COVID-19

[lpm]

You appear to have a very poor grasp of how government and the production of legislation works. It's not some cluster of words thrown together haphazardly as it all has impacts in the real world.
...
The regulations also have to be legal. The really tricky bit. The only way round this would be to invoke emergency powers which would be 'interesting'.

Why the great concern for legal regulation? Why not rely on social regulation? Less perfect, but far easier.

If in a population there is:

10% black marketeers, actively breaking laws to profit
25% careless cheaters, ignoring laws because they can't be bothered
50% followers, who will do what everyone else is doing
15% enforcers, obsessed with obeying rules

Using social pressure only - by the Prime Minister declaring in a public address that this is what everyone must do - will get the 15% enforcers and most of the 50% followers. Say 50% compliance.

Using emergency powers and legal regulations will get the enforcers and the followers, and part of the 25% cheaters. Say 75% compliance.

I'd say something as easy as a Prime Ministerial address could immediately knock the line below the curve. All this legal stuff can follow, catching up with problems when the real world impacts get noticed.

[OneOffDave]

In the previous pandemic planning there has been discussion about putting in national 30mph speed limits to lower the number of road casualties who might need ventilated beds.. When you are pushed for capacity, you don't need the usual trauma cases needing that capacity too. Trauma cases often need ventilation for longer too than those with pnemunonia

[OneOffDave]

You appear to have a very poor grasp of how government and the production of legislation works. It's not some cluster of words thrown together haphazardly as it all has impacts in the real world.
...
The regulations also have to be legal. The really tricky bit. The only way round this would be to invoke emergency powers which would be 'interesting'.

Why the great concern for legal regulation? Why not rely on social regulation? Less perfect, but far easier.

this might work for individual behaviour but business probably won't follow in the main. If you've got an event coming up that will generate most of your profit for the year, you aren't going to bin it unless actively told to.

[El Pollo Diablo]

Budget: SSP will be available to all who are advised to self-isolate. Sick notes via 111. "Quicker and easier" to access benefits for those in the gig economy. Temporary removal of income floor in universal credit. Relaxation of requirement to attend job centre - online or on phone instead. All worth £500m (which is f.ck all, why not just do this anyway?)

£500m hardship fund for local authorities as well.

Supporting businesses - 20% of workforce to be off potentially, so for businesses with <250 employees, cost of providing SSP to employees will be refunded by government in full (up to £2bn). Asked HMRC to allow businesses to defer tax payments over a certain amount of time. Some businesses might struggle with cash flow - will need loans, so a temporary Coronavirus business interruption loan scheme.

[El Pollo Diablo]

Removal of business rates for loads of businesses, and looking into its long-term future. £3k grant for small businesses that don't pay rates.

[shpalman]

https://www.repubblica.it/economia/2020 ... 250924846/

Emergency economic measures in Italy of the order of €20-25 milliard.* (But not to spend all at once). (€12 milliard will be to spend at once). (The rest of it is "thanks to European help").

The first priority is for the health service, but also various measures to support businesses, especially small businesses and the self-employed, including things like suspending mortgage payments or tax deadlines. Also things like parental leave and child care to support families.

I can imagine the UK government f.cking this all up really badly. And that's compared to the Italians.

[lpm]

In my field of managing financial risk, I like to say “Not taking a decision is a decision”. If you delay doing something while choosing between A, B and C, you are in fact deliberately choosing option D – to delay and then do A, B or C. You are actively taking a risk while waiting.

In 2024 a massive independent inquiry is going to issue its report. It will say something like:

“The government decided to do A, at massive cost to the economy. We estimate A only prevented approx 1,000 infections and 10 fatalities during the peak period. The government also decided to do B, also at massive cost, and we estimate this prevented 500,000 infections and 5,000 deaths during the peak. With hindsight, even better would have been C, which would have been far less costly to the economy and yet would have achieved the same benefits as B.”

What you absolutely mustn’t do now is try to determine precisely which is A, B and C, because this is too unknown and chaotic. If the government stalls, trying to decide between options, then it must be clear in its own mind it is actually choosing option D. It is deliberately and consciously choosing to delay all actions, and declaring it will decide on the best course at some point in the future.

Why is this choice D being made? Why delay? I think they are doing D because it is so hard to choose between A, B and C, and this government is confused and overwhelmed. A stronger government would say: we’re starting to do A and B, then in a few days say actually B was a mistake we’re trying C, then after that saying B looked better after all, we’re easing off on A and going all in on B and C.

This is what competent and strong leaders do. They actively take decisions knowing they could be wrong, but also knowing that those decisions will be better than delaying. They stay fluid, changing course. Weak leaders freeze, too worried to make decisions that will look wrong.

Italy is our future. The UK is a time traveller version of Italy - able to go back in time 10 days and change its path.

[lpm]

From https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavi ... d3d9cd99ca that Badger linked to. Every day, Boris Johnson is deliberately choosing delay - picking the red curve instead of the green.

[lpm]

And I think everyone - including media, politicians - instinctively thinks of 1 day delay for measures relative to current 1 day additions to current figures.

i.e. they think the cost of one day's delay in terms of 52 new cases announced today.

When in an exponential world, one day's delay is in the region of 20,000 additional cases. It's so hard to think exponentially when our norms are linear.

[jimbob]

May I share this LPM?

[El Pollo Diablo]

Today's increase of 83 cases is too low. Hmm. Are testing rates slowing down?

[Gfamily]

A friend's sister works as an epidemiologist at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine and has shared a couple of pre-print papers that might be of interest

A spatial model of CoVID-19 transmission in England and Wales: early spread and peak timing.pdf
The Efficacy of Contact Tracing for the Containment of the 2019 Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19).pdf

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1usT9d ... SICW6UX1CT

[lpm]

May I share this LPM?

Obvs

[lpm]

This claims partial lockdown from Sunday, but these journalists are full of sh.t with their phoney scoops.

https://twitter.com/chedwardes/status/1 ... 3424479238

[mikeh]

A friend's sister works as an epidemiologist at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine and has shared a couple of pre-print papers that might be of interest

A spatial model of CoVID-19 transmission in England and Wales: early spread and peak timing.pdf
The Efficacy of Contact Tracing for the Containment of the 2019 Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19).pdf

Very interesting, thanks.
For what its worth, the link within your original post goes to your own google drive, and thus visible name (which maybe you knew and are happy with).
Just in case this is better couple of direct links to the pre-prints
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101 ... 20022566v1
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101 ... 20023036v1

The 'A spatial model of CoVID-19 transmission' paper suggests potential peak around June, though of course big uncertainties around that. Nice graphs therein the paper too, e.g. around regional differences.

[Gfamily]

For what its worth, the link within your original post goes to your own google drive, and thus visible name (which maybe you knew and are happy with).

I think I'm OK with that, but the heads-up is appreciated - next time I'll link to the individual pdfs

[raven]

If you called it CORVID-19, would it force Raven to post more?

Look you lot, I told you already. Us crows, ravens, magpies and jays are all totally innocent. Got nuthink to do with us, guv'nor.

In other news, MrRaven is a bit cross that his work trip to lovely warm places next week is cancelled. I, otoh, am relieved. No getting quarantined on opposite sides of the planet, which wouldn't have been ideal. We go down, we go down together.

This talk of a lag between actual numbers vs reported numbers... Anyone know what sensitivity/specificity is like for the test? I read an abstract somewhere that suggested sensitivity might be 70%. So if I understand that right, for 400 positives we might have missed about 120 more cases?

[bmforre]

Look you lot, I told you already. Us crows, ravens, magpies and jays are all totally innocent. Got nuthink to do with us, guv'nor.

In other news, MrRaven is a bit cross that his work trip to lovely warm places next week is cancelled. I, otoh, am relieved. No getting quarantined on opposite sides of the planet, which wouldn't have been ideal. We go down, we go down together.

This talk of a lag between actual numbers vs reported numbers... Anyone know what sensitivity/specificity is like for the test? I read an abstract somewhere that suggested sensitivity might be 70%. So if I understand that right, for 400 positives we might have missed about 120 more cases?

If 400 positives detected by a 70% sensitive test, I believe the undetected 30% makes 30 x 400 / 70 which is ca. 170.

You being a raven would you know the famous observers Hugin and Munin and could you ask them from us for the best present view?

[mikeh]

The P-word
https://twitter.com/WHO/status/1237777021742338049?s=20

[TopBadger]

Some solid advice from the Guardian... don't hold or take part in orgies

[raven]

If 400 positives detected by a 70% sensitive test, I believe the undetected 30% makes 30 x 400 / 70 which is ca. 170.

You being a raven would you know the famous observers Hugin and Munin and could you ask them from us for the best present view?

You're right, I was being lazy with the maths.

Best view for what? Best view for ravens probably involves roadkill. Or hunting packs of wolves to follow. And I am but a 'umble raven, wot don't associate with the likes of Hugin and Munin anyway.

@badger - Thanks for that link to medium. Very sobering.

[shpalman]

If these numbers are confirmed then it's only just over 10000 and that would be a smaller increase than in the past few days. But it's possible not all of the labs have communicated their numbers yet.

The way that the number have gone up today makes me wonder if about 1000 positives are missing from yesterday's results.

[Ben B]

Some solid advice from the Guardian... don't hold or take part in orgies

Well that's my weekend ruined.

[Opti]

Now he's in Teh Grauniad. Celebrity beckons. https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/ ... f56e4c6ab5

[FlammableFlower]

Surely mikeh now can call "house" on his media bingo card?