Exhibition cancellations (not much to do with that anymore!)

[Nearholmer]

8 minutes ago, Ravenser said:

Is this the world's first continuous run exhibition layout???

 

Depends upon definition, I guess, but Thomas Davenport is often credited as building the first electric railway, and that was a model, on a circuit about 30" across in the 1830s  https://ethw.org/Archives:The_Inventions_of_Thomas_Davenport  

 

Since dynamos hadn't really been invented at that stage, he was using primary-cell power. 

 

The MRC were Johnny come latelies, not being founded until 1909/10. 

 

 

Edited September 30, 2020 by Nearholmer

[woodenhead]

32 minutes ago, Ravenser said:

Is this the world's first continuous run exhibition layout???

It is the parent of all trainsets - it even had the single siding in which to put your train.

Edited September 30, 2020 by woodenhead

[Nearholmer]

The "tramcar" and the "wagon" were both powered, and the whole thing was automatic, with a mimic-panel to show which sections were occupied. The control scheme actually wasn't really suitable for most railways (it was very similar to that on the London Post Office Railway forty odd years later), but it had a direct impact on the design of lift (elevator) control systems, which were perfected by Frank Sprague, who also perfected electric multiple unit control - I think he saw this demo train-set in action when he was in London.

 

It was actually a very important demonstration, which had a lot of influence "down stream".

[Nearholmer]

A chink of light at the far end of the long tunnel of HMG poor communication: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-54371943

 

This, or something similar, is the system that should haVe been in place for months, which nearly was (remember Covid Alert Levels?) until somehow fluffed, and which many, many other countries have used cleanly and clearly since the outset. I remember highlighting the Irish version on a thread here way back in March.

 

Two worrIes though: if the thresholds are as shown on the BBC website, they Look too high to me; and, a three level system seems a bit crude, I think other countries use five levels, although 0 is ‘nil virus, nil precautions’, which is mildly pointless.

[PaulRhB]

On 30/09/2020 at 16:14, Ravenser said:

Is this the world's first continuous run exhibition layout???

Depending on scale no  Catch me who can 1808 

http://www.edgehillstation.co.uk/resources/catch-me-who-can/

 

Well it’s a continuous run exhibition layout!  

 

[NeilHB]

The Trent Valley Area Group of the 7mmNGA took the decision at last night's Zoom meeting to cancel our January 2021 open day. We felt that this was the only sensible option given the situation, but hope to be back in January 2022 pandemic pending. 

 

We may even have a new version of the Henmore Dale Light Railway by then...

[john new]

On 17/09/2020 at 20:27, john new said:

The meetings previously expected to be able to run at our Teesside Centre (Coulby Newham, Nr Middlesbrough) this autumn have now also had to be called off. 

 

Our meetings at the Ayrshire & Godalming Centres are currently the only one's still in the active programme.

 

Cancelled - the autumn indoor meetings programmes are now off at Kendal, Kidderminster, Manchester, Middlesbrough (both venues) & Newcastle upon Tyne.

 

 

Sadly I have heard today that our Ayrshire Centre have now also had to cancel their meeting on 12th October after all. Their meetings programme then onwards monthly is also now unable to go ahead. Sadly their meeting programme is therefore now fully cancelled through to at least January.

 

Edited October 3, 2020 by john new

[woodenhead]

Well this is worrying and a sign that some information isn't being readily shared.

Further lockdowns coming, this isn't new but the image below was shared in this article.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-derbyshire-54464470

 

People being told in 'Covid secure' workplaces places to turn off contact tracing.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-54465356

 

What is in the missing 42% of the All Ages? - I would guess Schools (working or being educated), Care Homes as a patient and Hospitals as a patient.

 

Interesting even at the Goverment's new Tier 3, schools will remain open and here we have teachers being told to ignore instructions to self isolate and actively turn off their contract trace app.  My wife is working in schools at present, she is the only one there in PPE as she is NHS, the schools are showing no apparent social distancing so will be a hotbed of transmission.

 

It's like HMG is pointing all the blame at people who socialise, demonising them almost to avoid the real truth - Schools, Hospitals and Care Homes are where the real risk is but they cannot or won't do anything about it.

 

I know of a hospital where a patient was transferred and they did not pass on their Covid positive result during transfer, 16 other people infected as a result.

 

[Ian Morgan]

Basingstoke Exhibition - March 2021

 

Quote

Due to the ongoing COVID-19 situation we all find ourselves in, the committee and trustees have had to make the difficult decision to cancel next year's show.

 

[Nearholmer]

1 hour ago, woodenhead said:

My wife is working in schools at present, she is the only one there in PPE as she is NHS, the schools are showing no apparent social distancing so will be a hotbed of transmission.

I’m amazed/appalled. Our youngest is still at primary school, and our eldest at secondary,  and both are very tight on precautions, with all the staff wearing face visors, carefully enforced “bubbles” (too big for my liking at secondary school, but for clear reasons) etc etc.

 

As an instance, at primary, only in foundation and year one are children allowed to be close enough to the teacher to touch, which the second and third years find a bit upsetting, because they still expect to touch teachers quite often.

 

The secondary school had ‘track and trace’ doing really detailed case follow-up earlier in the week after a teacher tested positive, to get very precise about which pupils had to go into isolation and which didn’t.

 

If you ferret around for details, you will find that the real issue is that nobody knows for certain the degree to which transmission occurs within, and then onward from, schools, but that there are several studies underway in an attempt to find out.

 

The same almost certainly applies to pubs.

 

Things are being done on the balance of probabilities, based on what is known about the mechanisms of transmission, and that seems to be imperfect knowledge even now, and I guess on the balance of societal benefits from keeping different things open, spiced with a bit of understanding of public opinion.

 

It is seriously tough on the people working in the places that get shut-down, seriously tough, and they deserve all the support measures that can be afforded (which in some places they seem not to have been given).
 

1 hour ago, woodenhead said:

here we have teachers being told to ignore instructions to self isolate and actively turn off their contract trace app. 

 

Where is “here”? It must be a flipping scary place to be.

 

 

 

Edited October 8, 2020 by Nearholmer

[andyman7]

3 hours ago, woodenhead said:

 

It's like HMG is pointing all the blame at people who socialise, demonising them almost to avoid the real truth - Schools, Hospitals and Care Homes are where the real risk is but they cannot or won't do anything about it.

 

Cannot. You cannot close hospitals or care homes, and realitically you cannot close schools indefinitely or you are causing much more damage to many more lives than Covid does. Which means that we are all inching towards the inevitable truth that like our ancestors before us this is going to have to be assimilated into the many other risks that life brings. Living in the 21st century we hate to be be told that there is no magic solution, but there isn't - just a series of trade offs. BTW Mrs is a teacher too. There are precautions in place but of course it cannot be a 100% sterile environment.

Edited October 8, 2020 by andyman7

[Roger Sunderland]

I think there is clear evidence that primary school children have a very low incidence of catching Covid and don’t seem to pass it on. There is a clear correlation with age so same doesn’t apply to secondary schools and, most definitely, doesn’t apply to university students.

ive seen from my grandkids how important going to school is. It isn’t about blaming people for socialising but , yes, that’s where the virus is passed on - and it’s the 18 to 30 age groups who are getting it and passing it on. Who thought it was a good idea to get hundreds of thousands of students to travel over the whole country for a piss up? All University degrees could and should have been done on line from home - but then it is  their birthright  and part of that thing called growing up, so who are we to deny them?

[john new]

Mixing is what passes it on so it can be blamed where people are not social distancing, masking etc. Passed our local pub yesterday, looking in I could see people were sitting at the table in compliance yes , BUT shoulder to shoulder round the table not separated at all. We are all at risk while ever people are not abiding the rules. My wife and I keep seeing people with masks on but not covering their noses, wtf! Sorry but I will be social distancing and avoiding on a voluntarily basis many of the non-essential to visit places where people mix and doing that for a long time to come.

[John M Upton]

The local secondary school to me has separate year group bubbles in place but as soon as all 750 or so of them are out of the gate at ten past three they all gather in one big throng filing their way via the Co-Op to the station where they all pack onto trains that then load up even more with mostly unmasked college students (the very dictionary definition of the Great Unwashed) so any reality of bubbles and controls in education is quite frankly just hot air.

[Nearholmer]

This gives a quick idea of what is and isn’t known about transmission by children http://www.imperial.ac.uk/news/203933/studying-coronavirus-transmission-children-could-help/

 

If you go back to the presentation with oodles of graphs that the “chief scientists” gave (with no ministers present) a couple of weeks ago (on iPlayer), you can see that it is among older teenagers and young adults that the infection rate shot-up fastest. Unless all their little bros and sisters passed it to them, without managing to simultaneously pass it to their parents in the older adult groups, seems a tad unlikely, it certainly looked as if the ‘target action’ would need to involve Cutting down mingling in that late-teens/early-twenties group (or maybe putting them all in one place to mingle among themselves, well away from their parents and grandparents).

[woodenhead]

Thanks for the responses, I can see that schools cannot close, nor hospitals nor care homes but what I don't like is the messaging - that the rising infection rates are because people are not following the rule of 6 (which as most MPs will concur was a figure plucked out of nowhere) and because people won't distance in pubs.  To me it demonising an element of the public when they are not the only group where the contamination can come from, they represent about a third of the most infectious groups.

 

A grown up conversation from the Government is what we need, honest assessments and the truth.  Talking about a circuit breaker during the holidays by closing the pubs - is a good idea, but lets be honest, they want to do it in the holidays because then they don't have to shut the schools they will already be shut and it will contain things.

[woodenhead]

3 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

This gives a quick idea of what is and isn’t known about transmission by children http://www.imperial.ac.uk/news/203933/studying-coronavirus-transmission-children-could-help/

 

If you go back to the presentation with oodles of graphs that the “chief scientists” gave (with no ministers present) a couple of weeks ago (on iPlayer), you can see that it is among older teenagers and young adults that the infection rate shot-up fastest. Unless all their little bros and sisters passed it to them, without managing to simultaneously pass it to their parents in the older adult groups, seems a tad unlikely, it certainly looked as if the ‘target action’ would need to involve Cutting down mingling in that late-teens/early-twenties group (or maybe putting them all in one place to mingle among themselves, well away from their parents and grandparents).

Which is in my mind, I wonder how many of those infected at Newcastle University are actually really ill from it?

 

Maybe if we did apply a degree of separation and if us older people kept distance then maybe the infections v hospitalisations ratios may be broken favourably.

[Nearholmer]

11 minutes ago, woodenhead said:

Maybe if we did apply a degree of separation and if us older people kept distance then maybe the infections v hospitalisations ratios may be broken favourably.

Which seems to be some of what the “alternative view” scientists put forward yesterday. Although, what I don’t at all understand is how those scientists envisage the theoretically sound concept of separating the vulnerable from the far-less-vulnerable is supposed to work in practice.

 

Clinically vulnerable people (by age or for other reasons) don’t live lives separate from the rest of humanity, many are mothers or fathers of school-age children, Or grandparents who take a significant role in child-care, or teachers, or nurses, etc etc etc.

 

I’d better Read more of what they said, because they may answer that key question.

[black and decker boy]

1 hour ago, woodenhead said:

Thanks for the responses, I can see that schools cannot close, nor hospitals nor care homes but what I don't like is the messaging - that the rising infection rates are because people are not following the rule of 6 (which as most MPs will concur was a figure plucked out of nowhere) and because people won't distance in pubs.  To me it demonising an element of the public when they are not the only group where the contamination can come from, they represent about a third of the most infectious groups.

 

A grown up conversation from the Government is what we need, honest assessments and the truth.  Talking about a circuit breaker during the holidays by closing the pubs - is a good idea, but lets be honest, they want to do it in the holidays because then they don't have to shut the schools they will already be shut and it will contain things.

Interestingly, the limit of 6 seems to be a popular one, being used in several EU countries now not just UK.

 

The closure or curfew on bars is also popular, again being used in several EU countries and typically, a lot more stringent \ faster to full closure than we are

[Nearholmer]

This "figure plucked out of nowhere" line is an easy point-scorer, it sounds good and smart, but you have to ask yourself what number anyone, scientist, government, person on the Clapham Omnibus, is supposed to pick?

 

We all know that the only way to be 100% certain of stopping the plague spreading would be for us all to go into hermetically-sealed solitary confinement (not very practical), and that to make it spread as fast as possible we should all cram together in one big, poorly ventilated indoor space, with the temperature and humidity of a meat-packing factory (neither desirable nor very practical).

 

So some brave soul has to use their knowledge and judgement to decide where to draw the line: very roughly ('cos that is all it will ever be) what is the largest gathering that can be tolerated without setting-off chains of transmission that run out of control so fast that hospitals are swamped before anything else can be done?

 

Questions like "Why six, why not five, or seven?" (which I have heard asked) betray a lack of deep thought, or an assumption that "scientist" are all-knowing wizards,  by the person asking. 

 

And, the cynic in me says that if you tell everyone to stick to a maximum of six, a fair proportion of people will mis-hear the word 'six' as 'ten' anyway, and that a high proportion of late-teens and early-twenties simply won't hear it at all, because they are too busy trying to impress their mates and the opposite sex to hear anything.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited October 8, 2020 by Nearholmer

[john new]

Six makes sense for the simple reason it is a likely combination that can be understood:-

• 1 couple plus a family of four (grandparents with their family etc.)
• 3 couples/2 x three etc.
• 6 individuals. 

The first of the above is probably all the government really wanted to allow in the first phase of relaxation but allowing the others has crept in. The last one is probably the only contentious one where people get to mingle widely, and perhaps not always with any form of distancing.
 

The issue becomes making it any more complex and (a) people will ignore it/fail to understand it and (b) how can anyone in authority hope to police a gathering other than by group head counts. 
 

Edited October 8, 2020 by john new
Missing word typo

[Nearholmer]

Well, I read the slightly misleading titled* Great Barrington Declaration (https://gbdeclaration.org/) made by those "alternative view" scientists who have concluded that the best way to respond to covid is to protect the vulnerable and allow everyone else to get on with life while building herd-immunity, rather than to use lock-downs.

 

As I feared, it contains no practical detail of how anyone vulnerable, other than care-home residents, can be protected, and seems to use the term 'vulnerable' only in reference to age, eliding past all other causes of vulnerability.

 

It also makes no mention that I can find of the potential long-term impact of non-fatal covid, which seems a serious omission given that some estimates suggest that c10% of survivors of the disease are unfortunate enough to suffer lasting ill-affects.

 

It raises some very important points, but anyone who thinks its "a complete answer to the problem" might want to think again.

 

This is a good, intelligent analysis of it https://www.wired.co.uk/article/great-barrington-declaration-herd-immunity-scientific-divide .

 

*It is only "Great" in the sense that it was signed in a place called "Great Barrington". I bet they were careful not to sign it in Little Anywhere.

Edited October 8, 2020 by Nearholmer

[Andy Hayter]

4 hours ago, woodenhead said:

Well this is worrying and a sign that some information isn't being readily shared.

Further lockdowns coming, this isn't new but the image below was shared in this article.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-derbyshire-54464470

 

People being told in 'Covid secure' workplaces places to turn off contact tracing.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-54465356

 

What is in the missing 42% of the All Ages? - I would guess Schools (working or being educated), Care Homes as a patient and Hospitals as a patient.

 

Interesting even at the Goverment's new Tier 3, schools will remain open and here we have teachers being told to ignore instructions to self isolate and actively turn off their contract trace app.  My wife is working in schools at present, she is the only one there in PPE as she is NHS, the schools are showing no apparent social distancing so will be a hotbed of transmission.

 

It's like HMG is pointing all the blame at people who socialise, demonising them almost to avoid the real truth - Schools, Hospitals and Care Homes are where the real risk is but they cannot or won't do anything about it.

 

I know of a hospital where a patient was transferred and they did not pass on their Covid positive result during transfer, 16 other people infected as a result.

 

Can I suggest that a major contributor to the 42% could well be NFI (No factual information - other interpretations available).

[woodenhead]

21 minutes ago, Andy Hayter said:

Can I suggest that a major contributor to the 42% could well be NFI (No factual information - other interpretations available).

It's a big gap to be an unknown.

[Ravenser]

43 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

Well, I read the slightly misleading titled* Great Barrington Declaration (https://gbdeclaration.org/) made by those "alternative view" scientists who have concluded that the best way to respond to covid is to protect the vulnerable and allow everyone else to get on with life while building herd-immunity, rather than to use lock-downs.

 

As I feared, it contains no practical detail of how anyone vulnerable, other than care-home residents, can be protected, and seems to use the term 'vulnerable' only in reference to age, eliding past all other causes of vulnerability.

 

It also makes no mention that I can find of the potential long-term impact of non-fatal covid, which seems a serious omission given that some estimates suggest that c10% of survivors of the disease are unfortunate enough to suffer lasting ill-affects.

 

It raises some very important points, but anyone who thinks its "a complete answer to the problem" might want to think again.

 

This is a good, intelligent analysis of it https://www.wired.co.uk/article/great-barrington-declaration-herd-immunity-scientific-divide .

 

*It is only "Great" in the sense that it was signed in a place called "Great Barrington". I bet they were careful not to sign it in Little Anywhere.

 

It is also, in my view , aimed in large part at the USA, where most large cities are apparently not reopening their schools , and universities are not allowing students on campus  . I believe it was signed in Massachusetts , where apparently it has been decreed that bars will not reopen until there is a vaccine. I doubt if many will survive to do so.

 

As you say , it's airily vague on how any of this would work in practice. The mortality rate starts to become noticeable at about 55 and worsens substantially beyond that . Apparently 18% of the population are over 65 - not sure what the proportion is over 55. Nor what proportion of the population has "an underlying condition". Someone suggested that in the US it was 50% - which if being fat counts , would be a credible figure.. A "strategy" based on full-on shielding - "do not leave the house for the next 12 months" - for a third of the population or more doesn't seem a viable proposition. How do you stop care workers and hospital staff mixing with the general population?

 

And I'm also concerned about the tendency in some quarters on the internet to think that if you don't end up in a box then it's not a problem. To take an extreme example, very very few people die after a limb is amputated. This doesn't mean that losing a limb is a trivial matter, and we don't need to worry about it...

 

There is some evidence that closing pubs and restaurants has a substantial effect - we were told to avoid them a week before lockdown, and it seems to have had some effect; and they were closed in Leicester and Aberdeen , and cases came right down. We will see what happens in Glasgow and Edinburgh. They are also obvious places where people mingle at close quarters for long periods indoors , often with poor ventilation - which almost certainly will spread the virus.

 

I suspect we may see pubs and restaurants closed in the large cities that are currently seriously affected - not least because those are the places where students mingle with the general population , and it's spreading like wildfire amongst students in Manchester, Newcastle and Nottingham. The proposition that you can let the young do their own thing seperately from the older population is about to be given a practical test

 

In the meantime I think we can now kiss goodbye to any exhibitions before Easter next year, and I strongly suspect that clubs in the most severely affected areas will find they have to stop meeting again.

 

Unless we get lucky, the exhibition circuit will have sustained a near 15 month shutdown; and I suspect it will never be quite the same again. The hobby, on the other hand, will carry on a lot better than most leisure activities

Edited October 8, 2020 by Ravenser