Scrutable

OffTheRock wrote: ↑

Sun Feb 14, 2021 11:20 pm

Run Eat out to help out again. Seems like a reasonable idea. It's not like it caused any problems last time.

Could they not just distribute the money around the hospitality sector somehow, without forcing people to risk their and others' lives to prop up businesses?

Bird on a Fire wrote: ↑

Thu Feb 18, 2021 1:21 pm

OffTheRock wrote: ↑

Sun Feb 14, 2021 11:20 pm

Run Eat out to help out again. Seems like a reasonable idea. It's not like it caused any problems last time.

Could they not just distribute the money around the hospitality sector somehow, without forcing people to risk their and others' lives to prop up businesses?

Course not. That's socialism!

I thought socialism was when the government takes me out for a pub lunch? Politics is so confusing.

asking for gyms to be allowed to reopen by demonstrating that you don't need a gym to train in

Judging by the way the rules weren't enforced in my gym last summer, those places would be a disaster if they were to open now with >10,000 cases nationally per day rather than the few hundred per day we had back then.

Bird on a Fire wrote: ↑

Thu Feb 18, 2021 4:59 pm

I thought socialism was when the government takes me out for a pub lunch? Politics is so confusing.

Socialism is when the government does stuff.

Supporting the workers by paying them to stay home while they can't work is socialism; subsidizing people to go to restaurants so that the workers are paid to catch covid is "helping people to help themselves".

discovolante wrote: ↑

Sat Feb 20, 2021 8:33 pm

Bird on a Fire wrote: ↑

Thu Feb 18, 2021 4:59 pm

I thought socialism was when the government takes me out for a pub lunch? Politics is so confusing.

Socialism is when the government does stuff.

So it's all socialism, then?! Where does my lunch fit into all this? I'm starving.

Bird on a Fire wrote: ↑

Thu Feb 18, 2021 1:21 pm

Could they not just distribute the money around the hospitality sector somehow, without forcing people to risk their and others' lives to prop up businesses?

No. Because EOTHO had three effects, ony one of which involved the hospitality sector getting money from the government. They were:

• Subsidy from the governement
• Payment from customers
• Getting customers back into the habit of being customers

Direct subsidy covers the first of these. Maybe the second is irrelevant as it merely covers the cost of providing the service. But the third is potentially very big. If the scheme had coincided with an irreversible drop in Covid, it would have restarted eating out and provided a stable level of business to keep hospitality businesses running for the long term. Unfortunately, it was premature and the customers then had to be persuaded to stop eating out again, resulting in great expense for little benefit.

Lots of headlines on UK pushing for speedy unlockdown - all seemed linked to Prof Mark Woodhouse (SAGE) who was in front of Sci Tech Select Committee earlier this week. It's generated 'Outdoors is safe', 'Beaches are safe' and 'Schools are safe' headlines (of the 'top scientist says' variety).

I find his comments alarming and without context. Anyone who says "there's no evidence of anyone catching Covid on a beach" seems to me to be missing the point. According to wiki he's a proponent of the Swedish approach. This doesn't get into any of the reports I've seen. Was his appearance at the select committee engineered by the Tory backbenchers pushing for speedy unlockdown?

On other news, the Zoe study say that cases are increasing in 20-39 age group. And the overall dropping less quickly.

https://covid.joinzoe.com/post/rapid-dr ... slows-down

PS. Apols if this should be in a different thread or has been discussed on one of them, it's sometimes tricky to parse the different ones on here!

Beaches probably aren't a big risk for the reasons mentioned somewhere on here, but then again everywhere was a lot less risky last summer because there just weren't that many covids around (1000 new cases per day or fewer as compared to 10000 new cases per day now).

(In October in Italy we had theatres complaining that they should be allowed to open because between June and October there was like 1 case associated with the theatre but then cases grew exponentially for the whole of October as the second wave arrived, and there was a pre-season outbreak in the choir and orchestra of la Scala, so no you're not allowed to open.)

On the other hand, even though the Cheltenham Festival was outside it didn't make it safe.

The racing may be outside but as that article makes clear, the Festival featured a lot of rammed bars.

Which is part of my point about beaches. Being on a beach is low risk but:
What is prevalence of Covid at the time?
Is it locals on a walk, or is it day trippers driving hundreds of miles, meeting other households and rubbing suncream on each other?
What are the facilities? Loos, bins, cafes, pubs, chippies, ice cream vans, supermarkets, any stops on travel, eg services, etc. (and are these as low risk as beach?)
What's the drain on local resources which are stretched because pandemic?

I have an issue with the declaration of "there has never been a case of Covid being caught at X" because we just don't know for a fact where most Covid is caught.

So with Prof Woolhouse (and media reporting of) there's a double whammy of giving a false sense of security and a willful sin of omission around secondary impact.

Same with "schools are safe". IABMCTT.

"Schools are safe" is known to be a falsehood. Schools are definitely responsible for quite a bit of covid transmission, pretty obviously - they are crowded indoor spaces where it's not always easy to ventilate properly and young people can't do distancing.

Beaches might actually be pretty safe, because hot, dry, windy conditions are ideal for reducing transmission risk. There just isn't the data to demonstrate it for sure.

But, as you say, the loos at the beach are unlikely to be safe (if they're open - last summer there were places in the UK complaining that they'd locked their loos and removed the bins and weirdly enough people were pooing and leaving rubbish everywhere), and nor are the restaurants and stuff.

Last summer Portugal was running a bookings thing, where the beach was divided into a grid and you had to book a slot in a particular grid square limited for x number of people from the same household whatever. The UK has the resources to design such a system and actually implement/enforce it.

The schools are ‘safe’ thing is just Boris using safe in a very limited and specific way isn’t it? What he means is that children aren’t usually badly affected by Covid so they are unlikely to get seriously ill. He knows that’s not how most people are using the word but it’s enough of a dog whistle to the people who think he can do no wrong.

Which is how you end up declaring schools are safe on Sunday and then having to close them on Monday because they are driving transmission.

Bird on a Fire wrote: ↑

Sun Feb 21, 2021 7:33 pm

Beaches might actually be pretty safe, because hot, dry, windy conditions are ideal for reducing transmission risk. There just isn't the data to demonstrate it for sure.

Where do most British beaches fit into this as we only get one of those 99% of the time?

yeah, yeah, I'm aware we've done these conversations a lot elsewhere and am not trying to recreate them here. (and yes, schools are safe = kids aren't as badly affected and schools don't drive up R enough to close them unless they do, when we will)

I was a wee bit suspicious of the timing of these quotes last week as we headed towards crunch time. Anyway, I went and read the transcript from the Select Committee and he talks a good game. All the eye-catching quotes are from him and not the more cautious colleague being interviewed at the same time (Dame Prof Angela Mclean). When he says beaches are safe, he does also talk about "pinch points", but with relation to Cheltenham Races and not beaches, and no one on the committee picks him up on this.

Woolhouse is adamant Schools are safe (in that they don't cause a *surge* in infection, that they follow rather than drive community infection, and that teachers are no more at risk than most of the general workforce) and that as vaccinations continue to rise so quickly and case numbers continue to fall (and are "baked in") we can open up sooner rather than later. It's seems his argument is the one which has won out in the cabinet.

SAGE Spi-M at Select Committee

shpalman wrote: ↑

Wed Feb 24, 2021 7:53 pm

there is never a valid reason for going to Scunthorpe

I think driving away from Blackpool is a valid reason

Trinucleus wrote: ↑

Wed Feb 24, 2021 10:19 pm

shpalman wrote: ↑

Wed Feb 24, 2021 7:53 pm

there is never a valid reason for going to Scunthorpe

I think driving away from Blackpool is a valid reason

Yes but he should have kept going

Lombardy is going to move from Yellow to Orange on Monday so lots of people are enjoying the nice weekend weather while they can.

(I just took a walk into town this morning.)

A model suggests that cases in Milan will keep going on up, to peak on the 20th of March thanks to the contagion which has already happened.

I remember once a few years ago we wanted to do a Swing Around Collective at the Darsena in Milan but some plain clothes police came and told us that there was a bylaw in effect against playing music in that area, so the 10-15 of us went to the Piazza in front of the Politecnico instead. We'd already been careful not to bring any glass drinks bottles because we knew about that bylaw at least.

Anyway last night at the Darsena the young people of Milan celebrated the last Saturday night in a Yellow zone with a f.cking post-curfew rave party and a massive fight.

This morning they're fishing the bottles and rubbish out of the canal and there's the armed forced controlling access to the area.

Did someone date a girl from the other side and their friend shouted “a plague on all your houses”?

It's Verona which that didn't happen in, not Milan.