Day: 3 November 2020

Postcard From the Isle of Wight

By A.R. Norman One of the particular joys of living in our island corner of England is the sight of sailing boats out on the Solent – occasionally those menacing black-winged speed yachts hurtling at unfeasible velocity in their bid for Americas Cup glory, occasionally too the square or gaff rigs of large classic yachts, but many more of the brightly billowing spinnakers of the various racing boats vying for silver over the treacherous tides to the north, east and west of Cowes. Most of all, though, is the delight inspired by the sight of those earnest little dinghies sailed by youngsters in their thousands during the summer months. But not this year. Cowes week was cancelled and now, with this second lockdown, 2021 is in the balance. As for the smaller sailing organisations, like our local club, though past stewards built up a cash reserve to keep us afloat during the economic downturns that trouble the finance committee from time to time, the club’s viability is now seriously threatened. No doubt it will survive, but it is unlikely to do so in its present form. For why? In a way the answer is obvious: it’s the economy, stupid. But there is another, more troubling answer, of which the economy is only part. Our sailing club is over a hundred ...

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Professor David Livermore: 4,000 Deaths a Day Implausible David Livermore, Professor of Medical Microbiology at the University of East Anglia, has told Lockdown Sceptics he cannot see how Covid deaths could possibly reach 4,000 a day, the number Sir Patrick Vallance flagged up on Saturday. In an email exchange with me and Jon Dobinson, the head of Recovery, he made a number of good points. 4,000/day is three times higher than the peak rate for Brazil, which has a population three times greater than the UK’s and a pretty laissez faire attitude to the spread of COVID-194,000/day is three times the peak for India, which relaxed a (failing) lockdown in the teeth of a rising infection rate back in May or June. Admittedly, India has a younger population and one with (likely) a lot more non-specific immunity, but it also has a population that's 20 times larger than the UK's.SAGE, in the document leaked to the Spectator (estimating 85,000 deaths through the winter) is working on an infection fatality rate of 0.7%. So, 4,000/day translates to ~570,000 infections per day (4,000/0.007) some three to four weeks earlier, or around four million per week. If you use the Stanford IFR of 0.25, it’d equate to 1,600,000 infections per day or 11.2 million per week Given that the SAGE document also (rightly ...

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November 2020
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November 2020
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