Chat about Novel Coronavirus - 2019-nCoV - COVID-19

“I accidentally invented a necklace that buzzes continuously unless you move your hand close to your face,”

did lol

The last link of yours. The mayor reportedly said they are only testing hospital cases.

Many cases won’t make it to hospital.

Yes my friend was referring to Giorgio Gori, the mayor of Bergamo, who had told a number of reporters that deaths in his city had gone up, year-on-year, by an amount that was multiples of the confirmed Covid-19 death figure.

From a Deutsche Presse-Agentur report: "The mayor of Bergamo, a town near Milan at the epicentre of the crisis, said the 112 Covid-19 fatalities registered in his province on Monday were only a quarter of the total death toll." (https://www.dpa-international.com/topic/italy-posts-new-jump-virus-fatalities-increases-lockdown-urn%3Anewsml%3Adpa.com%3A20090101%3A200324-99-459529)

Interview with the Law professor who inspired Trump's take on the Coronavirus. Interviewer really takes him apart.

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Businesses are totally exploiting the Government's Job Protection Scheme and using it as a way to furlough employees that they wouldn't have made redundant or let go because their re-recruitment cots/effort were too high. Now they are getting 80% of their salaries back and using that money to protect their cash positions.

I hate this sort of shit. The govts plan is too blunt a tool to stop businesses profiteering. /rant

Businesses are totally exploiting the Government's Job Protection Scheme and using it as a way to furlough employees that they wouldn't have made redundant or let go because their re-recruitment cots/effort were too high. Now they are getting 80% of their salaries back and using that money to protect their cash positions.

I hate this sort of shit. The govts plan is too blunt a tool to stop businesses profiteering. /rant

I did wonder if people would be doing this. The optimist in me said they wouldn't. The accountant in me sai of course they fucking will.

Almost 2 weeks of WFH. Longest I've gone without having a shave for a long time, Mrs say's it looks okay but I'm not sure if she'll be saying that in Jul.

Oh and a haircut from her too. No.1 all the way up to the top. Not sure i'd rock it in the office.

^^^ there was a very good point someone made on Twitter about the NHS - if we want a system that has the flexiblity and capacity to respond quickly to emergencies with a minimum of red tape, then we have to accept that there will be times when the system benefits people who might not be deemed 'deserving'. The tabloid obsession with 'welfare queens' is what breeds paper-pushing and arse-covering in public services.

I think the same applies to the furlough scheme. Do you want a scheme that responds quickly to an economic crisis - at the risk of maybe allowing some people to exploit it - or do you want a scheme that checks everyone's credentials carefully, and so is way too slow/bureaucratic/cumbersome to respond to the economic crisis as swiftly as required? I don't think you can have both.

Didn't your business fire a set of employees before the scheme came into effect? That seems worse to me.

thanks for linking that good read. the bit where he goes all spoilt child is sign he was getting very flustered

Businesses are totally exploiting the Government's Job Protection Scheme and using it as a way to furlough employees that they wouldn't have made redundant or let go because their re-recruitment cots/effort were too high. Now they are getting 80% of their salaries back and using that money to protect their cash positions.

Easy Jet and Virgin both doing that, who knew...
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-52085701

It's the same mentality as tech bros. Privilege personified. His full-of-shitness was clear from his second response (to a question about him being so wrong): "But I was not so much interested in explaining why my number was right. I was interested in explaining why the other projections were wrong."

Anything to be made of this? Restrictions starting to take effect?

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I am not usually one to take pleasure in the misfortune of others but for Dominic Cummings I definitely make an exception

I wouldn't read anything in to that.
Look at the spike at 1000.

Why not? Genuine question.

New on R2 said that the number of hospital admissions was not increasing at the rate feared, but that deaths would still rise.

Isn't this to take the strain of the NHS? In Sweden SAS is doing the same with their cabin staff

Makes complete sense to me. They don't have a job to go to but are qualified to help out at hospitals, why wouldn't they?

Fucks sake first anti-vaccers, now 5G-ers and now "because corona tests aren't a 100% accurate, this is a manufactured pandemic" ejits on Facebook.

That's my FB argument of the day sorted, I wish more people understood some basic statistics. As is already written here "all models are somewhat wrong, but some are useful" but some people seem to think "well if tests aren't a 100% accurate, they must be 0% accurate SO TINFOIL HAT"

The data is too noisy to read too much into this yet. Just as likely, there was one high point three days ago, and a low point yesterday, without the overall trend having changed much. Also, what's the testing situation in the UK like at the moment? I think changes there also have a large influence on the numbers coming out the other end.

I mean I bloody hope the situation is getting better, but it's too tempting to read all kinds of stuff into single data points.

Nice, short little video by John Burn-Murdoch on why he is building the FT graphs the way he is:
https://www.ft.com/video/9a72a9d4-8db1-4615-8333-4b73ae3ddff8

I wouldn't read anything in to that.
Look at the spike at 1000.

I really, really hope you're wrong.

It's a valid point but it works have been very very easy to avoid by setting a cash or EBITDA threshold for businesses to comply to.

Blank cheques have a habit of being poorly written.

I know it's cases per day.
Social distancing is modeled to take 2-3 weeks to have an effect.

I think Italy / other places have shown similar "looks like it's slowing down".

but some people seem to think "well if tests aren't a 100% accurate, they must be 0% accurate SO TINFOIL HAT"

Yeah - that is a common thing though. Scientists are usually relatively straightforward about the fact that whatever they're doing is probably not 100% correct - but it is still very likely to be correct. Idiots read that and get the idea "oh well in that case anything is possible", and it's just... no.

This also applies to the idiots who think that because earlier scientific theories have been revised over time, this means everything and anything we know currently might just be totally wrong. No, that's not how that works. Isaac Asimov actually wrote a pretty good text on that called 'The relativity of wrong', which you can read here.