How you coping with lockdown?

[jinky]

We`re doing OK. Me, my wife and my youngest (29 yrs) all in one house after she broke up with her fiance late last year and came home.We`re having a laugh where we can, occasionally making a foray out for food and not getting on each others nerves too much. Very much missing our grandchildren and other daughter and son in law who are working from home best they can with a 3 year old and a one year old trying to help them with their work 
So far I`ve been able to rip out 6 rotten fence panels and replace, mend the shed roof, fit new trimmings on roof made out of spare fence boards and tidy the loft. I now have nowhere to put rotten wood/ loft rubbish as our bins are full and the tip is closed. Skips are still running but so expensive compared to last time I hired one at £125 +
Nice weather helps and already had 2 bbqs - unheard of this time of the year. Today i decided to follow WHO guidelines and wear a mask outside. Wondering if  can find my old scream mask to wear to the shops next 

[anglefire]

Well, there are 4 adults here  - my wife is working from home and remoting into her office - I'm largely working from home - remoting into various customer sites (which is normal behaviour) and writing software for some other projects - but I have a project starting next week which will take 2 or 3 weeks to do - today the site added mandatory wearing of surgical masks (they are supplying) to the other things they are doing. Will be a right pain in the arse! So I'm as busy as ever! There was a point that I thought I might have to be furloughed - then everything just went mad! And still getting jobs to look at and quote.

My eldest is in her final year of her degree (Submitted her Dis yesterday) and is now filling in the paperwork for the job she has accepted (Just got to pas the degree!) - Our local hospital as a radiographer.

My youngest has taken a year out before starting (hopefully!) her Uni course in September. And has been working at Tesco since September/October as a Dot com shopper - 3 days a week 6am to 12 - which has largely been 6days a week - and recently following the lockdown and recent one way systems as been 2am to 9am - though sometimes is earlier if they get everything picked or later if not. But rather than 3 days, its been 10 or 11 straight a day off then 4 on and now is having another 2 off.

To be fair it has fitness benefits - she has a stomach like wash board now - it is proper flat!

But to answer the question in a lot less words - we are doing ok - and its probably been the best Easter weather for a very long time.

Though - I should have been in Morocco - well on the start of the way back now. Next year. Hopefully. 

[Oldboy]

Very upset over sunny weather, Bluebells are at there best and Swallows should be back. All caused by Public Health England experts, on very large wages plus fantastic pensions not doing the job they are paid for. 

[anglefire]

 I wonder what you think they are doing wrong OB?

[Jediboy]

I have been on leave for a few weeks (supposed to be on holiday), and I have been looking after the kids. They are good but its hard work at times.
Admittedly they are playing too much Playstation, but they have also been playing in the garden, having Nerf battles and water pistol fights.
I have kept myself busy doing some housework, gardening and bits and bobs.

Also working on editing some videos that I have been doing, walking the dog, and enjoying some online fitness sessions.

Hope you are all keeping well.

[Oldboy]

I wonder what you think they are doing wrong OB?

The Americans knew about the outbreak in China in December and attended a conference there before Christmas. This is why the Chinese spread the rumour that it was the Americans who brought the disease into China. In early February Public Health England voted to class the virus reaching UK as been low risk. No perpetrations had been made like putting airports on high alert about flights arriving from China. Stocking up on things we might need if it does reach the UK like hospitals PPE equipment, alerting research bodies that this virus could arrive in the UK. Then, if the virus did come to the UK we would have been prepared.

         Our Fire, Hospitals and Police hold exercises to prepare for a bomb blast or plane crash therefor, they know what to do if it happens. The opening paragraph of the report shown below, which is worth quoting in full, warns that a fatal global pandemic was not a matter of 'if' but 'when'.

See this: https://www.rte.ie/news/coronavirus/2020/0321/1124579-should-we-have-been-caught-off-guard-by-covid-19/

We also had warnings like Sars, Mers and Ebola which some experts thought might produce the next pandemic. If fact the first two, Sars and Mers are from the same class of virus as Covid-19. I'm not an expert but even I would have done something like ordering extra stock and beds just in case it did arrive. It didn't help that the Chinese government hid the scale of the outbreak and when some doctors put out messages about the outbreak they were forced to retract their statements. Two of these alerters have now disappeared. China has some questions to answer as well as the World Health Organisation, who gave praise for the way it handled the outbreak. If the correct procedures and common sense approach had been followed then, it might have cost us tens of billions of pounds instead, it now looks like it will cost hundreds of billions if not more. The 'experts', who sit on the Public Health England body are paid over a hundred thousand each per year plus a fat pension when they retire. It's our money they are wasting and us who will have to pay the final bill. 

[jinky]

Didn`t seem to do the Americans any good though. I think Boris missing the first 5 COBR meetings and missing the EU email about being part of a big equipment deal had a lot to do with the problem. That and then being asked to think about whether we needed to go to the pub and not shutting them earlier and allowing things like Cheltenham Festival to carry on!

[anglefire]

The Cobr meetings don't always have the PM in attendance - so that is a side show dreamt up by the media to bash Boris and the Tory's again- and to sell newspapers.
Eu equipment - still not available for delivery - not even sure they have a spec for it yet. So irrelevant.
Shutting down earlier. May have helped may not have done - but it was all done based on the science. As it is the media demanded a lockdown - and now we are in one are demanding its opened up again. Yet the Government and science says its too early to predict and if they say anything about what they might open up first, you can guarantee the press will attack them when something changes and something different is done. And they want to see how other countries fair when it does open up.

I'll give you a prediction though.

Pubs and restaurants will be one of the last to open up again. Schools one of the first. Sporting events will depend - but won't be early ones. With pubs probably.

[jinky]

For something flagged up as key as this the PM should have been in attendance at COBR! certainly instead of being at a New Year  event in China then a country break with his girlfriend. Nothing sticks with Boris! Re: predictions it`s already been hinted schools first on phased return, no doubt with youngest first and yes the rest follows. Most festivals and biog events have been cancelled now until next year anyway.Re: the EU order - it was massive and at first firms didn`t respond but that huge order we could have been a part of arrives any day now. Instead we ask Dyson to build "would be" ventilators which according to most experts are not the correct type and could bring  more harm than good. Evidently they just pump oxygen  in and allow for further muscle wastage  instead of working with the patient with gradual reduction of pressure allowed for in a proper ventilator that encourages muscle use and self breathing.

[Hinfrance]

Ronald Reagan once said the most terrifying words are: "I'm from the government and I'm here to help". No longer. Today it is:"I'm an expert and I have built a model".

Paul re the EU ventilators talk doing the rounds. The lead time for delivery is 4 to 12 months, effectively there aren't any and won't be for some time to come. France certainly isn't getting any. But it doesn't matter anyway, medical opinion has moved on and ventilators are not now considered suitable for treating this disease - basically if you get put on a ventilator you die, if not you might just make it.

Much more important as far as I am concerned is the use of epidemiological models (I was a data analyst and model builder before I retired, not much has changed, except I suspect for the worse). To quote Dr John Lee from his interview with Spiked "These figures are then fed into models of the disease and the epidemic which are being used to influence and inform public policy. But those models are only as good as their input data and the assumptions they make. And there are so many unknowns which means the models' outputs are really quite questionable. " He's being polite, they're utter fiction. A statistical analysis can tell you with a reasonable degree of accuracy when and what has happened, never why, but no model (outside of engineering where all the data is known absolutely) can do much more than point to set of possibilities - the range of which we used to call the error bars. The error bars on the models being used to drive policy response are huge. Full text of Dr Lee's interview is HERE.

And for what it's worth, which may of course be absolutely nothing, here is the reply to this thread that I thought better of posting this morning, and before I read Dr Lee's interview, but what the hell . . .

"The lockdown strategy is an admission of failure. All of the countries that have used it have huge death tolls, it is simply closing the stable door after the horse has bolted in an attempt to ease the burdens on their healthcare systems.

The only successful strategy has been the three Ts - Trace, Test, Treat. Coupled with increased awareness of personal hygiene and masks. In the absence of the second T, isolation of contacts is a viable alternative. It is difficult to see how this can be anything other than delaying tactic, however. The disease will not go away, it's just being paused. It will only work if other countries build up herd immunity before the three T system is run down.

That is, of course putting it simply. It is no coincidence that the western cities with the worst infection rates have well used mass transit systems - and public transport is absolutely the most efficient way of spreading any communicable disease throughout a captive population very quickly. Just look at what has happened in London, reduced services have made this vector even more pernicious, and amongst 'essential' workers who are the only ones using it now. It's difficult to think of a more idiotic response. Also, of course cultural and social factors play a part, but without a serious effort on the three Ts there is no chance of stopping the spread.

Sweden has opted for herd immunity, which was Boris's original strategy before the MSM led him to panic, and that appears to be working and without destroying their economy and their children's futures. The government has been empirical in its analysis that a certain number of premature deaths are unavoidable. The developing infection and death bell curves are pretty much the same as lockdown countries, slightly better - which tells you unequivocally that at best lockdown is ineffective, at worst it's positively dangerous, especially for those in multiple occupancy housing or forced into using increasingly overcrowded public transport.

As an aside, I saw an interview with a New York ICU nurse who, inter alia, said two very telling things: 1) every death in her hospital for the last two weeks had been recorded with covid 19 as the cause of death - which is utterly implausible*, and 2) almost without exception every patient in ICU was clinically obese.

In the UK deaths have just passed the 5 year rolling average - not adjusted for population growth or demographics, including a spike of several thousand non covid 19 deaths. Last year was actually exceptionally benign, only 1700 flu deaths. In France they are still below the 5 year rolling average. Leaving aside the horrific cost to our children's future (how is a bankrupt country going to provide jobs and social and healthcare services?), as Neil Ferguson (the failed modeller behind the government's strategy - see how accurate his previous models were regarding BSE, CJD2, SARs ect - clue all wrong, by at least one order of magnitude) stated, 1/2 to 2/3rds of those would have died within 12 months anyway - probably the only part of his paper that is close to the truth.

So, in short, what we are seeing here is the standard mix of  incompetence, sentimentality, buck passing, and short termism that is a depressingly universal characteristic of the majority of our political classes.

My son's GP is now convinced that my son has had covid 19, he was very ill for a couple of weeks, high fever, coughing blood, serious shortness of breath, but this was in January and he was not admitted to hospital because the panic hadn't started at that point. He contracted it in the USA, which strongly suggests that covid 19 is far more widespread and arrived far sooner than we are being told**, and also reinforces the argument that we are throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

I appreciate that this is challenging time and that we, the public, are at best partially informed if not actually being lied to, but my background as a data analyst and modeller leads me to the conclusion that this whole imbroglio has been seriously misjudged and mismanaged from the outset, starting with the CCP lying through its teeth."

*under the US emergency regulations hospitals get and extra $15 a patient for covid 19 cases - clearly an incentive to over record.

** some analysts now believe the epidemic started as early as September last year.

[Oldboy]

A very good reply Hinfrance.

Old computer adage -'Rubbish in equals rubbish out', was a well known phrase in program creation years ago. It still applies today regardless what you are modelling. You can't build a model without lots of data. So, again China is at fault, as they put out false data by supressing the true picture, of what was happening during the start of the outbreak. This was further muddied by the World Health organisation, praising what China was doing to control the outbreak when, it wasn't doing anything of the sort. Those who wanted to warn the rest of the world had been silenced by the CCP.

As for our own experts are concerned no steps have been taken to stop aircraft bringing in people from China or other countries affected by the virus. No checks of arrivals has been done to see if they were carries of the virus. MPs decided to self isolate at home and getting an additional £10.000 in expenses on top of their £80,000 plus salary. The Peers are now saying they should get their expenses regardless that they are sitting at home. The tax free allowance is £323 per day tax free. Many of these peers are on big pensions from their employment before entering the Lords. So, the phrase we are all in this together doesn't quite ring true.     

[Jediboy]

Is it fair to say that the phrase 'We're all in this together' is open to interpretation?

Financially we are clearly not all in this together. Not by a long way.

But in terms of fighting this awful virus then perhaps we are.

I did hear a theory that as the virus as ready here checks airports were now pointless. I don't know but could be a valid point??

Just my thoughts.

[anglefire]

I don't know about the peers, but the £10k Mp expenses is not a hand out - it is as it suggest an extra 10K for additional expense for the Mp's staff working at home - many don't need it and aren't spending it.

China? WHO? a lot of questions to ask, but I'm not sure now is the right time to properly ask them.

Yes the theory is that once its in the country then any new cases brought in by travellers is small beer. I'm not sure, but it has given ammo to the press if nothing else.

As for the data modelling - I appreciate that you are/were a data analyst Hinfrance but I can't believe they have simply bashed in a couple of numbers- I have got a link to the modelling code, and you can see in the last week or so, that they have added an extra R0 value is as they now think its higher than the 2.5 and over 3. I'm not sure if that is good or bad.

To be honest, the media in my view is the biggest failure in all of this. They have done nothing but ask impossible to answer questions - repeatedly - then complain when they aren't answered.

I'm pretty sure the Government reply to the Sunday Times article yesterday (And replied to the same day) is pretty much unprecedented. I've not read all of it (Nor the ST article), but it does seem to go through each point.

[Hinfrance]

Bang on about the MSM Mark - especially in the US and the UK where they have been relentlessly stirring.

Re the models - I'm sure you will appreciate that even one error in a variable will render the output questionable.

Here's the rub - in order to be useful any model has to be fairly complex, but such a model cannot realistically be built on so many indefinable variables. Personally I would not like to be in the hot seat trying to build a covid 19 model.

Sometimes, of course, an educated guess is far better than any amount of maths Actually, make that a lot of the time.

We are now in week 6 of our lockdown and it has been 5 weeks since I could get any granary bread.