or sure the virus doesn’t care but it seems that it will be utilised for political purposes. I’ve laughed and been shocked at Trump’s antics but he’s taking it to a whole new level. I’m not sure he knows how wrong this could get.
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The Imperial College paper was “not very good” and he has never seen an unpublished paper have so much policy impact
Ooooft!
I think he’s been harsh on them, it isn’t their fault that others took so much guidance from them. Academics wouldn’t be academics without trying things. The U.K. built their whole policy on them though which is mental. Switching overnight on approach is crazy.
It forced countries to take it seriously which is a good thing, considering how much time was lost hoping it wasn’t too bad. The Imperial college models were given to the U.K. govt March 12th and coincided with deaths starting to ramp in Italy. The combination of the two was the equivalent of shock therapy.
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The imperial college don’t mess around
With the weather due to be good for the coming week, Paddy will be quare tempted to sit into the car and head for the beach
Epidemiology modelling is serious business.
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There’s lads who have made a whole career out of it.
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Schools back 1 day a week in May. I assume they split the class in 5.
Construction workers back in split shifts
2km to be extended
Only for hybrid vehicles
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It will be good to get cycling again tbh
Murderer
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The correct term is person on a bike. Using either cyclist or murderer is offensive
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Sigh
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So long as they stick to SEGREGATED cycling lanes, they are only murdering themselves.
Persons on bikes outside of SEGREGATED cycling lanes should be mown down, of course.
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Might sort out the virus if we could mow them down
Chinese scientists were free to publish studies about the coronavirus with normal peer-review standards back in February. However, in April, any Chinese researcher looking to publish a study or paper tracing the origins of the coronavirus must first get government approval.
Two universities that were conducting research on the origins of the coronavirus received a censorship order from the government. The universities posted the censorship order on their websites, but then their research and the censorship order vanished. You’d wonder why that oddball the lads banned has such a hard-on for the Chinese regime.
Anyway, as we all know, the Internet never forgets, and the censorship order was archived by web crawlers.
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This is very interesting and belongs in the “edgy” thread.
UK policy is being pushed by the media and looking at what everyone else is doing. A lockdown became the politically expedient thing to do. A mixture of fear (which is not a bad thing initially) and the idea of a “great national effort” (which I think is a lot more dangerous) has driven this. Once framed like the latter, it made things more difficult to reopen as people think we can actually wipe this out. The death total is being watched daily and people will go ape if you reopen and deaths continue.
There is a strong element of that here - particularly when you see how certain businesses voluntarily closed down around the place (including those deemed essential, like coffee shops) and have decided to just reopen in the last week or so as it has become clear that the Government have no roadmap for reopening the country. The Government did not officially close down the pubs until late March as that was not what the public health guidance suggested at the time - but Simon Harris got worried looking at people going ape on Twitter over tourists in Temple Bar so guilt tripped the Vinters into closing early.
The Swedes and the Danes have been decisive with their decisions, one way or the other. Both are looking to work within the best information they have and there are great signs of innovation coming out;
Simon Harris keeps quoting that Sligo roaster from the WHO’s viral clip (it could be nothing but that for Harris, social media guides all) of “speed beats perfection”, but Harris is now dragging his feet over any kind of roadmap as he is petrified of not just a resurge in cases, but being blamed for when deaths continue after any element of a reopening. Instead of actively engaging industries like tourism, the pubs and sporting bodies, he is having a photoshoot and telling people that their livelihoods are quite possibly gone through the media. This will have huge ramifications for the economy, not just the industries mentioned, but all industries. Instead of trying to be proactive, he is being gloomy. He goes on about a vaccine, but what if one never emerges? Can Harris tell us what level of ongoing Covid infection we can live with? Why can’t the government put together a roadmap like other countries have announced?
I think Ireland did a lot of good things early on this, bowing to social media pressure a couple of times excepted. Most people generally started practicing social distancing early. We didn’t lockdown all at once and nor did we move to totally draconian things like shutting down parks. We reacted to weaknesses in our healthcare system by tooling up. We strove to test a lot and put in contact tracing. It wasn’t perfect but it was a good strong effort and you’d have a lot more confidence in our figures than other countries, but we are being slow to react now.
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The first set of restrictions in Ireland came in on March 12th when we had had 70 total cases.
The second and current set of restrictions came in on March 27th, I think. That day we posted a daily figure of 302 cases.
You can talk about R0 all you like, but the crucial thing is the number of daily cases you have. That’s coming down, but it’s still miles above where we were when we implemented restrictions in the first place.
Because as soon as you relax restrictions, as sure as night follows day, the virus will pop back up.
At an absolute minimum, you can’t relax restrictions until you have an adequate testing regime and the necessary contact tracing regime in place.
And we are MILES off.
When you get that regime in place, if we ever do, and its doubtful, you might start thinking of a release, trap, release cycle which could go on for years.
Forget the pubs, forget matches, there really is no feasible or safe way we can open them until there’s a vaccine.
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