London South East | The UK's favourite investor portal.

ALL BRITISH CITIZENS ENTITLED TO CLAIM £100 POUND A DAY TO STAY AT HOME TO AVOID SPREAD OF COVID-19
15th March 20201 Min Read
All British Citizens Entitled to claim £100 pound a day to stay at home to avoid spread of COVID-19 novel Coronavirus starting from March 17, 2020. The Government grant pay is accessible to all no matter employment status. Read full article here on how to claim:

https://external-preview.redd.it/vxPXEGgL4v8mCGw06IFGsmJNtqWQg-z60xQQ79dHKPY.jpg?auto=webp&s=db7685262e9b352a4888e547f52a244e2ea2cb9f

Part 3

4... Almost everything that I have seen on social media is misleading and inaccurate. Some of it is extremely dangerous. If you want high quality information, you can get it from the health ministry, public health authority or health system of the country you are in. If you don't want to rely solely on government information, look at the official statements from reputable health orientated universities and departments. London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, Johns Hopkins and the TH Chan School of Public Health at Harvard are a good place to start. The World Health Organisation has good information, but it has to work in a range of very different countries and so may not be the most practically useful for a particular country.

5... we are not testing everybody in the world, so we can't reliably measure death rates. A simple totting up of the numbers will be a massive overestimate. In addition to this, the way people are tested varies massively from place to place. A low number of cases could mean not much disease or not enough testing.

6... There are only two meaningful strategies for managing an emerging infection. The first is containment, where you isolate cases and trace and test their contacts. If spread within a community becomes too great, this strategy becomes ineffective. The second strategy is herd immunity. The basis of this is that when a certain proportion of people have become immune to an infection, it can no longer spread and so people who are not immune are protected. This is why we vaccinate children. Part of a herd immunity strategy is to protect people at particular risk of harm until lots of low risk people are immune, so the disease can't spread to the vulnerable. A herd immunity strategy is not about culling the vulnerable, it is about protecting the vulnerable. This is a new infection and we are learning about it and our immune responses over time. Strategies will change and develop as knowledge grows

7... in many outbreaks, more people die (usually of things like heart attacks and strokes) because they can't get access to healthcare than die of the infection itself. It is extremely important to make sure that health services are not overwhelmed so that people can get the help they need.

8... there are three key ways we can protect health services. Firstly we need to ensure that, if we don't need to seek healthcare we stay away. Secondly, we "flatten the curve" to stretch out the number of people getting the infection over a longer time period, so they don't all arrive at hospital at the same time. Finally we need to ensure that we have enough people to staff our health and care services. If people can't get childcare, they may not be able to work, so we must be very cautious about closing schools etc.

Part 2
Government scientists, advisors and staff also have families, elderly relatives, the immunocompromised.
They aren’t automatons, they feel that weight of responsibility.

Party politics simply doesn’t come into it. It just doesn’t.

So don’t pander to it, or point score.

If your knowledge of the subject of pandemic is such that to understand the history of Spanish Flu you need to google it, then your dissent, because you are scared, has only one place.

Your inner monologue. Keep it to yourself.

Be brave. Read up on the .gov advice.

This is even more important than if you have a following for reasons other than your epidemiological expertise, so, some simple advice:

Shut the f**k up, you are scaring people.

People like Piers might have a voice, but they’d kill us all if we listened to it. Mute them.

Lastly, don’t feel bad about being scared. I’ve been scared, many times, don’t mind admitting it.

Turn off and mute the noise of those who seek personal gain by instilling fear and doubt in others. Those that pander and promote the worst in us. Be Kind.

So, look after each other, particularly those who are less able and more at risk.
Look after yourselves, your own mental as well as your physical health.

Follow the science.

Wash your hands.

Lastly, I post this from a former colleague whose opinion I greatly respect. His observations echo my own:?

My views on COVID-19...

I am trained as an epidemiologist and a communicable disease physician. I have also worked in predictive modelling in healthcare and in international health systems development. I am not, however, claiming to be an expert, but I would like to make an few observations...

1... it is unwise to draw parallels from one country to another. Many factors will be different from place to place, population age structure, population density, breadth of healthcare coverage, reliability and breadth of testing facilities, reliability and breadth of contact tracing capability, stage of spread when control measures were first introduced, population mobility, and many other things.

2... epidemic curves are a base case estimate and bear little comparison with real world spread. The more a disease spreads, the less reliable they become and the more complex a situation is, the less predictive they will be.

3... In the UK, the actual experts on this sort of thing are known as "Consultants in Communicable Disease Control". In other countries there are different arrangements. While others, such as intensive care specialists, microbiologists, virologist, mathematicians, journalists, acute physicians, behavioural psychologists have a contribution to make, they are not experts on disease spread in the community and should not be regarded (or present themselves) as such

by Sneggyblubird » Mon Mar 16, 2020 6:32 pm
COVID-19 Why we are right to be scared, and what we can do about it. A thread that I first posted on Twitter, replicated here.

Who the hell am I? I’m a former Army officer who runs a charity these days, and isn’t a scientist.

I’ve an Environmental Sciences BSc sure, but not ‘an expert’ virologist, epidemiologist, or human factors guy. But - I do speak the language, and I am an expert on where the right answers lie.

From 2000 on I trained at Porton Down to specialise in chemical, biological & radiological warfare, deploying in support of UK interests around the world. Christmas 2000 on the Iraq border commanding manned biological detection systems, and things got really busy in 2001.

I started 2001 tracking the virology of F&M in the fields of Cumbria and Devon, but by end of the year I was in Kabul, dealing with some extraordinary challenges, including unsecured Russian Cobalt-60 sources, and Anthrax veterinary vaccine production facilities.

By 03 I was a Major, Chief of Staff to Dep Comd of the Iraq Survey Group. The bloke showing Dr David Kelly around Baghdad days before he returned to face enquiry. I’m not a blind government fanboy. Let's say I learnt the dangers of conflating politics & science the hard way.

I was on the staff at Porton Down, working on a host of projects including planning for military aid to civil authorities, incl pandemics.
So, COVID-19
Scary, isn’t it? I think so too.
There’s also an abundance of information out there, and you’ve questions.
I’ve an answer.

The teams behind the Chief Scientific Advisor are extraordinary.
They are genuinely the world leaders in their fields, and they are ridiculously good at their jobs.
They aren’t googling the answers, or parroting a line that they just heard from a pushy presenter on TV.

The plans for this stuff are incredibly comprehensive, and help a government to act decisively, and at the right time.
So much in response is about timing – and too soon can be more dangerous than too late.
Look at the second (winter) wave of Spanish flu (graph from CDC)

That long game is what they - the experts are considering now.
Pictures of smiling Chinese people removing masks are propaganda, not science. That’s designed to cause an emotional response, and not in your interests
Success of early containment can only be judged in years.

We – in the UK, right now, are doing incredibly well.
We’ll protect our vulnerable best by responding promptly when the time is right, and the people who hold that responsibility deserve our trust and our support.

That takes guts. I know that. Now, more than ever.

Part 3

4... Almost everything that I have seen on social media is misleading and inaccurate. Some of it is extremely dangerous. If you want high quality information, you can get it from the health ministry, public health authority or health system of the country you are in. If you don't want to rely solely on government information, look at the official statements from reputable health orientated universities and departments. London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, Johns Hopkins and the TH Chan School of Public Health at Harvard are a good place to start. The World Health Organisation has good information, but it has to work in a range of very different countries and so may not be the most practically useful for a particular country.

5... we are not testing everybody in the world, so we can't reliably measure death rates. A simple totting up of the numbers will be a massive overestimate. In addition to this, the way people are tested varies massively from place to place. A low number of cases could mean not much disease or not enough testing.

6... There are only two meaningful strategies for managing an emerging infection. The first is containment, where you isolate cases and trace and test their contacts. If spread within a community becomes too great, this strategy becomes ineffective. The second strategy is herd immunity. The basis of this is that when a certain proportion of people have become immune to an infection, it can no longer spread and so people who are not immune are protected. This is why we vaccinate children. Part of a herd immunity strategy is to protect people at particular risk of harm until lots of low risk people are immune, so the disease can't spread to the vulnerable. A herd immunity strategy is not about culling the vulnerable, it is about protecting the vulnerable. This is a new infection and we are learning about it and our immune responses over time. Strategies will change and develop as knowledge grows

7... in many outbreaks, more people die (usually of things like heart attacks and strokes) because they can't get access to healthcare than die of the infection itself. It is extremely important to make sure that health services are not overwhelmed so that people can get the help they need.

8... there are three key ways we can protect health services. Firstly we need to ensure that, if we don't need to seek healthcare we stay away. Secondly, we "flatten the curve" to stretch out the number of people getting the infection over a longer time period, so they don't all arrive at hospital at the same time. Finally we need to ensure that we have enough people to staff our health and care services. If people can't get childcare, they may not be able to work, so we must be very cautious about closing schools etc.

Part 2
Government scientists, advisors and staff also have families, elderly relatives, the immunocompromised.
They aren’t automatons, they feel that weight of responsibility.

Party politics simply doesn’t come into it. It just doesn’t.

So don’t pander to it, or point score.

If your knowledge of the subject of pandemic is such that to understand the history of Spanish Flu you need to google it, then your dissent, because you are scared, has only one place.

Your inner monologue. Keep it to yourself.

Be brave. Read up on the .gov advice.

This is even more important than if you have a following for reasons other than your epidemiological expertise, so, some simple advice:

Shut the f**k up, you are scaring people.

People like Piers might have a voice, but they’d kill us all if we listened to it. Mute them.

Lastly, don’t feel bad about being scared. I’ve been scared, many times, don’t mind admitting it.

Turn off and mute the noise of those who seek personal gain by instilling fear and doubt in others. Those that pander and promote the worst in us. Be Kind.

So, look after each other, particularly those who are less able and more at risk.
Look after yourselves, your own mental as well as your physical health.

Follow the science.

Wash your hands.

Lastly, I post this from a former colleague whose opinion I greatly respect. His observations echo my own:?

My views on COVID-19...

I am trained as an epidemiologist and a communicable disease physician. I have also worked in predictive modelling in healthcare and in international health systems development. I am not, however, claiming to be an expert, but I would like to make an few observations...

1... it is unwise to draw parallels from one country to another. Many factors will be different from place to place, population age structure, population density, breadth of healthcare coverage, reliability and breadth of testing facilities, reliability and breadth of contact tracing capability, stage of spread when control measures were first introduced, population mobility, and many other things.

2... epidemic curves are a base case estimate and bear little comparison with real world spread. The more a disease spreads, the less reliable they become and the more complex a situation is, the less predictive they will be.

3... In the UK, the actual experts on this sort of thing are known as "Consultants in Communicable Disease Control". In other countries there are different arrangements. While others, such as intensive care specialists, microbiologists, virologist, mathematicians, journalists, acute physicians, behavioural psychologists have a contribution to make, they are not experts on disease spread in the community and should not be regarded (or present themselves) as such

by Sneggyblubird » Mon Mar 16, 2020 6:32 pm
COVID-19 Why we are right to be scared, and what we can do about it. A thread that I first posted on Twitter, replicated here.

Who the hell am I? I’m a former Army officer who runs a charity these days, and isn’t a scientist.

I’ve an Environmental Sciences BSc sure, but not ‘an expert’ virologist, epidemiologist, or human factors guy. But - I do speak the language, and I am an expert on where the right answers lie.

From 2000 on I trained at Porton Down to specialise in chemical, biological & radiological warfare, deploying in support of UK interests around the world. Christmas 2000 on the Iraq border commanding manned biological detection systems, and things got really busy in 2001.

I started 2001 tracking the virology of F&M in the fields of Cumbria and Devon, but by end of the year I was in Kabul, dealing with some extraordinary challenges, including unsecured Russian Cobalt-60 sources, and Anthrax veterinary vaccine production facilities.

By 03 I was a Major, Chief of Staff to Dep Comd of the Iraq Survey Group. The bloke showing Dr David Kelly around Baghdad days before he returned to face enquiry. I’m not a blind government fanboy. Let's say I learnt the dangers of conflating politics & science the hard way.

I was on the staff at Porton Down, working on a host of projects including planning for military aid to civil authorities, incl pandemics.
So, COVID-19
Scary, isn’t it? I think so too.
There’s also an abundance of information out there, and you’ve questions.
I’ve an answer.

The teams behind the Chief Scientific Advisor are extraordinary.
They are genuinely the world leaders in their fields, and they are ridiculously good at their jobs.
They aren’t googling the answers, or parroting a line that they just heard from a pushy presenter on TV.

The plans for this stuff are incredibly comprehensive, and help a government to act decisively, and at the right time.
So much in response is about timing – and too soon can be more dangerous than too late.
Look at the second (winter) wave of Spanish flu (graph from CDC)

That long game is what they - the experts are considering now.
Pictures of smiling Chinese people removing masks are propaganda, not science. That’s designed to cause an emotional response, and not in your interests
Success of early containment can only be judged in years.

We – in the UK, right now, are doing incredibly well.
We’ll protect our vulnerable best by responding promptly when the time is right, and the people who hold that responsibility deserve our trust and our support.

That takes guts. I know that. Now, more than ever.

Part 2

With regard to reform of the judiciary, the rapporteurs welcomed the adoption of the fourth wave of judicial reforms and expressed their hope that they would be implemented promptly and coherently. They encouraged the authorities to continue looking for ways to further strengthen the independence of the judiciary, including with regard to the functioning of the High Council of Justice. They reiterated that a genuinely independent and impartial judiciary will depend not only on the prompt and consistent implementation of reforms but also on a commensurate change in attitude and behavior by all stakeholders concerned.

The rapporteurs welcomed the decision of the ruling majority not to appoint any additional judges to the Supreme Court during the current parliamentary session. They urged the authorities only to appoint new Supreme Court judges after the current legislation for the appointment process has been amended to address the deficiencies noted in the recent appointment cycle. They also urged them to follow all remaining Venice Commission recommendations, in particular with regard to introducing secret voting, reasoned decisions and uniform and transparent selection criteria, in order to ensure a genuinely merit-based appointment process.

While welcoming progress made, the co-rapporteurs encouraged the authorities to further reduce the use of pre-trial detention as its use, which is still very frequent, runs counter to European standards and has contributed to allegations of its instrumentalization for politically motivated purposes. They welcomed the commitment of the authorities and the ruling majority to drafting a new law on administrative offenses, as the current one dates from the Soviet era, runs counter to European standards and Georgian constitutional provisions, and is vulnerable to abuse.

“Again, there is a window of opportunity for the creation of a new élan in Georgia’s political environment, which can be beneficial for the implementation of these reforms and which can give a new impetus to Georgia’s democratic consolidation,” the co-rapporteurs said. “As long-time friends of Georgia, we stand ready to assist all stakeholders with this process in any way we can.”

http://georgiatoday.ge/news/19992/PACE-Co-rapporteurs%3A-Political-Agreement-on-Elections-Offers-Window-of-Opportunity

Latest Share Chat

Member Info for Madpunter

Followers

Following

Posts (Last 30 Days)

Posts (All Time)

Last Post

Member Since

Share Chat Post Distribution (Last 30 Days)

Activity Log (Last 30 Days)

Latest Share Chat

Member Info for Madpunter

Followers

Following

Posts (Last 30 Days)

Posts (All Time)

Last Post

Member Since

Share Chat Post Distribution (Last 30 Days)

Activity Log (Last 30 Days)

Please enter at least 2 characters

No results found

Search results

Recently viewed

Trending