That's OK.Originally Posted by Witton Park
She knows she isn't going to live for ever but is quite happy with the way things are.
And since she (obviously) lived through six years of WW2 hardship, frankly a few weeks of lockdown aint so tough.
That's OK.
She knows she isn't going to live for ever but is quite happy with the way things are.
And since she (obviously) lived through six years of WW2 hardship, frankly a few weeks of lockdown aint so tough.
"...as dry as the Atacama desert".
https://www.bmj.com/content/371/bmj.m4470
Young, low risk patients ....
Like others have said on here, most of us see lock-downs as a last resort. With covid, the government only imposed locked down initially because they were advised it could be 2000 deaths per week if we didn't act, and then 4000 per week, and then...
That's never likely to be the case with seasonal flu. Of course, a new strain of pandemic flu...
Here it is in a nice graphic, under the “National” tab. The thick black line bumping along the bottom is what is actually happening and the huge coloured peaks are what was predicted. Naturally subject to revision as data becomes available.
https://data.spectator.co.uk/city/national
Last edited by Wetherby whaler; 18-11-2020 at 02:37 PM.
and back in March I accepted it was reasonable. You didn't see me knocking them in March, or April, or even May.
But the scenarios set out of 2000 and 4000 that they presented to use on Saturday evening 31/10 were not per week, they were per day Noel.
Muddy set out earlier where we should be by now and where we are.
All 4 of their forecasts/illustrations were out and 2 of them were out by a long way even as they made the presentation.
So those whoopers were way above seasonal flu - granted.
The reality is inline with seasonal flu, which can take 20,000 over a season - which is an average of 200 a day. That's about where we are with Covid.
Richard Taylor
"William Tell could take an apple off your head. Taylor could take out a processed pea."
Sid Waddell
Are you talking about 'predictions' of what would happen with the lockdown or without the lockdown?
In his presentation in the press conference with Boris Johnson on 31st October (see link, below), Vallance made it clear that the 'predictions' (if that's what you want to call them) related to the situation in which changes were not made to the mitigation measures in place. However, changes were made. So to compare those predictions with what is actually happening is, obviously, pretty meaningless.
Two example from the presentation.
1) The slide presented at video time 8:36 has the title "WINTER SCENARIOS FROM EARLY WORKING ANALYSIS: England daily deaths if no changes in policy or behaviour". Note the phrase if no changes in policy or behaviour.
2) At video time 11:20, Vallance says "So unfortunately that's a very grim picture in terms of what this looks like in the absence of action and continued growth." Note the phrase in the absence of action.
It's also important to understand what is meant by phrases such as 'reasonable worst case scenario" and "what could happen".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7B1sBUdQeio
But you have to build in the average time lag between infection and death. The average time between infection and symptoms is apparently 5 days and I believe that the average time lag between symptoms and death is around 23 days. So given that full lockdown only started on the 5th November, a comparison between actual deaths and the four scenarios is definitely valid. The deaths we are seeing at the moment relate to infections that occurred prior to lockdown. In fact we can keep on validly making these comparisons until early December.
All four scenario's are worse than actual and will probably end up being far worse. Actual deaths for November could easily have been more accurately predicted for the whole of November when they made the presentation because they already had the infection figures at that point
You're right. So why do we think they got it wrong. Were they erring on the side of caution after having acted too slowly in the last wave? Or do you think they were over-egging it in order to justify what they thought we needed (ie, a second lock-down).
Noel in a previous post you referred to SAGE as professional epidemiologists.
The most represented qualification on SAGE is that of mathematician. Perhaps that explains their over-reliance on modelling.
Virologists, epidemiologists and immunologists are thin on the ground.
https://www.gov.uk/government/public...ted-sub-groups
Google a few - you'll see.
They also have sub groups feeding in to them, such as SPI-B and has 42 members. It specialises in Behavioural Science.
A previous recommendation from them to SAGE was "The perceived level of personal threat needs to be increased among those who are complacent, using hard-hitting emotional messaging."
I don't think they got it wrong through incompetence. I think it was intent. Whether that intent was to coerce, to threaten, to heighten fear... I don't know, but I think it's backfiring. They could do that in the Spring, but people aren't having it now.
I am tending to think there are other motivations though.
Richard Taylor
"William Tell could take an apple off your head. Taylor could take out a processed pea."
Sid Waddell
Definitely the latter. Even if you were to say that cautiously pessimistic forecasting was understandable, they already knew that some of the information was factually incorrect at the point of the presentation. No wonder somebody leaked the national lockdown plan before Boris had chance to change his mind.
Interestingly many of the cases in the tier 3 areas were either dropping before they went into tier 3 or at about the point they did, certainly before lockdown.
https://data.spectator.co.uk/city/tier3
So this suggests lockdown was unnecessary. But the tier system was never given a chance to work.
