Coronavirus Sars-CoV-2/Covid-19 Megathread

[Barrister]

The big question for us is whether out-of-custody trials get cancelled again.  Premier Kenney goes on at 4:30 to announced the new restrictions, whatever they might be.

So Kenney announces a Public Health Emergency.  Following new restrictions:

-no indoor social gatherings of any kind, under penalty of law
-Grades 7-12 to move to online learning until after Christmas
-some businesses closed (concert halls, indoor kids playgrounds, all levels of sport)
-most other businesses to run at only 25% capacity
-Churches at max 1/3 capacity
-restaurants to remain open, can only sit with your family group, liquor to stop at 10 and close by 11, no games or entertainment (no pool or other games)

We'll see what they do with criminal trials a bit later.  Last time that did not come from the government but rather the judiciary.  We have taken steps to moderate the risk of criminal trials, but then again so have a lot of other sectors that just got limited or closed down.

[Sheilbh]

I wonder if the legal profession will embrace remote court sessions after Covid.  Based on my somewhat personal experience, a lot of court dates are a tremendously inefficient way to meet for five minutes to schedule the next five minute court date five months from now.

Yeah - there's no going back on this. It's not my area but it's generally been received very positively in the legal press in the UK (I think we've also moved to video conferencing for lots of court hearing).

I think the bigger shift is how much can be done remotely. The area I work in could always have been 100% remote to be honest, but there are some more conservative bits of law that love their paper documents and they've had to adapt. They're not always particularly profitable areas of law firms because they've been areas where there's lots of client pressure on costs so in the UK everyone's wfh at the minute but we've seen firms basically downsize their in-office teams and moving to virtual teams in those areas. It's a bit of a natural development from the freelance lawyers model that most firms have.

But I think the legal profession will be fairly big in embracing changes post-covid.

But the question is... when do we get those vaccines?  Will the US and UK get priority before Canada (or other countries) do?

So the UK government still has the potential to fuck this up. But there was a piece a while ago in the FT about governments making orders for vaccines and, from memory, the UK had the most diversified and largest per capita. A lot of that procurement included a big pre-order as soon as it's approved plus new orders in the next year. I think this is the chart:


Flipside is the UK didn't pre-order any of the Moderna vaccine while the US and Canada went in heavily on that. I doubt we'll be able to get big orders of Moderna for a while given how much has been pre-ordered elsewhere. So our initial stuff will all be Pfizer/AstraZeneca, but hopefully given how those trials have gone all of the other vaccines countries have invested in will start coming online in the course of the next year.

[Sheilbh]

So as we are going to leave national lockdown and move back to a localised tier system in the next week, I saw from a London City Hall reporter that: "City Hall sources think it is 50:50 whether London will go into Tier 2 or 3.... "it is in the balance"".

And I just think this is a joke - it's the same issue again where each local authority apparently has to negotiate which level of lockdown they're in. I get it may occasionally be unfair but I feel like the better approach would be to set out the trigger requirements for going into each tier - being transparent about them and applying them. Instead we will continue with this weird government by numberwang approach

[garbon]

Looks like again government going its own way as SAGE suggested 4 tiers.

[Sheilbh]

Looks like again government going its own way as SAGE suggested 4 tiers.

And Scotland's gone for 5 ranging from Tier 0 () to Tier 4.

The paper's here (by the modellers):
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/937449/S0879_SAGE67_201111_SPI-M-O_Statement_Impact_of_Tier_system_and_other_measures_in_the_UK.pdf

It is quite interesting. And this is the point Chris Whitty made that Tier 3 measures on their own are unlikely to reduce the R rate enough. But no-one's had Tier 3 measures on their own because each local authority has decided or negotiated additional measures. But because of that variance the modellers couldn't actually work out what the impact of Tier 3 is (whereas Tier 1 and 2 are pretty clear). So again I just feel like for the tier system to work it needs to be applied consistently because then it has meaning.

I think it's still all a bit too clever by half and if government are struggling to deliver the basic stuff (and they are) it feels like the clever/ambitious will definitely be beyond them. It reminds me of that risk assessment the scientists do for the government. They publicised and there were going to be five risk levels, each had a reasonably clear meaning. The very first assessment they issued publicly was 1.5

[Sheilbh]

Ooof - UK economic forecasts from the OBR: GDP to shrink by 11.3% this year (the largest fall in 300 years ), but to grow by 5.5% in 2021 and 6.6% in 2022 and we won't return to pre-covid levels until Q4 2022. Meanwhile the UK is borrowing about 19% of GDP this year (or £400 billion) - worth pointing out this is because of the policy response (furlough schemes etc) rather than the actual hit to GDP and that is the right approach - government also expects to spend abother £55 billion on covid measures (including vaccines) next year so it's not just a one year hit. They also project 7.5% unemployment next year or about 2.5 million people - peaking middle of next year.

So a challenging environment

Edit: One other crazy detail. Since March this year the projected spending on debt over the next few years has fallen by £20 billion. Basically the the benefits of lower rates/cost of borrowing far outweighs the fact we've actually massively increased our debt.

[Tamas]

And I just think this is a joke - it's the same issue again where each local authority apparently has to negotiate which level of lockdown they're in. I get it may occasionally be unfair but I feel like the better approach would be to set out the trigger requirements for going into each tier - being transparent about them and applying them. Instead we will continue with this weird government by numberwang approach

Don't be ridiculous

[Sheilbh]

Don't be ridiculous

Fair.

Although as you noted the data's pretty good and I personally find the publication of the scientific papers pretty interesting and fairly transparent - far better than at the start of this:
https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/scientific-evidence-supporting-the-government-response-to-coronavirus-covid-19

[alfred russel]

The big question for us is whether out-of-custody trials get cancelled again.  Premier Kenney goes on at 4:30 to announced the new restrictions, whatever they might be.

So Kenney announces a Public Health Emergency.  Following new restrictions:

-no indoor social gatherings of any kind, under penalty of law
-Grades 7-12 to move to online learning until after Christmas
-some businesses closed (concert halls, indoor kids playgrounds, all levels of sport)
-most other businesses to run at only 25% capacity
-Churches at max 1/3 capacity
-restaurants to remain open, can only sit with your family group, liquor to stop at 10 and close by 11, no games or entertainment (no pool or other games)

We'll see what they do with criminal trials a bit later.  Last time that did not come from the government but rather the judiciary.  We have taken steps to moderate the risk of criminal trials, but then again so have a lot of other sectors that just got limited or closed down.

There seems to be an element of the movie downfall in all of this. The patience of a large portion of the population has worn out and government responses are ineffective at stopping people from getting together.

[Caliga]

Yeah.  I'm sure there will be a colossal spike in the US next week as people will just go on and go to their big Thanksgiving holidays ands screw you to the mean government trying to keep us away from our families.

I think at this point it'll take people being personally impacted for them to care anymore.

[crazy canuck]

The big question for us is whether out-of-custody trials get cancelled again.  Premier Kenney goes on at 4:30 to announced the new restrictions, whatever they might be.

So Kenney announces a Public Health Emergency.  Following new restrictions:

-no indoor social gatherings of any kind, under penalty of law
-Grades 7-12 to move to online learning until after Christmas
-some businesses closed (concert halls, indoor kids playgrounds, all levels of sport)
-most other businesses to run at only 25% capacity
-Churches at max 1/3 capacity
-restaurants to remain open, can only sit with your family group, liquor to stop at 10 and close by 11, no games or entertainment (no pool or other games)

We'll see what they do with criminal trials a bit later.  Last time that did not come from the government but rather the judiciary.  We have taken steps to moderate the risk of criminal trials, but then again so have a lot of other sectors that just got limited or closed down.

There seems to be an element of the movie downfall in all of this. The patience of a large portion of the population has worn out and government responses are ineffective at stopping people from getting together.

In the case of Alberta the government response has been limited and as a result they have , not just the most cases per capita in Canada, but the most cases period.   These measures are being heavily criticized as being too little way too late.  They probably would have worked if implemented a month ago, like most of the other provinces did.  But unlikely to be enough now.

Alberta is a very good example of political ideology getting in the way of good public health policy.

[alfred russel]

Alberta is a very good example of political ideology getting in the way of good public health policy.

Policy is political and shouldn't be reduced to just public health considerations regarding covid.

[Maladict]

I still don't understand why still go to an office? Exposing yourself too so much risk so you can sit infront of a different computer?

A lot of what BB does involves highly confidential information that really should be staying in his secured office area.

My lawyer friend recently told me his office still has a fax machine because one of the courts only accepts communication by fax 

[Syt]

I still don't understand why still go to an office? Exposing yourself too so much risk so you can sit infront of a different computer?

A lot of what BB does involves highly confidential information that really should be staying in his secured office area.

My lawyer friend recently told me his office still has a fax machine because one of the courts only accepts communication by fax 

I think it's still widely used in legal circles for communications that require a timestamp that can't be messed with easily.

[celedhring]

Yeah, fax is used a lot in Spain for legal documents.