CV19 - Cure worse than the disease? (Vol 3)

[johnboy1975]

Condi said:

Elysium said:

This Govt seems to delight in briefing conflicting messages to the public. Somone clearly thinks this is some clever behavioural science stuff.

You think its as clever as that? I think that there is so little co-ordination, and Johnson/Cummings are so keen that decisions are centralised while admitting he is not a details man, that his opinion changes with the wind and he will say something to the press before it is discussed internally. How often has he contradicted his own Parliament, whether that be Hancock, Gove, or whoever? He is a populist politician elected on 1 policy now totally stuck because there is no overwhelming public opinion about the virus.

Boris cannot possibly not be aware of what Gove said yesterday.

To an extent, this was planned.

Dom looks at focus groups. Sees masks are popular amongst general public, but not with a small subsection. Send a rep from the "no mask" brigade (Gove) out to push no masks. Check public opinion. Then Boris arrives to save the day and ensure everyone's safety. He receives a hero's reception, everyone goes back to shops and we spend our way out of this hole. Or something.

On the second point, I think he is stuck purely because there IS an overwhelming public opinion about the virus......."yeah we will just sit on our arses for 6 months whilst you sort it all out"

[ORD]

And we forget in all this that mandatory restrictions on freedom should be exceptional and require strong evidence. There’s nothing close. It’s abhorrent that making it a criminal offence not to wear a mask is even receiving serious thought.

[smashing]

ORD said:

And we forget in all this that mandatory restrictions on freedom should be exceptional and require strong evidence. There’s nothing close. It’s abhorrent that making it a criminal offence not to wear a mask is even receiving serious thought.

That ship sailed LOOOOOOOOONG ago! we are deep down the social experiment rabbit hole right now.

[anonymous-user]

finger in the dyke after all the water has gone. I wonder if one of Boris's mate owns a mask company.

[Elysium]

bodhi said:

The Spruce Goose said:

bodhi said:

Any working that relies on observational data rather than running a computer model? As my faith in those isn't particularly high after the Prof Ferguson 500k deaths debacle.

it was actually 250k but to sell it, the government decided to go with the 500k model, which was proved wrong. Anyone don't let facts get in front of argument.

Well that makes it OK then!

Out of interest, how are his predictions for Sweden coming along? Pretty sure he said they would have 60k+ deaths if they carried on that course of action - how did that stand up in the end?

Well actual deaths are currently 12 times less so from an epidemiological perspective the prediction has been a massive success.

[Elysium]

RSTurboPaul said:

sambucket said:

JagLover said:

That has been suggested for Japan, which has been barely affected.

Japan is quite a mystery.

Is that the whole of Japan in one photo?

I think the real mystery is why their shopping trolleys are so tiny.

[Elysium]

ant1973 said:

JagLover said:

ant1973 said:

Masks = safe.
People in shops wearing masks = safe shops.
Safe shops = people returning to shops.

But:

Economy fecked = wasteful consumption unsafe.
Masks uncomfortable = miserable "experience" so let's just order from amazon.
Don't need to be in office = no need to use city centre retail
wearing masks = virus not gone away so unsafe.

They are complete halfwits if they think that wearing a mask is the difference between success and failure for retail and the high street.

Welcome to the law of unintended consequences when you behave irrationally.

The whole masks things is a complete mystery on that score.

If they make them compulsory for food retailers people will have to wear them though I would still be trying to avoid entering them. Most of the shopping in non-food retailers is discretionary and who is going to want to do it in a mask?. It might be focus group driven but no rational thought has gone into it.

The people who wanted to be locked down now want to wear a mask. Our view is very much in the minority, I'm afraid. Sometimes the only way to win is not to play the game. HMG equally need us to play the game here and all it takes is a significant minority of people just to say "no thanks" for their strategy to fail. The recent desperation reflects that furlough is ending and I suspect loads of people are just going to sit at home until October and lots are going to be made redundant i.e. the worst of all worlds.

I simply do not believe that the majority want masks to be compulsory. 95% of the people I see are not wearing them.

[Donbot]

Elysium said:

I think the real mystery is why their shopping trolleys are so tiny.

You have to pay to park if it is any bigger.

[Stay in Bed Instead]

I could see this happening a month ago, so I decided to gamble £100.

I ordered 300 masks and 100 gloves from a UK based retailer. I received 100 masks and 600 gloves. I complained and asked for what I had paid for. After having to prove I had received the items I claimed I received a partial refund.

So two cock up for one simple order.

British business ...

[semisane]

ant1973 said:

The people who wanted to be locked down now want to wear a mask.

Is that just your opinion or can it be substantiated ?

[monkfish1]

anonymous said:

[redacted]

This ^^^^.

We will have lockdowns everytime anything vaguely threatening appears on the horizon. Its inevitable.

Quite how businesses or the economy can possibly survive hower, is beyond me.

[monkfish1]

RSTurboPaul said:

Elysium said:

So Johnson is back on the masks in shops bandwagon today:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jul/13/bori...

Which makes you wonder why the fk they sent Gove out to tell everyone they would not be mandatory over the weekend.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-53381000

This Govt seems to delight in briefing conflicting messages to the public. Somone clearly thinks this is some clever behavioural science stuff.

I am sick and tired of their bullst.

For what it is worth, I think compulsory masks are coming now. This Govt is the lowest of the low. They are beneath contempt.

I know it will likely go straight into the round filing cabinet, but I am seriously thinking about writing to Boris and telling him to sort his st out.

If he wants to be Churchillian, like some of the papers claim he does, he needs to stop dicking about and lead from the front, even if the position is not liked by a vocal part of society, like (AIUI) Churchill did.

You would be better writing to Domininc C.

[grumbledoak]

smashing said:

That ship sailed LOOOOOOOOONG ago! we are deep down the social experiment rabbit hole right now.

There never was solid evidence in favour of lockdown. Indeed initially we were going to be sensible like Sweden. Then something changed. Somebody wanted lockdown. And they prevailed. To what end is still unclear, but if it was going to be something we wanted I suspect they could have done it without all the extra deaths and economic devastation.

[jamoor]

RSTurboPaul said:

Is that the whole of Japan in one photo?

Have you ever been to Japan?

[johnboy1975]

Elysium said:

I simply do not believe that the majority want masks to be compulsory. 95% of the people I see are not wearing them.

I'm not a mask fan, but that's not a fair argument. Why should people put up with the discomfort of a mask plus the stigma of looking like a loon, to protect other people when those other people don't show you the same courtesy in return? At least if its mandated everyone is uncomfortable, and everyone looks like a loon

[JagLover]

The Spruce Goose said:

bodhi said:

Any working that relies on observational data rather than running a computer model? As my faith in those isn't particularly high after the Prof Ferguson 500k deaths debacle.

it was actually 250k but to sell it, the government decided to go with the 500k model, which was proved wrong. Anyone don't let facts get in front of argument.

It was a model that predicted 500K deaths with no action and 250K deaths if we tried to isolate the vulnerable only. Then 20K deaths if we went into lockdown.

That was the model that led to us trying to commit economic suicide.

Not only has the model proved to be garbage, with faulty inputs and faulty modelling, it was also so crude it could not model anything in between lockdown and isolate the vulnerable only.

Niel Ferguson is now doubling up on failure and trying to cause yet more damage with his claims of less deaths if we had lockdown earlier.

[isaldiri]

Dr Z said:

This is one piece of working:



From here:

https://bskiesresearch.wordpress.com/2020/05/12/th...

We have had over 39k people die after the April 8th (the notional 'peak'), and we had 8.5k deaths then, which demonstrates the scale of the epidemic here.

The No. 1 rule in epidemic control is act early. Dithering costs you money and lives.

Sigh. Just shifting his dramatic post lockdown shift in R to a week earlier obviously means cases/deaths are lower. However it isn't going to be in any shape or form a necessarily accurate reflection of what actually would have happened.

fwiw, I do agree with the last statement per above - acting earlier would have reduced the size of the outbreak. How much though is rather open to question as well as whether fully locking down was necessary given the drop in mobility/intraction data and it's been quite clearly shown we had a lots of seeded cases from france/italy/spain by late Feb so a large outbreak was always going to happen here.

[JagLover]

anonymous said:

[redacted]

Sadly this most likely

[Elysium]

johnboy1975 said:

Elysium said:

I simply do not believe that the majority want masks to be compulsory. 95% of the people I see are not wearing them.

I'm not a mask fan, but that's not a fair argument. Why should people put up with the discomfort of a mask plus the stigma of looking like a loon, to protect other people when those other people don't show you the same courtesy in return? At least if its mandated everyone is uncomfortable, and everyone looks like a loon

That makes no sense to me at all.

If there is so little belief in the importance of masks that those in favour of them cannot be arsed to wear them voluntarily, then we should not be even considering making them a legal requirement.

[grumbledoak]

johnboy1975 said:

I'm not a mask fan, but that's not a fair argument. Why should people put up with the discomfort of a mask plus the stigma of looking like a loon, to protect other people when those other people don't show you the same courtesy in return? At least if its mandated everyone is uncomfortable, and everyone looks like a loon

You could use this argument to insist we all wear clogs.