Coronavirus - A pale horse,4 men and ....beer

[Dallas]

Witty and Vallance struggling to defend the stats and modelling the pushed BJ to a 2nd lockdown when being questioned by MP's
https://lockdownsceptics.org/2020/11/03 ... mplausible

[Morbius]

I generally don't like making assumptions about people but I think it's quite safe to make the assumption that Boris Johnson's a twit, to put it mildly, and it's easier to predict or assume what a twit is going to do or think.

you might be right Derek

But he actually if left to his own devices may have done something completely different to what he was advised. The problem as I said before is that scientists are very often non-pragmatists. They are facts and figures and numbers people....they believe in data and also (and here is the big danger), when the shit hits the fan in the event of something back firing, they can all point to the data as being the guiding force which is basically a get out of jail card for them. So basically what we have (whether they admit it or not) is a highly dangerous situation where self-learning algorithms are in the driving seat.

Lewis Hamilton is a great driver but you wouldn't want him driving your car down the M1 with you in it at three years of age would you??? This is where we were at the outset

[firlandsfarm]

We know that a lockdown or circuit breaker was advised. I can well believe that BJ ignored it because he's more concerned about the economy but it doesn't help to have these discussions in private only to be leaked later.

Derek I am literally watching the Science and Technology Committee questioning Sir Patrick Vallance and Professor Chris Whitty as I write this. They are both making the point that their advice has no economic input. Indeed they are further adding that their advice should be seen as separate to the economic advice so that their input cannot be influenced by the input of others and is purely based on the science as they see it. They see the merging of all the advice the Government receives should be detached from each other as much as possible and combined in an 'independent' place. They also acknowledged that where they do rub shoulders with the economic advice is in the area of the affect any action may have on the general health.

If Boris is more concerned about the economic situation then he has a reason for not imposing a lockdown 5 weeks ago, this is what I have been saying. He had a reason. You do not have to agree with that reason and clearly you don't. But he took a decision based on the total advice he had received. If he had taken the route of the lockdown in September there would have been lots of 'Dereks' now saying how wrong he was to ignore the economic arguments.

One thing that has become obvious from the handling of this pandemic is that it is impossible for everyone to be pleased by the decisions that are taken ... there will always be a clash between the "it's obvious we must do this"ers and the "you cannot be serious"ers ...". With Boris and Co in the middle.

Whether Boris has made the right decisions or not will be questioned by history but I am happy that he has made all his decisions with his belief of what is best for the country and it's citizens.

[firlandsfarm]

There are a lot of people making assumptions of what the government are doing based on not knowing what data they have or anything that is in depth about their advisory team/SAGE. Because of the unique characteristics of this virus, like any mathematical model we need to update it constantly and conclusions one month can be totally opposite to conclusions the following month with fresh data....

Morbius, we agree! BJ is being pulled in many directions and with each advisor ready to jump up and say "I told him so" followed by their fans providing the echo there is no way anybody could win as PM.

[Morbius]

We know that a lockdown or circuit breaker was advised. I can well believe that BJ ignored it because he's more concerned about the economy but it doesn't help to have these discussions in private only to be leaked later.

Whether Boris has made the right decisions or not will be questioned by history but I am happy that he has made all his decisions with his belief of what is best for the country and it's citizens.

+1

I wouldn't go as far as to say his position was impossible but it was only one step removed from it IMO. The balancing act he has had to find between an absolutely gruesome level of death and connected death and a completely fractured economy is perhaps in many ways the most difficult situation that any government at ANY TIME in history has had to face. I believe every single decision he has taken was taken with the best of the country's interests at heart. I don't even think this is debatable.

There will be MP's who are (have) attempted to use this for political gain and shame on them. Shame on them and idiots like Piers Corbyn who drum up the support of other idiots who simply don't have the capacity to think. I see pathetic banners like "This is Tyranny" and I just sink in despair. If the country en-masse had done what they were supposed to do at the very beginning then we could maybe have been in a much better situation now.

If we remember that all this started with one person in Wuhan and then remember thousands of people on Bournemouth, Brighton and Blackpool beaches as well as raves and house parties then seriously...what chance did we have???? The decisions at grass roots level taken by the public have been worse than anything that the government have done.

[Morbius]

There are a lot of people making assumptions of what the government are doing based on not knowing what data they have or anything that is in depth about their advisory team/SAGE. Because of the unique characteristics of this virus, like any mathematical model we need to update it constantly and conclusions one month can be totally opposite to conclusions the following month with fresh data....

Morbius, we agree! BJ is being pulled in many directions and with each advisor ready to jump up and say "I told him so" followed by their fans providing the echo there is no way anybody could win as PM.

You beat me to the punch as I was typing and agreeing with you....careful..we will soon be getting engaged

[greenmark]

April-June the NHS ran at winter capacity and occupancy.
I wonder where the headroom in capacity is going to come from.
Cancel non-urgent treatments?
Use other medical resources (military etc)?
The only possible plus is that social distancing etc might suppress the usual flu season headcount.
I'm puzzled about why lockdown has come now with hundreds dying per day.
Back in March it was 10's per day that triggered lockdown.
The next 3 weeks are going to be very revealing about whether the govt got the timing right.

[Korattt]

just come back from The Range to pick up some cat food & shall we say not many people were shopping for essential goods, lot of people were milling about the Christmas Decorations, car park was rammed & we had to queue up for 10 mins outside, from now until Christmas is gong to be the worst ever, bog rolls stocked from floor to ceiling everywhere, thinking about buying some for Christmas Presents 🧻

[Dallas]

UK terror threat just been raised to 'Severe' meaning an attack is 'Highly Likely'

This lockdown may yet have a sort of unintended silver lining

[Korattt]

UK terror threat just been raised to 'Severe' meaning an attack is 'Highly Likely'

This lockdown may yet have a sort of unintended silver lining

just seen that, said to the missus earlier when all this is finally over I would imagine it’s how everyone felt on VE Day

[Morbius]

UK terror threat just been raised to 'Severe' meaning an attack is 'Highly Likely'

This lockdown may yet have a sort of unintended silver lining

just seen that, said to the missus earlier when all this is finally over I would imagine it’s how everyone felt on VE Day

VE Day Just wait until they make "Lockdown: The Movie" ...my suggestion for who should play Hitler is Piers Corbyn

[greenmark]

UK terror threat just been raised to 'Severe' meaning an attack is 'Highly Likely'

This lockdown may yet have a sort of unintended silver lining

just seen that, said to the missus earlier when all this is finally over I would imagine it’s how everyone felt on VE Day

VE Day Just wait until they make "Lockdown: The Movie" ...my suggestion for who should play Hitler is Piers Corbyn

.... or Norman Tebbitt?

[Jukebox]

VE Day Just wait until they make "Lockdown: The Movie" ...my suggestion for who should play Hitler is Piers Corbyn

Hollywood will ensure that regardless of what actually happened it will be the USA that was responsible for the vaccine that saved the world and with their usual ability to get things historically accurate the villain could well be Mau Zedong

[Derek27]

We know that a lockdown or circuit breaker was advised. I can well believe that BJ ignored it because he's more concerned about the economy but it doesn't help to have these discussions in private only to be leaked later.

Derek I am literally watching the Science and Technology Committee questioning Sir Patrick Vallance and Professor Chris Whitty as I write this. They are both making the point that their advice has no economic input. Indeed they are further adding that their advice should be seen as separate to the economic advice so that their input cannot be influenced by the input of others and is purely based on the science as they see it. They see the merging of all the advice the Government receives should be detached from each other as much as possible and combined in an 'independent' place. They also acknowledged that where they do rub shoulders with the economic advice is in the area of the affect any action may have on the general health.

If Boris is more concerned about the economic situation then he has a reason for not imposing a lockdown 5 weeks ago, this is what I have been saying. He had a reason. You do not have to agree with that reason and clearly you don't. But he took a decision based on the total advice he had received. If he had taken the route of the lockdown in September there would have been lots of 'Dereks' now saying how wrong he was to ignore the economic arguments.

One thing that has become obvious from the handling of this pandemic is that it is impossible for everyone to be pleased by the decisions that are taken ... there will always be a clash between the "it's obvious we must do this"ers and the "you cannot be serious"ers ...". With Boris and Co in the middle.

Whether Boris has made the right decisions or not will be questioned by history but I am happy that he has made all his decisions with his belief of what is best for the country and it's citizens.

Fair enough, I dived into this argument without really knowing what advice BJ was given, as you rightly pointed out.

I think it's got to the stage where every time he opens his mouth I'm expecting lies or garbage and it's just become second nature to attack him.

[firlandsfarm]

VE Day Just wait until they make "Lockdown: The Movie" ...my suggestion for who should play Hitler is Piers Corbyn

Hollywood will ensure that regardless of what actually happened it will be the USA that was responsible for the vaccine that saved the world and with their usual ability to get things historically accurate the villain could well be Mau Zedong

+1 True, true, true