Ranking the fears

[vagrantbrain]

...Then there is the politics. Seen in all the 'usual places' and coming from all the 'usual suspects'.

Do you exclude left wingers from dabbling in the politics of this? I would say Labour has definitely been playing their own game - always pressing for a slightly tougher set of restrictions than the government in the hope of being able to lay the blame if something goes wrong.

Possibly so (though I'd rather err on the side of caution than carefree abandonment in these matters, for obvious reasons), but isn't that just normal party politics?

I refer rather to those ideological right wingers (Yes!) who are into minimisation and denial - as they are in other areas - and try to impose their ideological beliefs on reality, including all of us and on science itself. Some have stooped even to attacking the scientists who at this time are working to guide and aid us and to telling lies about their work*.

IMO, in this instance "scum" is an entirely appropriate description.


* e.g. The recent false attacks on the modelling used by SAGE.

There also those on the ideological left who have spent the last 18 months relentlessly attacking the "serco, not NHS" trace and trace program and those who work in it. And the ventilator production project largely funded out the pockets of the engineering companies themselves which, thankfully, wasn't needed. I know people in both of those who have worked their absolute [expletive deleted] off, often at the sacrifice of family and other commitments, to help the country and have been on the receiving end of some truly vile abuse from those on the far left who have done absolutely nothing themselves to help except sit at home on furlough and post on the internet.

[Mike4]

https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/cases

Perhaps you see that if you squint. If you squint with the other eye, you see a slow rise in the number of cases from August 1st till December 5th, after which they take off.

Would that be, like, exponentially, you mean?

You some kind of commie?

<<Busted>>

[9873210]

Cases have continuously risen since the low on the 5th November, that's 8 weeks almost to the day. Given that the experts think it's been in circulation here since early November (https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/ ... -spreading) I think the low on the 5th November is a reasonable starting point.

Looking at the covid dashboard cases have been rising solidly for the last 8 weeks,

https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/cases

Perhaps you see that if you squint. If you squint with the other eye, you see a slow rise in the number of cases from August 1st till December 5th, after which they take off.

Would that be, like, exponentially, you mean?

If you squint with your third eye. But ...

If you take the data from August 1 to Dec 24 a two-piece linear fit is much, much better than an exponential.
If you take the data from Dec 1 to Dec 24 a one-piece linear fit is best.
If you take the data from Nov 5 to Dec 24 an exponential begins to look good.

If you use Dec 28 as the end point the reporting lag, and presumed Christmas anomaly, make the peak basically disappear and the straight linear fit is best on all three timescales.

TLDR: People are staring into the data and seeing their own prejudices.

[Lootman]

Sure the facts might change. But right now there is no indication that they will do.

In an ongoing global pandemic the "facts" are always changing.

But that doesn't mean that things are getting worse.

Anyway my point was more that there are often reasons why people and organisations take the side they do on this, whether cavalier or over-reactive (to take just the two extremes). There is more to this than just the facts which aren't necessarily even in dispute. And the inferences people make can tell you a lot about their motives and their disposition.

For what it is worth I think the government's current balanced position on Omicron appears to be justified.