Generic Virus Thread

[HanoiVillan]

2 minutes ago, blandy said:

I've considered the possibility of the government disagreeing with me (well the other way round actually) and have posted my opinion as a consequence. I consider them to be incompetent idiots.

You can consider them whatever you like, but your claim was that they 'are bowing to back bench nutters for face saving reasons'. This suggests that you think there is no logic to their decision other than party management.

A clue as to why that is probably not the case is that so far, no 'non-political' advisors have spoken out about or resigned over this decision, which tends to be what advisors do when they feel their advice is being ignored for purely party political reasons.

There are lots of reasons why people might want society to be more opened up. You don't agree, and that's your right, but it doesn't mean people didn't come by the alternative opinion honestly, or that keeping Steve Baker happy is the only reason why this decision has been reached.

[fightoffyour]

I can’t see infection rates getting much higher. Let her rip.

[Genie]

Looks like everybody is not aligned on this.

Quote

Government scientists warned ministers of a "significant risk" in allowing Covid cases to rise by scrapping restrictions all at once.

Boris Johnson tonight announced almost all Coronavirus laws would be scrapped from step 4 of the roadmap - which is expected to take effect on July 19.

The PM and Chief Medical Officer Chris Whitty admitted this would likely lead to an increase in cases and deaths.

And Mr Johnson has repeatedly said his decision were underpinned by scientific advice, and driven by "data, not dates."

But in a document published today, SAGE scientists warned the impact could be more pronounced - even if the vaccination programme reduced the number of deaths

"There is significant risk in allowing prevalence to rise, even if hospitalisations & deaths are kept low by vaccination," the document reads.

"If it were necessary to reduce prevalence to low levels again...then restrictive measures would be required for much longer."

They suggested maintaining measures intended to minimise the spread of the virus - such as masks and social distancing - would make it easier to spot outbreaks "in advance of them growing large".

More on the Link

 

[blandy]

2 minutes ago, HanoiVillan said:

You can consider them whatever you like, but your claim was that they 'are bowing to back bench nutters for face saving reasons'. This suggests that you think there is no logic to their decision other than party management.

A clue as to why that is probably not the case is that so far, no 'non-political' advisors have spoken out about or resigned over this decision, which tends to be what advisors do when they feel their advice is being ignored for purely party political reasons.

There are lots of reasons why people might want society to be more opened up. You don't agree, and that's your right, but it doesn't mean people didn't come by the alternative opinion honestly, or that keeping Steve Baker happy is the only reason why this decision has been reached.

You've mis understood what I'm saying, or I've not put it well.

I am not against some slackening of restrictions (and said so). it's the arbitrary data of 19 July set last month. It's the ignoring their own criteria for opening up, set by the scientists (in part) and it's being able (I think) to look at the data and reach a view.

On the advisors thing - we'll hear ( I imagine) in due course that they/som of the cabinet don't all agree, but Johnson and Javid have overruled them/prevailed in any discussions. But we know there are a significant number of anti-lockdown (in any circs) tory MPs and as there has to be a vote on this opening up (or not) there are enough "rebels" to defeat the government. It's maths.

[HanoiVillan]

6 minutes ago, blandy said:

But we know there are a significant number of anti-lockdown (in any circs) tory MPs and as there has to be a vote on this opening up (or not) there are enough "rebels" to defeat the government. It's maths.

Just on this point, I think it's very far from obvious the opposition would vote *against* the government and *with* Tory rebels to force a defeat that led to faster reopening.

[blandy]

8 minutes ago, HanoiVillan said:

Just on this point, I think it's very far from obvious the opposition would vote *against* the government and *with* Tory rebels to force a defeat that led to faster reopening.

I agree. But the not knowing / the possibility is a problem for the Gov't - even winning, but only because of Labour votes would be embarrassing for Bunter.

[HanoiVillan]

34 minutes ago, blandy said:

I agree. But the not knowing / the possibility is a problem for the Gov't - even winning, but only because of Labour votes would be embarrassing for Bunter.

There's no air of mystery. This is the kind of rubbish the opposition are saying out loud:

 

[blandy]

8 minutes ago, HanoiVillan said:

There's no air of mystery. This is the kind of rubbish the opposition are saying out loud:

 

Jebus. They don't help themselves do they. Some of them must surely have the beginnings of brains. Who lets them out into society in that befuddled condition.?

[chrisp65]

Can you imagine the logistics of just surveying every public building, assessing what they have, working out what they need, informing the Planners, getting the kit ordered, organising installation.

I’d suggest, if we ignored cost and tendering and just got cracking, that would be a couple of years work.

[Davkaus]

‘I don’t think any avoidable deaths are acceptable’

That's just a nonsense view, isn't it? If he's applying that logic for Covid, why isn't he applying it for anything else?

A life in which society is geared to absolutely rule out any avoidable death is a life that's not worth living, in my view.

[HanoiVillan]

14 minutes ago, chrisp65 said:

Can you imagine the logistics of just surveying every public building, assessing what they have, working out what they need, informing the Planners, getting the kit ordered, organising installation.

I’d suggest, if we ignored cost and tendering and just got cracking, that would be a couple of years work.

I'm no expert, but my guess would be that front to back, if we dedicated an entire national effort to nothing else, an unlimited budget, we might get it done in a decade or so?

Honestly it would have been less embarrassing if he'd pulled his pants down on the Mall.

[chrisp65]

2 minutes ago, HanoiVillan said:

I'm no expert, but my guess would be that front to back, if we dedicated an entire national effort to nothing else, an unlimited budget, we might get it done in a decade or so?

Honestly it would have been less embarrassing if he'd pulled his pants down on the Mall.

I’m currently involved in something similar.

We started in October.

We’ve done eleven buildings so far. Our absolute best case scenario programme, given free reign on working hours and budgets, we’d have done twenty.

 

[blandy]

3 minutes ago, HanoiVillan said:

I'm no expert, but my guess would be that front to back, if we dedicated an entire national effort to nothing else, an unlimited budget, we might get it done in a decade or so?

Honestly it would have been less embarrassing if he'd pulled his pants down on the Mall.

I don't know if it's because I'm in an industry where facts and data and information and evidence and testing and verification and all that kind of stuff is a day to day thing, or if others feel the same - but the MPs...I mean almost none of them, regardless of party, demonstrate or exhibit any kind of critical thinking, of rigour of thought, of being able to present any kind of logical argument.

I get that that stuff is kind of of limited use if we're talking about Government support for the Arts or Music - it's hard to quantify the value and importance of cultural matters, but when it comes to stuff like health and viruses...they just seem hopelessly inept and unsuitable as a bunch of 650 odd to remotely deal with it. Yet there are a number of medical background people in Parliament, but expertise and experience and an ability to understand data and risk and time and all that....it's just not there. It's shocking how bad they are. And then in that ignorance, you get the stuff like that mad tweet, or opening up completely despite an exponential growth in the spread of a virus, or failure to lock down...it's dereliction of duty and feeble government (and opposition).

[HanoiVillan]

5 minutes ago, blandy said:

I don't know if it's because I'm in an industry where facts and data and information and evidence and testing and verification and all that kind of stuff is a day to day thing, or if others feel the same - but the MPs...I mean almost none of them, regardless of party, demonstrate or exhibit any kind of critical thinking, of rigour of thought, of being able to present any kind of logical argument.

I get that that stuff is kind of of limited use if we're talking about Government support for the Arts or Music - it's hard to quantify the value and importance of cultural matters, but when it comes to stuff like health and viruses...they just seem hopelessly inept and unsuitable as a bunch of 650 odd to remotely deal with it. Yet there are a number of medical background people in Parliament, but expertise and experience and an ability to understand data and risk and time and all that....it's just not there. It's shocking how bad they are. And then in that ignorance, you get the stuff like that mad tweet, or opening up completely despite an exponential growth in the spread of a virus, or failure to lock down...it's dereliction of duty and feeble government (and opposition).

To some extent it's not the end of the world; ministers who have the power to actually do things are advised by departments of people with actual relevant knowledge, and that keeps society from falling apart. But Ashworth's idea there is the sort of thing that can burn credibility with people who have any idea what they're talking about and are thinking beyond the soundbite level.

To be maximally charitable to him - I haven't seen the initial comments, only the tweets and references to them - it's perhaps *possible* that he was referring to freestanding, plug-in air purifiers, rather than actual building engineering to ventilation systems. However, it still wouldn't work, because we would need to order such vast quantities of them to cover every room open to the public in the country that supply would be impossibly stretched, and it would be both a huge budgetary effort and an impractical amount of time. Just a very silly thing to say at the end of the day.

[Davkaus]

2 minutes ago, HanoiVillan said:

Just a very silly thing to say at the end of the day.

Fortunately he said it in the morning 

[blandy]

3 minutes ago, HanoiVillan said:

To some extent it's not the end of the world; ministers who have the power to actually do things are advised by departments of people with actual relevant knowledge, and that keeps society from falling apart.

That's the theory, but this current lot (both sides) is rather testing the limits of the theory. The government have demonstrably not been following the expert advice.

[Panto_Villan]

27 minutes ago, blandy said:

I don't know if it's because I'm in an industry where facts and data and information and evidence and testing and verification and all that kind of stuff is a day to day thing, or if others feel the same - but the MPs...I mean almost none of them, regardless of party, demonstrate or exhibit any kind of critical thinking, of rigour of thought, of being able to present any kind of logical argument.

I get that that stuff is kind of of limited use if we're talking about Government support for the Arts or Music - it's hard to quantify the value and importance of cultural matters, but when it comes to stuff like health and viruses...they just seem hopelessly inept and unsuitable as a bunch of 650 odd to remotely deal with it. Yet there are a number of medical background people in Parliament, but expertise and experience and an ability to understand data and risk and time and all that....it's just not there. It's shocking how bad they are. And then in that ignorance, you get the stuff like that mad tweet, or opening up completely despite an exponential growth in the spread of a virus, or failure to lock down...it's dereliction of duty and feeble government (and opposition).

Surely the issue is that most of politics is just empty posturing? Clearly Labour and various other opposition parties have decided that they should oppose the Tory plans for re-opening, because the Tories are going to re-open anyway and there needs to be political space between them and the ruling party to justify their existence.

Maybe they're perfectly capable of seeing what the correct course of action is, but doing the best thing isn't good politics. I'm pretty sure Ashworth wouldn't actually want to implement any of that were he actually in power, but saying it allows him to get on his high horse and criticise the government like he's continually obliged to.

EDIT: and I guess the actual point I'm making (because what I wrote above is a bit trite) is that if the government is on roughly the right track with reopening, which I think it is, you can't generate political space between you and the ruling party by saying "it's fine, but I'd just wait another couple of weeks". If you're intent on opposing the government to appease your supporters you end up having to tell everyone that the Tories are recklessly murdering people and the correct thing to do is seal everyone in a hermetic pod for the rest of eternity. 

It'll be interesting to see what Sturgeon says on the matter because she's very good at constantly playing herself off against Westminster without coming across like an unreasonable lunatic. If she's not making political hay out of the decision then there probably isn't too much scope to do so.

Edited July 6, 2021 by Panto_Villan

[HanoiVillan]

15 minutes ago, Panto_Villan said:

Surely the issue is that most of politics is just empty posturing? Clearly Labour and various other opposition parties have decided that they should oppose the Tory plans for re-opening, because the Tories are going to re-open anyway and there needs to be political space between them and the ruling party to justify their existence.

I've said for ages now that Labour's preferred strategy of micro-opposing specific government regulations about covid - how many people together here, what date that regulation gets weakened there - is doing them no favours. They're not in charge, the government don't need to and won't listen to them, and it just creates this ambient sense that they have no real ideas and are just focused on nitpicking (which in turn, plays into people's negative perceptions of lawyers, which is hardly helpful for Starmer).

There are two big areas they could lean into instead. Firstly, they could make the link between precarity at work - low pay, weak regulation, zero hours contracts, lack of unionisation in the workplace, pathetic sick pay - and people coming in to work when they are ill. The most obvious specific policy asks here are a big increase in statutory sick pay, and legal protections for zero hours and weakly-contracted workers who need to take time off for medical reasons. Secondly, they could raise the warning about the dangers of running the health and social care systems at 90%+ or 100%+ of capacity all the time, and how that reality in the system led to it cracking last year. The specific policy asks here are a big increase in NHS budget and capacity, and a commitment not to use legally-enforced social distancing as a future policy lever to reduce pressure on the NHS during 'normal' winter crises.

They won't do either of those things, because in the Labour party asking for things that will cost lots of money is coded as unacceptably left-wing, but that leaves them with critiques about regulations that don't add up to anything and rapidly become irrelevant.

Edited July 6, 2021 by HanoiVillan

[blandy]

8 minutes ago, HanoiVillan said:

the Labour party asking for things that will cost lots of money is coded as unacceptably left-wing, but that leaves them with critiques about regulations that don't add up to anything and rapidly become irrelevant

It leaves them with rather more than just that, even if your suggestion about "unacceptably left wing" is right (which it isn't IMO).

One rule for the government, one for the rest of us, Cummins, Hancock.

You can afford to spaff billions to your cronies and mates, but won't spend on the NHS.

You utterly failed to control our borders. You took 11 months to introduce proper quarantine.

You have a list of destinations that is red/green/amber that is utterly inconsistent

track trace and Isolate is a monumental failure. 

You demand schools opened on one day and the next you demanded that schools closed.

You ignored the science repeatedly on lockdowns and you're doing it again

You **** up the exams of a year of schoolkids

You have **** up the University education of another year's students.

There's a huge range of things. huge.

and so on and so on.

[HanoiVillan]

My argument against that @blandy is that if that was persuading voters, Labour wouldn't have had a bunch of election results that range from average to very bad indeed. I know you are a fan of the 'it's all about the vaccine rollout' thesis - I'm not, because it cannot explain the Chesham and Amersham by-election for one - but even if that thesis is correct then by the time that 'vaccine bounce' disappears very little of that stuff is going to feel like anything other than ancient history, and the ones that won't - such as the damage to schoolkids - won't benefit the opposition because the public will correctly perceive that the opposition would have done little different themselves.