Westminstenders: The Tunnel or Bridge

[RedToothBrush]

Apparently negotiations are in the black hole of the EU tunnel or should that be on the back of the fantasy of the Boris Bridge?

Another week closer to complete meltdown.

I'm guessing that our world beating customs solution will be based on blackboard and chalk.

And why can’t we do that @Mistigri*??? It has been done in other countries too (Senegal if I remember correctly).
We had opportunities all throughout the summer. We still have those opportunities in some areas with lower incidence. We need to use those.*

Tbh I don't know why pooling of PCR tests hasn't been done (lack of capacity and bandwidth probably) but there are reasons why it shouldn't be done now. If many pools are positive you increase rather than decrease test turnaround times, which makes it harder to break transmission chains.

OTOH, I have seen a suggestion, from a French clinical biologist, that pooling of rapid tests (antigen not PCR) be used in the rapid assessment of clusters.

The idea is as follows:

• Say you need to test 100 people in a particular setting, eg a student residence or a homeless shelter.
• You put your samples into ten pools of ten, and test them using the rapid test technology
• If there is a low positivity rate, you'll only get one or two positive pools. At this point you can prioritise those 10-20 people for PCR tests with a rapid turnaround.
• OTOH, if there is a high positivity rate, several of your pools will be positive. But unlike PCR pooling, where you might have wasted the best part of 24 hours, you've only wasted 15 minutes. At the same time you have quickly established that there is a significant cluster, which is in itself a very important piece of public health information.

I think this is a very interesting argument ... could potentially be a good approach for screening in student residences for example.

[quote ListeningQuietly]And back in the land of grown ups
news.sky.com/story/largest-irish-budget-in-history-assumes-no-brexit-deal-and-no-covid-19-vaccine-12103232[/quote]
Mr Donohoe said that Ireland would prevail, and closed his speech with a quote from the poet Seamus Heaney: "If we winter this out, we can summer anywhere."

(looks at current shower of philistine shits in Westminster and weeps)

Mistigri
Its one of the things that really bugs me about the daily drama dose of Whitty and Co.
They compare the number of Positive tests with what was happening in March
but no mention of the number of Negative tests
ie were 10% testing positive then and 1% positive now? - it makes a HUGE difference to the risk profile
but would undermine the justification for destruction of our civil liberties

This webinar is an urgent meeting called at short notice to enable the Bars of England and Wales, Scotland and N. Ireland to discuss the serious challenges to the rule of law raised by the Internal Market Bill. The Law Society and the Bar Council produced a briefing paper setting out their concerns for international, domestic law (particularly judicial review) and devolution here. The IBA previously held a webinar on the domestic and international legal implications of the Internal Market Bill which can be viewed here.

This webinar will concentrate on the domestic aspects and the role of the Bar in maintaining, protecting and standing up for the rule of law. The webinar will encompass half an hour of presentations from our eminent speakers and half an hour of questions for audience participants.

As I've said before LQ - we'll have to agree to differ on appropriate strategies. I don't happen to think that NS is being overly draconian. I think it's better to be strict now - and hope to get a lid on things sooner rather than later. Our rates per 100,000 are currently lower than in England - as are our death rates but surely we don't want to emulate those rates

Our schools also went back 3 weeks before the English ones so the increase that came with that happened earlier. But I'm happy that education is being prioritised over hospitality - as are most people I've talked to. Correction: everyone I've talked to.

It's 16 days of increased restrictions - that also coincide with the October week/fortnight. I can cope with that.

Can we stop going on about lockdown.... because quite frankly no one has been in lockdown recently- if restaurants, pubs and bars , gyms, schools , universities and your able to travel to go on holiday - you are not in lockdown! Yes your living with some restrictions, but describing it as lockdown is completely misleading.

1% positive now?

Do you not get the data on positive test rate in the U.K.?

In France the positive test rate is now around 11-12% - and it's 15-20% in the worst hit areas. It has gone up like a rocket in the last two weeks.

I'd expect the U.K. data to look very similar, with perhaps a small lag.

Mistigri
By the look of it on this page
coronavirus.data.gov.uk/
its 8% of tests positive at the moment
2% positive over all

MrsL
I agree its not a Lockdown
Its a massive infringement on civil liberties from which those in power(eg Stanley Johnson) seem to be exempt.

looks like Starmer is calling Johnson's bluff though

and luckily DHs on site days are outside the planned circuit breaker days

The Crick are reporting 10% positivity, and that is largely with healthcare professionals tested regularly regardless of symptoms and also likely to be nearer the 20% with antibodies that is the estimate for the London population

https://www.bbc.com/news/business-54522844

The IMF warns that the global recovery is not assured while the pandemic continues to spread.

Research the agency published last week suggested that the downturn was only partly attributable to lockdown restrictions on activity imposed by governments.

Much of it reflected voluntary social distancing by people reluctant to do things that expose them to increased risk of infection.

The implication of that is that a complete recovery needs more decisive progress in tackling the virus, such as a vaccine

LQ - France has gone from a 7-8% positive rate to around 12% nationally in just a few days - I doubt the U.K. is far behind.

But again the key point with the UKs shambolic approach to everything
is that a national rate tells you nothing about how to tackle it.
PROPER tracing - as Germany have done - allows clusters and patterns to be identified and interventions targeted effectively.

Sadly the UK is stuck with eejits who just want to bung money to their mates.

That's a bit of good cheer for MrListening 👍

Sorry to hear your lad's job has been hit by this too, DG
I hope he can find something temporary to help tide him over,
but obviously he wants his old life back, hopefully in spring

Scotland lets you see down to neighbourhood level - you can get the positive test rate by local authority or health board, and see the number of cases detected in the last week in regions of 3000-6000 population. I admit I'm slightly obsessed with this site!

public.tableau.com/profile/phs.covid.19#!/vizhome/COVID-19DailyDashboard_15960160643010/Overview

Good shout, MShip, thanks for the link.

The IMF warns that the global recovery is not assured while the pandemic continues to spread

I'll be honest that I don't think the UK is going to track what the rest of the world is doing very well in the next 10-15 years.

PROPER tracing - as Germany have done - allows clusters and patterns to be identified and interventions targeted effectively.

Sure - but as case numbers, test and trace capacity quickly reaches its limits.

The French were doing reasonably well at test and trace, but since the beginning of September, cases have exploded, with the result that local capacity for testing AND tracing has been exceeded.

For test and trace to have a chance to work properly, you have to get case numbers down first, and it's hard to see how that can be done without more repressive measures.

Yep, in the 1st wave, entering the peak, our track & trace here warned us that they couldn't cope with the sheer numbers
and estimated they were missing several times the number of contacts they could find

Germany's deaths in the peak weeks were 300+
Streeck's estimated IFR in Gangelt was 0.36% which would give us ~83,000 daily cases, all with contacts to trace

Even tougher task:
UK daily cases in 1st wave are estimated at 100-200k, depending on modelling, with iirc one early Imperial model calculating nearly 300k at peak

In all densely populated European countries, we have to keep numbers far below the real numbers of cases int he 1st wave

Going by numbers of deaths, real cases ~ 2 weeks ago are way below 1st wave and scale up from that the cases found today and still far below

That's for Spain & France etc, not just UK
All have deaths far below 1st peak, including after scaling up cases now compared to 2-3+ weeks ago, to allow for "death lag"

So still time to get this under control

Barnier says little prospect yet of EU and UK entering ‘tunnel’ negotiations

The EU negotiating team and heads of govt have noted BJ's history of U-turns, so may be expecting another.
However, for the EU "No Deal is better than a bad deal"

• and they know too that they can afford to wait, as the UK negotiating position will be weaker next year

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/oct/13/brexit-michel-barnier-mocks-boris-johnson-third-deadline-on-talks

He noted that Johnson had twice previously suggested that the UK needed the certainty of a deal by a specific date, only to later backtrack.

“It is the third unilateral deadline that Johnson has imposed without agreement,”
Barnier was said to have remarked.
“We still have time.”
< subtle dig ? >

Oh Blimey, here it comes again, a bloody Deal-wanting Brexit Ref Yes Voter barging in breaking the china and upsetting 'sensibilities'.

Looks like a deal is going to happen (I'm happy to give lots of leeway my side).

And plenty of support and opposition to any attacks on our agricultural, workers and environmental standards post-Brexit.

@Mistigri

1% positive now?

Do you not get the data on positive test rate in the U.K.?

In France the positive test rate is now around 11-12% - and it's 15-20% in the worst hit areas. It has gone up like a rocket in the last two weeks.

I'd expect the U.K. data to look very similar, with perhaps a small lag.

We get regional rates and the national rates.

We WERE getting the rates for watchlist areas but PHE stopped publishing this data to the public last week though councils are still getting this and some are publishing it. I spend Sunday hunting for a bunch to get an idea of what is going on.

The worst place in the country is undoubtedly Liverpool. Their positive rate topped out on Friday at over 24%. Which is BAD. Its one of the few councils publishing figures daily and the good news is that this now does seem to have peaked.

Manchester City Council wasnt a lot behind Liverpool on the last data available.

And most of the rest of the current hotspots have topped 15% positive in the last few weeks.

Its massively frustrating theyve pulled the data, but this data only serves to show up the problem with testing in certain areas. Its undoubtedly due to lack of accessibility. I know that many places have really poorly located test centres especially if you cant drive. To give you an example, Warrington with a population of 100,000 had no permanent local testing centre in the town until two weeks ago. Prior to that there had been a shared mobile unit with neighbouring Halton, although when an outbreak started in Warrington they moved it to Warrington but this had limited capacity and was badly located (in an area of town which wasnt having the worst outbreakand wasn't central nor easy to get to).

God knows what arrangements were made in Halton when the mobile van was moved to Warrington or what facilities were available in Halton (which is less well off generally than Warrington). Halton now has higher numbers than Warrington - and irs entirely possible that this lack of testing and diverting resources to Warrington when it had a problem led to the problem in Halton establishing.

Either way its a complete shit show and the focus has been on restrictions not testing. And tbh constantly changing the restrictions almost makes for the perfect dead cat as no one talks about how poor testing.

The tracing is so bad that some local councils in Manchester and Lancashire brought in local tracing (which they can't afford) and the government isnt resourcing.

It now turns out that the government is offering financial help for local tracing (despite spunking billions on Didos white elephant) but rather than being available as a preventative resource for anywhere teetering on the brink in Tier 2 restrictions this money is only available when you get to 'shitstorm' level in T3.

This policy has been reported by the Manchester Evening News as driving a Manchester political leader to accurately call it 'insane' and like being lead by 'madmen'.

I hope this summarises the situation accurately enough as to whats happening in the uk and just how ineffective testing and tracing is.

SAGEs damning of it yesterday was very polite to put it mildly.

Thanks RTB. That is indeed insanity.

We have (or had) a problem with test availability in France, but even in my little town there are two clinical biology labs which do testing.

As for a Brexit deal: there will be one, the question is whether it's a deal signed from a position of disadvantage this year, or from a position of desperation next year.

"As for a Brexit deal: there will be one, the question is whether it's a deal signed from a position of disadvantage this year, or from a position of desperation next year."

I agree
The issue probably will be whether the EU are sufficiently anxious about Ireland to agree this year,
or whether the consensus is to wait and get a better deal next year

Macron reportedly would be in deep trouble if he agrees to compromise significantly on fish,
so he probably wants to hold out for a deal next year
Likely so do the other 7 coastal fishing nations

EU countries are concerned about the Single market and Level Playing Field
also of course they don't trust BJ or his successor - since he's set the precedent - who could renege as soon as they think the Uk is in a better position to do so
(say after the Covid cases (hopefully) drop right down in spring / after vaccination)