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Tony Yates Profile picture
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30 Dec 20, 4 tweets, 1 min read
Baffling incompetence by the govt. they have had a long time to concoct a plan and revealing it will help businesses and workers figure out what they still have to endure.
What can we infer from the absence of a published plan? 1) what they think they can do does not look good and will lead to heavy criticism. 2) there is no plan. 3) there is a plan, but publishing it will deprive them of the tactic of drip feeding for news bumps.
It seems telling to me that we can't most of us feel the cranking up of the gears in local authorities, GP practices and hospitals. The most visible sign of urgency is a @DavidGauke thread about general election staffing models.
[A great thread btw, but notable in its salience, when we should have had weeks of debate and public reflection and refinement of plans like this involving super mobilization].

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More from @t0nyyates

Tony Yates Profile picture
1 Jan
Delaying the 2nd doses of the Pfizer vaccine seems like a poor gamble.
It's hard to calculate the odds, because there is not good data about the performance of the vaccine under the proposed changed regimen.
In this situation, one way to think of it is using the framework of robustness, devised by engineers, stolen by economists and others.
Read 9 tweets
Tony Yates Profile picture
24 Dec 20
This is such a daft paragraph. And it sums up the silliness of Brexit leaning commentary. Brexit will make us poorer. It's the job of reason and good government not to fetishize industrial symbols and immiserate everyone else.
What about manufacturing workers? What about service sector workers? Don't they also 'make up that unit'? The Brexit deal was about making the best of the several lies that its mandate was wrought from.
The lie that there was anything who 'makes up that unit' will end up wanting from the 'sovereignty'; the lie that it we could have the same benefits as the single market; that Brexit would allow us to prosper; that there was even an agreed on thing called Brexit.
Read 5 tweets
Tony Yates Profile picture
19 Dec 20
At each and every point in the pandemic, the policy mistake seems to have been very similar.
Step 1: watch case numbers rise, fail to lockdown because of the perception, or concern about others' perception, of this being a 'cost', of needing to weigh that cost against deaths and disability.
Step 2: watch case numbers rise further. Finally lockdown, by more and for longer than would have otherwise been necessary, because what they knew woud come to pass has come to pass.
Read 12 tweets
Tony Yates Profile picture
19 Dec 20
Lockdowns have obviously done the opposite, which is why the govt has been forced to introduce another one today. A shame that an MP comes out with a clear untruth here.
Steve contradicts himself later, demanding a plan for how vaccines allow a return to normal life. On its own terms, this is a fair ask. But if you thought lockdowns did not work, why would you need a plan that related to vaccine roll outs? You just relax lockdowns right away
If you are going to tell porkies about lockdowns for ideological reasons, then you should at least stick to your story.
Read 10 tweets
Tony Yates Profile picture
16 Dec 20
140k vaccinated in a week sounds good but that's roughly 7.3m a year. Prob need 30% or more of the pop, ie 20m to make a serious dent in the R with no restrictions. So obvs the vaccination program has to step up dramatically to make a difference sooner.
Looking at the Our World in Data case fatality rate by age, data for South Korea shows you have to get down to the 30-39 age group until the rate is similar to that for flu.
About 50 per cent of the UK population is 40 or over. So you need to vaccinate 33 million to get the case fatality rate of covid19 down to that for flu. I think that's right.
Read 8 tweets
Tony Yates Profile picture
12 Dec 20
Amateur economist MMT-converts are very like the religious people I have occasionally met who confidently recite creationism.
Creationism mostly stems from ignorance and insulation from good scientific education. Amateur economist MMT-ism, prevalent in journalism, finance, retired finance, stems from the same ignorance.
Economics rightly does not have the same status as science. But this is more true of the answers. The questions and controversies are rich and interesting. You sound silly barking MMT and revealing your lack of curiosity about all those questions.
Read 9 tweets

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