Westminstenders: Following the EU lead

[RedToothBrush]

Coronavirus poses a particularly Irish shaped question. How the UK responds to Irish plans for ending lockdown and whether Arlene continues to back an all Ireland plan will be fascinating to watch and see justified regardless of which way we go.

The UK for all its new found independence is looking very closely to the success / failure of EU strategies before making our own plan public. Mainly because we've yet to write one.

Johnson hasn't led much. He's delegated. Yet he gets all the praise for doing the sum total of fuck all and never being the bad guy. There always another fall guy to blame.

Economically we are stuffed and promises of a very quick bounce back don't look likely based on public confidence and willingness to return to places like pubs restaurants and shops.

Our ability to adapt to new conditions at short notice has been tested and businesses can not afford to do this again soon.

This is the background to which we go into talks. Both sides need an extension to serve their best interests. Johnson is determined to cut our nose of to spite our face for the sake of his legacy and to keep those paying the back handers and dodging tax happy.

Emilyontmoor
ABCs and BBCs
(lets see if a Clav can work that one out)

American Born Chinese??
British Born Chinese??

My grammar school which was the County super selective when I was there (a truly dire confidence sapping experience, their main tool for keeping discipline was to drain girls of all self esteem) is now a free school. It means it now manages for the first time in its history during which it managed to exclude successive waves of immigration (Irish Eastern European Asian ) until they were regarded as sufficiently assimilated to reflect the ethnic and economic diversity of the area eg Indian Hindus started to be successful ahead of Pakistani Muslims. Actually its results are still pretty much the same, apparently because of the increase in BAME pupils. “They’re right clever” is a quote from a current pupil, obviously betraying a spot of othering....

No idea what view academia would take of other academics, not explicitly invited, reviewing code and publishing results

Totally normal. It's published, it's open to critique. Copyright has nothing to do with it.

Ah yes Emily - but with my Italian I was able to make myself understood in Spain.......

A very good friend and colleague of mine was a native HK mandarin speaker, but when she took a regional role took Cantonese lessons so she could conduct business meetings in Cantonese if need be. (Plus could understand absolutely if "the other side" switched to Cantonese in meetings - thinking she would be able to follow completely)

Louise BJ has never done detail - that requires hard work and concentration
He didn't work much before his illness and he probably hasn't the necessary stamina atm to catch up on all the details he missed

So he'll have the broad picture and be relying a lot more than is usual on his Cabinet
and also the expert advisers

Raab has "grown into" the Deputy PM role

• imo, he looked quite frightened / out of his depth during the first couple of pressers, but he has seemed confident in his role for some time now, just very aware of the seriousness - which is a good thing

He never looked confident when Brexit Sec,
but the difference is probably that Whitty & Vallance will have been briefing him continually and these experts have no fear of being forced out like Ivan Richards for giving the blunt facts

He & the Cabinet have been listening to these advisers and trusting them, not silencing them

This is not code that should be supporting national decision making
said Frankie
as have my real life coder friends

Proff Ferguson has cried wolf once too often

Mistigri
A friend told me today that her daughter is going back to university in Nancy asap as she has exams and her books, etc. are in her flat. She has had CV, as has almost everyone in her class, and is travelling from a green to a red zone.
A friend of hers has booked a flight to Bordeaux to return to university.
They seem to think it will be OK.
I am not sure they are quite right, when you read E. Philippe's details on what motif impérieux means...
Not v helpful, I know.

QuestionMarkNow some of the elderly people around here speak a kind of Provençal French and there are a handful of people in the SW I know whose grandparents still speak their patois. But they are definitely dying out.

In other news, there is no "test school" in our town, the mayor was clearly overtired when he said that. First and last year of primary are going back on Tues in all 3 primary schools, one week on, one week off in half groups. 12/week in DS2's year, 24 altogether out of over 70 pupils.
9 in the first year so 4 or 5 per week.
The two groups present on any one day will never encounter each other, as one will be in the former girls' school and one in what was the boys' school. Separate entrances, two playgrounds with another one between them, serving as a huge buffer zone.
After two weeks, they'll take stock, see how they have managed to enforce all the regulations and decide whether to open to more years.

TBH, I am far less concerned about him going back now than about Sept, when he is due to start middle school in a whole new environment, with all this going on.

Listening, my colleagues have been making the point that bad code isn't the same thing as bad science. Most of them have been comparing the "Lockdown Skeptics" blog to this one:

bparsia.wordpress.com/category/computer-science/agent-based-modeling/replicating-imperial/

But as long as you believe that lockdown can be lifted and it's all been a storm in a teacup, that first anonymous blog has done its job.

School has finally confirmed they will take dd if I get the job, so I applied today although they have no summer holiday clubs planned due to staff shortages. Home schooling is not going well tbh.

I need to catch up on yesterday's posts but I found this today, which I thought some of you will find interesting 'Canine Respiratory Coronavirus: A Naturally Occurring Model of COVID-19?' journals.sagepub.com/eprint/GC7MQIIWKUJNIR84Q7H6/full

What do the Malay Chinese community speak? I studied with some years ago, and I know that they said that Chinese people used to mock them for their expressions and accents. Not real Chinese.

Good luck JeSuisPoulet!!

singasonga
But as long as you believe that lockdown can be lifted and it's all been a storm in a teacup, that first anonymous blog has done its job.
As per MD in Private Eye
Lockdown should never have been started
test trace test trace test trace test trace

The UK Lockdown has not worked
but the only way forward is to get the test trace system working FAST
based around GPs and councils rather than rich git mates of Tory Ministers

as they say in Ireland
"I'd not start from here"
but as with Brexit we are where we are
so the Lockdown needs to be lifted in a way that will work
for the many and the few

Lockdown should never have been started WRONG
The UK Lockdown has not worked WRONG

Lockdown was the only way to stop exponential infection growth once it started

It saved hundreds of thousands of deaths in Whitty's "reasonable worst case"

Lockdown flattened the curve,
It was a pause button
gave time to build up NHS capacity
gave time for doctors & scientists to learn more about COVID, more about how to treat it, how to avoid it

Your family suffering financially / carrer-wise trumps neither the facts nor the national interest

Most countries around the world locked down, not just the UK
Merkel locked down and will lock down again, German regions or the whole country, if cases rise above a certain amount

I trust the judgement of Merkel, Macron, Varadkar and co in a crisis far more than I trust Private Eye

Ferguson was a useful squirrel,
that opponents of lockdown are now using,
but the UK would have copied other countries and shut down if he had never existed

The country was already shutting itself down before the government acted:
workers staying home
teachers and pupils staying home
The people forced the govt to lockdown

Some of the UK economy will stay closed even when the govt calls everyone back to work

• because the Grey Pound matters and much of it will be staying home until the danger has passed

Merkel's test for shutting down German regions again is 50 new cases per 100,000 pop in one week

The UK as a whole has about 60 cases / 100,000 pop per week atm

So the entire UK would fail Merkel's test to stay open

BJ can relax outdoor activities, which are low risk,
but the rest of the measures will probably stay another 2-3 weeks,
unless cases fall more dramatically - maybe as the weather heats up

BigChoc
Before dissing Private Eye, maybe you should read the article
as its not actually about the UK

The govt will be watching what happens as other countries relax measures

If all goes well, the UK will probably follow at a safe distance,
once UK new cases drop below say 2k per day and / or new (total) deaths below 200

The UK doesn't seem able to organise the necessary mass testing,
so the govt probably feels safer with the additional early warning that the fate of other countries might provide

It is hardly "dissing" Private Eye to state that I have more trust in the judgement of those 3 highly competent politicians

No responsible government could gamble that the "reasonable worst case" of its CMO won't happen
especially when other countries had already chosen lockdown

There is no "Whoops, rewind" button after a gamble lets hundreds of thousands die within a few months

Peregrina The Nonya community in Malaysia are fascinating, amazing fusion food and culture. I think there was a pidgin language but I am not going to do a cut and paste when I am sure someone far more knowledgable from first hand (and witty) will be along later....

Lockdown flattened the curve,
It was a pause button
gave time to build up NHS capacity

Without wishing to be negative about the positive aspects of lockdown, I would just say that it seems to me that NHS capacity was built up for COVID at the expense of many other treatments and 'parts' of the NHS, e.g. my child's audiology, my physio, other family members' urology and neurology appointments. Hopefully we'll all be ok with these referrals being pushed back for at least several months, but shoring up the ability to cope with COVID does involve loss/contraction of the NHS elsewhere, so it doesn't feel quite right not to acknowledge this.

Arborea - which is why more should have been done sooner . Mass gatherings cancelled, social distancing, encouraging employers who could go let staff work from home, instead of persuing herd immunity. Then maybe some of those appointments- the most urgent could have been seen.

A friend is a gynie in one of the nhs trusts in London worst hit. She hasn't practiced her specialty for about 10 weeks now..... several weeks before look down she was starting to say that she would go into works and another ward was converted to Covid patients...... the warnings we there . They were just ignored.

Also on top of lack of action you have an NHS that had been worn bare.......
I saw a rather patronising article about the state of NZ's health service . Well I have experienced both - and although NZ is not a wealthy country - it's Public Health Service is noticeably better than here. Yes is may not be at Germany's standard but I think generally people are better served. It was just another example if a certain sectors belief in English exceptionalism.

To be clear I distinguish the message from the messenger - am not a sceptic, I have no doubt that lockdown was, by then, the only option - the resources for test/trace did not exist, and I'm not certain they exist now.

Given the unwillingness of the numpties in charge to cooperate with Europe - or anyone really - then we're on a hiding to nothing, just hoping they move slowly.

The issue with the modelling code is that it seems to be the only thing providing a basis for predictions - given it looks like you can frig the parameters to get the models to say absolutely anything I'd like to see some review of the underlying models and then validation of their implementation in the code.

(we do seem to fall for snake-oil - back when the treasury released their model into the public domain I remember looking at what seemed to be a polynomial - albeit with an awful lot of terms. However the model didn't include any hysteresis - have always felt that brown's use of fractional interest rate changes mitigated that lack, prior to that relatively large rate changes always overshot/undershot targets.)

Unfortunately, there is a significant risk of infection in UK hospitals,
more so than in some other countries

There has not been adequate planning, resources, PPE etc to prevent this

So going to a hospital for routine non-urgent appointments is risky
it won't be any less risky once lockdown is relaxed, unless new cases are a lot lower by then

What I would like to know is when the public are going to twig that not only did we lockdown later than we should, but we will have to be in lockdown much longer - well, until we see some community based cluster testing at least - unless we go for a second wave with even worse mortality after a failed pause of lockdown. At what point does a Boris loving Tory think "why are we doing so many things that makes us global outliers when the rest of the world is relatively COVID free?" do we think another 3 months?

I'm interested in what the world will do if they open for business, having contained the virus and a flight from the highly infectious UK decides it's fine for them to arrive on a holiday? Personally, if I was witnessing the lack of...well anything going on here I'd close my boarders to UK residents who couldn't prove that they had spent lockdown in another country. I'm guessing many areas reliant on the tourists may struggle with that though come August.

We are in a grammar area. Dd is unlikely to get in, from what I can tell, because she is dyslexic. Other than the reluctance to write (and believe me home schooling hasn't helped in the slightest) she is extremely bright, loves reading and loves maths. Most of my friends here went to one of the grammars with mixed results (strangely none of them have left the town, which is worrying IMO) but one thing they all have said "there were no dyslexics at our school". We have had parents tutoring their kids from Y1 of Primary to compete against the DFL (Down From London) lot who keep pipping local kids.

"the only thing providing a basis for predictions"

It just added some detail about timing and may have been the government's shiny toy

However, Whitty's estimated "reasonable worst case" was just early primary school level multiplication
The important bit is Whitty's expert estimates of max 80% infection rate and max 1% death rate