Showing posts with label lockdown. Show all posts
Showing posts with label lockdown. Show all posts
Friday 5 March 2021
Tuesday 5 January 2021
To predict government policy, listen to Boris and wait for the opposite
At every stage in the coronavirus pandemic, the prime minister has been hopelessly behind the curve writes John Crace in The Guardian
‘During the biggest national health crisis in 100 years, it’s just our luck to have Boris Johnson in charge.’ Photograph: Andrew Parsons/No10 Downing Street
In hindsight, the clues were there for everyone to see. Last week, the government forced a vote on extending recess by an extra week until 11 January. After all, it wasn’t as if there was a lot on for MPs to scrutinise. Brexit was bound to be going swimmingly and the coronavirus was near enough completely under control. So sure enough, on the very first day of its prolonged holiday, Boris Johnson announced that parliament would be recalled on Wednesday.
It’s now becoming easier and easier to predict government policy. Just listen to what the prime minister said in the morning and the opposite is likely to be true come the middle of the afternoon. It’s almost like clockwork – the government does what most reasonable people would have done several weeks earlier.
At every stage in the coronavirus pandemic, the government has been hopelessly behind the curve. From being late to lockdown in March while the Cheltenham festival and Carrie Symonds’s baby shower went ahead. From ignoring the Sage advice in September for a second national lockdown and being forced into one in November by both Keir Starmer and the rapidly rising rates of infection. From announcing a five-day Christmas free-for-all in early December – everyone knew Covid liked to take time off over the holiday period – which he then had to cancel after everyone had already made their plans.
During the biggest national health crisis in 100 years, it’s just our luck to have Johnson in charge. A man pathologically unable to make the right calls at the right time. The prime minister is a narcissistic charlatan. The Great Dick Faker. Someone who can’t bear to be the bearer of bad news or to be proved wrong by people who disagree with him. So he stubbornly ignores the evidence until he becomes overwhelmed by it and public opinion has turned against him. He isn’t just a liability as a leader, his indecision has cost lives. His hubris will only cost him his job.
So the day started off much like any other day for Boris. A quick feelgood photo opportunity jaunt to watch someone get the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine on its first day of national distribution and a short clip to camera. Schools should definitely remain open, he insisted, apparently oblivious to the fact that most health and teaching professionals had said otherwise.
But Boris thought differently. Most schoolkids only got a mild dose of Covid and the teachers should stop moaning. Despite the increased infectivity of the new coronavirus variant, teachers should take one for the team as children couldn’t afford to fall further behind in their education. It didn’t seem to have occurred to him that children also have parents and grandparents with whom they live and who might not be so lucky.
There might be a time for increasing restrictions – Nicola Sturgeon announced Scotland’s early in the afternoon and the Labour leader had made a second appeal in two days for Johnson to see sense – but now was not the right time. Which begged the question: “If not now, then when?”
With infections increasing exponentially, the death rate rising and hospitals struggling to cope with the rate of admissions, just how many more people would have to get seriously ill before Boris could be bothered to take action?
As it happened, not many. Because shortly after filming this interview and insisting there would be no No 10 press conference that evening, Johnson announced he would be addressing the nation on TV at 8pm. Yet again, Boris had been shamed into another U-turn. Better late than never. Though too late for some.
For his TV address, a dishevelled Boris – why change the habit of a lifetime and make it look like you give a toss? – didn’t look serious so much as scared shitless. Someone for whom reality had – temporarily at least – penetrated his self-delusion. There was little way to sugarcoat the news, despite him talking up the vaccine. No triumphs to be declared, no ersatz leadership theatrics for reassurance. Only the despair of a down-on-his-luck TV evangelist was on offer in the eight-minute statement.
He began as if the huge rise in coronavirus cases had come as a massive shock to him at lunchtime, even though it was old news to the rest of the country, and spoke of his deep regret – the hurt was all his – at putting the country back into a total lockdown. Including closing the schools he had opened that morning.
“Some of you might be wondering why we haven’t done this before,” he said. A question literally no one was asking as no one expects anything but incompetence and delay from this government any more. Typically, there was nothing about financial support for those whose livelihoods may be affected. He ended by saying that if all went well, there could be an easing of the lockdown by mid-February.
But not even The Great Dick Faker, the master of self-deception, sounded convinced by this. As usual he didn’t have the balls to level with the country and tell us what we all deep down know. That it’s going to take at least three months before there’s even a hint of a return to normality. And that’s if we’re lucky.
“So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”
In hindsight, the clues were there for everyone to see. Last week, the government forced a vote on extending recess by an extra week until 11 January. After all, it wasn’t as if there was a lot on for MPs to scrutinise. Brexit was bound to be going swimmingly and the coronavirus was near enough completely under control. So sure enough, on the very first day of its prolonged holiday, Boris Johnson announced that parliament would be recalled on Wednesday.
It’s now becoming easier and easier to predict government policy. Just listen to what the prime minister said in the morning and the opposite is likely to be true come the middle of the afternoon. It’s almost like clockwork – the government does what most reasonable people would have done several weeks earlier.
At every stage in the coronavirus pandemic, the government has been hopelessly behind the curve. From being late to lockdown in March while the Cheltenham festival and Carrie Symonds’s baby shower went ahead. From ignoring the Sage advice in September for a second national lockdown and being forced into one in November by both Keir Starmer and the rapidly rising rates of infection. From announcing a five-day Christmas free-for-all in early December – everyone knew Covid liked to take time off over the holiday period – which he then had to cancel after everyone had already made their plans.
During the biggest national health crisis in 100 years, it’s just our luck to have Johnson in charge. A man pathologically unable to make the right calls at the right time. The prime minister is a narcissistic charlatan. The Great Dick Faker. Someone who can’t bear to be the bearer of bad news or to be proved wrong by people who disagree with him. So he stubbornly ignores the evidence until he becomes overwhelmed by it and public opinion has turned against him. He isn’t just a liability as a leader, his indecision has cost lives. His hubris will only cost him his job.
So the day started off much like any other day for Boris. A quick feelgood photo opportunity jaunt to watch someone get the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine on its first day of national distribution and a short clip to camera. Schools should definitely remain open, he insisted, apparently oblivious to the fact that most health and teaching professionals had said otherwise.
But Boris thought differently. Most schoolkids only got a mild dose of Covid and the teachers should stop moaning. Despite the increased infectivity of the new coronavirus variant, teachers should take one for the team as children couldn’t afford to fall further behind in their education. It didn’t seem to have occurred to him that children also have parents and grandparents with whom they live and who might not be so lucky.
There might be a time for increasing restrictions – Nicola Sturgeon announced Scotland’s early in the afternoon and the Labour leader had made a second appeal in two days for Johnson to see sense – but now was not the right time. Which begged the question: “If not now, then when?”
With infections increasing exponentially, the death rate rising and hospitals struggling to cope with the rate of admissions, just how many more people would have to get seriously ill before Boris could be bothered to take action?
As it happened, not many. Because shortly after filming this interview and insisting there would be no No 10 press conference that evening, Johnson announced he would be addressing the nation on TV at 8pm. Yet again, Boris had been shamed into another U-turn. Better late than never. Though too late for some.
For his TV address, a dishevelled Boris – why change the habit of a lifetime and make it look like you give a toss? – didn’t look serious so much as scared shitless. Someone for whom reality had – temporarily at least – penetrated his self-delusion. There was little way to sugarcoat the news, despite him talking up the vaccine. No triumphs to be declared, no ersatz leadership theatrics for reassurance. Only the despair of a down-on-his-luck TV evangelist was on offer in the eight-minute statement.
He began as if the huge rise in coronavirus cases had come as a massive shock to him at lunchtime, even though it was old news to the rest of the country, and spoke of his deep regret – the hurt was all his – at putting the country back into a total lockdown. Including closing the schools he had opened that morning.
“Some of you might be wondering why we haven’t done this before,” he said. A question literally no one was asking as no one expects anything but incompetence and delay from this government any more. Typically, there was nothing about financial support for those whose livelihoods may be affected. He ended by saying that if all went well, there could be an easing of the lockdown by mid-February.
But not even The Great Dick Faker, the master of self-deception, sounded convinced by this. As usual he didn’t have the balls to level with the country and tell us what we all deep down know. That it’s going to take at least three months before there’s even a hint of a return to normality. And that’s if we’re lucky.
“So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”
Wednesday 29 July 2020
Does Modern Medicine have a Platypus Problem?
By Girish Menon
“Early zoologists classified as mammals those that suckle their young and as reptiles those that lay eggs. Then a duck-billed platypus was discovered in Australia laying eggs like a perfect reptile and then, when they hatched, suckling the infant like a perfect mammal.
The discovery created quite a sensation. What an enigma! it was exclaimed.
What a mystery! What a marvel of nature! When the first stuffed specimens reached England from Australia around the end of the eighteenth century they were thought to be fakes made by sticking together bits of different animals. Even today you still see occasional articles in nature magazines asking ‘Why does this paradox of nature exist?’.
The answer is: it doesn’t. The Platypus isn’t doing anything paradoxical at all. It isn’t having any problems. Platypuses have been laying eggs and suckling their young for millions of years before there were any zoologists to come along and declare it illegal. The real mystery, the real enigma, is how mature, objective, trained scientific observers can blame their own goof on a poor innocent platypus.” Robert Pirsig in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
I wondered if this is the attitude of modern medicine towards primary care physician Dr. Stella Emmanuel for her recommendation of Hydroxychloroquine as a panacea for the Covid-19 virus.
I discussed Dr. Emmanuel's prescription with more than one practitioner of modern medicine and they were all unanimous in their condemnation of Dr. Emmanuel’s self publicity approach of making a film with many white coated authority figures in the background. 'She could have presented her data for scrutiny' and 'her claims will not qualify as level 2 evidence' were some of their verdicts.
Hydroxychloroquine, unfortunately, has become a highly political drug which has divided opinion on liberal v conservative lines. ‘Big Pharma’ has also been accused of trying to destroy a cheap solution to the raging Corona virus problem.
In the UK, modern medicine’s success in combating Covid-19 has resulted in over 50,000 deaths and delayed treatment of all other life threatening ailments. Decision making has been a series of flip-flops and U turns and is best illustrated by Telegraph’s Blowe
I wondered if some of the decisions by modern medicine on the lockdown and thereafter have the same amount of evidence required of Dr. Emmanuel and her panacea?
I am willing to take a sceptical approach to Dr Emmanuel as well as to the science based responses of the Boris Johnson government.
But, I also wondered if modern science and medicine ever consider that they too may suffer from the platypus problem?
“Early zoologists classified as mammals those that suckle their young and as reptiles those that lay eggs. Then a duck-billed platypus was discovered in Australia laying eggs like a perfect reptile and then, when they hatched, suckling the infant like a perfect mammal.
The discovery created quite a sensation. What an enigma! it was exclaimed.
What a mystery! What a marvel of nature! When the first stuffed specimens reached England from Australia around the end of the eighteenth century they were thought to be fakes made by sticking together bits of different animals. Even today you still see occasional articles in nature magazines asking ‘Why does this paradox of nature exist?’.
The answer is: it doesn’t. The Platypus isn’t doing anything paradoxical at all. It isn’t having any problems. Platypuses have been laying eggs and suckling their young for millions of years before there were any zoologists to come along and declare it illegal. The real mystery, the real enigma, is how mature, objective, trained scientific observers can blame their own goof on a poor innocent platypus.” Robert Pirsig in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
I wondered if this is the attitude of modern medicine towards primary care physician Dr. Stella Emmanuel for her recommendation of Hydroxychloroquine as a panacea for the Covid-19 virus.
I discussed Dr. Emmanuel's prescription with more than one practitioner of modern medicine and they were all unanimous in their condemnation of Dr. Emmanuel’s self publicity approach of making a film with many white coated authority figures in the background. 'She could have presented her data for scrutiny' and 'her claims will not qualify as level 2 evidence' were some of their verdicts.
Hydroxychloroquine, unfortunately, has become a highly political drug which has divided opinion on liberal v conservative lines. ‘Big Pharma’ has also been accused of trying to destroy a cheap solution to the raging Corona virus problem.
In the UK, modern medicine’s success in combating Covid-19 has resulted in over 50,000 deaths and delayed treatment of all other life threatening ailments. Decision making has been a series of flip-flops and U turns and is best illustrated by Telegraph’s Blowe
I wondered if some of the decisions by modern medicine on the lockdown and thereafter have the same amount of evidence required of Dr. Emmanuel and her panacea?
I am willing to take a sceptical approach to Dr Emmanuel as well as to the science based responses of the Boris Johnson government.
But, I also wondered if modern science and medicine ever consider that they too may suffer from the platypus problem?
Saturday 23 May 2020
Why Sweden is unlikely to make a U-turn on its controversial Covid-19 strategy
For a foreigner living here, the country’s approach to handling the crisis is worrying, but it is partly explained by its history writes Tae Hoon Kim in The Guardian
Just 7.3% of Stockholm had Covid-19 antibodies by end of April, study shows
Whereas this might explain the lack of opposition, it is far from exhaustive. For example, Norway, Denmark and Finland are also known as high-trust societies. But all three have imposed far more restrictive measures, ranging from lockdowns to declaring a national emergency.
Second, the fact that some of the people most affected by the high death rate are from the poorest immigrant groups, such as the Somali community, whose voice is not always well represented in the media, goes against this image of a universally trusting and transparent society.
Perhaps another explanation is that Sweden has a very different way of perceiving the current crisis. Instead of seeing it as a national emergency or a fight against an “invisible enemy”, there seems to be a tendency to regard coronavirus just as a serious public health problem. It is viewed as something that requires the careful observance of rules set out by health experts, rather than an existential problem that calls for the state to suspend civil liberties for the sake of national security. Indeed, whenever a non-scientific expert such as me criticises the Swedish strategy, the response has often been that I am not an expert.
This is where Sweden is unique, something that may be attributable to its history. The country has not experienced a national emergency or crisis for more than 100 years. Since around the Swedish general strike of 1909, it has not seen any profound social conflicts, for example the miners’ strike in Britain, or a civil war, as in Spain or Finland. Any foreigner who has lived in Sweden will know how conflict-adverse Swedish people seem to be. Furthermore, Sweden has not engaged in any armed disputes since the 1810s. This is in contrast to Denmark and Norway, which were occupied by Germany in the second world war, and Finland, invaded by the USSR in the same period. A rallying cry of unity in the face of national adversity isn’t part of the collective cultural fabric in Sweden.
This lack of experience with handling national crises goes some way to explaining why there is a technocratic and dispassionate outlook to Covid-19, as opposed to a sense of urgency. It is also why the public health agency in Sweden seems to have few qualms about “herd immunity”. Whereas other countries see it as a dangerous national experiment, Swedish health officials regard it more as a type of medical prescription. It might not be 100% effective and some deaths might occur, as in any medical situation. But in the long run, it could work in mitigating the negative effects of the virus, without mass social disruption.
It is for this reason that the denial by the Swedish government and health officials that it is actually pursuing “herd immunity” seem so halfhearted, a rebuttal to critical foreign press rather than its citizens. For a foreigner living in Sweden like me, it is not entirely reassuring. How long Sweden will continue with this policy is difficult to ascertain. But as long as Covid-19 is seen in this light, and it looks as if it will, a U-turn seems unlikely.
People enjoy a warm spring day in Ralambshovsparken park, Stockholm, 8 May. Photograph: IBL/REX/Shutterstock
Sweden has received considerable media scrutiny in recent days. According to figures published on Tuesday, it now has the highest coronavirus-per-capita death rate in the world, with an average of 6.08 deaths per million inhabitants a day on a rolling seven-day average between 13 and 20 May. As of 22 May, Sweden has had 32,172 confirmed cases and 3,871 deaths. These figures are lower than those of Italy or the UK. But they are higher than those of Portugal and Greece, two countries with a similar size of population to Sweden. The figures are also much higher than Sweden’s Nordic neighbours, with Denmark at 11,182 cases and 561 deaths, Norway at 8,309 and 235, and Finland at 6,537 and 306.
International observers and critics within Sweden blame these depressing figures on its controversial Covid-19 strategy. Unlike the rest of Europe, or what is often cited as the exemplar nation of South Korea, Sweden has not imposed any lockdowns nor carried out mass testing. Its policy has been to slow the spread of the virus by exhorting its citizens to practise voluntary social distancing.
Some restrictions have been enforced, such as a ban on gatherings of more than 50 people, and a stipulation that drinks can only be served on seated tables as opposed to bars. Everyday life in Sweden is not the same as before. There are fewer people in shopping centres and public transport. Working from home has become the new normal for those who can. But people continue to socialise outdoors freely, while primary schools, hairdressers and shopping centres remain open.
But despite the high number of deaths, about 70% of Swedes support their government’s approach. In fact, there has not been much public debate or organised opposition to the strategy. The deaths have indeed shocked many Swedes, especially the disproportionately high number of deaths among those over 70 in care homes and those from working-class, immigrant backgrounds. The debates, however, seem to be taking a more socioeconomic angle. In other words, the reasons for these deaths are being blamed on structural, economic, and social deficiencies – but not on the strategy itself.
Why is this so? One explanation that has been aired frequently points to the high degree of trust between government agencies and citizens. The argument is that the level of government transparency and the state’s service-mindedness has created an environment where the people trust their government and experts.
Sweden has received considerable media scrutiny in recent days. According to figures published on Tuesday, it now has the highest coronavirus-per-capita death rate in the world, with an average of 6.08 deaths per million inhabitants a day on a rolling seven-day average between 13 and 20 May. As of 22 May, Sweden has had 32,172 confirmed cases and 3,871 deaths. These figures are lower than those of Italy or the UK. But they are higher than those of Portugal and Greece, two countries with a similar size of population to Sweden. The figures are also much higher than Sweden’s Nordic neighbours, with Denmark at 11,182 cases and 561 deaths, Norway at 8,309 and 235, and Finland at 6,537 and 306.
International observers and critics within Sweden blame these depressing figures on its controversial Covid-19 strategy. Unlike the rest of Europe, or what is often cited as the exemplar nation of South Korea, Sweden has not imposed any lockdowns nor carried out mass testing. Its policy has been to slow the spread of the virus by exhorting its citizens to practise voluntary social distancing.
Some restrictions have been enforced, such as a ban on gatherings of more than 50 people, and a stipulation that drinks can only be served on seated tables as opposed to bars. Everyday life in Sweden is not the same as before. There are fewer people in shopping centres and public transport. Working from home has become the new normal for those who can. But people continue to socialise outdoors freely, while primary schools, hairdressers and shopping centres remain open.
But despite the high number of deaths, about 70% of Swedes support their government’s approach. In fact, there has not been much public debate or organised opposition to the strategy. The deaths have indeed shocked many Swedes, especially the disproportionately high number of deaths among those over 70 in care homes and those from working-class, immigrant backgrounds. The debates, however, seem to be taking a more socioeconomic angle. In other words, the reasons for these deaths are being blamed on structural, economic, and social deficiencies – but not on the strategy itself.
Why is this so? One explanation that has been aired frequently points to the high degree of trust between government agencies and citizens. The argument is that the level of government transparency and the state’s service-mindedness has created an environment where the people trust their government and experts.
Just 7.3% of Stockholm had Covid-19 antibodies by end of April, study shows
Whereas this might explain the lack of opposition, it is far from exhaustive. For example, Norway, Denmark and Finland are also known as high-trust societies. But all three have imposed far more restrictive measures, ranging from lockdowns to declaring a national emergency.
Second, the fact that some of the people most affected by the high death rate are from the poorest immigrant groups, such as the Somali community, whose voice is not always well represented in the media, goes against this image of a universally trusting and transparent society.
Perhaps another explanation is that Sweden has a very different way of perceiving the current crisis. Instead of seeing it as a national emergency or a fight against an “invisible enemy”, there seems to be a tendency to regard coronavirus just as a serious public health problem. It is viewed as something that requires the careful observance of rules set out by health experts, rather than an existential problem that calls for the state to suspend civil liberties for the sake of national security. Indeed, whenever a non-scientific expert such as me criticises the Swedish strategy, the response has often been that I am not an expert.
This is where Sweden is unique, something that may be attributable to its history. The country has not experienced a national emergency or crisis for more than 100 years. Since around the Swedish general strike of 1909, it has not seen any profound social conflicts, for example the miners’ strike in Britain, or a civil war, as in Spain or Finland. Any foreigner who has lived in Sweden will know how conflict-adverse Swedish people seem to be. Furthermore, Sweden has not engaged in any armed disputes since the 1810s. This is in contrast to Denmark and Norway, which were occupied by Germany in the second world war, and Finland, invaded by the USSR in the same period. A rallying cry of unity in the face of national adversity isn’t part of the collective cultural fabric in Sweden.
This lack of experience with handling national crises goes some way to explaining why there is a technocratic and dispassionate outlook to Covid-19, as opposed to a sense of urgency. It is also why the public health agency in Sweden seems to have few qualms about “herd immunity”. Whereas other countries see it as a dangerous national experiment, Swedish health officials regard it more as a type of medical prescription. It might not be 100% effective and some deaths might occur, as in any medical situation. But in the long run, it could work in mitigating the negative effects of the virus, without mass social disruption.
It is for this reason that the denial by the Swedish government and health officials that it is actually pursuing “herd immunity” seem so halfhearted, a rebuttal to critical foreign press rather than its citizens. For a foreigner living in Sweden like me, it is not entirely reassuring. How long Sweden will continue with this policy is difficult to ascertain. But as long as Covid-19 is seen in this light, and it looks as if it will, a U-turn seems unlikely.
Wednesday 20 May 2020
Returning to work in the coronavirus crisis: what are your rights?
Hilary Osborne in The Guardian
How much notice should I be given that I have to return?
“If employees are unable to work from home, employers can ask employees to return to work and, technically, no notice is required,” says Gingell.
Solicitor and consumer law expert Gary Rycroft says there is no notice period written into law “but giving at least 48 hours’ notice should allow either side to have discussions and air any concerns or even official ‘grievances’”.
The advisory group Acas says employers need to check if there are any arrangements in place with unions or similar about notice. It advises: “Employees and workers should be ready to return to work at short notice, but employers should be flexible where possible.”
So while your employer could ask you to return straight away, a good employer would understand if there were things you needed to put in place first, and give you chance to do so.
What if I was furloughed?
When you were furloughed your employer should have outlined what would happen when it wanted you to go back to work, and this may have a clause saying that you have to return as soon as you are asked.
“The termination of the furlough agreement and when an employee will be expected to return to work will depend on the provisions of the agreement,” says Gingell. Again, though, even if there is no notice period, a good employer should realise that you may need some time to prepare.
If you have been furloughed under the government’s job retention scheme, your employer can’t ask you to go in and do ad hoc days, or work part-time. They would need to take you off furlough and renegotiate your contract with you.
Can they ask me to go back in part-time?
Not, currently, if you have been furloughed and they are using the government scheme to pay you. It only allows companies to furlough people for all of their normal hours, and bans them from asking you to do any work while you are off.
But if your company has not claimed government money to cover your wages, it can ask you to resume work part-time. Make sure you understand the terms of the request – your employer cannot adjust your contract without your permission, so if it is asking you to change your hours you should get advice.
Can they ask me to take a pay cut?
“The law here is the same as it would be if an employer made the same request in the normal course of an employee’s employment. Reducing hours and/or pay are deemed to be such fundamental changes to an employee’s terms and conditions that the employee concerned should be consulted and then agree in writing,” says Rycroft.
He points out that for some employers “this may be the only economically viable option”, and the alternative, if people refuse, could be redundancies. To make more than 20 people redundant there will need to be collective consultation.
What if I am in a vulnerable group or live with someone who is?
No special rules have been put in place to protect people in these groups who are asked to go into work but some already exist – if you are disabled or pregnant, for example, your employer has extra obligations.
Rycroft says some employees may be able to argue that it will be discriminatory to force them to attend work outside the home. “It is all a question of degrees, in terms of how the employer can show that they have listened to legitimate concerns and made reasonable adjustments,” he says.
If you are pregnant your employer is obliged to make sure you can do your job safely. This can mean allowing you to do your job from home, or giving you a new role which can be done remotely. If your employer refuses either of these options, and you do not feel safe going into work you should take advice. Employmentsolicitor.com says that you could be able to argue for a medical suspension on full pay, which will allow you to stay at home.
Living with someone who is vulnerable or especially at risk is not necessarily a reason an employee can refuse to return to work, says Rycroft. “However, you can, as an employee raise a grievance and ask to be listened to and hopefully a compromise may be agreed, such as unpaid leave or using up annual holiday. But if an employer can show that a workplace is safe, the employer may insist on an employee attending.”
What if I have childcare to worry about?
Legally, you can take time off to look after any dependants – these could be children, or older relatives. This time is typically unpaid. If you are currently furloughed and your employer does not have enough work for everyone to go back full-time, they may agree to leave you on furlough so you can continue to earn 80% of your normal pay.
What information should they give me in advance?
Rycroft says there is no law saying that employers should provide information before you return, but the government guidance to employers recommends that they do. He says this information – written or verbal – should cover how they are making your workplace safe in light of the pandemic. So you should be told what is happening to ensure social distancing and hygiene. “This will allow employees to understand how their health and safety at work is being addressed.
Can I refuse to go back?
Yes, if you believe there is a real danger to going to work. “If an employee refuses to return to the workplace due to the employee reasonably believing imminent and serious danger and is then dismissed for that reason the employee could, depending on the circumstances, have a claim for unfair dismissal,” Gingell says.
“The requirement that the employee has to believe that there is imminent and serious danger, does limit the right.”
Otherwise, you cannot refuse. “If someone refuses to attend work without a valid reason, it could result in disciplinary action,” says Acas. But you may be able to make other arrangements with your employer – perhaps you can use holiday or take unpaid leave, or if you have concerns about something like travelling at peak time, they may be willing to accommodate different shifts. Your employer does not have to agree to this, but it is worth asking.
What if I am worried when I see my workplace?
Rycroft says that under section 100 of the Employment Rights Act 1996 employees may leave a place of work where there is an imminent health and safety danger. So if, for example, you return to find social distancing is impossible, you could argue that this is a reason to leave your workplace.
But in the first instance you should try to resolve the issue with your boss. Gingell says: “Employers ought to to listen to the concerns of individuals and be sympathetic and understanding.”
If you do not get anywhere with this, you should take advice. If you are in a union, it should have a helpline you can call if there is no rep to speak to on site. Acas is another port of call, as is Citizens Advice.
“If the employer has breached the implied obligation to provide a safe working environment and/or trust and confidence an employee could, again, depending on the circumstances, resign swiftly as a result and claim constructive unfair dismissal,” says Gingell. But he says you should get advice before taking this action.
“Another option for employees to consider is contactIng the Health and Safety Executive, which enforces health and safety legislation,” he says.
Some people may be concerned about returning to work during the coronavirus crisis. Photograph: Matthew Horwood/Getty Images
As the lockdown restrictions begin to be eased across the UK, more workers are being asked to return to the workplace.
The government has said that employees should only be asked to go back if they cannot do their job from home, so if you can, your employer should not be asking you to travel in to work.
If you do need to go to your workplace, your employer is obliged to make sure you will be safe there. Employment lawyer Matt Gingell says: “Employers have a general duty to ensure, as far as reasonably practicable, the health, safety and welfare of all of their employees.”
Here’s a guide to your rights if your employer wants you back in the workplace.
As the lockdown restrictions begin to be eased across the UK, more workers are being asked to return to the workplace.
The government has said that employees should only be asked to go back if they cannot do their job from home, so if you can, your employer should not be asking you to travel in to work.
If you do need to go to your workplace, your employer is obliged to make sure you will be safe there. Employment lawyer Matt Gingell says: “Employers have a general duty to ensure, as far as reasonably practicable, the health, safety and welfare of all of their employees.”
Here’s a guide to your rights if your employer wants you back in the workplace.
How much notice should I be given that I have to return?
“If employees are unable to work from home, employers can ask employees to return to work and, technically, no notice is required,” says Gingell.
Solicitor and consumer law expert Gary Rycroft says there is no notice period written into law “but giving at least 48 hours’ notice should allow either side to have discussions and air any concerns or even official ‘grievances’”.
The advisory group Acas says employers need to check if there are any arrangements in place with unions or similar about notice. It advises: “Employees and workers should be ready to return to work at short notice, but employers should be flexible where possible.”
So while your employer could ask you to return straight away, a good employer would understand if there were things you needed to put in place first, and give you chance to do so.
What if I was furloughed?
When you were furloughed your employer should have outlined what would happen when it wanted you to go back to work, and this may have a clause saying that you have to return as soon as you are asked.
“The termination of the furlough agreement and when an employee will be expected to return to work will depend on the provisions of the agreement,” says Gingell. Again, though, even if there is no notice period, a good employer should realise that you may need some time to prepare.
If you have been furloughed under the government’s job retention scheme, your employer can’t ask you to go in and do ad hoc days, or work part-time. They would need to take you off furlough and renegotiate your contract with you.
Can they ask me to go back in part-time?
Not, currently, if you have been furloughed and they are using the government scheme to pay you. It only allows companies to furlough people for all of their normal hours, and bans them from asking you to do any work while you are off.
But if your company has not claimed government money to cover your wages, it can ask you to resume work part-time. Make sure you understand the terms of the request – your employer cannot adjust your contract without your permission, so if it is asking you to change your hours you should get advice.
Can they ask me to take a pay cut?
“The law here is the same as it would be if an employer made the same request in the normal course of an employee’s employment. Reducing hours and/or pay are deemed to be such fundamental changes to an employee’s terms and conditions that the employee concerned should be consulted and then agree in writing,” says Rycroft.
He points out that for some employers “this may be the only economically viable option”, and the alternative, if people refuse, could be redundancies. To make more than 20 people redundant there will need to be collective consultation.
What if I am in a vulnerable group or live with someone who is?
No special rules have been put in place to protect people in these groups who are asked to go into work but some already exist – if you are disabled or pregnant, for example, your employer has extra obligations.
Rycroft says some employees may be able to argue that it will be discriminatory to force them to attend work outside the home. “It is all a question of degrees, in terms of how the employer can show that they have listened to legitimate concerns and made reasonable adjustments,” he says.
If you are pregnant your employer is obliged to make sure you can do your job safely. This can mean allowing you to do your job from home, or giving you a new role which can be done remotely. If your employer refuses either of these options, and you do not feel safe going into work you should take advice. Employmentsolicitor.com says that you could be able to argue for a medical suspension on full pay, which will allow you to stay at home.
Living with someone who is vulnerable or especially at risk is not necessarily a reason an employee can refuse to return to work, says Rycroft. “However, you can, as an employee raise a grievance and ask to be listened to and hopefully a compromise may be agreed, such as unpaid leave or using up annual holiday. But if an employer can show that a workplace is safe, the employer may insist on an employee attending.”
What if I have childcare to worry about?
Legally, you can take time off to look after any dependants – these could be children, or older relatives. This time is typically unpaid. If you are currently furloughed and your employer does not have enough work for everyone to go back full-time, they may agree to leave you on furlough so you can continue to earn 80% of your normal pay.
What information should they give me in advance?
Rycroft says there is no law saying that employers should provide information before you return, but the government guidance to employers recommends that they do. He says this information – written or verbal – should cover how they are making your workplace safe in light of the pandemic. So you should be told what is happening to ensure social distancing and hygiene. “This will allow employees to understand how their health and safety at work is being addressed.
Can I refuse to go back?
Yes, if you believe there is a real danger to going to work. “If an employee refuses to return to the workplace due to the employee reasonably believing imminent and serious danger and is then dismissed for that reason the employee could, depending on the circumstances, have a claim for unfair dismissal,” Gingell says.
“The requirement that the employee has to believe that there is imminent and serious danger, does limit the right.”
Otherwise, you cannot refuse. “If someone refuses to attend work without a valid reason, it could result in disciplinary action,” says Acas. But you may be able to make other arrangements with your employer – perhaps you can use holiday or take unpaid leave, or if you have concerns about something like travelling at peak time, they may be willing to accommodate different shifts. Your employer does not have to agree to this, but it is worth asking.
What if I am worried when I see my workplace?
Rycroft says that under section 100 of the Employment Rights Act 1996 employees may leave a place of work where there is an imminent health and safety danger. So if, for example, you return to find social distancing is impossible, you could argue that this is a reason to leave your workplace.
But in the first instance you should try to resolve the issue with your boss. Gingell says: “Employers ought to to listen to the concerns of individuals and be sympathetic and understanding.”
If you do not get anywhere with this, you should take advice. If you are in a union, it should have a helpline you can call if there is no rep to speak to on site. Acas is another port of call, as is Citizens Advice.
“If the employer has breached the implied obligation to provide a safe working environment and/or trust and confidence an employee could, again, depending on the circumstances, resign swiftly as a result and claim constructive unfair dismissal,” says Gingell. But he says you should get advice before taking this action.
“Another option for employees to consider is contactIng the Health and Safety Executive, which enforces health and safety legislation,” he says.
Thursday 7 May 2020
Why The Lives of the Poor are not worth saving!
A STUDY has been doing the rounds since early April which argues that in poor countries the price of a lockdown is larger than the benefits to be gained from it. The lead author of the paper is an economist of Bangladeshi extraction at Yale, who has plenty of experience working in developing countries and is no stranger to the lay of the land here. Khurram Husain in The Dawn
I first came across the study when it was being circulated in mid-April by people from industry, particularly those who were busy lobbying the government for easing the lockdown restrictions. It was subsequently cited in a few opinion pieces published in newspapers, and most recently was invoked by Planning Minister Asad Umar in his televised talk with the press in which he presented a bevy of arguments in support of easing the lockdown.
It is useful to examine this study carefully, because doing so gives us an idea of how (some) economists approach questions of pressing and urgent public importance, and the limitations of the tools that they use.
The study in question is called The Benefits and Costs of Social Distancing in Rich and Poor Countries, and it is authored by Zachary Barnett-Howell and Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak, both highly credentialled and published economists at Yale. It begins by asking whether “shuttering the economy for weeks or months and mass unemployment are reasonable costs to pay?” in return for “flattening the curve” of Covid-19 cases. In order to answer their own question, the authors have to first render both the costs and benefits of a lockdown into a comparable unit. The economic costs are measured in dollars, whereas the health benefits of a lockdown are measured in lives saved. So the question arises: how to compare these two quantities — lives and money — with each other?
To do so, the authors deploy a widely used model in the economics literature called the Value of Statistical Life model. What VSL does, quite literally, is tell us the dollar value of human life in different contexts. It was used originally in more limited contexts to help policymakers with complex judgements in cases where a particular policy imposed an economic cost in return for a vague health benefit. One example might be setting air quality standards.
But with the passage of time, the VSL model began to be used in contexts far more complicated and more pressing than any in the past. One example is climate change, where a number of economists from prestigious universities have used the model to argue that the benefits from the mitigation efforts to curb carbon emissions that scientists are calling for are not worth the economic costs that they will impose. Simply put, they argued that the likelihood of climate change turning out to be a catastrophic event was small, and making massive investments in foregone output today to avert an event that was probabilistically miniscule was not worth the cost.
The VSL at stake did not justify the massive investments required to curb greenhouse gas emissions to a two per cent increase by century end. This debate was sparked in 2006 when the Stern Review, put out by the eminent UK economist and public servant Nicholas Stern, argued that such an investment was now a matter of existential importance for mankind to make. Those who opposed him either took issue with his projections of the economic losses that climate change would impose, or invoked the VSL model to argue that the foregone economic output was larger than what was purportedly being saved.
It took 16-year-old Greta Thunberg to cut through the Gordian technicalities into which the ensuing conversation fell. “People are suffering, people are dying, entire ecosystems are collapsing,” she exclaimed in her famous address to the UN in September 2019. “We are in the beginning of a mass extinction, and all you can talk about is money and fairy tales of eternal economic growth. How dare you!”
Today, the economists are back, armed with their VSL model, telling us that the dollar value of the lives saved as a result of the lockdown are worth less than the foregone output in developing countries, and they specifically mention Pakistan as one example.
For the US, for example, they say 1.76 million lives will be saved through aggressive interventions, and put the total value of these lives at $7.9 trillion. This easily justifies a $2tr stimulus along with whatever economic losses result from a closure of the economy.
It is worth asking, they argue, “whether similar mitigation and suppression strategies are equally valuable in low- and middle-income countries”. When they compute the VSL for countries like Pakistan and Nigeria, they find that the amount is so low that it makes little difference to have a suppression strategy. “In comparison to US losses, the dollar costs of uncontrolled Covid-19 in large countries such as Pakistan or Nigeria look miniscule.”
So they’re basically telling us that we are investing precious foregone economic output to save lives that are not worth saving. Among the reasons why the Covid-19 loss is lower for a country like Pakistan is the “higher base VSL” in the US.
They don’t give the dollar figure, but in a graphic they show that the “total VSL lost” for the US ranges from $25tr to just under $1tr depending on the severity of the suppression measures. For Pakistan, Bangladesh and Nigeria, their model shows the total VSL lost to be near zero across the range.
Economists have a hard time speaking plain English, especially when they are attaching dollar values to human lives. It is worth asking this pair to explain in plain English how the base VSL is higher in the US. And the irony is that this argument is being used to justify an easing of the lockdown in the name of the daily wagers themselves, the very people whose lives are found to be not worth saving!
I first came across the study when it was being circulated in mid-April by people from industry, particularly those who were busy lobbying the government for easing the lockdown restrictions. It was subsequently cited in a few opinion pieces published in newspapers, and most recently was invoked by Planning Minister Asad Umar in his televised talk with the press in which he presented a bevy of arguments in support of easing the lockdown.
It is useful to examine this study carefully, because doing so gives us an idea of how (some) economists approach questions of pressing and urgent public importance, and the limitations of the tools that they use.
The study in question is called The Benefits and Costs of Social Distancing in Rich and Poor Countries, and it is authored by Zachary Barnett-Howell and Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak, both highly credentialled and published economists at Yale. It begins by asking whether “shuttering the economy for weeks or months and mass unemployment are reasonable costs to pay?” in return for “flattening the curve” of Covid-19 cases. In order to answer their own question, the authors have to first render both the costs and benefits of a lockdown into a comparable unit. The economic costs are measured in dollars, whereas the health benefits of a lockdown are measured in lives saved. So the question arises: how to compare these two quantities — lives and money — with each other?
To do so, the authors deploy a widely used model in the economics literature called the Value of Statistical Life model. What VSL does, quite literally, is tell us the dollar value of human life in different contexts. It was used originally in more limited contexts to help policymakers with complex judgements in cases where a particular policy imposed an economic cost in return for a vague health benefit. One example might be setting air quality standards.
But with the passage of time, the VSL model began to be used in contexts far more complicated and more pressing than any in the past. One example is climate change, where a number of economists from prestigious universities have used the model to argue that the benefits from the mitigation efforts to curb carbon emissions that scientists are calling for are not worth the economic costs that they will impose. Simply put, they argued that the likelihood of climate change turning out to be a catastrophic event was small, and making massive investments in foregone output today to avert an event that was probabilistically miniscule was not worth the cost.
The VSL at stake did not justify the massive investments required to curb greenhouse gas emissions to a two per cent increase by century end. This debate was sparked in 2006 when the Stern Review, put out by the eminent UK economist and public servant Nicholas Stern, argued that such an investment was now a matter of existential importance for mankind to make. Those who opposed him either took issue with his projections of the economic losses that climate change would impose, or invoked the VSL model to argue that the foregone economic output was larger than what was purportedly being saved.
It took 16-year-old Greta Thunberg to cut through the Gordian technicalities into which the ensuing conversation fell. “People are suffering, people are dying, entire ecosystems are collapsing,” she exclaimed in her famous address to the UN in September 2019. “We are in the beginning of a mass extinction, and all you can talk about is money and fairy tales of eternal economic growth. How dare you!”
Today, the economists are back, armed with their VSL model, telling us that the dollar value of the lives saved as a result of the lockdown are worth less than the foregone output in developing countries, and they specifically mention Pakistan as one example.
For the US, for example, they say 1.76 million lives will be saved through aggressive interventions, and put the total value of these lives at $7.9 trillion. This easily justifies a $2tr stimulus along with whatever economic losses result from a closure of the economy.
It is worth asking, they argue, “whether similar mitigation and suppression strategies are equally valuable in low- and middle-income countries”. When they compute the VSL for countries like Pakistan and Nigeria, they find that the amount is so low that it makes little difference to have a suppression strategy. “In comparison to US losses, the dollar costs of uncontrolled Covid-19 in large countries such as Pakistan or Nigeria look miniscule.”
So they’re basically telling us that we are investing precious foregone economic output to save lives that are not worth saving. Among the reasons why the Covid-19 loss is lower for a country like Pakistan is the “higher base VSL” in the US.
They don’t give the dollar figure, but in a graphic they show that the “total VSL lost” for the US ranges from $25tr to just under $1tr depending on the severity of the suppression measures. For Pakistan, Bangladesh and Nigeria, their model shows the total VSL lost to be near zero across the range.
Economists have a hard time speaking plain English, especially when they are attaching dollar values to human lives. It is worth asking this pair to explain in plain English how the base VSL is higher in the US. And the irony is that this argument is being used to justify an easing of the lockdown in the name of the daily wagers themselves, the very people whose lives are found to be not worth saving!
Friday 17 April 2020
Only a monumental effort of political imagination can end lockdown
The methods – whether it’s mass testing or contact-tracing – matter less than the huge shift in thinking that is required writes Jonathan Freedland in The Guardian
Illustration: Matt Kenyon
Sometimes you’re just asking the wrong question. On news programmes and at daily briefings, politicians across the world face versions of the same query again and again: when will the lockdown end? But that’s the wrong question.
Imagine a family has escaped a rampaging bear in the woods, seeking refuge in a log cabin. After sheltering there for days and weeks, they’re desperate to know when they can come out. But they wouldn’t simply be asking “When?” They would be asking “When will it be safe?” which is a different and tougher question, one whose answer would depend on several other questions: has the bear been tamed? If it hasn’t, do we have the weapons to destroy it or at least protect ourselves against it? And are those protections strong enough that we won’t have to rush back inside the cabin the moment we’ve ventured out?
We should be clear on one thing. Impatience to see an end to this mass, global quarantine is understandable. It’s not just boredom or lack of stamina that prompts it. There are people struggling to put food on the table; there are people whose mental health is faltering; there are people for whom a day stuck at home is a day stuck with a domestic abuser. For them lockdown is a jail sentence and they need it to end.
So of course it makes sense to long for an exit strategy. But it has to begin with an understanding of what lockdown is and what it is not. It’s tempting to see it as a solution: everyone stays at home, we “flatten the curve” and then, slowly and gradually, we lift the restrictions and return to normal. But that’s not how it is. Instead, lockdown is merely the crudest, bluntest instrument we could reach for when the coronavirus first struck. Its primary objective was to keep the number of people infected sufficiently low that the health service could cope. Judged by that standard, preventing, say, the NHS in Britain being overwhelmed, it has succeeded.
But essential though it was and is, lockdown could only ever be a first step. It enjoys remarkable support – still backed by 91% of Britons, according to a YouGov poll – but it was always going to be dropped the moment a better option became available. The ideal would be a vaccine, equivalent to removing the bear’s claws and teeth, but that, we are warned, is 18 months away at best. So what’s the other route out of hiding?
Read the expert plans, and they all come back to one thing. Sure, social distancing will have to endure, in one form or other, but the key will be the one identified by the World Health Organization at the start: testing, testing, testing.
And yet here, too, there is a misconception, and it is one of scale. So far, testing has been limited to those with symptoms and in hospital. But the Nobel laureate Paul Romer – admittedly his prize was for economics rather than epidemiology – has got a lot of attention for a plan that argues that for the economy, and human life, to return to anything like normality, testing will need to be conducted for millions of people, all the time. He imagines health workers being tested at the start of a shift; the same would go for care workers, pharmacists, police officers and bus drivers. You might add teachers and restaurant workers. Romer wouldn’t bother testing people who already have symptoms: they should be presumed positive and immediately self-isolate. It’s the “asymptomatic spreaders” you need to identify, stopping them in their tracks. The logic underpinning the plan is clear: there will be no point in reopening shops, pubs and restaurants if people feel too scared to visit them. As virologist Prof Nicolas Locker puts it, “You can’t lift the lockdown as long as you are not testing massively.”
Do the maths and the numbers are colossal: Romer estimates some 22m tests would be necessary every day in the US alone, the equivalent of testing every American once every two weeks. Consider that there’s still no sign that Matt Hancock will reach his goal of 100,000 tests a day in the UK, and you realise how many orders of magnitude stand between where we are now and where we would need to be.
The obstacles are huge and obvious, though Romer reckons he has answers for all of them. Shortage of swabs? Move to saliva tests instead. Shortage of the key chemicals known as “reagents”? The test kits that rely on them are not the only option. The sheer numbers of tests that would have to be produced? The world’s manufacturers could do it; it just requires the political will. Which, given that our lives depend on it, should be there.
If that seems daunting, there is another approach. It would still require testing – though not on the same scale – followed by contact tracing: finding all those who’d been in close proximity to someone who’d tested positive and isolating them. “Test, trace, isolate” also has logic on its side, but it, too, takes lots of money and people. It’s thought one contact-tracer is required for every four cases of infection.
That means using the hiatus of lockdown to recruit and train people now in the mechanics of contact tracing. With no leadership from the top – on Thursday Donald Trump effectively announced that the buck stops with the 50 states – the likes of Massachusetts are already assembling their own squads of contact-tracers. San Francisco is doing the same, deploying a combination of librarians and medical students. The UK government could follow their lead immediately, putting to work some of the thousands of people currently at home and itching to help. Tech can play a role, too: note this week’s announcement that Apple and Google will join forces to see if they can produce the app that will make tracing easier and faster, though the threat to privacy of such surveillance is obvious.
What specific methods are deployed matter less than the bigger shift that is required, which is one of imagination. Governments need to realise that what’s coming is not a decision about easing this or that rule of social distancing, but rather a massive political, industrial and collective drive unseen since the last war. It may well mean repurposing factories to mass-produce testing kits. At the very least, it should mean a dedicated cabinet minister for testing.
This demands a huge shift by the UK government, which wasn’t even testing people coming out of hospital and going into social care until this week. But nothing less will be enough. It’s not enough to flatten the curve; we have to get ahead of it. It’s true that we cannot stay in lockdown for ever. But we cannot leave until it’s safe – and that requires a monumental effort, starting right now.
Sometimes you’re just asking the wrong question. On news programmes and at daily briefings, politicians across the world face versions of the same query again and again: when will the lockdown end? But that’s the wrong question.
Imagine a family has escaped a rampaging bear in the woods, seeking refuge in a log cabin. After sheltering there for days and weeks, they’re desperate to know when they can come out. But they wouldn’t simply be asking “When?” They would be asking “When will it be safe?” which is a different and tougher question, one whose answer would depend on several other questions: has the bear been tamed? If it hasn’t, do we have the weapons to destroy it or at least protect ourselves against it? And are those protections strong enough that we won’t have to rush back inside the cabin the moment we’ve ventured out?
We should be clear on one thing. Impatience to see an end to this mass, global quarantine is understandable. It’s not just boredom or lack of stamina that prompts it. There are people struggling to put food on the table; there are people whose mental health is faltering; there are people for whom a day stuck at home is a day stuck with a domestic abuser. For them lockdown is a jail sentence and they need it to end.
So of course it makes sense to long for an exit strategy. But it has to begin with an understanding of what lockdown is and what it is not. It’s tempting to see it as a solution: everyone stays at home, we “flatten the curve” and then, slowly and gradually, we lift the restrictions and return to normal. But that’s not how it is. Instead, lockdown is merely the crudest, bluntest instrument we could reach for when the coronavirus first struck. Its primary objective was to keep the number of people infected sufficiently low that the health service could cope. Judged by that standard, preventing, say, the NHS in Britain being overwhelmed, it has succeeded.
But essential though it was and is, lockdown could only ever be a first step. It enjoys remarkable support – still backed by 91% of Britons, according to a YouGov poll – but it was always going to be dropped the moment a better option became available. The ideal would be a vaccine, equivalent to removing the bear’s claws and teeth, but that, we are warned, is 18 months away at best. So what’s the other route out of hiding?
Read the expert plans, and they all come back to one thing. Sure, social distancing will have to endure, in one form or other, but the key will be the one identified by the World Health Organization at the start: testing, testing, testing.
And yet here, too, there is a misconception, and it is one of scale. So far, testing has been limited to those with symptoms and in hospital. But the Nobel laureate Paul Romer – admittedly his prize was for economics rather than epidemiology – has got a lot of attention for a plan that argues that for the economy, and human life, to return to anything like normality, testing will need to be conducted for millions of people, all the time. He imagines health workers being tested at the start of a shift; the same would go for care workers, pharmacists, police officers and bus drivers. You might add teachers and restaurant workers. Romer wouldn’t bother testing people who already have symptoms: they should be presumed positive and immediately self-isolate. It’s the “asymptomatic spreaders” you need to identify, stopping them in their tracks. The logic underpinning the plan is clear: there will be no point in reopening shops, pubs and restaurants if people feel too scared to visit them. As virologist Prof Nicolas Locker puts it, “You can’t lift the lockdown as long as you are not testing massively.”
Do the maths and the numbers are colossal: Romer estimates some 22m tests would be necessary every day in the US alone, the equivalent of testing every American once every two weeks. Consider that there’s still no sign that Matt Hancock will reach his goal of 100,000 tests a day in the UK, and you realise how many orders of magnitude stand between where we are now and where we would need to be.
The obstacles are huge and obvious, though Romer reckons he has answers for all of them. Shortage of swabs? Move to saliva tests instead. Shortage of the key chemicals known as “reagents”? The test kits that rely on them are not the only option. The sheer numbers of tests that would have to be produced? The world’s manufacturers could do it; it just requires the political will. Which, given that our lives depend on it, should be there.
If that seems daunting, there is another approach. It would still require testing – though not on the same scale – followed by contact tracing: finding all those who’d been in close proximity to someone who’d tested positive and isolating them. “Test, trace, isolate” also has logic on its side, but it, too, takes lots of money and people. It’s thought one contact-tracer is required for every four cases of infection.
That means using the hiatus of lockdown to recruit and train people now in the mechanics of contact tracing. With no leadership from the top – on Thursday Donald Trump effectively announced that the buck stops with the 50 states – the likes of Massachusetts are already assembling their own squads of contact-tracers. San Francisco is doing the same, deploying a combination of librarians and medical students. The UK government could follow their lead immediately, putting to work some of the thousands of people currently at home and itching to help. Tech can play a role, too: note this week’s announcement that Apple and Google will join forces to see if they can produce the app that will make tracing easier and faster, though the threat to privacy of such surveillance is obvious.
What specific methods are deployed matter less than the bigger shift that is required, which is one of imagination. Governments need to realise that what’s coming is not a decision about easing this or that rule of social distancing, but rather a massive political, industrial and collective drive unseen since the last war. It may well mean repurposing factories to mass-produce testing kits. At the very least, it should mean a dedicated cabinet minister for testing.
This demands a huge shift by the UK government, which wasn’t even testing people coming out of hospital and going into social care until this week. But nothing less will be enough. It’s not enough to flatten the curve; we have to get ahead of it. It’s true that we cannot stay in lockdown for ever. But we cannot leave until it’s safe – and that requires a monumental effort, starting right now.
Wednesday 15 April 2020
Regulatory Capture? Insurance Regulator rules in Favour of Insurance Industry
City regulator will not intervene over businesses ineligible for payouts writes Kalyeena Makortoff in The Guardian
Small and medium-sized businesses fear they will not be able to survive the economic impact of the coronavirus lockdown. Photograph: James Veysey/Rex/Shutterstock
Most UK businesses will not be eligible for insurance payouts over the Covid-19 lockdown, the City watchdog has warned, adding that it was not prepared to intervene on their behalf.
In an open letter to insurance chief executives on Wednesday, the Financial Conduct Authority said it found that most claimants on business interruption policies did not have the right coverage to warrant a payout during a pandemic.
“Based on our conversations with the industry to date, our estimate is that most policies have basic cover, do not cover pandemics and therefore would have no obligation to pay out in relation to the Covid-19 pandemic,” the FCA’s interim chief executive, Christopher Woolard, said.
“While this may be disappointing for the policyholder we see no reasonable grounds to intervene in such circumstances.”
The move is likely to anger small and medium-sized business owners who fear they will not be able to survive the economic impact of the coronavirus outbreak.
Typical business interruption policies pay up to £100,000 to cover the cost of keeping a company running if it is forced to shut for reasons beyond its control, such as flooding or fires.
However, while large insurers such as Hiscox sold policies before the lockdown that promised to pay out if businesses were forced to shut because of a notifiable disease, business owners say their claims have been denied because the policies do not specifically cover pandemics. A group of brokers and loss adjusters are planning legal action against some of Britain’s largest insurance companies.
The FCA said some small businesses – that earn less than £6.5m in revenues and employ fewer than 50 employees – can still take claims worth up to £355,000 to the Financial Ombudsman Service, which could result in faster decisions than if they were taken through the courts.
However, in a warning shot at the wider financial sector, the watchdog announced that it was also launching a new small business unit that would keep an eye on how smaller firms are treated by financial services during the outbreak.
The FCA also said insurers should be acting quickly to get money to businesses who have legitimate and undisputed claims, and should give partial payments where only part of the claim is under review.
Most UK businesses will not be eligible for insurance payouts over the Covid-19 lockdown, the City watchdog has warned, adding that it was not prepared to intervene on their behalf.
In an open letter to insurance chief executives on Wednesday, the Financial Conduct Authority said it found that most claimants on business interruption policies did not have the right coverage to warrant a payout during a pandemic.
“Based on our conversations with the industry to date, our estimate is that most policies have basic cover, do not cover pandemics and therefore would have no obligation to pay out in relation to the Covid-19 pandemic,” the FCA’s interim chief executive, Christopher Woolard, said.
“While this may be disappointing for the policyholder we see no reasonable grounds to intervene in such circumstances.”
The move is likely to anger small and medium-sized business owners who fear they will not be able to survive the economic impact of the coronavirus outbreak.
Typical business interruption policies pay up to £100,000 to cover the cost of keeping a company running if it is forced to shut for reasons beyond its control, such as flooding or fires.
However, while large insurers such as Hiscox sold policies before the lockdown that promised to pay out if businesses were forced to shut because of a notifiable disease, business owners say their claims have been denied because the policies do not specifically cover pandemics. A group of brokers and loss adjusters are planning legal action against some of Britain’s largest insurance companies.
The FCA said some small businesses – that earn less than £6.5m in revenues and employ fewer than 50 employees – can still take claims worth up to £355,000 to the Financial Ombudsman Service, which could result in faster decisions than if they were taken through the courts.
However, in a warning shot at the wider financial sector, the watchdog announced that it was also launching a new small business unit that would keep an eye on how smaller firms are treated by financial services during the outbreak.
The FCA also said insurers should be acting quickly to get money to businesses who have legitimate and undisputed claims, and should give partial payments where only part of the claim is under review.
Saturday 28 March 2020
A letter to the UK from Italy: this is what we know about your future
Francesca Melandri in The Guardian tell us what to expect during a lockdown
I am writing to you from Italy, which means I am writing from your future. We are now where you will be in a few days. The epidemic’s charts show us all entwined in a parallel dance.
We are but a few steps ahead of you in the path of time, just like Wuhan was a few weeks ahead of us. We watch you as you behave just as we did. You hold the same arguments we did until a short time ago, between those who still say “it’s only a flu, why all the fuss?” and those who have already understood.
As we watch you from here, from your future, we know that many of you, as you were told to lock yourselves up into your homes, quoted Orwell, some even Hobbes. But soon you’ll be too busy for that.
First of all, you’ll eat. Not just because it will be one of the few last things that you can still do.
You’ll find dozens of social networking groups with tutorials on how to spend your free time in fruitful ways. You will join them all, then ignore them completely after a few days.
You’ll pull apocalyptic literature out of your bookshelves, but will soon find you don’t really feel like reading any of it.
You’ll eat again. You will not sleep well. You will ask yourselves what is happening to democracy.
You’ll have an unstoppable online social life – on Messenger, WhatsApp, Skype, Zoom…
You will miss your adult children like you never have before; the realisation that you have no idea when you will ever see them again will hit you like a punch in the chest.
Old resentments and falling-outs will seem irrelevant. You will call people you had sworn never to talk to ever again, so as to ask them: “How are you doing?” Many women will be beaten in their homes.
You will wonder what is happening to all those who can’t stay home because they don’t have one. You will feel vulnerable when going out shopping in the deserted streets, especially if you are a woman. You will ask yourselves if this is how societies collapse. Does it really happen so fast? You’ll block out these thoughts and when you get back home you’ll eat again.
You will put on weight. You’ll look for online fitness training.
You’ll laugh. You’ll laugh a lot. You’ll flaunt a gallows humour you never had before. Even people who’ve always taken everything dead seriously will contemplate the absurdity of life, of the universe and of it all.
You will make appointments in the supermarket queues with your friends and lovers, so as to briefly see them in person, all the while abiding by the social distancing rules.
You will count all the things you do not need.
The true nature of the people around you will be revealed with total clarity. You will have confirmations and surprises.
Literati who had been omnipresent in the news will disappear, their opinions suddenly irrelevant; some will take refuge in rationalisations which will be so totally lacking in empathy that people will stop listening to them. People whom you had overlooked, instead, will turn out to be reassuring, generous, reliable, pragmatic and clairvoyant.
Those who invite you to see all this mess as an opportunity for planetary renewal will help you to put things in a larger perspective. You will also find them terribly annoying: nice, the planet is breathing better because of the halved CO2 emissions, but how will you pay your bills next month?
You will not understand if witnessing the birth of a new world is more a grandiose or a miserable affair.
You will play music from your windows and lawns. When you saw us singing opera from our balconies, you thought “ah, those Italians”. But we know you will sing uplifting songs to each other too. And when you blast I Will Survive from your windows, we’ll watch you and nod just like the people of Wuhan, who sung from their windows in February, nodded while watching us.
Many of you will fall asleep vowing that the very first thing you’ll do as soon as lockdown is over is file for divorce.
Many children will be conceived.
Your children will be schooled online. They’ll be horrible nuisances; they’ll give you joy.
Elderly people will disobey you like rowdy teenagers: you’ll have to fight with them in order to forbid them from going out, to get infected and die.
You will try not to think about the lonely deaths inside the ICU.
You’ll want to cover with rose petals all medical workers’ steps.
You will be told that society is united in a communal effort, that you are all in the same boat. It will be true. This experience will change for good how you perceive yourself as an individual part of a larger whole.
Class, however, will make all the difference. Being locked up in a house with a pretty garden or in an overcrowded housing project will not be the same. Nor is being able to keep on working from home or seeing your job disappear. That boat in which you’ll be sailing in order to defeat the epidemic will not look the same to everyone nor is it actually the same for everyone: it never was.
At some point, you will realise it’s tough. You will be afraid. You will share your fear with your dear ones, or you will keep it to yourselves so as not to burden them with it too.
You will eat again.
We’re in Italy, and this is what we know about your future. But it’s just small-scale fortune-telling. We are very low-key seers.
If we turn our gaze to the more distant future, the future which is unknown both to you and to us too, we can only tell you this: when all of this is over, the world won’t be the same.
I am writing to you from Italy, which means I am writing from your future. We are now where you will be in a few days. The epidemic’s charts show us all entwined in a parallel dance.
We are but a few steps ahead of you in the path of time, just like Wuhan was a few weeks ahead of us. We watch you as you behave just as we did. You hold the same arguments we did until a short time ago, between those who still say “it’s only a flu, why all the fuss?” and those who have already understood.
As we watch you from here, from your future, we know that many of you, as you were told to lock yourselves up into your homes, quoted Orwell, some even Hobbes. But soon you’ll be too busy for that.
First of all, you’ll eat. Not just because it will be one of the few last things that you can still do.
You’ll find dozens of social networking groups with tutorials on how to spend your free time in fruitful ways. You will join them all, then ignore them completely after a few days.
You’ll pull apocalyptic literature out of your bookshelves, but will soon find you don’t really feel like reading any of it.
You’ll eat again. You will not sleep well. You will ask yourselves what is happening to democracy.
You’ll have an unstoppable online social life – on Messenger, WhatsApp, Skype, Zoom…
You will miss your adult children like you never have before; the realisation that you have no idea when you will ever see them again will hit you like a punch in the chest.
Old resentments and falling-outs will seem irrelevant. You will call people you had sworn never to talk to ever again, so as to ask them: “How are you doing?” Many women will be beaten in their homes.
You will wonder what is happening to all those who can’t stay home because they don’t have one. You will feel vulnerable when going out shopping in the deserted streets, especially if you are a woman. You will ask yourselves if this is how societies collapse. Does it really happen so fast? You’ll block out these thoughts and when you get back home you’ll eat again.
You will put on weight. You’ll look for online fitness training.
You’ll laugh. You’ll laugh a lot. You’ll flaunt a gallows humour you never had before. Even people who’ve always taken everything dead seriously will contemplate the absurdity of life, of the universe and of it all.
You will make appointments in the supermarket queues with your friends and lovers, so as to briefly see them in person, all the while abiding by the social distancing rules.
You will count all the things you do not need.
The true nature of the people around you will be revealed with total clarity. You will have confirmations and surprises.
Literati who had been omnipresent in the news will disappear, their opinions suddenly irrelevant; some will take refuge in rationalisations which will be so totally lacking in empathy that people will stop listening to them. People whom you had overlooked, instead, will turn out to be reassuring, generous, reliable, pragmatic and clairvoyant.
Those who invite you to see all this mess as an opportunity for planetary renewal will help you to put things in a larger perspective. You will also find them terribly annoying: nice, the planet is breathing better because of the halved CO2 emissions, but how will you pay your bills next month?
You will not understand if witnessing the birth of a new world is more a grandiose or a miserable affair.
You will play music from your windows and lawns. When you saw us singing opera from our balconies, you thought “ah, those Italians”. But we know you will sing uplifting songs to each other too. And when you blast I Will Survive from your windows, we’ll watch you and nod just like the people of Wuhan, who sung from their windows in February, nodded while watching us.
Many of you will fall asleep vowing that the very first thing you’ll do as soon as lockdown is over is file for divorce.
Many children will be conceived.
Your children will be schooled online. They’ll be horrible nuisances; they’ll give you joy.
Elderly people will disobey you like rowdy teenagers: you’ll have to fight with them in order to forbid them from going out, to get infected and die.
You will try not to think about the lonely deaths inside the ICU.
You’ll want to cover with rose petals all medical workers’ steps.
You will be told that society is united in a communal effort, that you are all in the same boat. It will be true. This experience will change for good how you perceive yourself as an individual part of a larger whole.
Class, however, will make all the difference. Being locked up in a house with a pretty garden or in an overcrowded housing project will not be the same. Nor is being able to keep on working from home or seeing your job disappear. That boat in which you’ll be sailing in order to defeat the epidemic will not look the same to everyone nor is it actually the same for everyone: it never was.
At some point, you will realise it’s tough. You will be afraid. You will share your fear with your dear ones, or you will keep it to yourselves so as not to burden them with it too.
You will eat again.
We’re in Italy, and this is what we know about your future. But it’s just small-scale fortune-telling. We are very low-key seers.
If we turn our gaze to the more distant future, the future which is unknown both to you and to us too, we can only tell you this: when all of this is over, the world won’t be the same.
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