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Coronavirus Briefing with Whitty and Vallance (21/09)

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RomeoCharlie71

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I'd guess Boris, Whitty and Valance
Just Whitty and Valence apparently.

England's chief medical officer, Professor Chris Whitty, has warned the rate of COVID-19 infections in the UK is "heading in the wrong direction".

On Monday, Professor Whitty and chief scientific adviser Sir Patrick Vallance will deliver a televised briefing on the latest coronavirus data.

According to Downing Street, they will explain how the coronavirus is currently spreading and set out "potential scenarios" for the months ahead.

They will not be joined by Prime Minister Boris Johnson or any members of the cabinet and will not take questions from journalists.
 
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Richard Scott

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Yew

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Well that's bound to be full of doom and gloom then. Not exactly known for positive news or often being close to the truth!
Perhaps that indicates that it will be a warning, rather than an announcement of restrictions?
 

Class 33

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Well that's bound to be full of doom and gloom then. Not exactly known for positive news or often being close to the truth!

Indeed. I will give that a miss myself. Whitty will be babbling his usual "We need to keep up social distancing for a VERY long time yet." again I expect. If not even "We need to keep up social distancing forever. Social distancing is here to stay now."!!!!

But I'm sure I read somewhere that even though it will be just Whitty and Valance tomorrow, that Boris is still due to address the nation or hold a press conference on TUESDAY.
 

adc82140

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Yes, that's right. It'll be a press conference on Tuesday, rather than "addressing the nation". Tomorrow it's Whitty and Valance delivering some sort of evidence to some sort of committee I think with live TV coverage, rather than addressing journalists or the public directly.

The Daily Mail has broken ranks.


Of all the muddled, panicky, flip-flop responses by the Government to the Covid-19 pandemic, the introduction of a so-called ‘circuit breaker’ lockdown this week would be the worst yet.

Shutting down the country for two weeks will turn a dangerous situation into a disaster.

Boris loses the support of the Mail at his peril. Che mck out the comments underneath the article. This lady has support. The Murdoch press is currently staying loyal, but there is a change in the air.
 
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westv

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I thought the only main thing proposed was shutting pubs at 10pm. Not really that much different to when they used to shut at 11pm.
 

AM9

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Clearly the media has a shortage of news when it goes out of its way to push the story that everybody is confused about the current restrictions. For over a week now, there is this constant revisiting the fact that the poor (uninformed?) public are confused by the differences between the Scots, Welsh, NI and English rules of 6. They then get the (easy to find) cluless moron in the street saying that they don't know whether they can meet with 2, 3 or more households, whether children are counted in the 6 etc.. Unless you are a family living close to one of the boundaries between two of the nations with relatives/freinds living on either side, the rules for each nation are quite simple. What they are in the other nations is totally irrelevant.
I doubt there would be any confusion if all the pubs in one nation had different hours*, they'd just go and check for themselves. Instead it seems to be an excuse for getting it wrong in some minds, - or not complying at all!

* or some similar restriction that they might want to know about.
 

DelayRepay

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No Boris on a serious address about the nation?

He really has gone below the belt now. What's his (no doubt pathetic) excuse?

I wonder if it's because they realise that a significant and increasing number of people don't trust a word the man says now.

Perhaps using the scientists is an attempt to get the message to those who don't believe politicians but do believe scientists.

I believe the government is almost in panic mode now, and are trying to get the message about following restrictions out by any means possible. Yesterday it was threats of fines and further restrictions from the politicians. Today it is the scientists explaining the data. Next we might see NHS staff appealing to the public to follow the rules...

I suppose it is worth a try, given we know confidence in politicians is low, and there seems to be a lot of evidence that there is a high level of rule breaking, not just in terms of meeting more than six people but, perhaps more seriously, people not isolating when they should do.

Clearly the media has a shortage of news when it goes out of its way to push the story that everybody is confused about the current restrictions. For over a week now, there is this constant revisiting the fact that the poor (uninformed?) public are confused by the differences between the Scots, Welsh, NI and English rules of 6.

I agree. I think the previous English rules were a bit confusing, but the 'rule of 6' is clear (I am not commenting on whether it is effective or sensible, just that it's clear). If the public are confused, then the media must take some of the blame and rather than reporting on confusion, it would be helpful if they tried to clarify the situation for everyone.
 

Bletchleyite

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I agree. I think the previous English rules were a bit confusing, but the 'rule of 6' is clear (I am not commenting on whether it is effective or sensible, just that it's clear). If the public are confused, then the media must take some of the blame and rather than reporting on confusion, it would be helpful if they tried to clarify the situation for everyone.

The "support bubble" thing is causing considerable confusion. I wouldn't get rid of it (not least because I benefit from one), but allowing any two households to merge and be considered as one would be easier and help with e.g. childcare.
 

DelayRepay

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The "support bubble" thing is causing considerable confusion. I wouldn't get rid of it (not least because I benefit from one), but allowing any two households to merge and be considered as one would be easier and help with e.g. childcare.

I wouldn't get rid of it, but I would stop using the term 'bubble' to describe different things. Maybe some of the confusion is coming from kids being in 'bubbles' at school, even though these 'bubbles' are completely different from 'support bubbles'.
 

Bletchleyite

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I wouldn't get rid of it, but I would stop using the term 'bubble' to describe different things. Maybe some of the confusion is coming from kids being in 'bubbles' at school, even though these 'bubbles' are completely different from 'support bubbles'.

True. The word seems to have come from Australia or NZ and is being overused.

Using more descriptive terms such as "year groups" and "extended households" is probably better.
 

johntea

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Whitty: Covid will be a 'six-month problem' which we all need to deal with

Didn’t a similar line get rolled out...6 months ago!

It’s going to be a problem of unlimited length until a vaccine is ready! Flu didn’t just go home and put it’s feet up after 6 months...
 

kristiang85

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I had to laugh at that growth graph. They only went up to the 16th September with the 'real' data, which in reality with the figures for the next few days show a very little rise. And they cherrypicked the evidence from France/Spain - the situation is on the way back down by some measures.
 

Yew

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So what are the indications of strategy?
I had to laugh at that growth graph. They only went up to the 16th September with the 'real' data, which in reality with the figures for the next few days show a very little rise. And they cherrypicked the evidence from France/Spain - the situation is on the way back down by some measures.
Indeed, if you're making predictions without a confidence interval, you don't deserve to be taken seriously.
 

Peter Mugridge

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I had to laugh at that growth graph. They only went up to the 16th September with the 'real' data, which in reality with the figures for the next few days show a very little rise. And they cherrypicked the evidence from France/Spain - the situation is on the way back down by some measures.

One interesting thing was that they said ( NB not verbatim ) "if this rises to 100,000 cases a day we will get 200 deaths a day."

Which if looked at on a pro rata basis suggests they think we must have had far more than the often quoted estimated 100,000 cases a day back in the spring; that it would have been closer to 500,000 a day?


Or did the subtitle on the BBC News 24 show "200" when it should have shown a different figure?



So what are the indications of strategy?

Indeed, if you're making predictions without a confidence interval, you don't deserve to be taken seriously.

As soon as it started, I wondered straight away if someone at the place they were giving the conference from was being slightly mischeivous because they made it look reminiscent of the Two Ronnies doing the news.
 

ainsworth74

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Indeed, if you're making predictions without a confidence interval, you don't deserve to be taken seriously.

Perhaps I misheard but it didn't sound like a prediction to me (indeed I thought they explicitly said "this is not a prediction"!). It was one scenario based on cases doubling around every seven days which is apparently what they're doing right now. Didn't Vallance say words to the effect of "that's a big if" as well regarding that slide?
 

brad465

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One interesting thing was that they said ( NB not verbatim ) "if this rises to 100,000 cases a day we will get 200 deaths a day."

Which if looked at on a pro rata basis suggests they think we must have had far more than the often quoted estimated 100,000 cases a day back in the spring; that it would have been closer to 500,000 a day?


Or did the subtitle on the BBC News 24 show "200" when it should have shown a different figure?
I thought they said 50,000 cases a day and 200 deaths. Either way that is a lower estimated cases to reported deaths ratio than in the spring.
 

Peter Mugridge

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I thought they said 50,000 cases a day and 200 deaths. Either way that is a lower estimated cases to reported deaths ratio than in the spring.

The subtitle said 100,000 and 200.

Does anyone have it on replay to confirm what was actually spoken, please?

50,000 / 200 would imply 250,000 cases a day back in spring, which sounds more realistic to me than 500,000 would.
 

ainsworth74

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I thought they said 50,000 cases a day and 200 deaths. Either way that is a lower estimated cases to reported deaths ratio than in the spring.

Yes that was quite encouraging I have to say. In some respects though it's the hospitalisation that might be more worrying as they eat up NHS resources and prevent them focussing on other illnesses and problems. Indeed, again, I think that was a point that was made by, I think, Whitty.
 

Dent

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It was one scenario based on cases doubling around every seven days which is apparently what they're doing right now.

No they are not. I don't know where the myth of cases doubling every seven days came from, but it is obviously completely false if you actually look at the figures.

Consider yesterday's figure compared to the previous two Sundays. Two weeks ago it was 2,988. If it really were doubling every seven days then one week ago it would have been 5,976 and yesterday it would have been 11,752. In reality it was only 3,300 a week ago and 3,899 yesterday, which is nowhere near.
 

Yew

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I noticed the use of the word Endemic rather than Pandemic, and I wonder if that's indicating a change of strategy?
 

Bletchleyite

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They did also use the phrase "learn to live with the virus" didn't they?

They did indeed. Though did they ever suggest that we would follow an elimination path? I don't think they did.

FWIW I thought it was very well done. I can now see why Bozza wasn't on it - it was a purely scientific and factual briefing, not one of politics or even really strategy. In essence close to being a University lecture on the subject.
 

Scrotnig

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I noticed the use of the word Endemic rather than Pandemic, and I wonder if that's indicating a change of strategy?
Endemic and pandemic aren't exclusive. Are you confusing endemic with epidemic?
 

Tomp94

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Something I'm not understanding here, and I believe the conference was disgusting scare mongering.

Tests:

We test 20k people daily in April with no widespread community testing and positives come back as 3-4k per day.
Fast forward to today we do 250k tests a day, with widespread community testing, and we get 3-4k per day positive.


Are the scientists using the same tosh modelling that predicted 500k deaths in the spring?

Whitty and Vallance are like slippery car salesmen, except they're slippery vaccine salesmen.

Edit:
they also showed a graph from Spain and France with a MASSIVE upward line.. And at the side the numbers say 0.2 deaths a day per 100,000 population.
 

nlogax

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I noticed the use of the word Endemic rather than Pandemic, and I wonder if that's indicating a change of strategy?

That's my take on it. An acceptance that C19 is here to stay and now forms part of the normal background noise of illnesses in our society.
 
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