, e.g.

Care home deaths:The lies that will not die,

How many more times son? It was not the hospital discharges

 

The testing capacity should have been such that workers were tested before entering the homes whether from agency or hospitals.  

 “Based on that internationally recognised approach, Scotland, Wales, and particularly England appear to have performed poorly.” (from the same report)

sounds like whatever they did, they did badly..

[phart]

This is for England not sure if same for Scotland

 

[ThistleWhistle]

Thought this was quite interesting take on the route the government seems to be going down:  

https://www.theguardian.com/law/2020/oct/27/covid-measures-will-be-seen-as-monument-of-collective-hysteria-and-folly-says-ex-judge

[phart]

52 minutes ago, ThistleWhistle said:

Thought this was quite interesting take on the route the government seems to be going down:  

https://www.theguardian.com/law/2020/oct/27/covid-measures-will-be-seen-as-monument-of-collective-hysteria-and-folly-says-ex-judge

It's all dependent on what weights you put on certain things. It makes some historically dubious claims, rationing for 10 years; basically governments dictating how much food you can buy is much more coercive. However Lawyers try and win arguments not pursue "truths" so their rhetoric is shaped by that.

He's probably not wrong in some of his criticisms just a bit hysterical in his own claims He's right about parliamentary scrutiny , will be an expert on what powers certain acts should proportionally have etc. Not sure what propaganda he is specifically talking about as he doesn't give examples in that piece.  Folk point to the Vallance graph but that is now being shown to be an understatement not an overstatement of the severity of the cases and deaths. That's the crazy thing with Covid, all these folk making predictions and then can compare to reality straight away.

 

 

[phart]

“The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt.”

― Bertrand Russell

[ThistleWhistle]

42 minutes ago, phart said:

It's all dependent on what weights you put on certain things. It makes some historically dubious claims, rationing for 10 years; basically governments dictating how much food you can buy is much more coercive. However Lawyers try and win arguments not pursue "truths" so their rhetoric is shaped by that.

He's probably not wrong in some of his criticisms just a bit hysterical in his own claims He's right about parliamentary scrutiny , will be an expert on what powers certain acts should proportionally have etc. Not sure what propaganda he is specifically talking about as he doesn't give examples in that piece.  Folk point to the Vallance graph but that is now being shown to be an understatement not an overstatement of the severity of the cases and deaths. That's the crazy thing with Covid, all these folk making predictions and then can compare to reality straight away.

 

 

He defo overeggs the pudding but thought it was interesting from someone steeped  in the legal profession almost downgrading the pandemic as of lesser importance to what government are potentially up to.  

 

 

The Democrats got caught with something similar on having to go even tougher on crime than the Republicans because there was no room for debate:

By using “propaganda”, he said, the government had “to some extent been able to create its own public opinion – fear was deliberately stoked up by the government”.

And being a libertarian, he said, had become a term of abuse. “The public’s fear effectively silenced opposition in the House of Commons. The official opposition did not dare to challenge the government, except to suggest that they should have been even tougher even quicker.”

 

[ThistleWhistle]

46 minutes ago, phart said:

“The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt.”

― Bertrand Russell

It's pretty obvious he knows what he's on about and she's the news equivalent of Adrian Durham.  

What I don't really get though is the population densities side of it because granted London at about 5700 (square km)is higher than Stockholm at about 4200 but its not massively different.  Glasgow comes in at 3400 so why is Scotland seeing levels more comparable to England than Sweden?  Are we just further down the road with a second wave and/or do we measure it differently for example?  

On the bright side your graph is probably the first I've sort of understood in about a week so things are hopefully on the up!   

[phart]

31 minutes ago, ThistleWhistle said:

He defo overeggs the pudding but thought it was interesting from someone steeped  in the legal profession almost downgrading the pandemic as of lesser importance to what government are potentially up to.  

 

 

The Democrats got caught with something similar on having to go even tougher on crime than the Republicans because there was no room for debate:

By using “propaganda”, he said, the government had “to some extent been able to create its own public opinion – fear was deliberately stoked up by the government”.

And being a libertarian, he said, had become a term of abuse. “The public’s fear effectively silenced opposition in the House of Commons. The official opposition did not dare to challenge the government, except to suggest that they should have been even tougher even quicker.”

 

I'm of the opinion governments are far too interfering,I just find it amusing that suddenly everyone is espousing the libertarian mindset cause of a pandemic and not the thousands of other examples beforehand, like data collection, AI in social media, the new powers given in various acts, hell even refugee crossings etc.

The 200 a day deaths was baked in by infection numbers 4 weeks ago, it;s like staring at the sun we're not seeing where it is but where it was 8 minutes ago.

Glad he has changed his mind on the government though he's the fucker that was defending the government over releasing David Kelly's name saying they had done nothing wrong during the Hutton inquiry etc.

[phart]

34 minutes ago, ThistleWhistle said:

It's pretty obvious he knows what he's on about and she's the news equivalent of Adrian Durham.  

What I don't really get though is the population densities side of it because granted London at about 5700 (square km)is higher than Stockholm at about 4200 but its not massively different.  Glasgow comes in at 3400 so why is Scotland seeing levels more comparable to England than Sweden?  Are we just further down the road with a second wave and/or do we measure it differently for example?  

On the bright side your graph is probably the first I've sort of understood in about a week so things are hopefully on the up!   

Cause it's a lot more complex than that. It's population behaviours as well. Also the virus progresses non-linearly, it explodes by superspreader events, most folk don't even infect anyone else but a minority infect loads and loads of folk. So super-spreading events drive it rather than just population density. The experts don't even like the term waves as it implies some sort of time dependent cycle, they say it's more like forest fires where you stamp out but a spark suddenly causes another huge fire. If you relax your fire suppression efforts it suddenly bursts alight again.

Sweden is doing abysmally (death-wise) compared to Norway and Finland and worse than Denmark too. I play World of Warcraft in a predominately Scandanvian guild and they all call Sweden "Covid-land". It seems to have picked up this mythical status among a certain demograph (probably fueled by social media misrepresentations) that everyone just carries on as normal and no one is affected by Covid, but they have multiple multiple more deaths than their neighbours the population is working from home , metrics like public transport use are down like 75% etc. Behaviours have changed in their population, then you look at this

 

Edited October 28, 2020 by phart

[phart]

1 hour ago, ThistleWhistle said:

It's pretty obvious he knows what he's on about and she's the news equivalent of Adrian Durham.  

What I don't really get though is the population densities side of it because granted London at about 5700 (square km)is higher than Stockholm at about 4200 but its not massively different.  Glasgow comes in at 3400 so why is Scotland seeing levels more comparable to England than Sweden?  Are we just further down the road with a second wave and/or do we measure it differently for example?  

On the bright side your graph is probably the first I've sort of understood in about a week so things are hopefully on the up!   

Seems a maths professor has heard the interview as well. To answer the question on how we measure, I don't know. I'm assuming the effiacy of specialised scientists and repeating what i understand from their work, they could be wrong and/or i could be too dumb to understand their work and be wrong as well.

 

 

[ThistleWhistle]

4 minutes ago, phart said:

Cause it's a lot more complex than that. It's population behaviours as well. Also the virus progresses non-linearly, it explodes by superspreader events, most folk don't even infect anyone else but a minority infect loads and loads of folk. So super-spreading events drive it rather than just population density. The experts don't even like the term waves as it implies some sort of time dependent cycle, they say it's more like forest fires where you stamp out but a spark suddenly causes another huge fire. If you relax your fire suppression efforts it suddenly bursts alight again.

Sweden is doing abysmally (death-wise) compared to Norway and Finland and worse than Denmark too. I play World of Warcraft in a predominately Scandanvian guild and they all call Sweden "Covid-land". It seems to have picked up this mythical status among a certain demograph (probably fueled by social media misrepresentations) that everyone just carries on as normal and no one is affected by Covid, but they have multiple multiple more deaths than their neighbours the population is working from home , metrics like public transport use are down like 75% etc. Behaviours have changed in their population, then you look at this

 

So it's OF fans fault then?  All I need to know - 100% confidence restored!

Declaring Sweden as winning compared to us (UK) is a bit like Florida pronouncing itself awesome compared to other US States before they went pear-shaped?   

Knew they weren't exactly NZ levels of control but hadn't appreciated they're sitting at 6,000 deaths from it with 10m population.  Not sure how that compares with us as we're on 4500 where Covid is mentioned with 5.5m population.

A bit crass but will be really interesting at the end of all this to see how the other Scandinavian countries managed it better than Sweden and how they in turn compare to us.  

Did you see the excess deaths for Yemen have been estimated:

https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-yemen-graves/grave-counting-satellite-images-seek-to-track-yemens-covid-death-toll-idUSKBN27C3BT

Was surprised its 'only' 2000 but must be down to other factors like folk not getting to an age anyway where it really takes hold.  

 

[Orraloon]

I think this bit is interesting.

"COVID-19 associated mortality was concentrated in its impact, more than half of COVID-19 deaths were in 64 homes and a quarter of all COVID-19 deaths were in just 25 homes."

That's from a total of 1084 care homes.

file:///home/chronos/u-d93353cdd3fc6c394ab5af5904ac5290d9484794/MyFiles/Downloads/2020-10-28-discharges-from-nhsscotland-hospitals-to-care-homes-report.pdf