Coronavirus

[oddoneout]

Travellers arriving in the UK from Poland, Turkey and three Caribbean islands will have to self-isolate for 14 days from 04:00 on Saturday.

Yet again, the logic (if any) utterly defeats me.
If it matters, it matters NOW, not suddenly at 04:01 on Saturday.

Well the virus is such an obliging little thing, it knows not to be dangerous in pubs before 10 pm, and knows that lockdown boundaries are postcode not 'on the ground' boundaries... It will make sure it stays away from visitors in those places that are suddenly deemed to require quarantine until the deadline.
What I don't understand, given that holidays at least tend to run Saturday to Saturday why the crack of sparrowfart deadline which means that very many more travellers are trying to find flights home because they can't use the ones they already have booked, and quite possibly milling around in airports for extended and stressful periods sharing germs in the process. And I doubt that admin is in place at their UK destinations to follow up whether quarantine is observed by all the travellers. Cash boost for airlines etc able to charge what they like to provide alternative travel though, so some benefit to someone...

[Bryn]

Mr & Mrs Trump have tested positive. I shall do the decent thing and refrain from comment.

My sympathies to all the innocents they may have infected.

[oddoneout]

Mr & Mrs Trump have tested positive. I shall do the decent thing and refrain from comment.

Does Mrs T now have to take on the job of applying the orange face colouring?

[french frank]

My sympathies to all the innocents they may have infected.

Including Joe Biden who spent a while with him in loud-voiced exchanges - and has been sticking to the advice.

[Dave2002]

I think I'm 'doing the right thing', but I keep getting a whiff of something like epicaricacy in my own musings and mullings over our situation.

Interesting and barely used word - https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/epica...%3Aepicaricacy.

[LMcD]

If anybody ever asks me again for a perfect example of irony, I shall certainly have no trouble in finding one. I sincerely wish them both a complete recovery but at the same time hope that this persuades (or forces) him to live the rest of his life out of the public limelight, where he can cause less damage.

[Simon B]

Well the virus is such an obliging little thing, it knows not to be dangerous in pubs before 10 pm, and knows that lockdown boundaries are postcode not 'on the ground' boundaries... It will make sure it stays away from visitors in those places that are suddenly deemed to require quarantine until the deadline.

The urge to bash the various governments (especially the Westminster one) whenever possible is entirely understandable. I can certainly identify with it right now.

However, do intelligent people such as those found on these MBs really believe that focus on the inevitable arbitrariness and internal contradictions of some of the rules constitutes rational argument? It is understandable to be exasperated by the managerial incompetence of the govt, but even so...

It seems to reflect a broader and very depressing tendency: Even after 6 months of this, huge swathes of the population still don't seem to get that public health and epidemiological management neither knows nor cares about all the individual absurdities on the ground and nor should it. Epidemiology isn't medicine or virology or politics or anything else, it boils down to stochastics, applied statistics. Either a measure has an overall beneficial effect or it doesn't. The details and all the weird counterproductive individual exceptions to the broader trends don't matter a damn.

If you want to protect yourself, take deterministic actions yourself based on the evidence of what influences your individual risk. Isolate, essentially, as this is the only really effective measure. The authorities aren't interested in any particular individual's protection other than in a very indirect long-term way. They are attempting to manipulate stochastic processes to achieve a goal. Nothing more, nothing less.

[oddoneout]

Interesting and barely used word - https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/epica...%3Aepicaricacy.

Although the German equivalent seems quite popular.

[Cockney Sparrow]

The urge to bash the various governments (especially the Westminster one) whenever possible is entirely understandable. I can certainly identify with it right now.
....................public health and epidemiological management neither knows nor cares about all the individual absurdities on the ground and nor should it. Epidemiology isn't medicine or virology or politics or anything else, it boils down to stochastics, applied statistics. Either a measure has an overall beneficial effect or it doesn't. The details and all the weird counterproductive individual exceptions to the broader trends don't matter a damn............

Sociologist contributors to Sage do say that compliance with government restrictions has been remarkably high. But perhaps we are moving to a stage where that will break down at a very dangerous point for resurgance.

I'm with you on your sentiment - except for me it helps to rebalance the conversation. I wouldn't want to suppress discussion which questions the decisions taken. I'm dead against this government and expect any parliamentary debate to be a vehicle for business interests to pressure Johnson away from the better public health decisions. But there has to be a decision maker, and at least Johnson and his cabal seem to by trying to balance other interests (economic, social, medical) against holding back Covid 19).

We all want life to return to pre-Covid freedoms and I have to recognise I have hardly suffered from the Pandemic (nor will I much - unless I get Covid - in which case I could suffer mightily). But pleading contradiction, confusion, denial of the virus/vaccination and contesting inconsistencies are not helping to batten down transmission. Also gives comfort to that fraction of the population who are unwilling to comply, or somehow compelled to behaviours which put others at risk.

[Serial_Apologist]

If anybody ever asks me again for a perfect example of irony, I shall certainly have no trouble in finding one. I sincerely wish them both a complete recovery but at the same time hope that this persuades (or forces) him to live the rest of his life out of the public limelight, where he can cause less damage.

So, God really does exist...

[french frank]

We all want life to return to pre-Covid freedoms

My neighbour who has been doing my supermarket shopping along with her own told me yesterday that her office (NHS training admin) isn't expecting to reopen the premises to workers regularly until next March

[LHC]

If anybody ever asks me again for a perfect example of irony, I shall certainly have no trouble in finding one. I sincerely wish them both a complete recovery but at the same time hope that this persuades (or forces) him to live the rest of his life out of the public limelight, where he can cause less damage.

I would never normally wish ill towards anyone, but in his case I’ll make an exception. I think it would be disastrous if he recovers quickly with no symptoms, as this would only encourage him to continue to pretend the virus isn’t a problem. I therefore hope he suffers just seriously enough to prevent him from campaigning for the rest of this election, loses the election badly, and then spends a very long time in jail.

[Dave2002]

Although the German equivalent seems quite popular.

Seemingly yes, though I hear that native German speakers don't use it in the same way as the English and others.

[Simon B]

... I wouldn't want to suppress discussion which questions the decisions taken. I'm dead against this government and expect any parliamentary debate to be a vehicle for business interests to pressure Johnson away from the better public health decisions...

Agreed and agreed. I expressed myself poorly, as ever. Also, lest there is doubt, any hostile tone is unintentional. I'm interested in "the search for truth", never (intentional) point scoring.

To summarise:

I think (contradict me at will) that the logical/scientific/rationalist/data type contributors here would agree with the premise that:

1) Whatever the situation we are currently in is, there exists an optimum set of measures that could be taken that would produce the very best achievable outcome. Nobody knows what the situation really is and nor can they; there is a huge number of variables; in practice it is all guesswork. Donald Rumsfeld's existential poetry really does apply - unknown and unknowable unknowns etc. That doesn't change the fact that there is an optimum approach, even though we have no way to find it.

2) In the theoretical universe where we could find that optimum approach, the measures it entails would very likely look to the layperson like they were:
i) Peculiar
ii) Counterintuitive
iii) Full of apparent contradictions and arbitrary divides

Because that's what happens over and again. See: The sum total history of human scientific enquiry.

[Stunsworth]

Mr & Mrs Trump have tested positive. I shall do the decent thing and refrain from comment.

My thoughts are with the Coronavirus at this difficult time.