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One of the most enjoyable aspects of investigations is listening to miscreants’ excuses for their bad behaviour. The same ones came up regularly, so much so that interviews would have been much quicker if we’d had a poster on the wall of the excuses so they could just have pointed and said: “6” with a bit of “9”. The two most common, usually presented with the passive-aggressive mulishness of schoolboys, were: “Where does it say I can’t do that?” and “Show me where it says that I have to do that.”
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The smart critics of the government, we don't hear from them, right? That must mean that they're being supressed.
Now, idiot critics, like Peter Hitchens, who discredit the whole idea of this being a despotic takeover of democratic government, well we hear from them.
This all actually proves that, instead of Boris Johnson trying to (you know) save lives, this is all just the beginning of a coup that will leave him dictator for life, and us all stripped of our dignity and rights.
Grim grim grim news.
It's an excellent sanity tactic. I know what I know. It's a f-ing awful virus. Nothing, yet, can cure it. There's no vaccine. Only thing to do to stay alive is avoid people. We need to endure months of this.
Ends.
https://www.avonandsomerset.police.uk/report/breach-of-covid-19-restrictions/
We have a trio of fairly similar countries at the top - Spain, then Netherlands and Italy (Netherlands is marching very closely with Italy's per capita rate).
Then a clump of other countries (France, ourselves, Switzerland and Sweden.
Germany below that, and Norway at the very bottom (I included Norway because I wanted an easy comparison between Norway's suppression and Sweden's mitigation strategies).
Now, what happens next! The big question is how we harness new testing regimes / clever social distancing (note: not lockdowns!) / new therapeutics / better understanding of what treatments work to make sure that the next wave of Covid-19 infections can be handled much better.
It will require ingenuity and clever thinking but we can definitely do it!
We need a long, long, lockdown. Sadly the Spanish situation is not clearly showing the right trend.
I'm afraid.
www.ecodibergamo.it/stories/bergamo-citta/coronavirus-the-real-death-tool-4500-victims-in-one-month-in-the-province-of_1347414_11/
A curiosity is why they neglected to add a "once a day" to the exercise restrictions in England. Enforceability? Never seemed to have stopped them before.
Possibly, of course, that's a middle class attitude; other categories of Brits have rarely regarded the police in that light. The kindly 'clip round the ear and tell your Dad' bobby was, I suspect, to many people a fiction.
Who wants to advertise at a time when the shops are closed and even online people are dramatically reining in their spending.
It's not just journalism, there will be a lot fewer people employed in the advertising industry in the next few months time.
Surely a more pressing question is are the tests actually, valid working, reliable tests for this disease..
https://twitter.com/tomhfh/status/1245029539459235843?s=20
Probably a good idea to do some wider testing to get a clearer idea of the spread. I'm not sure what the age specification will be in this context, and I'm not sure whether a nationwide sample base will be practical.
Our authorities have chosen a different approach. They are testing Gangelt, a small municipality in close proximity to Heinsberg, our (chronologically) second cluster. The town and surrounding rural area have population of 12,000. With the help from a polling company (!) 1,000 people have been picked as a representative sample and have been invited to take the test (under German law they cannot be compelled to do so, authorities have to ask for compliance).
The idea seems to be that a local, limited sample size (but only a few miles from a hotspot of infection) will give a more reliable picture of community transmission. Other, similar setups are already in preparation in other Bundesländer.
Point is, probably most of these people were breaking the social distancing requirements imposed on the population to slow the epidemic. I don't want the police to be issuing fines like confetti, but I am in favour of them reminding citizens what their obligations are, in the same way they might talk to an unruly neighbour or break up a spontaneous large gathering of youths. The choice isn't just between heavy-handedness and doing nothing.
There is no way more calculated of bringing a law into disrepute than its rigid enforcement. The police seem determined to demonstrate that.
I recommend reading the whole thing, but what I take away, (yes because it backs up my pre-held belief LOL) is that the privit secter when involved can and will achieve amazing things very quickly. in the US and here the CDC and Public Heath England, wanted a monopoly, on testing and then could not cope.
The NHS is full of lots of wonderful people who are highly skilled, working exceptionally hard and at the moment brave, but the organisation stretcher is rubbish.
https://twitter.com/ChineseEmbinUK/status/1245049100246056962
https://twitter.com/ChineseEmbinUK/status/1245049106508255234
The industry has few friends and its main customers, the elderly, may shun it for good" (£)
https://www.economist.com/business/2020/03/31/the-coronavirus-may-sink-the-cruise-ship-business
But then I have a bit of a bugbear about people treating guidance as law in any case, which even if the guidance is good cannot have the same level of authority behind it. Discussing this with someone today it was noted the police can be a little overenthusiastic in interpreting what has been said rather than written. Not solely their fault, as the header notes, but procedures and rules are important even if difficult times.
Point 4 is interesting though, as legislation often makes reference to having regard to any guidance issued by a secretary of state, so why didn't it state that.
Given the Spanish experience....
It's funny as the few senior police officers I know are very thoughtful and conscientious.
On which topic, for people who like tennis and Fed and have never read it, one of the great sporting essays. "Roger Federer as Religious Experience" -
https://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/20/sports/playmagazine/20federer.html
Nothing to do with Saudi Arabia.
Sorry just binge watched the leaning tower can highly recommend it.
Round here there is virtual unanimous support for their actions though the goats in Llandudno are a bit unruly
Standard belief among police officers who i've met....
The most interesting curve there is the Netherlands. Spain and Italy both famously hit the capacity ceiling and deaths spiralled for a week or two. But I don't remember the Netherlands having the same problem. I though the problem there was following the "herd immunity stratedy" rather than "almost lock down" like most of their European neighbours.
Another "curio" is that France is in the UK group, whereas I though that parts of France were close to capacity.
Make of that what you will.
If people flout guidance they may rightly be shamed for that, but they should follow it because it is felt right to do so, not from an incorrect view of what is legal. There has been confusion on that, I'm not sure I have it all 100%, but that people might support the intention of the police in this emergency that doesn't mean all they have said and done, even if supported, is appropriate.
As far as the police are concerned any law is there to be used as much as they can get away with, whenever they want to use it.
Twas ever thus.
I tend to agree PHE are useless
Am I reading it correctly that the USA is only on Day 10 and is just above where Switzerland (and presumably us) was on Day 10? I'm surprised its that high.
Also what's Day One in your graph?
China as a nation is not to be trusted and if one good thing comes out of this it is hopefully a realignment of the industrialised world to exclude China from essential and sensitive supply chains.
The goats are the only ones with a free pass
The reason they were bought, I would imagine something on the lines of -
(a) the Spanish test problems hadn't come to light when the contract was signed.
(b) If a few million quid gets you a million tests, worth the risk of getting duff tests. You test the tests before you use them....
The section on Michael Gove has been redempted!!!
He travels the fastest who travels alone...'
Public fury will enable harder restrictions than warnings of potential law breaking which may not even be lawbreaking depending on the circumstances.