Westminstenders: How many Dead Cats Do You Get In A Thunderstorm?

[RedToothBrush]

It never rains. It only pours.

What I wouldn't give for a bit of old fashioned drizzle right now.

4 years on and we are facing a torment of calamities. Brexit, serious political instability in the USA ahead of an election that Trump will refuse to lose even if he does, trade deals with the rest of the world put on 6 week deadlines, anger within the commonwealth, a sick weak dependent PM on the back foot and ill briefed, rampant growing corruption in the Tory party, woke nut jobs out of touch with reality, councils on the brink of bankruptcy and the whole covid-19 crisis.

How completely shit are we?

Coronavirus: UK hardest hit by virus among leading G7 nations www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-53222182

Report on BBC news at 10 was good! And pretty scathing...

Clavinova If you doubt the FT graphs, then check the deaths in the German stats link I gave

However, the FT uses the ONS or equivalent for each country, so I don't know why they would take 2 states only when the national figures for Germany are available
btw, Hessen and Berlin are about in the middle as regards COVID severity, but it still would be perverse

Maybe in the very early days before the German stats bureau starting giving out these releases ?
(unlike the ONS, it doesn't normally give out many reports until much later, but has pulled up its socks because of the COVID crisis to give moreminfo)

The New York Times shows the same excess deaths (not quite as up to date)
but compares to more years, as well as to the average:

www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/04/21/world/coronavirus-missing-deaths.html

How do you lock down a city like Leicester?

It only works imo, if done locally, by the local authorities, who know their patch,
not imposed from Westminister

news.sky.com/story/coronavirus-how-do-you-lock-down-a-city-like-leicester-12017622

Was someone asking upthread about UK holidaymakers being allowed in ?

At least Trump has no excuse for banning Brits from the USA - which looks worse atm

news.sky.com/story/coronavirus-greece-extends-travel-ban-on-uk-visitors-for-two-weeks-12017620

Greece is extending its ban on UK flights for another two weeks, the country's prime minister has said.

British holidaymakers will not be allowed to fly to Greece until 15 July,despite the country opening its borders to other international visitors on Wednesday.

Well a hard lockdown will work in Leicester for a short period. This half lockdown won't work. Need to shut Leicester right down. No one in or out. Send as many track and test teams. Enforce 14 day lockdowns with penalties if not adhered to. Kill the virus swiftly and hard. Stamp it out. Otherwise complete waste of time. And it's going to happen all over. Why? Because lockdown not quick enough, hard enough, no test and trace useless Government and people not listening and following the rules. In fact a complete farce.

More great news. In China new strain if flu originating from pigs and likely to cross over to humans very soon according to scientists now studying it.

Oh dear, leave and tory voting friend who has a holiday house in Greece won't be happy as they booked flights for 14th July. What can you do.

Yes joined up thinking and services are the best way to have a working lockdown, govt has spent it's trust tokens and been found wanting. I strongly suspect Leicester isn't the only place with a growing number of cases, but is possibly better at testing. Will other towns and cities be so keen?

Sos - yes, any threads ago I said localised testing and lockdowns with road blocks. The govt itself has enabled the public to think of this as "extreme" and so now seem unlikely to do it.

Oh dear, leave and tory voting friend who has a holiday house in Greece won't be happy as they booked flights for 14th July. What can you do.

Can they blame the EU? Or Starmer for not holding the Government to account? Or the Greeks themselves - unreliable furriners?

Oh I have just thought - blame EasyJet - they have been inundating me with emails asking me to book flights with them.

It only works imo, if done locally, by the local authorities, who know their patch, not imposed from Westminister

And those local authorities need good local data.

I genuinely don't understand why the U.K. is unable to decentralise this when it has good local NHS structures available to manage test and trace.

In Germany I presume this is all done at regional level as it is in France (we have regional health authorities managing clusters and they work with primary healthcare providers). I have been pleasantly surprised at how effective this has been so far, although rather more pessimistic about how it will work when high schools and universities are fully open again.

However, the FT uses the ONS or equivalent for each country, so I don't know why they would take 2 states only when the national figures for Germany are available

The FT sometimes shows regional/city figures separately, and I have noticed that for some countries (eg Italy) this data is sometimes more up-to-date than national data. But I doubt very much that regional data has been used as a proxy for national data unless specifically labelled and anyone suggesting this should be politely asked to show their workings/evidence.

I genuinely don't understand why the U.K. is unable to decentralise this when it has good local NHS structures available to manage test and trace.

Because it's been a political decision to destroy anything local.

British holidaymakers will not be allowed to fly to Greecee* until 15 July,despite the country opening its borders to other international visitors on Wednesday.

Sensible decision by Greece, why risk the health of your local population and the tourism industry by inviting people from high risk countries in.

Reading victims - terrorist attack. I watched Jonathan Pie and realised why these men were chosen - they were gay. The fact is buried at the end of a BBC report. Apparently saying they were attacked by a Muslim (with MH issues) because they were gay is Islamophobic.

woke utopia

"An online book of condolence has also been opened for people to pay tribute to the three friends, who were members of the LGBT community.

Martin Cooper, chief executive of Reading Pride, said he also had been friends with all three men, and they were "great supporters" of the community. He previously described them as "true gentlemen" and said each had a "unique personality"."
<a class="break-all" href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-53206550?intlink_from_url=www.bbc.co.uk/news/topics/c78e2r6vvlnt/reading-stabbings&link_location=live-reporting-story" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-53206550?intlink_from_url=www.bbc.co.uk/news/topics/c78e2r6vvlnt/reading-stabbings&link_location=live-reporting-story

It only works imo, if done locally, by the local authorities, who know their patch, not imposed from Westminister

And those local authorities need good local data.

LAs do have good local data (look at how much more successful the local teams have been in track and trace than the national level Servo team) and at least in my area have been putting into place local action plans. The issue is that they have very limited powers for imposing local lockdowns.

"At least Trump has no excuse for banning Brits from the USA - which looks worse atm"

Every cloud has a rusty lining

"I watched Jonathan Pie and realised why these men were chosen - they were gay."

I'll be surprised if it turns out to be a homophobic attack.
The group they were with was sitting nearest the gate and would have been the first people the attacker saw.

I remember Reading as an inclusive town and most people don't give race or sexuality a second thought. It makes me cross that certain people (Peter Tatchell!) are trying to "other" them like this.

Greece is extending its ban on UK flights for another two weeks, the country's prime minister has said.

Anyone who reads these threads isn't surprised. I wonder how many Brits will try to circumvent that ?

Shocking hints that POTUS might be a complete and utter moron ... we can only imagine what he's saying to Boris.

edition.cnn.com/2020/06/29/politics/trump-phone-calls-national-security-concerns/index.html

Trump's conversations with May, the UK Prime Minister from 2016 to 2019, were described as "humiliating and bullying," with Trump attacking her as "a fool" and spineless in her approach to Brexit, NATO and immigration matters.

"He'd get agitated about something with Theresa May, then he'd get nasty with her on the phone call," One source said. "It's the same interaction in every setting coronavirus or Brexit with just no filter applied."

Merkel remained calm and outwardly unruffled in the face of Trump's attacks —"like water off a duck's back," in the words of one source -- and she regularly countered his bluster with recitations of fact. The German official quoted above said that during Merkel's visit to the White House two years ago, Trump displayed "very questionable behavior" that "was quite aggressive ... [T]he Chancellor indeed stayed calm, and that's what she does on the phone."

Prime Minister May, in contrast, became "flustered and nervous" in her conversations with the President. "He clearly intimidated her and meant to," said one of CNN's sources. In response to a request for comment about Trump's behavior in calls with May, the UK's Downing Street referred CNN to its website. The site lists brief descriptions of the content of some calls and avoids any mention of tone or tension. The French embassy in Washington declined to comment, while the Russian and Turkish embassies did not respond to requests for comment.

BigChocFrenzy
The New York Times shows the same excess deaths (not quite as up to date) but compares to more years, as well as to the average:

You have highlighted the UK and Germany in the chart but I only mentioned Germany because I was aware that stats from Berlin and Hesse had previously been used to represent the whole of Germany - my point being that we do not know what anomalies there are in other countries - making it difficult to compare (estimated) excess deaths between countries. For example, from your link;

"Some countries have less historical data available. For countries with three or fewer years of data, the model uses a simple average of deaths in the observed years."

The charts in your FT link also refer to "recent years".

However (from a lay person's perspective) comparing a two or three year average with a five year average is not comparing like with like - severe winter flu some years, heat waves etc. Surely, the 'crude' chart below illustrates this - the (estimated) average death rate for France 2017-2018 (two years) is going to be statistically different to the average death rate for 2014-2018 (five years) or am I missing something?

tradingeconomics.com/france/death-rate-crude-per-1-000-people-wb-data.html

DGR - I imagine the POTUS and Boris are a mutual arse licking admiration society.

We need to pay careful attention to Venezuela, since that's where we're going to be soon.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-53230015

Venezuela tells EU ambassador to leave country

Venezuela's President Nicolás Maduro has ordered the European Union's ambassador to leave the country within 72 hours.

Isabel Brilhante Pedrosa's expulsion came hours after the EU placed sanctions on 11 Venezuelan officials.

They were sanctioned for acting against the national assembly headed by opposition leader Juan Guaidó.

Mr Guaidó declared himself interim president last year but has failed to remove Mr Maduro.

The opposition leader has the backing of the EU and the US.

Clavinova ""Some countries have less historical data available"

Yes and their 5-year average would be affected by 1 bad year, but not much
Even for an exceptionally bad year like 2020, excess deaths for the period might be 50% higher, which averages out to about 10%

Some countries had an exceptionally bad year since 2015, but many didn't

The NYT graphs show several years, not just averages
You can see the huge COVID spike in many countries including the UK, compared to the several years overlaid, not just the average

Ever been reminded of the saying, "None so blind as those who will not see" ?