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Third wave

The home for all non-political Coronavirus (Covid-19) discussions on The Lemon Fool
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This is the home for all non-political Coronavirus (Covid-19) discussions on The Lemon Fool
XFool
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Re: Third wave

#400894

Postby XFool » April 1st, 2021, 4:21 pm

Julian wrote:True but once you've populated the 64th square on the board whether it's rice or sand probably doesn't make much difference, you're not going to be able to get anywhere close to the chess board due to the volume of sand covering it and the surrounding area. It would be quite a fun calculation to take the volume properties of some sand, maybe builders' sand, and work out just how many cubic metres of sand would be on that final square of the chess board.

A veritable Sand Reckoner?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sand_Reckoner

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Re: Third wave

#401171

Postby 1nvest » April 2nd, 2021, 5:30 pm

GeoffF100 wrote:We are fortunate that effective vaccines have been found, and that we appear to have sufficient supply. The US is in that position too. If there were no effective vaccine, would the public have wanted the lockdown to continue for another year in the hope that an effective vaccine would be found?

Why any lockdown. Could have been locked out (borders closed) but Johnson preferred for otherwise. Attempts to secure the fewer than 1M who are more prone to die from Covid, the 0.1%, and survive perhaps another 5 years (95% of Covid deaths are elderly) ... 5 million life years, at a cost of 65 million life years locked in 'cells'.

There were more surplus (above average) deaths in the 1976 heatwave over a shorter period of time than Covid deaths in (unvaccinated) 2020. Scaled to the same population size the equivalent of 800K total deaths 1976, 700K total deaths 2020. Such spikes in surplus deaths are a natural occurrence. With many of those most vulnerable 0.1% now having already expired no doubt it will be claimed that it was the success of the vaccines rather than just a natural decline when the figures decline. Come to that, and out of a population of 66 million with a average 80 year life expectancy and you might expect 825K deaths a year to occur naturally. On that measure you may very well ask why the death toll was relatively low in 2020.

Lockdown did prevent the likes of the Nightingale centres being used. Much of the NHS went dark, GP's for instance. A small number of NHS have in contrast been overloaded - the Covid patients front end, whilst many of the other NHS units are idle. Lockdown it would seem was more as a cover for incompetence and poor management/utilisation of resources. Where many have had to pay a high price for a relatively few.

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Re: Third wave

#401199

Postby XFool » April 2nd, 2021, 7:16 pm

1nvest wrote:Why any lockdown. Could have been locked out (borders closed) but Johnson preferred for otherwise.

Fine (in principle) before the horse has bolted - or in this case, entered the stables. But pretty useless when you find he is already comfortably settled inside.

1nvest wrote:Attempts to secure the fewer than 1M who are more prone to die from Covid, the 0.1%, and survive perhaps another 5 years (95% of Covid deaths are elderly) ... 5 million life years, at a cost of 65 million life years locked in 'cells'.

ONS

Clinically extremely vulnerable
People who are identified as clinically extremely vulnerable (CEV) are at very high risk of severe illness from the coronavirus (COVID-19). Up to 16 February 2021, CEV people were identified either because of a pre-existing condition or based on the clinical judgement of their clinician or GP that they are at higher risk of serious illness if they catch COVID-19. From 16 February 2021, individuals can still be identified as CEV by these routes, but also by COVID-19 population risk assessment. More information can be found in Guidance on shielding and protecting people who are CEV from COVID-19. The NHS identified approximately 2.2 million people as being CEV.
In February 2021, there were additions made to the Shielded Patient List following the COVID-19 population risk assessment, where a further 1.5 million people were advised to shield. The sample for this wave of the COVID High Risk Group Insights Study does not reflect the behaviour of the additional CEV people, as the sample was drawn before these people were added.


1nvest wrote:There were more surplus (above average) deaths in the 1976 heatwave over a shorter period of time than Covid deaths in (unvaccinated) 2020. Scaled to the same population size the equivalent of 800K total deaths 1976, 700K total deaths 2020. Such spikes in surplus deaths are a natural occurrence. With many of those most vulnerable 0.1% now having already expired no doubt it will be claimed that it was the success of the vaccines rather than just a natural decline when the figures decline. Come to that, and out of a population of 66 million with a average 80 year life expectancy and you might expect 825K deaths a year to occur naturally. On that measure you may very well ask why the death toll was relatively low in 2020.

It wasn't.

Covid: 2020 saw most excess deaths since World War Two

BBC News

"Come to that, and out of a population of 66 million with a average 80 year life expectancy and you might expect 825K deaths a year to occur naturally."
So a simple death rate of 825k/66m = 1.25%

If you look at the chart in that BBC News article, for the last ten years the death rate (Age-standardise mortality rate) was under 1000 per 100,000 population. So under 1%

1nvest wrote:Lockdown did prevent the likes of the Nightingale centres being used. Much of the NHS went dark, GP's for instance. A small number of NHS have in contrast been overloaded - the Covid patients front end, whilst many of the other NHS units are idle.

Yes. And that was with lockdown. 'Just let it rip' and what would have happened? Do you reckon it would have been better? BTW, those other hospital units were idle because the staff were seconded for treating the COVID patients.

1nvest wrote:Lockdown it would seem was more as a cover for incompetence and poor management/utilisation of resources. Where many have had to pay a high price for a relatively few.

IMO "Lockdown scepticism" is just another name for not facing the facts.

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Re: Third wave

#401209

Postby GeoffF100 » April 2nd, 2021, 7:44 pm

1nvest wrote:
GeoffF100 wrote:We are fortunate that effective vaccines have been found, and that we appear to have sufficient supply. The US is in that position too. If there were no effective vaccine, would the public have wanted the lockdown to continue for another year in the hope that an effective vaccine would be found?

Why any lockdown. Could have been locked out (borders closed) but Johnson preferred for otherwise. Attempts to secure the fewer than 1M who are more prone to die from Covid, the 0.1%, and survive perhaps another 5 years (95% of Covid deaths are elderly) ... 5 million life years, at a cost of 65 million life years locked in 'cells'.

There were more surplus (above average) deaths in the 1976 heatwave over a shorter period of time than Covid deaths in (unvaccinated) 2020. Scaled to the same population size the equivalent of 800K total deaths 1976, 700K total deaths 2020. Such spikes in surplus deaths are a natural occurrence. With many of those most vulnerable 0.1% now having already expired no doubt it will be claimed that it was the success of the vaccines rather than just a natural decline when the figures decline. Come to that, and out of a population of 66 million with a average 80 year life expectancy and you might expect 825K deaths a year to occur naturally. On that measure you may very well ask why the death toll was relatively low in 2020.

Lockdown did prevent the likes of the Nightingale centres being used. Much of the NHS went dark, GP's for instance. A small number of NHS have in contrast been overloaded - the Covid patients front end, whilst many of the other NHS units are idle. Lockdown it would seem was more as a cover for incompetence and poor management/utilisation of resources. Where many have had to pay a high price for a relatively few.

Your numbers are wrong:

https://fullfact.org/health/toby-young-ifr-tweet/

https://wellcomeopenresearch.org/articles/5-75

In principle, an island nation can cut itself off from the world. In practice, we cannot even feed ourselves without outside help. We had little testing capacity, and our public health teams had been disbanded. Johnson was not interested until it was far too late for an isolation strategy even to be considered.

I did a QALY calculation when the first lockdown started, using the best numbers that were available at the time. It suggested that the lockdown was not worthwhile. Covid would kill about half a million people, who would lose an average of about 13 years of life each. Nonetheless, my calculation suggested that trying to prevent these deaths was not economic.

Letting Covid run unhindered through the population was never politically possible. Even a modest overload of the health service (such as that in northern Italy) produced demands for action. If no action had been taken, the number of cases would very quickly have been several times the NHS capacity. The Nightingale hospitals would not have made a material difference.

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Re: Third wave

#401280

Postby 1nvest » April 2nd, 2021, 11:32 pm

GeoffF100 wrote:In principle, an island nation can cut itself off from the world. In practice, we cannot even feed ourselves without outside help. We had little testing capacity, and our public health teams had been disbanded. Johnson was not interested until it was far too late for an isolation strategy even to be considered.

So you'd agree that the 126K deaths, more than three times the D-Day landing deaths, can be attributed to Johnson?

Personally we went into precaution/lockdown a couple of weeks before the official one even started, its not 'with hindsight' factor, rather gross incompetence to the extreme. Failure to defend the realm is high treason, a disgrace.

Last time the UK was cut off from Europe and a increased food shortage issue arose the nation rose to address that. With better technology/robotics nowadays addressing that challenge would be far easier. There are a broad range of alternatives that arisen could even prove useful given more changeable/unreliable weather patterns - such as bug (insect) burgers for protein that can be 'farmed' in stacked trays very rapidly; Carbohydrates can take dried form that might be shipped/stored long term (distance irrelevant), as are fats long life. Frozen fruits are nutritionally just as good as fresh and the UK could abundantly produce apples, pears ...etc. domestically. With British waters just supporting British mouths sea-foods ...etc.

We're in a currency war, de-globalisation era now anyway, so one way or another are likely more inclined towards greater domestic self sufficiency on the energy and food fronts.

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Re: Third wave

#401282

Postby 1nvest » April 2nd, 2021, 11:42 pm

GeoffF100 wrote:I did a QALY calculation when the first lockdown started, using the best numbers that were available at the time. It suggested that the lockdown was not worthwhile. Covid would kill about half a million people, who would lose an average of about 13 years of life each. Nonetheless, my calculation suggested that trying to prevent these deaths was not economic.

I'd imagine a big difference in quality of life years also. Perhaps 5 years out of 13 in a poor mental/physical state - low quality of life, widening the gap between a broader 66 million lost life years otherwise largely comprised of much better quality of life and productivity.

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Re: Third wave

#401291

Postby 9873210 » April 3rd, 2021, 12:26 am

Half a million dead people would reduce the quality of life for the survivors as well.

Without any response the death toll would be large enough and quick enough that there would be many spontaneous and traumatic unorganized reactions that would be quite detrimental to the QOL for everybody.

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Re: Third wave

#401294

Postby EssDeeAitch » April 3rd, 2021, 6:31 am

XFool wrote:
Julian wrote:True but once you've populated the 64th square on the board whether it's rice or sand probably doesn't make much difference, you're not going to be able to get anywhere close to the chess board due to the volume of sand covering it and the surrounding area. It would be quite a fun calculation to take the volume properties of some sand, maybe builders' sand, and work out just how many cubic metres of sand would be on that final square of the chess board.

A veritable Sand Reckoner?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sand_Reckoner


Great read, thanks for putting it up. And to think a maths teacher once said said to me "sdh, your winging it aren't you!. Not compared to Archimedes I wasnt.

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Re: Third wave

#401303

Postby GeoffF100 » April 3rd, 2021, 8:10 am

1nvest wrote:
GeoffF100 wrote:In principle, an island nation can cut itself off from the world. In practice, we cannot even feed ourselves without outside help. We had little testing capacity, and our public health teams had been disbanded. Johnson was not interested until it was far too late for an isolation strategy even to be considered.

So you'd agree that the 126K deaths, more than three times the D-Day landing deaths, can be attributed to Johnson?

Personally we went into precaution/lockdown a couple of weeks before the official one even started, its not 'with hindsight' factor, rather gross incompetence to the extreme. Failure to defend the realm is high treason, a disgrace.

Last time the UK was cut off from Europe and a increased food shortage issue arose the nation rose to address that. With better technology/robotics nowadays addressing that challenge would be far easier. There are a broad range of alternatives that arisen could even prove useful given more changeable/unreliable weather patterns - such as bug (insect) burgers for protein that can be 'farmed' in stacked trays very rapidly; Carbohydrates can take dried form that might be shipped/stored long term (distance irrelevant), as are fats long life. Frozen fruits are nutritionally just as good as fresh and the UK could abundantly produce apples, pears ...etc. domestically. With British waters just supporting British mouths sea-foods ...etc.

We're in a currency war, de-globalisation era now anyway, so one way or another are likely more inclined towards greater domestic self sufficiency on the energy and food fronts.

To reduce Covid deaths to near zero would have needed very early action. The wake up call was SARS. We took no action. A bigger wake up call was Covid in China. We took no action. A further wake up call was the detection of the virus in Europe. We took no action. Was the government responsible, or the political system? If the government had put up taxes to pay for preparations for a pandemic that might not happen, would that have won them votes? If the government had stopped voters going on holiday or made them eat bugs, would that have won them votes? The government appeared to do what the majority of the public wanted. Lock down when the hospitals were overloaded. Unlock when they started to cope. Repeat...

You do not need to eat insects to get protein. It is very easy to get enough protein from plant sources. Britain could feed itself if we all ate a vegan diet:

https://www.vegansociety.com/news/blog/ ... arch-shows

That would be very good for the planet too, but it would require a lot of preparation. Would it be a vote winner?

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Re: Third wave

#401472

Postby redsturgeon » April 3rd, 2021, 7:41 pm

Moderator Message:
I have just deleted a string of off topic posts. Please keep to the topic.

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Re: Third wave

#401530

Postby servodude » April 4th, 2021, 12:38 am

GeoffF100 wrote:That would be very good for the planet too, but it would require a lot of preparation


Some really delicious vegan meals require very little preparation ;)

But really you just need provision for the risks around haulage; which should be manageable given there's a customs border !?!

-sd

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Re: Third wave

#401542

Postby GeoffF100 » April 4th, 2021, 8:06 am

servodude wrote:
GeoffF100 wrote:That would be very good for the planet too, but it would require a lot of preparation

Some really delicious vegan meals require very little preparation ;)

But really you just need provision for the risks around haulage; which should be manageable given there's a customs border !?!

If you are eating wholefood, vegan is the easiest diet of all. A vegan junk food diet is a very bad idea. Here are some sensible guidelines:

https://nutritionfacts.org/daily-dozen/

Yes, haulage is the main problem. Trucks cross the channel with potentially infected drivers who disperse across the country. It would be very difficult to keep track of them all and make sure that they do not come into contact with anybody. If there is no watertight system to ensure that, you need a large and highly effective test and trace (definitely not Johnson's "world class"). You would probably also need selective lockdowns when you do detect a Covid case. It should be easier now with vaccination, but we are talking about the early stages here.

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Re: Third wave

#401545

Postby Nimrod103 » April 4th, 2021, 8:17 am

GeoffF100 wrote: Britain could feed itself if we all ate a vegan diet:


At the risk of going off topic, how can this be correct?
All the vegans I know eat large amounts of fruit, nuts, rice and exotic foodstuffs (avocados, sweet potatoes, salads out of season etc), almost all of which are imported.
The UK prooduces huge amounts of milk, cheese, meats and fish of all kinds, because our climate and soils are best at producing these foods. Maybe not enough to to satisfy present demand, but certainly enough if people did cut down meat consumption a little.

A traditional meat and two veg meal based diet can be produced exclusively within the UK.

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Re: Third wave

#401552

Postby 9873210 » April 4th, 2021, 8:37 am

GeoffF100 wrote:
Yes, haulage is the main problem. Trucks cross the channel with potentially infected drivers who disperse across the country. It would be very difficult to keep track of them all and make sure that they do not come into contact with anybody. If there is no watertight system to ensure that, you need a large and highly effective test and trace (definitely not Johnson's "world class"). You would probably also need selective lockdowns when you do detect a Covid case. It should be easier now with vaccination, but we are talking about the early stages here.

Just for giggles.

There is no reason for drivers to cross the channel. French driver drop the trailer (or container) in Calais. Drayage onto a ferry or train and into Dover. British driver picks up trailer. Isolate and test drayage drivers (and boat/train crews).

It's basically how intermodal freight works in the rest of the world. Also quite common on land borders, since it allows a specialist to handle customs.
No need to ship tractors and drivers around or have them idle. Saves money because these are the most expensive part of the truck.

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Re: Third wave

#401554

Postby GeoffF100 » April 4th, 2021, 8:47 am

Nimrod103 wrote:
GeoffF100 wrote: Britain could feed itself if we all ate a vegan diet:

At the risk of going off topic, how can this be correct?
All the vegans I know eat large amounts of fruit, nuts, rice and exotic foodstuffs (avocados, sweet potatoes, salads out of season etc), almost all of which are imported.
The UK prooduces huge amounts of milk, cheese, meats and fish of all kinds, because our climate and soils are best at producing these foods. Maybe not enough to to satisfy present demand, but certainly enough if people did cut down meat consumption a little.

A traditional meat and two veg meal based diet can be produced exclusively within the UK.

At the risk of continuing off topic, here is the paper linked by the article linked above:

http://animal.law.harvard.edu/wp-conten ... -Hayek.pdf

The answer is "yes". We can produce enough protein and calories with just a fraction of our land. A lot of food that would not normally grow here could be grown under glass (or plastic). That may not be economic in comparison with importing the food, but that is not the point here.

We managed to feed ourselves using an omnivorous diet during WW2, with the help of food rationing and dig for Britain. People's health improved too. The population was smaller then. It would be more difficult now. That diet is also very bad for greenhouse gas emissions and the environment in general, which is the point of the paper.

However, it was done, it is fair to say that if we were to become self sufficient, people would not get all their favourite foods.

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Re: Third wave

#401555

Postby GeoffF100 » April 4th, 2021, 8:50 am

9873210 wrote:
GeoffF100 wrote:
Yes, haulage is the main problem. Trucks cross the channel with potentially infected drivers who disperse across the country. It would be very difficult to keep track of them all and make sure that they do not come into contact with anybody. If there is no watertight system to ensure that, you need a large and highly effective test and trace (definitely not Johnson's "world class"). You would probably also need selective lockdowns when you do detect a Covid case. It should be easier now with vaccination, but we are talking about the early stages here.

Just for giggles.

There is no reason for drivers to cross the channel. French driver drop the trailer (or container) in Calais. Drayage onto a ferry or train and into Dover. British driver picks up trailer. Isolate and test drayage drivers (and boat/train crews).

It's basically how intermodal freight works in the rest of the world. Also quite common on land borders, since it allows a specialist to handle customs.
No need to ship tractors and drivers around or have them idle. Saves money because these are the most expensive part of the truck.

That would be ideal from a bio-containment standpoint, but is there enough capacity?

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Re: Third wave

#401597

Postby Julian » April 4th, 2021, 11:23 am

9873210 wrote:
GeoffF100 wrote:
Yes, haulage is the main problem. Trucks cross the channel with potentially infected drivers who disperse across the country. It would be very difficult to keep track of them all and make sure that they do not come into contact with anybody. If there is no watertight system to ensure that, you need a large and highly effective test and trace (definitely not Johnson's "world class"). You would probably also need selective lockdowns when you do detect a Covid case. It should be easier now with vaccination, but we are talking about the early stages here.

Just for giggles.

There is no reason for drivers to cross the channel. French driver drop the trailer (or container) in Calais. Drayage onto a ferry or train and into Dover. British driver picks up trailer. Isolate and test drayage drivers (and boat/train crews).

It's basically how intermodal freight works in the rest of the world. Also quite common on land borders, since it allows a specialist to handle customs.
No need to ship tractors and drivers around or have them idle. Saves money because these are the most expensive part of the truck.

At first glance that seems a really good and clever idea. The world needs as much of this lateral thinking as it can get, plus sufficient will power and good engineers and general problem solvers to turn good ideas into reality. Fast forward a decade or so and one could imagine a new generation of cross-channel ferries where the loading and unloading of the cargo spaces is fully automated, made far easier by requiring all cargo to be standard sized ISO containers. Essentially floating Amazon automated warehouses where all the packages are the same huge size, and probably accompanied by a new generation of trucks designed such that the trailer sections interface easily with the automated ship loading/unloading systems.

As well as the huge acceleration in vaccines and other areas of medicine/pharmacology/healthcare that will I hope be a lasting beneficial legacy of this pandemic I suspect that accelerated progress in automation of goods handling will be another area where, although it was on this trajectory anyway, the speed of change will be rapidly accelerated. Remember this time last year when home delivery services got so overwhelmed that it was pretty much impossible to place online orders with any of the major supermarkets unless one was on an extremely-vulnerable list? I'm sure that has made many organisations look long and hard at their systems. All of a sudden Amazon drone deliveries don't seem quite as many years in the future as they did just 12 months ago(*).

Yes, the pandemic has been and still is awful but there will come a time I hope, in the not too distant future, where its legacy really does change the world for the better even if only by significantly accelerating things that would have eventually happened anyway.

- Julian

(*) And yes, for the pedants out there, I know they would now seem 1 year closer than 12 months ago even with no adjustment to an expectation of the year in which they will become a reality in the UK.

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Re: Third wave

#401605

Postby tjh290633 » April 4th, 2021, 11:43 am

GeoffF100 wrote:We managed to feed ourselves using an omnivorous diet during WW2, with the help of food rationing and dig for Britain. People's health improved too. The population was smaller then. It would be more difficult now. That diet is also very bad for greenhouse gas emissions and the environment in general, which is the point of the paper.

However, it was done, it is fair to say that if we were to become self sufficient, people would not get all their favourite foods.

Our local golf course (9 holes) was dug up for the purpose and never reopened, even though the fields returned to their original purpose as a recreation ground, and a soccer pitch was laid out on one of them. It had a public footpath across the pitch, which led to one match I saw being suspended while a pedestrian trudged across the pitch. The fields were used to grow cereals during the war.

I suspect that a few Golf Courses could usefully be taken back to agriculture. One near us now has become a housing estate.

TJH

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Re: Third wave

#401608

Postby servodude » April 4th, 2021, 12:03 pm

Julian wrote:
9873210 wrote:
GeoffF100 wrote:
Yes, haulage is the main problem. Trucks cross the channel with potentially infected drivers who disperse across the country. It would be very difficult to keep track of them all and make sure that they do not come into contact with anybody. If there is no watertight system to ensure that, you need a large and highly effective test and trace (definitely not Johnson's "world class"). You would probably also need selective lockdowns when you do detect a Covid case. It should be easier now with vaccination, but we are talking about the early stages here.

Just for giggles.

There is no reason for drivers to cross the channel. French driver drop the trailer (or container) in Calais. Drayage onto a ferry or train and into Dover. British driver picks up trailer. Isolate and test drayage drivers (and boat/train crews).

It's basically how intermodal freight works in the rest of the world. Also quite common on land borders, since it allows a specialist to handle customs.
No need to ship tractors and drivers around or have them idle. Saves money because these are the most expensive part of the truck.

At first glance that seems a really good and clever idea. The world needs as much of this lateral thinking as it can get, plus sufficient will power and good engineers and general problem solvers to turn good ideas into reality. Fast forward a decade or so and one could imagine a new generation of cross-channel ferries where the loading and unloading of the cargo spaces is fully automated, made far easier by requiring all cargo to be standard sized ISO containers.


From a pandemic suppression point of view it just needs folk to drive to the ferry and drive something else back
I know that's how they changed the Tasmanian ferry to work; staff don't get off the boat on the South Island (or home as the missus calls it) and there's a steady stream of guys who would otherwise have been driving on the mainland turning around and heading back to where they came from.
Helps in this instance though that the ferry is generally full both ways; so there's a balance. And there's a park of 40' containers to choose from either side for what you need to pick up, and where to take it.

-sd

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Re: Third wave

#401611

Postby Julian » April 4th, 2021, 12:11 pm

tjh290633 wrote:
GeoffF100 wrote:We managed to feed ourselves using an omnivorous diet during WW2, with the help of food rationing and dig for Britain. People's health improved too. The population was smaller then. It would be more difficult now. That diet is also very bad for greenhouse gas emissions and the environment in general, which is the point of the paper.

However, it was done, it is fair to say that if we were to become self sufficient, people would not get all their favourite foods.

Our local golf course (9 holes) was dug up for the purpose and never reopened, even though the fields returned to their original purpose as a recreation ground, and a soccer pitch was laid out on one of them. It had a public footpath across the pitch, which led to one match I saw being suspended while a pedestrian trudged across the pitch. The fields were used to grow cereals during the war.

I suspect that a few Golf Courses could usefully be taken back to agriculture. One near us now has become a housing estate.

TJH

Then there's the whole area of hydroponics. I'm not sure if it also includes other more novel technologies but I have seen mention a few times over at least the last decade of the possibility of multi-storey urban high density agricultural facilities where, in the more fanciful depictions, a sky scraper in the middle of a city could be providing worthwhile plant/vegetable output. I suspect the key is the efficiency of solar panels on the roof and the efficiency of the necessary internal lighting to simulate daylight on each floor. Maybe not worth it today when, as you say, there is probably quite a lot of land available to be re-purposed but possibly an option in decades to come were it to become necessary. It can only be a good thing if there is at least the option for the growing area of a given acre of land to be increased perhaps 10-fold in an energy-sustaining manner (those energy efficiency numbers being important) if required.

- Julian


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