I've always been a bit of a pessimist when it's come to the Coronavirus crisis. That I admit. I thought it serious long before the government did. I thought that it would be enormous before they did. I thought the chance of a V shaped recovery remote, to the point of being impossible, from the outset. I always thought that there was far too much optimism about the scale of the costs of reopening an economy forcibly shut down. I still do. And my unemployment expectations remain higher than those most have.
In addition, I've always thought a second wave of coronavirus likely, most especially when the UK government (as opposed to that of Scotland, for example) did not have an elimination stretch for the disease.
But it seems I am being outdone in my pessimism. Politico reports this morning that:
Panic stations: Boris Johnson fears the U.K. too will be gripped by a second wave next month, the Daily Mail's Political Editor Jason Groves reports. He has spoken to a “senior government source” who says the PM has been spooked by the combination of serious spikes on mainland Europe and a slow-but-steady rise of cases here in the U.K. “The PM is extremely concerned by what he's seeing abroad and fears we could be seeing the same thing here in a fortnight,” the source tells Groves. “People have got to realize we are still in the middle of a pandemic. He wants to go further on opening things up and getting people back to work, but he knows it'll be his head on the block if things go wrong.” Yikes.
Boris Johnson is ahead if the curve, for once. It's all about him, of course. But he's still, for once, appreciating that the issues we still face are enormous. Bigger, in fact, than those we have already faced.
I remain bemused by the idea that many seem to have that the worst of this coronavirus crisis is over. We are still in a pandemic.
I keep hearing conversations laden with paradoxes; that furloughed people expect there to be unemployment but not for them.
And my conversations with business owners suggest that all my concerns about solvency remain as valid as ever.
To be blunt, the Prime Minister is right to be spooked. But, action beyond a quarantine on those returning from Spain is what is really required. And on the issue of real action, backed up by a real plan, the government remains silent, except when it promises to exacerbating the crisis by continuing with Brexit, the very obvious catastrophic consequences of which become more apparent by the day.
Spooked is not enough when you're Prime Minister. Ideas and actions are meant to follow, and they are not. And that's the biggest cause for pessimism that there is.
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None of us, I believe, have a problem with institutions making mistakes and then learning from them. Religions generally do not. As the omnishambles continues it is clear that we are facing a cult rather than a decision making group approaching matters in a rational way. I keep banging on to my business network the need to move as much as they can to locations that do not suffer in this way.
Well, I saw Boris on the TV yesterday and he looks a lot better. And that is bad news.
He’s obviously been told to smarten up, get his hair cut and iron his shirts and get his act together. The Boris Bullshit Machine is back I feel.
His piece on the coronavirus in Europe had a hint of schadenfreude about it – a glint of satisfaction and almost relief that Europe was suffering again in order to make England look better.
People were telling me that folk started to come back from Spain through Portugal, thus getting around the 2 week isolation rule. Do the Government really know what they are doing?
Looking at the piece above, what does Boris expect?
It all indicates to me that we have been governed by wishful thinking for far too long – whether Neo-liberalism or wishing that Covid-19 was over. It’s time to get real.
This why MMT is so important now.
I don’t know about anyone else but I have been recently deluged with investment invites to join Bitcoin. This is a big worry to me, because Bitcoin is not a national sovereign currency but exists on some bastard’s laptop some where – I mean who controls it? If anyone out there answers ‘the market’ I’d say ‘Yeah, right………..’.
I feel we are in the midst of something that is more that just a virus, but a moment of vulnerability to, and opportunity for some very malign forces at work in our world.
A world without sovereign national currencies is a nightmare.
The Government followed a strategy of reminiscent of the fairy tale ‘The King’s New Clothes’. It has presented, as truth, a view from a parallel universe and it has all served to bolster an appearance of considered decisions taken with the best advice available. The approach can be seen in the handling of Covid, it is equally applicable to the Brexit negotiations and it is becoming clear the same is true for climate change. The strategy works only until the real world breaks into the Downing Street bubble and questions become more forensic than the BS briefings published in the MSM can handle.
Johnson’s ministers take shelter behind the claim they didn’t, couldn’t possibly, understand the nature of Covid because it was unique, came out of the blue and was completely new. Nobody could have understood it they say.
That excuse might have held some water if the Government:
Had taken any notice of the reports in 2010 (Hine H1N1 report), 2011 (EU experts group) 2015 (Journal of Infectious Diseases & Gates Foundation) 2017 (Report in Time magazine) March 2019 (WHO), September 2019 (Global Preparedness Monitoring Board) October 2019 (World Economic Forum.
Had not ignored warnings like this reported in the Independent in March 2018: ‘History tells us that it is likely the next big outbreak will be something we have not seen before …most likely developed through zoonotic transmission, where an infectious disease which usually afflicts animals jumps to humans.”
Had not reduced the stockpile of PPE by over £330 million between 2013 and 2019.
Had not ignored the 12 intelligence briefings (CIA & 5 Eyes) on Covid dating to November 2019.
Had not ignored the lessons of history from 1918 and the Spanish Flu pandemic.
Had entered into lockdown at least 2 weeks earlier based on the existing evidence from China.
Had not pursued policy based on a vainglorious belief in the herd immunity threshold (HIT).
Had assumed the R number was closer to SARS (R6-8) than Winter Flu (R2-3).
Had presumed the HIT was closer to SARS (80%) than Flu (40%).
Had not discharged untested patients to care homes.
Had maintained even a basic monitoring programme for care homes.
Had not allowed 20% shortages of staff in the NHS to accrue.
Johnson and his cabinet knew or should have known the broad outline of the pandemic, in advance. The disease specifics were always going to differ but a general overall approach could and should have been in place. But, “For too long, we have allowed a cycle of panic and neglect when it comes to pandemics: we ramp up efforts when there is a serious threat, then quickly forget about them when the threat subsides. It is well past time to act.” Global Preparedness Monitoring Board. Now the Government finds itself unable to maintain the illusion of knowing what it is doing but equally unable to disavow its past performance without political consequence. Result – panic, denial, illogical pursuit of useless policies simply in order to save face. I hope that the families of the 50-70,000 victims remember this hubris when next we go to the polls.
Yes, but apart from these 18 or so missed opportunities did they do anything wrong? (sarcasm) Yes, they dumped the “precautionary principle” as well. We haven’t had a pandemic, I believe, since 1918, so why didn’t they look at China, Korea and other examples where they have had to cope with epidemics more recently and thought to themselves, “maybe just as a precaution we should get ready to test, trace and isolate”. Or, and this doesn’t take an epidemiologist to work out, the way it’s going to reach the UK is by people coming into the country bringing it with them, it’s not going to swim here on the fur of rats. So maybe as a precaution we should do something about people coming in via planes and boats and trains. There’s no other way it’s going to arrive. People aren’t going to sneak over the border in unmarked cars.
Did they get that advice? Did they ignore it? Or were the advisors as infected with British exceptionalism as the muppets in Downing Street?
“ but exists on some bastard’s laptop“
Bit extreme isn’t it. If people want to own bitcoin then let them. After all it’s a free country and we don’t live in a repressed society though by your tone I’m not sure you want it to remain that way
I am not sating people may not own bitcoin – or think they own Bitcoin – if they wish
After all, how would they know?
And no, I do not think a distributed ledger is proof of anything – especially when there is no such thing as a bitcoin…
Whether we’re “free” or not depends upon what you mean by that word. If you mean free to either try and dupe or to be duped by any number of shysters and hucksters then that isn’t really a freedom worth having in my view. Whatever else bitcoin might be, it is certainly a means for people to lose catastrophic amounts of money. I’d level the same accusation at all the different ways in which we allow financial activities in the name of liberty/freedom but which are, in my view, simply piggybacking on these concepts to fleece those who don’t know better because of information asymmetries in all matters financial. The freedom to gamble in any form is not in my view a useful freedom. What’s allowed or not in law, what we’re free to do or not tells us a lot about who the legal system is for, who its intended to benefit, and it’s not the person doing the gambling.
Wise words
Ben
We are free to dabble in what we want – true.
But are we free to rip other people off even if it is because a deal sounds so good you must know it just cannot be so?
There are lots of people using Bitcoin to rip people off Ben. Just Google it dude and read away. It’ll keep you occupied for hours.
Where’s the accountability? Where is the payer of last resort?
My tone is one of disgust at the defrauding of people – nothing to do with an objection to freedom.
Tut, tut Benny boy.
I’d have said he ain’t spooked ….. I think his goose is kooked, burned and fooked.
Perhaps he ought to be spooked. There is a good chance his premiership will be remembered for all the wrong reasons. Events, dear boy.
The numbers are still frightening me. There are still between 50 and 100 Coronavirus deaths every day, and have been for the last month or so (even though the ONS weekly death statistics show no excess deaths compared to the 5-year average – typically about 1300 per day at this time of year – so “other” deaths must be down). At a 1% case mortality rate, that means probably 5 to 10 thousand people becoming infected every day. There is apparently “capacity” to do over 300,000 tests per day, but for some reason (even with their dodgy counting of test that are sent out, or double counting a person who is tested more than once to make sure) only half of that capacity is used, around around 150,000 tests. (Something does not add up: why are we only using half the so-called capacity?) From those tests, we have been finding between 500 and 1000 positive results per day for the last month, and creeping up (like exponential processes tend to do until they suddenly explode). That is, we are only finding 10% of the putative cases (if we are finding all of the cases, the case morality is 10%, which seems unfeasibly high, or perhaps some combination of the two – 3% mortality and 30% of the cases, say). The contact tracing is bad and getting worse. They are only reaching 70% of the people with positive tests, and only reaching a fraction of their contacts. That is better than nothing, but it is pretty hit and miss.
The virus has not gone away. We have little idea how many have had it, or how much immunity that confers, or what their long term prognosis looks like. We have no idea what is going to happen in September.
You are right to be concerned, in my opinion
As you say, much of this does not stack
And testing is following the Trump mantra of ‘don’t test and you will not find‘ to manage the news media, and not the issue
Part of the problem, no doubt, is that many people seem to be asymptomatic when infected. If you only test people with symptoms, you’ll miss all of the asymptomatic people, and that goes some way to bridge the gap between around 1000 positive results per day and perhaps 10000 infections per day (working back from the death numbers). We have the capacity, they say, so why aren’t we just testing anyone who wants a test?
We are at the stage of unlocking a bit and seeing what happens (answer: the more you unlock, the more cases increase) and then adjusting up or down a bit to keep infections (and the inevitable consequent deaths) within acceptable bounds. It is grim, but you can’t stop people dying of something, and there is a grisly balance to be struck between coronavirus deaths and other deaths. This is likely to carry on for some time. I don’t know how we can be confident about all the schools reopening in September and then remaining fully open for any length of time.
Ditto universities where infection and onward contamination rates will be higher
One reason that things will probably go badly IMHO is that some of “the science” seems to take a long time to reach this island. Take the notions
1 that transmission via aerosols is likely,
2 that asymptomatic infection is quite common,
3 that people can infect each other at a distance when indoors (follows from 1)
I seemed to know about these weeks if not months before the “experts” had heard of them. Or maybe the experts HAD heard of them, in which case EITHER they did not inform the government (or they informed the government s o q u i e t l y . . . .that the government could not hear what they were saying, OR they did inform the government and the government chose not to hear.
And so we had a debate about the safe opening of schools, in which Ministers promised safety because anyone showing symptoms would be tested. But this is an invalid solution due to the commonness of asymptomatic infection. 70%, we now are told by the ONS, are asymptomatic.
And so we have the “return to work” – wisely rejected or mistrusted by many – with guidance to indoors employers where the advice on ventilation is a couple of sentences which show zero awareness of the dangers.
The government knows nothing, so, seemingly do the unions. They did not mention these aspects, or, I did not see that reported.
See here, for Bromage’s article which draws the lessons about indoor transmission from numerous actual studies (written in early May, summarising earlier events) :
https://www.erinbromage.com/post/the-risks-know-them-avoid-them
and here for a parliamentary select committee footnote (so some MP’s know . . .) detailing several studies dating from April:
https://committees.parliament.uk/publications/1347/documents/12176/default/
footnote 3
and here, for what rules on heating and ventilation systems should include — proper regulations on air change frequency for starters:
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-to-make-indoor-air-safer/
Not to mention the role of masks, or the role of quarantine plus testing for travellers into the UK – for which science has just been published – how long before it reaches Downing Street??
I forgot to add the important fact that the notions 1,2, and 3 which i mention at the start of my post together make for a big big caveat on the mantra of ‘keep to social distancing.’ Stay 2 metres – no, make that 1.5 metres – apart.
This too is wheeled out as a panacea. In the schools debate, and in the great “return to work” along with the testing of those showing symptoms, everything was going to be alright as long as everyone kept their distance.
Not so. Indoors, keeping your distance is not enough.