Brexit, for once some facts.

oyster

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Nov 7, 2017
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West West Wales

oyster

Esteemed Pedelecer
Nov 7, 2017
10,422
14,609
West West Wales
I've posted that the government were wrong to advise people not to buy in stock and create shortage. I said that we have huge stocks of most things, even years of of them, and that the only problem was delay in getting replacement stocks out.
There is a world of difference between rational planned purchasing for predicted difficulties and buying, buying, buying regardless of any likelihood of need.

As you say, if you need to self-isolate for your own protection or that of others, you need those things. Getting things delivered is proving difficult as the supermarkets simply don't have the capacity. (Our butcher is happy to deliver for free - minimum order £15. I think that is pretty good.)

We started to increase the amount we have have on hand a while ago but never engaged in grabbing the last packet. Partner does have several issues so we are concerned - and she is not able to drive at present.
 
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flecc

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Oct 25, 2006
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There is a world of difference between rational planned purchasing for predicted difficulties and buying, buying, buying regardless of any likelihood of need.
I agree, some people seem to have been snatching crazy items that were never at risk of going short. They even emptied my largest supermarket of sugar, but Sainsburys response was to put some huge 5 kilo bags of granulated in. That'll test them as they try to lug those away!
.
 
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Woosh

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May 19, 2012
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sjpt

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Jun 8, 2018
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but boris says we'll be fine in twelve weeks and I cannot see any reason not to trust him
To be fair, I think he said the tide would turn then, not we'd be fine. If you look at the black (do nothing) line that appears to be the case: it might be an extreme spring tide but it will turn.
~~~

More seriously, this modelling is clearly very useful, but also models like this are inherently very unstable and tiny changes to inputs can make vast changes to output (as I am sure the Imperial people are well aware, I'm not trying to teach grandmother here). For example, it seems odd that in the 'do nothing' scenario things have settled down almost completely by August (even if there has been a huge number of deaths in the interim). This seems highly improbable to me; I would expect that there would be the terrible peak shown, but that after that the graph would still stay pretty high. If it were my model I'd be looking very closely at what lead to that conclusion.

Further out, there is good reason to believe in the orange and green peaks, but their scale and timing is extremely uncertain.
 
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Woosh

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May 19, 2012
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16,456
Southend on Sea
wooshbikes.co.uk
To be fair, I think he said the tide would turn then, not we'd be fine. If you look at the black (do nothing) line that appears to be the case: it might be an extreme spring tide but it will turn.
~~~

More seriously, this modelling is clearly very useful, but also models like this are inherently very unstable and tiny changes to inputs can make vast changes to output (as I am sure the Imperial people are well aware, I'm not trying to teach grandmother here). For example, it seems odd that in the 'do nothing' scenario things have settled down almost completely by August (even if there has been a huge number of deaths in the interim). This seems highly improbable to me; I would expect that there would be the terrible peak shown, but that after that the graph would still stay pretty high. If it were my model I'd be looking very closely at what lead to that conclusion.

Further out, there is good reason to believe in the orange and green peaks, but their scale and timing is extremely uncertain.
our current path is somewhere between the brown and green plots.
you see there are two peaks: one in late spring and one in late autumn.
Hospitals can run out of beds in first or second week of May and again in late September (bottom picture where the red plot intersects the brown and green plots). The majority of sufferers will have to stay at home.
The second in late autumn is the bigger wave.
Still, the original WHO estimate 3.4% IFR will be much, much reduced.

 
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sjpt

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Still, the original WHO estimate 3.4% IFR will be much, much reduced.
Lack of testing and data gathering in the UK might mean we never know the IFR (infection mortality rate; I had to look it up). We'll know the number of deaths fairly accurately, but not the number of infections.
 
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