IOM Covid removing restrictions

[gettafa]

2 minutes ago, The Lurker said:

Railing against the restrictions does not make anyone a libertarian warrior; it just makes them a petulant twat.    

100% spot on.

[GillR]

2 hours ago, Grayson said:

But they are facts. Hooper is an intelligent man asking intelligent and relevant questions. Guidance has been far from clear and the police have been making it up they go along in many cases. 

I rather like Hooper - he comes across balanced and fair but makes some good and necessary observations!

[ecobob]

5 minutes ago, GillR said:

I rather like Hooper - he comes across balanced and fair but makes some good and necessary observations!

I hardly knew who he was until recently but yes, I concur.

The lady on the Mannin Line put it far better than I can remember. Her point was mainly about the use of 'construction workers' and 'horticulture workers". Apparently over the course of a few days different words were used to describe said workers.  Words that were ambiguous and open to interpretation.  And this is the point.  If we want people to not bend the rules then it has to be made ABSOLUTELY clear what the rules are and who they relate to.  Even HQ agreed with her and said they'd do better next time.

They just need to be sure that when they release a statement it's been scrutinised thoroughly before publishing.  Throughly. Everything is open to interpretation as we have seen thats why is has to be crystal clear.  It saves people like the police having to clear up the mess afterwards. 

Joined up government is a statement been bandied about for years but NEVER was there a time for egos to be put to one side and true collaboration put in place.

[WTF]

9 minutes ago, ecobob said:

 

They just need to be sure that when they release a statement it's been scrutinised thoroughly before publishing.  Throughly. Everything is open to interpretation as we have seen thats why is has to be crystal clear.  It saves people like the police having to clear up the mess afterwards. 

Joined up government is a statement been bandied about for years but NEVER was there a time for egos to be put to one side and true collaboration put in place.

how should we interpret 'Throughly' ?   

[MadAsHell]

1 hour ago, P.K. said:

Quite.

As ecobob pointed out legislation should not be open to different interpretations. But to be fair it's generally true that if it's pushed through quickly it's liable to have some issues that rely on people and the police using their common sense.

That's where it's fallen down I suppose.... 

That can't be the reason. The legislation must have been thoroughly scrutinised by the LegCo.

[Andy Onchan]

3 minutes ago, MadAsHell said:

That can't be the reason. The legislation must have been thoroughly scrutinised by the LegCo.

Best post today so far.... take a house point!

[P.K.]

Rearrange these words into a well known phrase or saying:

Space   Waste   Of

[Filippo]

20 hours ago, The Chief said:

Any coherent argument you might have had was just destroyed when you linked Tucker Carlson and Fox News, you might want to see what they stand for before posting links to that filth.

“The Chief” and “Zarley”: The reason why I linked to Fox News is because Youtube had censored the video from the California scientists and thus I had to google their names to find a replacement copy, which I happened to find in a Fox New’s web page. I am a practical libertarian, not a supporter of Trump or enthusiast follower of Fox News. I would however prefer Trump and Fox News to a crazy authoritarian government trying to impose on me the limitation of “one form of exercise” per day in the outdoors for the purpose of “saving the NHS”. The NHS is nothing else more than institutionalized hypocrisy.

There are plenty of opinions on my side of the argument in left-wing or centre-left media outlets (if you prefer those):

a) https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/20/opinion/coronavirus-pandemic-social-distancing.html

b) https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/03/21/facing-covid-19-reality-national-lockdown-is-no-cure/

c) https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/greater-risk-literacy-can-reduce-coronavirus-fear-by-gerd-gigerenzer-2020-03

The New York Times looks like pretty left-wing to me.

The UK government officially adopted the lockdown soon after it saw the mathematical modelling of the Imperial College team headed by professor Neil Ferguson. Those are the same people that in 2001 convinced Tony Blair’s government to slaughter more than six million cattle, sheep and pigs; a policy that in retrospect became to be seen as absurd and an utterly waste of public funds, as you can see from the academic papers below. The US government followed suit as soon as it saw the same Neil Ferguson‘s flawed mathematical modelling and what the UK government was doing. The truth however is that both the UK and US government’s motivations were entirely political; they just used Ferguson’s report as a justification.

I know what the papers are going to write ten years from now, but in the meantime here is some food for thought for you:

1) ‘“Carnage by Computer”: The Blackboard Economics of the 2001 Foot and Mouth Epidemic’, David Campbell and Robert Lee

2) ‘Use and abuse of mathematical models: an illustration from the 2001 foot and mouth disease epidemic in the United Kingdom‘, Michael Thrusfield et al, Edinburgh Research Explorer (The University of Edimburg), 2006
https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/8951/e59ad3931dce8dbfd8cda6cb96f0663afefb.pdf?_ga=2.99657048.730061829.1588217640-822816696.1588217640

3) ‘Physical interventions to interrupt or reduce the spread of respiratory viruses‘, T Jefferson et al, NCBI, July 2011

4) ‘A fiasco in the making? As the coronavirus pandemic takes hold, we are making decisions without reliable data‘ by John PA Ioannidis, Stat, March 17th 2020

5) ‘Neil Ferguson, the scientist who convinced Boris Johnson of UK coronavirus lockdown, criticised in past for flawed research‘ by Katherine Rushton and Daniel Foggo, The Telegraph, March 28th 2020

6) ‘Complicated Mathematical Models Are Not Substitutes for Common Sense‘ by Philippe Lemoine, National Review, March 30th 2020

7) ‘Dissent over coronavirus research isn’t dangerous – but stifling debate is‘ by Toby Young, The Spectator, April 4th 2020

8) ‘Predictive Mathematical Models of the COVID-19 Pandemic: Underlying Principles and Value of Projections‘, Nicholas P Jewell et al, JAMA Networks, April 16th 2020

9) ‘The Tyranny Of Models‘ by William M Briggs, wmbrigs.com, April 17th 2020

10) ‘After Repeated Failures, It’s Time To Permanently Dump Epidemic Models‘ by Michael Fumento, Issues & Insights, April 18th 2020

11) ‘POLICY IMPLICATIONS OF MODELS OF THE SPREAD OF CORONAVIRUS: PERSPECTIVES AND OPPORTUNITIES FOR ECONOMISTS‘, Christopher Avery et al, National Bureau of Economic Research, April 2020

12) ‘How Wrong Were the Models and Why?‘ by Phillip W. Magness, American Institute for Economic Research, April 23rd 2020

13) ‘The Bearer of Good Coronavirus News: an Interview With John Ioannidis‘ by Allysia Finley, Wall St Journal, April 24th 2020

======================================================================================================

By the way, Sweden is not the only western country following the policy it is following; there are others. The Netherlands and Latvia have been following a similar policy, just more covertly, for the same political reasons. Several US states are exiting their lockdowns (some actually never imposed one). And Switzerland (one of the most affected countries by number of cases per-capita) is also coming down to hearth. Here is an except from the Telegraph yesterday:

Switzerland speeds up lifting of virus restrictions (source: The Telegraph)

The Swiss government said Wednesday it would speed up easing the restrictions imposed to control the coronavirus pandemic, allowing restaurants to open again on May 11.

"We are in a new phase and we must learn to live with the virus," Swiss President Simonetta Sommaruga told a press conference in Bern.

Switzerland stopped short of imposing full confinement in March but most shops and services closed down.

On Monday, hairdressers, garden centres, hardware stores and doctors' surgeries reopened again in the first stage of easing the controls.

On May 11 schools can reopen, along with shops and markets in the second stage.

Professional and amateur sports clubs can resume training and public transport will operate to normal schedules.

The government said it was "relatively easy" to apply physical distancing and hand hygiene rules in such establishments and control the flow of people.
 

[monasqueen]

"Switzerland (one of the most affected countries by number of cases per-capita) is also coming down to hearth."

That's them gone up in flames, then.

[P.K.]

Germany's Covid-19 expert: 'For many, I'm the evil guy crippling the economy'

Germany’s leading coronavirus expert Christian Drosten on Merkel’s leadership, the UK response and the ‘prevention paradox’

Well worth a read. Someone who knows what they're talking about with some important insights as to what the future may well hold for all of us.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/26/virologist-christian-drosten-germany-coronavirus-expert-interview

[Neil Down]

30 minutes ago, P.K. said:

Rearrange these words into a well known phrase or saying:

Space   Waste   Of

Space of Waste - Tynwald...

[The Lurker]

34 minutes ago, Filippo said:

“The Chief” and “Zarley”: The reason why I linked to Fox News is because Youtube had censored the video from the California scientists and thus I had to google their names to find a replacement copy, which I happened to find in a Fox New’s web page. I am a practical libertarian, not a supporter of Trump or enthusiast follower of Fox News. I would however prefer Trump and Fox News to a crazy authoritarian government trying to impose on me the limitation of “one form of exercise” per day in the outdoors for the purpose of “saving the NHS”. The NHS is nothing else more than institutionalized hypocrisy.

..............................................................

Edited to reduce bloat.

 

 

Firstly; those three articles you linked? Dated 20th, 21st and 13th of March 2020 respectively. the numbers in the US for those dates (again respectively) were: 185,991 cases; 3,809 deaths. 160,686 cases: 2,988 deaths and 2,163 cases, 52 deaths.  

Today that figure stands at 1,033,913 cases and 54,938 deaths. (I quote US stats as the articles appear to originate from across the Atlantic.)

[Stats are taken from Wikipedia because for some reason the John Hopkins site won't work at the moment.)  

To say those articles haven't aged well would be an understatement; basing your argument on articles written by Opinionists over a month ago highlights its' flaws.  

I'm interested in your thoughts on why the 'NHS is nothing else more than institutionalized hypocrisy.' I'm guessing that neither you nor a loved one has received life saving treatment.

The FMD outbreak in 2001 cannot be compared with Coronavirus because it was a 'known unknown' and there should've been a better and swifter response in place ready to go when the first cases were detected, I'll concede that western governments should have had a better pre-prepared pandemic response to Coronavirus but there was no way of knowing the full nature of what any potential disease would would be.

The FMD outbreak in 2001 cannot be compared with Coronavirus because a vaccine was available prior to the breakout although using this renders the recipient animal unfit for the food chain so mass culling would still have been required.

The one paper you reference that I could find to read in full seems to have a bit of an axe to grind; 'won't somebody think of the animals?' See my previous post in regard to the comfort offered by a passenger seat on the hindsight bus.

FMD was horrific; I was living in rural Yorkshire at the time and vividly recall the devastation in the farming communities and allied businesses. It's a crap disease causing the animals to waste away and rendering them uneconomically viable; if allowed to spread it would have wiped out the UK livestock industry and the social and economic damage would have been far, far worse than it was (are you beginning to see the parallels?) The cull was necessarily tragic to prevent a more widespread outbreak and led to stronger measures to prevent and deal with future outbreaks; evidenced by the reaction to a further breakout in 2007.

To be honest; I can't really be arsed writing anymore; especially as I suspect that logic and compassion for fellow humans will never penetrate your tin foil hat; therefore I direct you to the last sentence of my previous post. 

 

[P.K.]

1 hour ago, Neil Down said:

Space of Waste - Tynwald...

Close but no cigar....

[Golfer]

I'm more concerned with when I can play golf again! CoMin considering sports today!

[monasqueen]

2 hours ago, The Lurker said:

The FMD outbreak in 2001 cannot be compared with Coronavirus because it was a 'known unknown' and there should've been a better and swifter response in place ready to go when the first cases were detected,

Indeed, FMD was well known in 1967, and lessons should have been well and truly learned from then.

I can still relive the taste and smell from passing funeral pyres on the bus across the England/North Wales border.