Hulse was a good player though, always like a proper centre forward. Great goal he scored in this game, almost Shearer-like.

Hulse's goals kept us in the Championship that season. I have never been a fan of the old fashioned centre forward, maybe because I was brought up on the forward line of Hector, OHare and Hinton. All of them relied on skill rather than height. Preston had Parkin up front who managed to score two. What a monster he was. Just as well he was tall because if he jumped he would cause an earthquake.

Professor Neil Ferguson, aka Professor Lockdown, aka Professor Pantsdown, has been sounding off again to anyone who will listen, and there are plenty of media outlets happy to give his opinions plenty of oxygen. He is saying that there would have been half the number of deaths had lockdown been introduced a week earlier.

Here is the Prof's track record:

He predicted that up to 200 million (yes, 200 million) people worldwide could die from avian flu. It was 282.

He was responsible for the strategy of mass slaughter in the foot and mouth epidemic, later found to be entirely unnecessary and which caused 8 billion pounds to be lost from the farming industry in the UK after 6 million healthy animals were slaughtered and burned on heaps across the country. He said that there would be a Europe-wide pandemic that never happened. The then Labour government refused a public enquiry.

He predicted that 65,000 people in the UK would die from swine flu. It was 457.

He predicted up to 50,000 would die from BSE. It was 177.

He has no biological or medical background, having done a PhD in theoretical physics. He bases his advice purely on mathematical models and has no understanding at all of real life or how infection actually spreads. He predicted 500,000 UK deaths from Covid based on a 13-year old theoretical mathematical model that has been criticised around the world. No doubt he will say that the fact it is fewer than this is down to his sage advice (thank you, I'm here all week). However he also predicted 100,000 deaths in Sweden if they did not adopt a rigid lockdown. There have been 4,000 and Sweden actually has had fewer deaths per capita than the UK. When asked about this, he said he was baffled and that it was "an interesting question".

Here is an interesting question: why has the government been relying for its strategy on the opinion of an egotistical imbecile with a track record of 100% incompetence?

It's an unrealistic belief in the assumptions he uses Vidal. The models are probably based on sound maths but any model as I have said previously is only as good as the assumptions used. Models which have exponential increases built in to them are especially sensitive to wrong assumptions.

Ideally he should have worked with epidemiologists to construct his model. I suspect he didn't include the 40% or so asymptomatic people or the unusual feature that the vast majority of children seemed to never even become infected. It would be interesting to see that if he refined his assumptions with current knowledge whether it would predict an outcome in line with what is actually happening.

He appears to have learned nothing from his previous ludicrous predictions or even to question himself about why he has always got it so completely wrong.

It's also very worrying that there are supposedly plans to use similar models by this berk to assess the likely effects of reducing lockdown measures.

Maybe he knows a few paedophiles?

Vidal
There is one fact that was bearing out the Professor's forecast and its the only thing we do know as a fact and that is that the deaths graph was rising exponentially prior to lockdown.
We don't know when the peak would have, or will come, in our country, if the tube network, pubs etc were still operating at full capacity.

In my opinion the NHS would have been overwhelmed by the end of April leading to got knows what outcomes. No one would be going out, even doctors and nurses would be staying at home as the virus wreaked havoc.

That is very unlikely, Rameses. The evidence is that the infection will only affect a small proportion of the population, not all of it. All infectious diseases have an exponential element at the start as they work through the most susceptible. Eventually they run out of steam as transmission slows down. The models didn't take account of this because those responsible for them don't understand this and assume that infection continues in the same way in all people. This isn't how it works. The rate of growth was already declining in London before the effects of lockdown had any effect. That's why London now has virtually no cases - the virus had run through its population.

Rather than the full lockdown we should have focused on protecting the most at risk. The vast proportion of deaths have come in the more elderly. Had care homes been prioritised then the numbers would have been far fewer. Better testing would ahve had a far, far bigger impact than lockdown. South Korea had no lockdown and fared vastly better than the UK.

Ate you speaking with hindsight Vidal, or has the SAGE/COBRA committee missed a trick in not employing you?

My take on this lot in power is that they "follow the science" when it fits their agenda?

They dont seem to have ever had a plan.

Vidal sorry mate but we locked up 2 million of the most vulnerable who would be walking about now if we had not have locked down at all.
Thus they could well have pushed the death rate up into the hundreds of thousands as they became infected.
You seem to advocate that its not as bad as we think but if the whole country had to face this with no safeguards we would be looking at numbers very close the the worst case scenario.

At the time I don't think there was much option other than to lockdown because other countries in Europe were doing it and the political pressure was mounting. And it wasn't obvious what was likely to happen. Now it is clear that we would never have got anywhere near the worst case scenario no matter what. There is a good argument for saying that lockdown was the best and safest thing to have done at the time but it's at least doubtful that it has had a bigger impact than lesser measures such as were introduced in Sweden. Based on the situation we were in there was probably little no choice. But the projections from Ferguson should certainly have been taken with a huge pinch of salt given his track record.

In London, where new infections have almost stopped, it's estimated that 15% of the population have actually been infected, either symptomatically or asymptomatically. This is based on the testing of the population that has been done. There has been no increase in infections with relaxation of lockdown. This 15% figure is interesting because it is the same as the observed rate of infection in closed communities exposed to the virus such as the Diamond Princess and a town in Germany where an outbreak occurred. I mentioned this on this thread a while back. Everybody is not equally susceptible. It seems that the vulnerable proportion is around this 15% mark.

On the Diamond Princess with a very elderly population the mortality was 1%. The overall mortality of all ages of those with clinical infection seems to be around 0.5%. If these assumptions are correct then the maths of that in this country would be that the expected number of dead, assuming 15% of the entire population would get infected (roughly 10 million people) and that 0.5% of those would die, would be a death toll of about 50,000. And that would be if we didn't really do anything to stop it. Which is pretty much exactly where we are. The erroneous assumptions were made that at least 80% of the population would catch it and that at least 1% of those would die, hence the 500,000 figure that so scared us. But that was never all that plausible based on the information that was available, and also on common sense and experience of other infections.

Probably the main benefit of lockdown was to slow it down a bit. With the NHS in a critical state already, a sudden influx of even a relatively small number of ill people would have been disastrous. To be fair to the government, this was the main thing they pushed at the start of the pandemic, to flatten the curve. In this respect it has definitely been successful. Without lockdown I agree that this might have been a possibility. It's hard to know for sure. But I doubt it has had a very big impact on the total death toll from the virus, and it has certainly resulted in other deaths from delayed presentations of serious illness which are coming through in increasing numbers right now as people start emerging form their homes to seek help.

Vidal, I think the government are working on your theory. They believe its got as bad as its going to get and the priority now is to not totally f-up the economy.
It could well be the way ahead and anecdotal evidence from elsewhere seems to back up the theory.
It's be a brave move by the government to loosen things and I doubt a left leaning government would move as quick. But time will tell and I hope it works because we are all fed up with lockdown.

I would add that a left leaning government would have put us into lockdown two weeks earlier.

Maybe.

By the way, while I might talk glibly about populations and percentages I’m well aware that people have their own situations. One infection is very meaningful if it is you or someone close to you. So whatever the government chooses to do people will still make their own decisions. Fortunately we can all protect ourselves individually by our own behaviour to a large extent, no matter what others do. Some of us will probably restrict what we do until the prevalence of the virus is very low. But the signs are good. Although we worried about the easing that has already happened, infections have continued to drop significantly and there is nothing to indicate that this won’t continue.

Sweden had a voluntary lockdown, nothing enforced but Swedish culture would ensure that most people did what they thought was best. Those pictures of people drinking and sitting in restaurants were atypical. Also a much lower population density so vulnerable people could move away from high risk areas. I don't think you can use Sweden as a great example of how locking down didn't make much difference. Look at what is happening in the USA and Brazil for a better picture of what could have happened in Britain.

What I was saying is that there are possibilities between doing nothing and a complete lockdown.

In New York City there was carnage, and then it stopped quite quickly. Estimates there are that the numbers of those infected reached around 20% and have now stalled. This is slightly more than the 15% I have been talking about, but very similar. I think that with our strategy the numbers dead are very similar to those that would have been reached without doing much at all. It seems that the maximum infection rate in any population is 15-20%. How many of those die will depend on what health facilities are available to support the sicker patients who might recover.

I don’t think we could have had many more deaths than we have suffered, looking at global figures. Probably we could have had fewer at this stage with a more coherent plan.

Is this thread still active?





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Anyone there?

It is now Peeder. Football is starting soon anyway. Well something called football but is not as we know it. If no fans are allowed would they need to play the play final at Wembley? They could play it on the local recreation ground and still have the same attendance.

comment by Spart-Derby really are the best says red dog. (U4603)
posted 4 hours, 3 minutes ago
It is now Peeder. Football is starting soon anyway. Well something called football but is not as we know it. If no fans are allowed would they need to play the play final at Wembley? They could play it on the local recreation ground and still have the same attendance.
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I'd like to see how they'd get on at Biggin Spart?

Some players would drop into the bomb hole up the left wing never to be seen again.

Peeder, I haven’t posted anything on this thread for a while because I didn’t really know if anyone was still reading! If anyone is still interested in my opinions on the pandemic or wants to ask me any questions I’m happy to respond. I don’t set myself up as an expert, just offering a personal take on things. Since there will no doubt shortly be match threads etc I didn’t really think it was the place for footy or other stuff any more. I hope it has served a purpose of sorts.

Of course everyone else could be dead. Not your fault of course and a valiant effort to keep the home fires burning. And farewell Dame Vera.