FlyTheNest

Good morning, everyone.

I got the year right.

This advice sets out the NEU’s position on school and college opening from Monday 4 January

Good morning.


Deepti Gurdasani's response to the ghastly McVey, very good thread.

https://twitter.com/dgurdasani1/status/ ... 6830525440


I don't think McVey is a minister now though, so shouldn't be taken as representing the govt.

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One world, like it or not - John Martyn

This morning's papers say a full lockdown is coming.

So, again, why the delay?

Good morning.

I see the Opposition are putting the case for a national lockdown...oh...wait...



and this is interesting too.

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If I'm not here, then I'll be in the library. Or the other library.

How about this as the reason, from the G.

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One world, like it or not - John Martyn

So we have to wait to find out whether tier 4 and school closures worked at Xmas before we decide.
Although we already know that the Xmas mingling will offset any possible benefit.

I've advised mr gilsey to get his haircut this week before we go to tier 4, as we will be shortly, because if they won't close the schools that's all they've got.

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One world, like it or not - John Martyn

I'm sure PH experts and boffins are as infuriated as I am by Hancock and Johnson talking about the risk to teachers.
It's about household mixing, you clowns.

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One world, like it or not - John Martyn

'Labour's proposed lockdown would "try to get this virus under control and to keep children in class", says Shadow Education Secretary Kate Green'

Oh dear.

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One world, like it or not - John Martyn

I see Allison Pearson is behaving g exactly as you would think she would as a member of the "Free Speech (sic) Union"

https://twitter.com/s8mb/status/1346048997073580034

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If I'm not here, then I'll be in the library. Or the other library.

Happy New Year everyone

I am sorry but this is complete and utter nonsense

'Every Covid-19 death is preventable' - how can someone purporting to be a medical doctor or scientist come out with this is beyond me and shows that extremist claims are not just limited to one side of the argument

Of course the UK Government response has been a shambles but the UK is not a particular outlier and you could argue most Northern hemisphere Western countries have all be in the same boat and to be honest we have not enough understanding on why the situation has developed as it has. There seems to be a 'herd consensus' that it is all about lockdowns and masks but the evidence is weak at the very best and in a lot of senses goes against that argument. I am convinced when we exit the fog of war a lot of prevailing wisdom will not have been very wise at all

Back though to the original tweet - is she saying that we aim for 0 Covid death no matter the cost or consequence. All viral diseases, including the common cold can kill people - at what point do we say something is 'preventable' or not. Is she claiming that all Covid deaths will disappear with a vaccine? I see no virologists claiming that.

https://twitter.com/dgurdasani1/status/ ... 4675475456

Lockdowns may be necessary to prevent over-running of health services but should be used very carefully. Her claims on what is causing excess deaths post the initial pandemic in March/April are based on incomplete data and it may be another 6 months until the 2020 situation is fully understood. Euromomo shows that since March/April in UK there have been a slight increase in excess deaths above 5 year average but nothing like as anomalous as March/April and it will need further study

The pressure on the NHS has been the same for years now during this season and nothing has been done, some of her comments in this direction are valid but she also seems to be, on mental health for example, dismissing any detrimental effects because things were a problem beforehand. That could equally be applied to the Covid situation as well - previous under-investment left us inadequately prepared for something like this. Seems contradictory. Does she not also understand that as a society we have accepted and tolerated people dying for years now. We permit the selling alcohol, cigarettes, paracetamol, aspirin, cars, oil, gas etc all of which are know to cause deaths on a greater or lesser scale and yet are tolerated because of the perceived detriment of banning them. We see arms to Saudi and various other dictatorships that are meant to kill - and we, as a society, tolerate that for some reason. We tolerate a lot of things - some more justifiable than others. This winter season is not (yet) sitting completely outside the norms for excess deaths. If that stays the same then I assume we will lockdown for every winter season now on as to do otherwise will tolerate death?

Covid is a dangerous disease for certain demographics and should be controlled as much as possible - how best to facilitate that control is of course a matter for debate and the answers are not easy - the pro-lockdown certainty of their position is not based upon very much apart from 'common sense' though and she has made the comparison of the UK with Taiwan for some reason and not countries much closer with a much more severe approach that have not fared any better.

There was an article in the G yesterday all about how Sweden's approach had been shown to be catastrophic and yet when you actually look at the data and the current situation using the only reliable metric we seem to have of excess deaths this is shown not to be supported.....so much of this debate is poor and, as an industrial scientist working with data and risk analysis daily, I am amazed at some of the opinions of scientists being taken as facts - an expert opinion is just an opinion, and often another expert will have a 180 degree opposed one - anyone who has been to scientific conferences has seen this in action. Opinion is the first step on the way to hypothesis but sometimes the 'experts' are so convinced of their expertise they forget the bit about evidence and proof. Experts are also often very narrowly focused and the moment they step outside that area then their opinions are not that relevant anymore

One thing I do know is we have to get out of the pandemic mentality as soon as possible - the best way to me is to ramp up the vaccinations of those most vulnerable - we should reach an acceptable HIT relatively quickly assuming that around 20-30% of the population have already had this, another significant %age are of lower susceptibility and then with vaccines on top we could quickly get to 60% + coverage.

The one thing that has been totally missing is the endgame we are looking for - people like Gurdasani seem to want zerocovid but that should be challenged strongly and that we need to get out of the 'pandemic' and 'lockdown' mentality as soon as we can. Yes I am more libertarian than most on the left but then again I thought the left was for personal liberty

A situation where a friend cannot travel 5 miles to visit elderly parents (maintaining a safe distance after having done their shopping) under threat of prosecution - with the consequence his 85 year old mother goes to the shops herself - is not something that I can accept in anything but the most extreme circumstances. The left has completely vacated the idea of personal liberty from what I can see and been advocates for what I consider to be badly directed and poorly supported lockdowns

I have already left a number of sites for having been denigrated for taking a different point of view to my peers with various snide insinuations of being a 'granny killer' and other offensive comments - I find this whole subject poison and 'the science' has been left behind long ago

Michael Rosen, who I respect massively as a person and an author, now seems to have become the 'expert' on Covid due to him having had it. I am sure he can rebuff some of the extremist claims that this is not serious and that there can be longer-term complications but the idea that his experience now makes him an expert is ridiculous. He is also prone to throwing around nonsense such as Covid is like the Black Death but challenging his claims and pronouncements leads to dog piling and viciousness that is as bad as anything I have experienced.

This is the first time I have put my head above the parapet for a while on this subject and may be the last!

If you remember back in the Autumn some in the press were suggesting that Labour were making it difficult for the government to introduce a circuit breaker lockdown by asking for one. When you're being told anything you suggest prevents a government with the maturity of a 10 year old from adopting it saying anything becomes fraught with difficulty. FWIW "closing schools" is very unpopular with a not insignificant number of the public. An aim of keeping schools open safely is not bad in itself. Perhaps the emphasis should be more on the government's failure to achieve that safety to date and what evidence the government has that the proposed lateral flow testing will improve the situation is a more useful line to take than simply say "shut schools" which may well be needed now the virus has been allowed to get out of control but it's not an outcome anyone actually wants.

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"Fall seven times, get up eight" - Japanese proverb

Good morfternoon.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch -



https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/live/2021/jan/04/donald-trump-georgia-votes-joe-biden-brad-raffensperger-senate-covid-coronavirus-us-politics-live

@howsillyofme1
Sorry to hear you've experienced personal abuse on forums just for wanting a discussion. Personally I've been interested in the idea of covid spreading in clusters rather than more uniformly, with some people more likely to spread it than others. The experience in Japan, in particular, has been quite different, I think and my understanding is that they have been concentrating on backwards tracing, so when someone is found positive, working back to try to find who they caught it from and then testing or quarantining all their contacts. Not that we have ever had the test and trace capacity to do that here as we failed to close borders and stop large gatherings until after it had already spread widely. I've been disappointed more hasn't been made of the fact that everyone in the UK went along with huge restrictions during the first lockdown to get the numbers down and allow time to get an effective track and trace in place - an effort that seems to have been totally squandered by our incompetent, corrupt government. Track and trace appears to have achieved next to nothing through lack of knowledge of those running it, hence the need for less sophisticated and more drastic lockdown style measures, which none of us really want but it feels very much, without intelligent governance, we have no other choice. It's not just about deaths of older people who may equally have succumbed to flu or pneumonia in a normal year. The impact on younger, previously active, working age people of long term, debilitating illness is of huge concern.

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"Fall seven times, get up eight" - Japanese proverb

Thanks Willow

I am still not convinced of the 'long Covid' data - it still seems very anecdotal and few quality studies have come out that confirm it. We need to be cautious but at the same time are we going to use that to justify lockdown for the next year until everyone is vaccinated? I need to be far more convinced than some people on twitter and in the papers saying that they have a self-diagnosed illness. People have been talking about post-viral syndromes for years and have been treated with scepticism but now it is linked with Covid it is treated as axiomatic - again, the rhetoric seems much more convincing than the science it is based on. Long-term effects are usually defined over a year from the original illness so we will not see anything significant until much later in the year - are we locking down until we have that?

As to the reaction back in March/April - we probably missed being able to do anything effective by a couple of months - winter and the holiday season. Some countries were more fortunate and were able to react but I think it is possibly wishful thinking that there was much difference we could have made. Those countries that were seen as doing well in Europe early on are not maintaining that and may actually have just pushed their epidemic into the winter season - Czechia, Slovenia and even Germany.

Tegnel in Sweden based his whole strategy on the long-game and that a respiratory virus once out would need to managed. The soft lockdown strategy was based on this and the limited acceptance of continued infection and, yes, deaths until the vaccine is available rather than the rather chaotic hard lockdown and release.

In the end the numbers in general seem to end up quite similar - some places have done better but I don't think I am convinced by the lockdown arguments - perhaps borders if done early enough and perhaps if really good track and trace may have helped too. Western Europe has had very similar outcomes no matter what the approach to be honest

I just find it perplexing that there is so much certainty that lockdowns are the only way forward and people who are sceptical are called granny killers and are treated as anti-vaxxer conspiracy theorists when actually lockdowns are the big experiment as they have never really been used in this way before - it seems we were impressed by Wuhan but I am sceptical ee have all the information from China

As I said above, I think the wisdom of 2020 will eventually be found not to be that wise

@howsillyofme1

I hear what you're saying, and what you've said before.


Academics like Gurdasani, Devi Sridhar is another, calling for zero covid are saying that should be our aim. They're not saying it is or isn't entirely achievable in our particular circumstances, just that any other objective is abhorrent.

Minimising covid infections from day 1, which we have utterly failed to do in the UK, also minimises all the other harms. I don't think that should be controversial.

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One world, like it or not - John Martyn

Hi

This is all about Covid though and nothing else

Of course we would want to minimise infections from any disease but at what cost? Their rhetoric is non-scientific and is sloganising. It is something you expect from politicians and I am not impressed with some of the interventions from 'academics' - Sridhar particularly is not really a medical doctor and is more on the political side of public health

If they don't want zero Covid and claim all deaths from Covid are preventable then what is it they actually mean rather than eradication or elimination? Sridhar has said that she wants to eliminate Covid from Scotland and when I challenged on this on twitter she invented her own definition of 'eliminate' which went against both dictionary and WHO definitions. She said she didn't actually mean reduce to zero but said it was to minimise and when I asked her what that meant in quantifiable and practical terms she blocked me

There are no easy answers to this but their position is no more credible than those who want no NPI but they are never challenged in the same way. Tegnel is called a murderer and told his approach was catastrophic - when have you ever seen the pro-lockdown academics challenged robustly in the media and the gaps in their arguments?

Why do you just say in the UK - the UK is not totally out of sync with the rest of Western Europe - often countries with far stricter lockdowns? The Government, as expected, has been a complete shambles but do you really think it has been much better elsewhere in Europe? Could it be that Government responses actually are not that important when dealing with this and the virus just finds its own way of surviving?

I accept that there is a balance to be found and I understand why lockdowns are seen as being a sensible precautionary principle but just because something seems sensible may not mean it is and the consequences down the line could be much worse

I remember discussions on here about the elimination of badgers to prevent bovine TB using the precautionary principle based on sketchy science. The acute benefit from lockdown may be either justifiable or not but the chronic effects need to be assessed as well - these could be mitigated by huge financial interventions but I do not see either the Government or Labour asking for that.

When we see massive poverty, homelessness and unemployment caused due to the lockdowns with the consequent effect on or ability to fund healthcare as well as the direct increased poverty-related mortality then I for one will be asking some questions of those who were so supportive of hard lockdowns knowing no mitigation was being considered

Perhaps a left-led Labour would have had a more credible position on lockdowns because they would have supported the economy properly with financial support

Spare us that one, please.
There is no consequent effect. The govt can fund healthcare, and decent social security benefits, if it wants to, regardless of the state of our economy, because those things improve the health of the population and the health of the economy.

Our govt clearly don't care about the health of the economy either, or the UK wouldn't have left the Single Market.

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One world, like it or not - John Martyn

Here's an academic you can probably agree with, hsom.

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One world, like it or not - John Martyn

can you also spare me your sarcasm please?

so you think that the UK Government whether Tory (or even Labour post-2024) is going to dig deep into their pockets to fund healthcare adequately when they have had this problem coming since 2010 and before that? We have been 'able' to invest of lots of things but the current economic dogma in the west does not support that - will that change in the future?

It is not good enough saying we can afford this (which we probably can although we will see how that transpires after another few months of a hard lockdown with precious little mitigation in place) but also if it is going to be done when the dust settles and we see what is left when we try to restart the economy.

Look how the right of Labour treated the Green Deal proposals under Corbyn and the other 'unaffordable' spending promises that pale against what will be required here

Perhaps you are right and I'm wrong because that is the approach all pro-lockdown advocates take - no consideration that they do not work very well, produce little long-term benefit and are only useful in very specific circumstances. Perhaps the vaccine will help but we already have those who were seeing this as our way out now dampening that and advocating strict measures for months to come

No action yesterday because Johnson waiting for the results of this poll? Surely not.

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One world, like it or not - John Martyn

from Starmer

The current economic dogma in the West - here you go.


You don't need to believe in MMT, Keynes said the same back in the day.

You're questioning the extent to which govt can actually prevent people dying from the pandemic, but it's surely indisputable that they can reduce the harm from a recession.

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One world, like it or not - John Martyn

He's seen the poll as well. Sigh.

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One world, like it or not - John Martyn

not entirely fair
he was tweeting the same information yesterday

the following emergency statement linked below doesn't indicate what government intends to do except go from Tier 4 to Tier 5.
Not even a link to the Tiers page

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/covi ... l-officers

This is clearly linked on the emergency statement webpage

Even they found her behaviour here too much, it would appear.

Yep, this really happened...

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If I'm not here, then I'll be in the library. Or the other library.

And all because Boris wanted to be able to announce the 'good news' of the first AstraZeneca vaccinations to soften the 'bad news' lockdown announcement and distract from the fact there is no end date being given for these latest restrictions.

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"Fall seven times, get up eight" - Japanese proverb

Incidentally, just as there wasn't a list of primary schools ready on the gov website when SE and London closures were announced, the full details promised in this latest speech weren't up and ready either despite Boris specifically directing the public to them

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"Fall seven times, get up eight" - Japanese proverb

I have now located the full details on the government website for those interested.
I'm sure you'll all be relieved to hear that off-licences will remain open as essential retail.

https://www.gov.uk/guidance/national-lo ... ay-at-home

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"Fall seven times, get up eight" - Japanese proverb

I think its even more venal than that tbh.

They were trying to get Labour to call for school closures so they could shout at them "PUPPETS OF THE TEACHING UNIONS!!".

Surely that would only work if the government didn't then close schools? Or are we back to pretending Labour has all the power and is making all the decisions so schools are only closed because of Labour, nothing to do with us, we're just the poor, powerless government...
Boris does like playing the innocent victim, I know, but I can't see how he can avoid being closely associated with the decision to close schools today, especially when some of the biggest pressure to close was coming from Tory councils in tier 4 areas.

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"Fall seven times, get up eight" - Japanese proverb

Yes, to a large extent they really *do* see themselves as marginalised if not powerless battlers against a VAST LEFT WING ESTABLISHMENT.

Despite having been in government for over a decade now!

the irrational
human beings aren't always rational

Goodnight, everyone.
love,
cJA