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Post by olliebean on Dec 24, 2020 14:46:00 GMT
I got an email Christmas Message from a wise old fella who asked us to suspend at least for a couple of days our condemnation of ALL the politicians involved. He asked us to honestly consider if we'd have made a better job of this unprecedented situation? Time for us to show some real understanding and compassion. Would we have made a better job of it than Nicola Sturgeon? Probably not. But a better job than Boris Johnson and the current lot in charge at Westminster? I reckon we'd have been in with a decent shot.
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Post by olliebean on Dec 24, 2020 14:37:10 GMT
What concerns me is that this more transmissible variant has increased the threshold for herd immunity, meaning that if as many people don't get the vaccine as the polls suggest, it's flipped from just about enough for herd immunity to almost certainly not enough for herd immunity.
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Post by olliebean on Dec 20, 2020 19:03:28 GMT
Was this particular new variant identified in September? I’ve read a couple of times since September that new variants have been found, but not this particular one. You could well be right though. My understanding is that this particular variant was first identified in October, from data collected in September.
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Post by olliebean on Dec 20, 2020 8:16:01 GMT
Meanwhile the WHO have said that this "new" coronavirus variant is one they were already aware of, and there is currently no information to suggest that it spreads any faster. So it seems, as I suspected, that the UK government is lying about this, and just using it as the latest scapegoat for their own abject failure to control the spread of the virus.
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Post by olliebean on Dec 20, 2020 0:56:21 GMT
So for the next few days, presumably the supermarkets are going to be swarming with hordes of people who thought they were going away for Christmas, now desperate to buy food they didn't think they were going to need. Every new thing the government does recently seems to lead to large crowds of non-socially-distanced people as an unintended consequence.
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Post by olliebean on Dec 12, 2020 23:21:01 GMT
Guys, help me out - what is the song that Ranvir and Giovanni waltzed to? Ta Un Giorni Per Noi by Josh Groban Originally (and without lyrics) it was the love theme from Zeffirelli's Romeo and Juliet, although probably better known these days as Our Tune.
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Post by olliebean on Nov 27, 2020 0:06:52 GMT
I'm waiting to see how the government goes about this. If they give the job of administering the vaccines to the NHS, I'll be first in line (or at least whatever position in line my priority grouping allows me to be). If they give it to Pestfix, I may have to think twice.
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Post by olliebean on Nov 21, 2020 12:37:16 GMT
I would strongly oppose any measure that would undermine the principle of free healthcare for all. But there could be other consequences: for example, allowing employers to specify vaccination as a condition of employment, or (more pertinent to this board) theatres refusing entry to the unvaccinated. What's wrong with theatres refusing the unvaccinated? Why should they be allowed to come in and spread the virus while willingly refusing the treatnent? I didn't say there would be anything wrong with it. I'm just presenting it as a potential consequence of refusing to be vaccinated. By no means am I saying there should be no consequences; just that the withholding of free healthcare shouldn't be one of them.
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Post by olliebean on Nov 21, 2020 11:49:34 GMT
Anyone who refuses to be vaccinated should be made to pay for all of their healthcare. ‘Freedom’ has consequences, otherwise it’s like not getting yourself insured and expecting a payout. Post war there was a much more communal expectation but we’ve devolved into a decadent phase in the last thirty/forty years or so. Not everyone but enough to be a societal threat. I would strongly oppose any measure that would undermine the principle of free healthcare for all. But there could be other consequences: for example, allowing employers to specify vaccination as a condition of employment, or (more pertinent to this board) theatres refusing entry to the unvaccinated.
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Post by olliebean on Nov 14, 2020 8:20:07 GMT
But you haven't answered the question about why it is illegal to have a socially distanced conversation between two groups of two people but not a group of two and a single person. There is no difference if the two groups are each a household and keeping their distance, yet one is allowed but the other is not. There is no different economic benefit there. It is arbitrary and unnecessary if social distancing is being practised. As far as I am aware, the only situation in which it is legal for two or more people from one household to meet a single person from another household in the way you describe is if the two households are in a social bubble. This is only allowed if one of the households has only one person in it, and the reason for this concession is not arbitrary - it's so that people who live on their own don't end up completely socially isolated during the lockdown.
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Post by olliebean on Nov 12, 2020 8:05:27 GMT
Terrible policies are par for the course with this government. I can definitely see them reviving the original herd immunity strategy - shield the vulnerable and let everyone else get it - as vaccinate the vulnerable and let everyone else get it.
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Post by olliebean on Nov 2, 2020 8:14:53 GMT
I understand the argument for keeping schools open; the problem is that the government hasn't given them any additional resources or support to help with distancing and other measures to keep them covid-safe. This ought to be as much of a scandal as the insufficient support for businesses and other organisations.
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Post by olliebean on Nov 1, 2020 11:43:43 GMT
I feel like I ‘wasted’ last lockdown You and the government both.
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Post by olliebean on Oct 30, 2020 19:12:57 GMT
We were? I don't recall that at all, and I can't see what the rationale behind it would have been. Hasn't it since been established that the advice the government was receiving at the time was to lock down earlier rather than later? Yes we were told. Valance discussed it on one of the TV briefings using the analogy of locking down too early as being like pushing down on a spring which would bounce back. He said we still needed the virus circulating. This is reflected in the13 March Sage minutes: “Sage was unanimous that measures seeking to completely suppress spread of Covid-19 will cause a second peak.” You can see this is true - places which locked down early in the cycle - like the North East and several East European countries have a big second peak. OK, I've found the references to this. They were still talking about herd immunity at the time, and Vallance's comments appear to have been made in this context - he explicitly talked about herd immunity in that briefing. It's fairly widely accepted now that pursuing herd immunity without a vaccine will just mean lots more people dying along the way, and it's no longer openly talked about by government (in fact the idea was so discredited that they denied ever having raised it), although I suspect Cummings and Johnson still have it in their sights.
As for your quote from the minutes of the SAGE meeting, the second half of that quote is: "SAGE advises that it is a near certainty that countries such as China, where heavy suppression is underway, will experience a second peak once measures are relaxed." I'm looking at the graph of new infections in China now, and I see not the remotest sign of a second peak. So that seems to have been somewhat less of a certainty than they believed.
By the way, I don't recall, nor can I find any reference to, the North East locking down any earlier than the rest of the country - surely the entire country locked down simultaneously on the 23rd March, or did I miss the news about local lockdowns back then?
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Post by olliebean on Oct 30, 2020 17:32:48 GMT
We were? I don't recall that at all, and I can't see what the rationale behind it would have been. Hasn't it since been established that the advice the government was receiving at the time was to lock down earlier rather than later? If I recall correctly the government's early fear was that if they had a lockdown too early then people would suffer lockdown fatigue by the time the peak hit, so everybody would be out and about again just at the time when they needed to stay home. It took a week or so to convince them that the disease wasn't going to make the slow progress they initially believed and the peak was approaching far faster than they realised, so they changed the strategy and we had a lockdown in March. This was always a nonsense argument. If we'd gone into lockdown earlier, we'd have started it from a better position and wouldn't have needed to stay in it so long, so people would have been less likely to get "lockdown fatigue." The government had other reasons for wanting to delay the lockdown and this was just the excuse they came up with. The same thing is happening now, only this time they don't seem to have even a nonsense excuse for it.
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Post by olliebean on Oct 30, 2020 16:14:05 GMT
Except to the government, apparently, who seem constantly surprised that what their scientific advisors told them would happen is the exact thing that happens. Likewise the public who were clearly told by Vallance that an early lockdown in March would lead to a bigger second wave, but many clamoured for it anyway. We were? I don't recall that at all, and I can't see what the rationale behind it would have been. Hasn't it since been established that the advice the government was receiving at the time was to lock down earlier rather than later?
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Post by olliebean on Oct 30, 2020 14:03:26 GMT
But, well, this isn't surprising, is it. Except to the government, apparently, who seem constantly surprised that what their scientific advisors told them would happen is the exact thing that happens.
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Post by olliebean on Oct 30, 2020 11:09:43 GMT
It seems pretty clear looking at the timing of it that the main driver of the big rise in infections was the reopening of schools, colleges, and universities.
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Post by olliebean on Oct 30, 2020 10:33:03 GMT
Academic research confirms the blindingly obvious.
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Post by olliebean on Oct 16, 2020 13:50:12 GMT
In any case, being 1m away from someone for 2 hours would certainly exceed the threshold. Only if you aren't wearing masks. The thresholds don't take account of mitigation measures, which the theatres have in abundance. The contract tracing app doesn't know about mitigation measures. I don't know what happens if you are contacted by a contract tracer and tell them, "It's okay, we were wearing masks." (I'm not making a joke. Having now thought of it, I'm honestly wondering if they take that into account.)
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Post by olliebean on Oct 16, 2020 13:42:04 GMT
My issue was never the seating, it was getting to them. The idea of 1m is easily enforceable in principle, until that person in the middle of the row brushes past you to get to the toilet, or that person arrives late and had to go past everybody in the row to get to their seat. But you have to consider the "time at risk" as well. There will be no exact figures but I belive the contact tracing app is using greater than 15mins as the threshold. You would have to be very unlucky to catch it/pass it on with a short contact as someone goes past espically if they have a mask to help catch sudden coughs and sneezes. That's different to being sat close to someone for a couple of hours at a time. Asi understand it, the app has a 15 minute threshold for being within 2m of someone who has tested positive (approximately - the technology isn't capable of measuring the distance particularly accurately), or 30 minutes if you were between 2m and 4m away. So on that basis, the threshold for 1m would be 7-8 minutes. Actually probably less, as I suspect there's an exponential increase in risk as you get closer to someone. In any case, being 1m away from someone for 2 hours would certainly exceed the threshold.
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Post by olliebean on Oct 13, 2020 17:06:45 GMT
I think it's the requirement to big up the scheme on social media that's unusual (or maybe it isn't; not being a part of the industry, I don't really know). I reacted to it in much the same way as I react when a business makes a similar requirement of me in order to receive some benefit or discount: that's my personal Twitter/Facebook account, and I'm damned if I'm going to let myself be turned into a shill. But I can see that for a commercial account which is mostly used promotionally in any case, it would be less of an imposition.
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Post by olliebean on Oct 13, 2020 10:36:34 GMT
Indeed, I'm sure many of the organisations receiving funding would publicly acknowledge and welcome it without being asked, and most of the rest would as well if asked politely, but making it a mandatory condition isn't a good look. Really? If anything that's an uncommonly relaxed set of conditions. Compare it with the requirements involved with commercial sponsorship, which can involve things like renaming your organisation and including the sponsor's logo in every single thing you do.
Complaining that free money comes with a trivial condition isn't a good look for the entertainment industry.
Of course, because the raison d'être of commercial sponsorship is to promote the sponsor. Is it usual for governmental crisis support funding to come with such stipulations?
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Post by olliebean on Oct 13, 2020 9:32:03 GMT
Don't see an issue. They are being asked to acknowledge the funding and welcome it and put out a press release, well why wouldn't they. Those are all standard things. If any organisation has a problem doing that (or wasn't already going to) after receiving a gift of hundreds of thousands of pounds then that is quite something. Just like Fatima another story is being made out of nothing here as a beating stick. Indeed, I'm sure many of the organisations receiving funding would publicly acknowledge and welcome it without being asked, and most of the rest would as well if asked politely, but making it a mandatory condition isn't a good look.
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Post by olliebean on Oct 4, 2020 7:33:21 GMT
Cineworld's use of the word "unviable" is surely no accident, but a reference to Rishi Sunak's refusal to continue supporting (temporarily) "unviable" businesses.
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Post by olliebean on Sept 25, 2020 21:29:47 GMT
It sort of got lost in all the other announcements yesterday. Seems a bit of a battery drainer (at least it's the only new app I've added recently and my phone has had to be recharged partially 3 times since I installed it yesterday). And not because I had to turn bluetooth on (it already was). I expect it varies from phone to phone, but for what it's worth I've had it on my 4 year old Motorola since shortly after midnight yesterday, and battery usage has been negligible. Mind you, I haven't been anywhere - maybe it uses more power the more nearby devices it detects throughout the day.
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Post by olliebean on Sept 21, 2020 23:26:50 GMT
Curfew for pubs and restaurants at 10PM from Thursday: Because the virus gets more contagious after 10pm?
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Post by olliebean on Sept 20, 2020 16:17:44 GMT
Seems massively unlikely that the government will manage not to change their mind about what the rules are for the next three months. On recent performance, a fortnight seems to be about the limit.
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Post by olliebean on Sept 19, 2020 12:23:52 GMT
The "moonshot" contract has been given to Deloitte. So that's another massive load of public money spaffed up the wall, to coin a phrase.
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Post by olliebean on Sept 19, 2020 7:19:22 GMT
It's been on the cards as a possibility for months - Chris Whitty was warning back in July that, once schools resumed in September, the Government would probably need to compensate for the bump in numbers by closing some other 'reopened' things. It's just happening faster, and more dramatically, than was anticipated. My recollection is that Whitty was advising the closure of other things in preparation for opening schools, so as to prevent a big jump in the infection rate - not waiting for the big jump to happen and then playing catch-up. Once again, the government is reacting to the spread of the virus after the fact, rather than acting preemptively to prevent it.
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