It may be it may not be. The virus is out in the wild and everyone will at some point or other have to catch it unless we get a vaccine or herd immunity.
It will only be when we look back that we will discover which countries did well and how the first lockdown, impacted the unavoidable subsequent ones.
All of that may be true but the most damning feature of those dither days isn't the willy nilly attitude to lockdown. It's the utter failure to prepare 1. Testing kits and 2. PPE.
There is nothing, absolutely nothing, by which it is possible to defend this Government's handling. It is Boris' good fortune that he's immensely popular, especially having very nearly taken one for the team.
And, get this, 100,000 passengers are still alighting at Heathrow every week without screening. It's staggering. Absolutely staggering.
Where do you forcible isolate 200,000 passengers?
Equally 100,000 passengers is less than 6% of the average for this time of year.
I think rates of infection vary more with testing rate than disease. In the UK we have a policy against community testing, just inpatients, so the numbers mean very little.
I think that countries that test early, not just with swabs but also blood tests for inflammatory markers, low lymphocytes, and early CT scanning have better outcomes, but just my hunch.
Belatedly vaguely thinking that, living alone, I ought to get hold of an oxygen monitor (I don't have a thermometer, but assume I'll know if I've got a high temperature). Looking on Amazon, there is a gigantic range from about £10 to £250. For example "AFAC Oxygen Saturation Monitor, Pulse Oximeter Fingertip Adult Child Paediatric, Test for Sp02 Blood Concentration, Heart Rate with Batteries and Lanyard" for £25.
I've no idea if that's a useful device, or indeed how to use it usefully to see if I get the virus or am getting through it if not - main advantage would be to measure if it had reached the stage where a 111/999 call was needed.
Any advice?
A thermometer is useful, and only a few quid. I measure my temperature every day before leaving for work.
I got a basic £15 pulse oximeter from Amazon. It is easy to use and gives the same readings as our machines at work. The fancier ones do perfusion index too, but that is icing on the cake.
Does one use a mercury thermometer these days? Or what does one do, please?
Also, any chance of mentioning the make/model of the oximeter? Maybe as a PM?
Mercury thermometers are fine, but no longer sold, I think.
I bought the AGPTEK pulse oximeter, but no longer available. They all look pretty much of a muchness to me. The £26 one looks fine.
The EU's plan was to just go to the market with a big order - that doesn't work when the market is already at capacity, it's better to grab the bits you can get yourself.
There are, as ever, some interesting parallels from WW2.
Socialist Germany went with a top-down state controlled policy, the US with directed free-market. The US method worked much better.
Please sir, please sir, which method did the Soviet Union go with?
taking hand outs from the Capitalists?
Taking the deaths for them as well, would have been a different kettle of fish if they had not been there.
Yes Malc, how altruistic of them to come to our aid like that.
Nice of the communist union bods to you know, get behind the war effort when their mates in Moscow got involved too
Good or bad the crap over here that we won the war single handedly is pretty pathetic. It would have been much different if the Russians had not been doing the hard slog they did, even if they wree doing to help themselves.
I am not a WW2 expert, especially the war in the East, but on the face of it it confuses me why Japan did not invade Russia from the other side. Had that happened, I would think Russia would have been overcome. So good news for all concerned they decided to have a bash at China instead.
The last time the Japanese tussled with Russia in the far East it did not go well for them.
They also had more than enough on their plates as it was.
with all 6 worst-hit covid-19 states having Democrat governors, can anyone explain with facts where the responsibility lies between federal government and state?
Generally everything is the States unless it is specifically delegated to the Feds. Congress tries to stretch this where they can (eg regulation of interstate commerce)
The EU's plan was to just go to the market with a big order - that doesn't work when the market is already at capacity, it's better to grab the bits you can get yourself.
There are, as ever, some interesting parallels from WW2.
Socialist Germany went with a top-down state controlled policy, the US with directed free-market. The US method worked much better.
Please sir, please sir, which method did the Soviet Union go with?
taking hand outs from the Capitalists?
Taking the deaths for them as well, would have been a different kettle of fish if they had not been there.
Yes Malc, how altruistic of them to come to our aid like that.
Nice of the communist union bods to you know, get behind the war effort when their mates in Moscow got involved too
Good or bad the crap over here that we won the war single handedly is pretty pathetic. It would have been much different if the Russians had not been doing the hard slog they did, even if they wree doing to help themselves.
I am not a WW2 expert, especially the war in the East, but on the face of it it confuses me why Japan did not invade Russia from the other side. Had that happened, I would think Russia would have been overcome. So good news for all concerned they decided to have a bash at China instead.
1) Why would they? There was nothing there. Or at least, nothing that could be easily and quickly exploited. China meanwhile had food, minerals and a huge population that could be reduced to slavery.
Even if we overlook the obvious that the Japanese (a) did attack Mongolia (a Soviet ally) in 1939 and got thumped, and had a non-aggression pact (yes, yes, I know) with the USSR.
It may be it may not be. The virus is out in the wild and everyone will at some point or other have to catch it unless we get a vaccine or herd immunity.
It will only be when we look back that we will discover which countries did well and how the first lockdown, impacted the unavoidable subsequent ones.
All of that may be true but the most damning feature of those dither days isn't the willy nilly attitude to lockdown. It's the utter failure to prepare 1. Testing kits and 2. PPE.
There is nothing, absolutely nothing, by which it is possible to defend this Government's handling. It is Boris' good fortune that he's immensely popular, especially having very nearly taken one for the team.
And, get this, 100,000 passengers are still alighting at Heathrow every week without screening. It's staggering. Absolutely staggering.
The EU's plan was to just go to the market with a big order - that doesn't work when the market is already at capacity, it's better to grab the bits you can get yourself.
There are, as ever, some interesting parallels from WW2.
Socialist Germany went with a top-down state controlled policy, the US with directed free-market. The US method worked much better.
Please sir, please sir, which method did the Soviet Union go with?
taking hand outs from the Capitalists?
Taking the deaths for them as well, would have been a different kettle of fish if they had not been there.
Yes Malc, how altruistic of them to come to our aid like that.
Nice of the communist union bods to you know, get behind the war effort when their mates in Moscow got involved too
Good or bad the crap over here that we won the war single handedly is pretty pathetic. It would have been much different if the Russians had not been doing the hard slog they did, even if they wree doing to help themselves.
It was also a shame the Soviets began the war in virtual alliance with the Nazis, helping them to chop up a defenceless Poland in the hope that the German alligator would eat them last.
Like it or not, in 1940 Britain was the last hope for avoiding the complete Nazi domination of Europe, which would have made it almost impossible for the US to liberate it and much more difficult for the Soviets to receive supplies essential to their survival from the Allies. The Battle of Britain was our Marathon, Thermopylae, and Salamis all rolled into one, and since the Greeks are still dining out on those battles two and a half thousand years later, I think we've still got some mileage left in it for us
I said last night I thought Merkel's explanation of the reasons for and issues with lock down was superb and miles in front of anything Raab and Hancock have provided.
The issue of who will follow Merkel is due to be decided next weekend. I'm no expert in internal CDU politics but it seems Armin Laschet is likely to defeat Friedrich Merx though how any successor will follow Merkel remains to be seen.
It was good. But she was given the time and space to develop an argument and explanation.
Our media just isn’t up to standard. Imagine Piers Morgan interrupting her every 3 words.
Quite. I've said for a long time that German media are better because they give the chance to hear both sides of an argument put without interruption - we have got locked into the celebrity interviewer cult, which people watch for fun rather than information. A typical German viewer won't even know or care who the interviewer is, whereas we know Paxman/Humphries/Kuensberg better than we know Ministers.
I once had 20 minutes on R4 to discuss an issue in detail - it was an amazing experience and I never expect to hear, let alone participate in, one again.
Yes it's a shame. Call me a boring old fart but I'd quite like to see Matt Hancock doing something like the old Weekend World programme. A solid hour of quality, steered conversation on testing, PPE, the Nightingale, vaccine prospects, the key metrics for lockdown relaxation etc. Sharp but polite probing from the Brian Walden equivalent (suggest Nick Robinson) and the Health Secretary granted the time to answer properly, without fretting that a word out of place or "off message" will have him burned at the stake.
The EU's plan was to just go to the market with a big order - that doesn't work when the market is already at capacity, it's better to grab the bits you can get yourself.
There are, as ever, some interesting parallels from WW2.
Socialist Germany went with a top-down state controlled policy, the US with directed free-market. The US method worked much better.
Please sir, please sir, which method did the Soviet Union go with?
taking hand outs from the Capitalists?
Taking the deaths for them as well, would have been a different kettle of fish if they had not been there.
Yes Malc, how altruistic of them to come to our aid like that.
Nice of the communist union bods to you know, get behind the war effort when their mates in Moscow got involved too
Good or bad the crap over here that we won the war single handedly is pretty pathetic. It would have been much different if the Russians had not been doing the hard slog they did, even if they wree doing to help themselves.
I am not a WW2 expert, especially the war in the East, but on the face of it it confuses me why Japan did not invade Russia from the other side. Had that happened, I would think Russia would have been overcome. So good news for all concerned they decided to have a bash at China instead.
The Japanese were already having a bash at China (and Korea), from the mid-1930s onwards. They did also fight a nasty little border clash with the Soviets at Khalkin Gol in 1938 but got a very bloody nose. But no idea myself why they didn't ally themselves properly with the Germans.
Well the fact that both States were racist and deemed the other one their inferiors probably didn't help
Blackpool: Imagine everyone who [you] wouldn't want to meet down a dark back-alley put into a single place whilst being completely frazzled out of their minds 24/7 on booze/drugs and you'll get a rough idea.
I went to Bexhill on Sea a few years ago, another faded seaside town. I had the weird feeling that everyone was either <25 and pushing a pram, or >65 with a walking stick.
Perhaps if people start going to these places on holiday, they will stop being dumping grounds for the unwanted?
The response to Coronavirus is the biggest policy mistake by any British government ever in the history of British governments. Lord North can now relax, wherever he is.
I got called hysterical for saying that on here yesterday. Reading what BoE governor Andrew Bailey says, that the economy will take a 35% hit and struggle to recover from that hit, perhaps some might like to dial down the criticism.
Panic reigns. I see one cabinet minister is even briefing journalists that the government never wanted lockdown but the public did so they went with it.
So its the public's fault, its the virus's fault, its....er....Lets see....Donald Trump's fault....its China's fault, it's the data collectors fault, when in fact it is the government's fault
We are utterly at sea. Rudderless, leaderless, with a broken compass giving us false information and drifting towards an economic whirlpool.
Its actually worse than that, I think. I am struggling to find words for how bad it is.
Whether right or wrong or somewhere in between (!) I do commend you for sticking to this line throughout.
I am far more sympathetic to it than the one pushed by others on here that the government is not to be questioned and we should just follow blindly and keep our mouths shut.
Appreciated.
My reasoning is simply this. Misfortunes of one sort have befallen the British people down the centuries, but nobody running the country has even sought to wilfully destroy an enormous part of the economy as a policy response to those misfortunes. No government or king, ever.
If we can look to our own conduct in the past, surely we can look to the conduct of every single country in the world now (with some very limited, jury-out exceptions) and say that we are doing what every government and king is doing now, everywhere?
If you look at the history of the Black Death or the Plague you will see that they shut down, in many cases permanently, a lot more than 35% of the economy. That may have been without government involvement, but there was less government involvement in everything anyway in those days.
I am not saying you are wrong, but you over simplify the problem beyond what it will bear.
In the early 17th century, theatres closed when deaths reached 30 pee week. Between 1603 and 1613 they were closed for six and a half years. There is some weird thought process going on, that in the past, plagues were just dealt with by letting it happen. For starters, anyo e with enough sense and money/property had scarpered off to a country getaway as soon as humanly possible. The difference, obviously, was lack of travel and localised economies that didn’t rely on national supply lines let alone international ones, so it was easier to block it off in certain locations.
It is true that during the Black Death there was a flight to the country due to the belief that one was safer there, but it was an illusion. Rural death rates were as high as in the town, because it was the rats (or more specifically the fleas in colonies of rats) that spread the plague and infestations were just as likely in the countryside.
Peter Frankopan's book The Silk Roads has an excellent chapter on this.
It points out, incidentally, that long term the disease helped to change the social structure and facilitate the growth of economic activity and social mobility in the succeeding period, but it took a while.
I’m a Derbyshire lad, so the story of Eyam was imprinted on my mind at a young age. Thinking specifically about the 1665 outbreak it was concentrated in London but pockets that emerged were kept smaller or, like, Eyam, completely quarantined.
It may be it may not be. The virus is out in the wild and everyone will at some point or other have to catch it unless we get a vaccine or herd immunity.
It will only be when we look back that we will discover which countries did well and how the first lockdown, impacted the unavoidable subsequent ones.
Herd immunity and a future vaccine are hypotheses at this point in time. I mean I hope they're correct too but we shouldn't act as if they are.
The EU's plan was to just go to the market with a big order - that doesn't work when the market is already at capacity, it's better to grab the bits you can get yourself.
There are, as ever, some interesting parallels from WW2.
Socialist Germany went with a top-down state controlled policy, the US with directed free-market. The US method worked much better.
Please sir, please sir, which method did the Soviet Union go with?
taking hand outs from the Capitalists?
Taking the deaths for them as well, would have been a different kettle of fish if they had not been there.
Yes Malc, how altruistic of them to come to our aid like that.
Nice of the communist union bods to you know, get behind the war effort when their mates in Moscow got involved too
Good or bad the crap over here that we won the war single handedly is pretty pathetic. It would have been much different if the Russians had not been doing the hard slog they did, even if they wree doing to help themselves.
I am not a WW2 expert, especially the war in the East, but on the face of it it confuses me why Japan did not invade Russia from the other side. Had that happened, I would think Russia would have been overcome. So good news for all concerned they decided to have a bash at China instead.
The Japanese were already having a bash at China (and Korea), from the mid-1930s onwards. They did also fight a nasty little border clash with the Soviets at Khalkin Gol in 1938 but got a very bloody nose. But no idea myself why they didn't ally themselves properly with the Germans.
It may be it may not be. The virus is out in the wild and everyone will at some point or other have to catch it unless we get a vaccine or herd immunity.
It will only be when we look back that we will discover which countries did well and how the first lockdown, impacted the unavoidable subsequent ones.
All of that may be true but the most damning feature of those dither days isn't the willy nilly attitude to lockdown. It's the utter failure to prepare 1. Testing kits and 2. PPE.
There is nothing, absolutely nothing, by which it is possible to defend this Government's handling. It is Boris' good fortune that he's immensely popular, especially having very nearly taken one for the team.
And, get this, 100,000 passengers are still alighting at Heathrow every week without screening. It's staggering. Absolutely staggering.
Mysticrose, do you think that we are all going to catch it at some point? If not, what gives you such confidence? IMO you are far too optimistic about the health consequences I suspect.
What really gets me is that in the afterglow of Brexit we had THE perfect opportunity to be an island. We could have spotted this - bloody hell if a few people on here can then the Gov't advisors could - and gone into sharp lockdown as ukpaul describes. At the same time we should have gone hell bent on testing and protective equipment, contact tracing and deep cleaning.
We could have done a South Korea. A New Zealand.
Instead it has been an utter shambles. It's great that Boris has pulled through but just look at them all - mingling close to one another, spluttering away. We're the only country in the world whose leader ended up needing Intensive Care treatment.
Blackpool: Imagine everyone who [you] wouldn't want to meet down a dark back-alley put into a single place whilst being completely frazzled out of their minds 24/7 on booze/drugs and you'll get a rough idea.
I went to Bexhill on Sea a few years ago, another faded seaside town. I had the weird feeling that everyone was either <25 and pushing a pram, or >65 with a walking stick.
Perhaps if people start going to these places on holiday, they will stop being dumping grounds for the unwanted?
Plenty of people still go to Blackpool for a holiday. These were the booze/drug frazzled individuals I was referring to. Can't remember much about the locals, except for the B&B landlord who cheated us out of a deposit and a barmaid who didn't know what a gin and tonic was. (This was early 2000s so I wasn't being a trendy hipster twit in asking for one!)
I am not a WW2 expert, especially the war in the East, but on the face of it it confuses me why Japan did not invade Russia from the other side. Had that happened, I would think Russia would have been overcome. So good news for all concerned they decided to have a bash at China instead.
The Russians had given the Japanese a bloody nose three years earlier, seee.g.
and as the main Japanese priority was gaining access to oil and domination of Asia, attacking the Soviet Union as well as the United States looked (and would have been) a dangerous stretching of forces. Attacking America was quite bad enough.
The Soviet ability to bring in fresh troops from the east was undoubtedly very helpful in avoiding the loss of Moscow, but most analysts think that they'd have fought on (possibly without Stalin) even if Moscow had fallen, since the movement of industry and potential for defence in depth had already been initiated. There was no equivalent of the Halifax faction pressing for opening negotiations with Germany when the war was going badly - indeed proposing it would have meant instant execution.
I said last night I thought Merkel's explanation of the reasons for and issues with lock down was superb and miles in front of anything Raab and Hancock have provided.
The issue of who will follow Merkel is due to be decided next weekend. I'm no expert in internal CDU politics but it seems Armin Laschet is likely to defeat Friedrich Merx though how any successor will follow Merkel remains to be seen.
It was good. But she was given the time and space to develop an argument and explanation.
Our media just isn’t up to standard. Imagine Piers Morgan interrupting her every 3 words.
Quite. I've said for a long time that German media are better because they give the chance to hear both sides of an argument put without interruption - we have got locked into the celebrity interviewer cult, which people watch for fun rather than information. A typical German viewer won't even know or care who the interviewer is, whereas we know Paxman/Humphries/Kuensberg better than we know Ministers.
I once had 20 minutes on R4 to discuss an issue in detail - it was an amazing experience and I never expect to hear, let alone participate in, one again.
Yes it's a shame. Call me a boring old fart but I'd quite like to see Matt Hancock doing something like the old Weekend World programme. A solid hour of quality, steered conversation on testing, PPE, the Nightingale, vaccine prospects, the key metrics for lockdown relaxation etc. Sharp but polite probing from the Brian Walden equivalent (suggest Nick Robinson) and the Health Secretary granted the time to answer properly, without fretting that a word out of place or "off message" will have him burned at the stake.
these thickos have nothing other than a few soundbites and fake promises, they are shallow self seeking halfwits.
The EU's plan was to just go to the market with a big order - that doesn't work when the market is already at capacity, it's better to grab the bits you can get yourself.
There are, as ever, some interesting parallels from WW2.
Socialist Germany went with a top-down state controlled policy, the US with directed free-market. The US method worked much better.
Please sir, please sir, which method did the Soviet Union go with?
taking hand outs from the Capitalists?
Taking the deaths for them as well, would have been a different kettle of fish if they had not been there.
Yes Malc, how altruistic of them to come to our aid like that.
Nice of the communist union bods to you know, get behind the war effort when their mates in Moscow got involved too
Good or bad the crap over here that we won the war single handedly is pretty pathetic. It would have been much different if the Russians had not been doing the hard slog they did, even if they wree doing to help themselves.
I am not a WW2 expert, especially the war in the East, but on the face of it it confuses me why Japan did not invade Russia from the other side. Had that happened, I would think Russia would have been overcome. So good news for all concerned they decided to have a bash at China instead.
The last time the Japanese tussled with Russia in the far East it did not go well for them.
They also had more than enough on their plates as it was.
Eh? The Japanese thrashed the Russians in 1905, and is considered by many as a contributory factor to the 1917 revolution.
We had two weeks when people said we needed to lockdown...that is not hindsight..instead we now are probably already the worst in Europe in relation to fatalities....(we are not counting 1000's of care home deaths)...and we are going to be in lockdown longer....
Our economy...being primarily service sector based....is going to be particularly hit..and take longer to recover....
So well done....
And these Tories in power are still chomping at the bit about Brexit negotiations....
I thought T May's Govt was particularly bad...but fuck me....this lot of idiots, ideologues and amateurs are excruciatingly awful....
Coming and reading comments on pbCOM like your inane soundbite is not good for me....
The EU's plan was to just go to the market with a big order - that doesn't work when the market is already at capacity, it's better to grab the bits you can get yourself.
There are, as ever, some interesting parallels from WW2.
Socialist Germany went with a top-down state controlled policy, the US with directed free-market. The US method worked much better.
Please sir, please sir, which method did the Soviet Union go with?
taking hand outs from the Capitalists?
Taking the deaths for them as well, would have been a different kettle of fish if they had not been there.
Yes Malc, how altruistic of them to come to our aid like that.
Nice of the communist union bods to you know, get behind the war effort when their mates in Moscow got involved too
Good or bad the crap over here that we won the war single handedly is pretty pathetic. It would have been much different if the Russians had not been doing the hard slog they did, even if they wree doing to help themselves.
I am not a WW2 expert, especially the war in the East, but on the face of it it confuses me why Japan did not invade Russia from the other side. Had that happened, I would think Russia would have been overcome. So good news for all concerned they decided to have a bash at China instead.
The last time the Japanese tussled with Russia in the far East it did not go well for them.
They also had more than enough on their plates as it was.
Eh? The Japanese thrashed the Russians in 1905, and is considered by many as a contributory factor to the 1917 revolution.
The Russians got the better of the Japanese in 1939.
I said this at the time and I will keep saying it. That fateful week and a half will be looked back on as the choice that condemned the British economy and cost lives in the long run. In time, we will be able to put names to this disaster, the members of SAGE who argued for ‘letting the virus pass through the population’. We could have had a shorter, harsher lockdown and the economy would have been better placed, instead we are facing months longer and the sheer laxity of it will see deaths increase week on week with the r0 being allowed to remain too high.
The problem with this argument is that we were told how well some countries like Singapore who took prompt action were doing. Singapore had 942 new cases today.
I can't help wondering if in the end Government actions won't end up mattering that much. Countries that did well in wave 1 will do worse in wave 2 and so on.
The EU's plan was to just go to the market with a big order - that doesn't work when the market is already at capacity, it's better to grab the bits you can get yourself.
There are, as ever, some interesting parallels from WW2.
Socialist Germany went with a top-down state controlled policy, the US with directed free-market. The US method worked much better.
Please sir, please sir, which method did the Soviet Union go with?
taking hand outs from the Capitalists?
Taking the deaths for them as well, would have been a different kettle of fish if they had not been there.
Yes Malc, how altruistic of them to come to our aid like that.
Nice of the communist union bods to you know, get behind the war effort when their mates in Moscow got involved too
Good or bad the crap over here that we won the war single handedly is pretty pathetic. It would have been much different if the Russians had not been doing the hard slog they did, even if they wree doing to help themselves.
I am not a WW2 expert, especially the war in the East, but on the face of it it confuses me why Japan did not invade Russia from the other side. Had that happened, I would think Russia would have been overcome. So good news for all concerned they decided to have a bash at China instead.
The Japanese were already having a bash at China (and Korea), from the mid-1930s onwards. They did also fight a nasty little border clash with the Soviets at Khalkin Gol in 1938 but got a very bloody nose. But no idea myself why they didn't ally themselves properly with the Germans.
Seriously? How many were on here saying this? It can’t have been just me. For the writer, yes, he didn’t know enough at the time, but those who did were dismissed,
I said this at the time and I will keep saying it. That fateful week and a half will be looked back on as the choice that condemned the British economy and cost lives in the long run. In time, we will be able to put names to this disaster, the members of SAGE who argued for ‘letting the virus pass through the population’. We could have had a shorter, harsher lockdown and the economy would have been better placed, instead we are facing months longer and the sheer laxity of it will see deaths increase week on week with the r0 being allowed to remain too high.
The problem with this argument is that we were told how well some countries like Singapore who took prompt action were doing. Singapore had 942 new cases today.
I can't help wondering if in the end Government actions won't end up mattering that much. Countries that did well in wave 1 will do worse in wave 2 and so on.
I said last night I thought Merkel's explanation of the reasons for and issues with lock down was superb and miles in front of anything Raab and Hancock have provided.
The issue of who will follow Merkel is due to be decided next weekend. I'm no expert in internal CDU politics but it seems Armin Laschet is likely to defeat Friedrich Merx though how any successor will follow Merkel remains to be seen.
It was good. But she was given the time and space to develop an argument and explanation.
Our media just isn’t up to standard. Imagine Piers Morgan interrupting her every 3 words.
Quite. I've said for a long time that German media are better because they give the chance to hear both sides of an argument put without interruption - we have got locked into the celebrity interviewer cult, which people watch for fun rather than information. A typical German viewer won't even know or care who the interviewer is, whereas we know Paxman/Humphries/Kuensberg better than we know Ministers.
I once had 20 minutes on R4 to discuss an issue in detail - it was an amazing experience and I never expect to hear, let alone participate in, one again.
Yes it's a shame. Call me a boring old fart but I'd quite like to see Matt Hancock doing something like the old Weekend World programme. A solid hour of quality, steered conversation on testing, PPE, the Nightingale, vaccine prospects, the key metrics for lockdown relaxation etc. Sharp but polite probing from the Brian Walden equivalent (suggest Nick Robinson) and the Health Secretary granted the time to answer properly, without fretting that a word out of place or "off message" will have him burned at the stake.
Best interviewer I see regularly on TV is Stephen Sackur, who presents a long-form interview programme called Hard Talk on BBC World News. He does his research and lets the interviewee speak.
It may be it may not be. The virus is out in the wild and everyone will at some point or other have to catch it unless we get a vaccine or herd immunity.
It will only be when we look back that we will discover which countries did well and how the first lockdown, impacted the unavoidable subsequent ones.
All of that may be true but the most damning feature of those dither days isn't the willy nilly attitude to lockdown. It's the utter failure to prepare 1. Testing kits and 2. PPE.
There is nothing, absolutely nothing, by which it is possible to defend this Government's handling. It is Boris' good fortune that he's immensely popular, especially having very nearly taken one for the team.
And, get this, 100,000 passengers are still alighting at Heathrow every week without screening. It's staggering. Absolutely staggering.
Where do you forcible isolate 200,000 passengers?
We could shut down commercial air travel.......
If there have been failures in the programme to control the pandemic, surely top of the list is the argument that there has been a total dereliction of duty by governments the world over not to lockdown air travel.
The EU's plan was to just go to the market with a big order - that doesn't work when the market is already at capacity, it's better to grab the bits you can get yourself.
There are, as ever, some interesting parallels from WW2.
Socialist Germany went with a top-down state controlled policy, the US with directed free-market. The US method worked much better.
Please sir, please sir, which method did the Soviet Union go with?
taking hand outs from the Capitalists?
Taking the deaths for them as well, would have been a different kettle of fish if they had not been there.
Yes Malc, how altruistic of them to come to our aid like that.
Nice of the communist union bods to you know, get behind the war effort when their mates in Moscow got involved too
Good or bad the crap over here that we won the war single handedly is pretty pathetic. It would have been much different if the Russians had not been doing the hard slog they did, even if they wree doing to help themselves.
I am not a WW2 expert, especially the war in the East, but on the face of it it confuses me why Japan did not invade Russia from the other side. Had that happened, I would think Russia would have been overcome. So good news for all concerned they decided to have a bash at China instead.
The last time the Japanese tussled with Russia in the far East it did not go well for them.
They also had more than enough on their plates as it was.
Eh? The Japanese thrashed the Russians in 1905, and is considered by many as a contributory factor to the 1917 revolution.
I have just come back from my legally permitted exercise walk (in the People's Republic of Lambeth). Seemed to me that traffic was busier than last Saturday, pedestrian traffic busier than a normal Saturday! Lots of cyclists and joggers, and groups of people spread out over narrow pavements. I cut short my walk.
I think lockdown is starting to crumble here.
Yesterday afternoon when I went out for a walk the roads to Cannock Chase were all pretty much as normal. Today, rather less so, but it was pissing it down and only 8am.
The lockdown is being rigorously obeyed down here in Surrey - I ventured out for a walk a couple of times in my residential suburb and met virtually nobody - not on the street, not in their front gardens, 3-4 cars passing in half an hour. Anecdotally (chatting to people online) even people who were going out for exercise have stopped - "Why risk it?" is the phrase you hear all the time.
It may be it may not be. The virus is out in the wild and everyone will at some point or other have to catch it unless we get a vaccine or herd immunity.
It will only be when we look back that we will discover which countries did well and how the first lockdown, impacted the unavoidable subsequent ones.
All of that may be true but the most damning feature of those dither days isn't the willy nilly attitude to lockdown. It's the utter failure to prepare 1. Testing kits and 2. PPE.
There is nothing, absolutely nothing, by which it is possible to defend this Government's handling. It is Boris' good fortune that he's immensely popular, especially having very nearly taken one for the team.
And, get this, 100,000 passengers are still alighting at Heathrow every week without screening. It's staggering. Absolutely staggering.
Where do you forcible isolate 200,000 passengers?
We could shut down commercial air travel.......
If there have been failures in the programme to control the pandemic, surely top of the list is the argument that there has been a total dereliction of duty by governments the world over not to lockdown air travel.
I agree - and the aviation industry keeps me in gainful employment
The EU's plan was to just go to the market with a big order - that doesn't work when the market is already at capacity, it's better to grab the bits you can get yourself.
There are, as ever, some interesting parallels from WW2.
Socialist Germany went with a top-down state controlled policy, the US with directed free-market. The US method worked much better.
Please sir, please sir, which method did the Soviet Union go with?
taking hand outs from the Capitalists?
Taking the deaths for them as well, would have been a different kettle of fish if they had not been there.
Yes Malc, how altruistic of them to come to our aid like that.
Nice of the communist union bods to you know, get behind the war effort when their mates in Moscow got involved too
Good or bad the crap over here that we won the war single handedly is pretty pathetic. It would have been much different if the Russians had not been doing the hard slog they did, even if they wree doing to help themselves.
I am not a WW2 expert, especially the war in the East, but on the face of it it confuses me why Japan did not invade Russia from the other side. Had that happened, I would think Russia would have been overcome. So good news for all concerned they decided to have a bash at China instead.
The Japanese were already having a bash at China (and Korea), from the mid-1930s onwards. They did also fight a nasty little border clash with the Soviets at Khalkin Gol in 1938 but got a very bloody nose. But no idea myself why they didn't ally themselves properly with the Germans.
Well the fact that both States were racist and deemed the other one their inferiors probably didn't help
I presume they had had to dial down the racial shame stuff more than a bit for expediency. Especially as they had been opponents in WW1.
I said last night I thought Merkel's explanation of the reasons for and issues with lock down was superb and miles in front of anything Raab and Hancock have provided.
The issue of who will follow Merkel is due to be decided next weekend. I'm no expert in internal CDU politics but it seems Armin Laschet is likely to defeat Friedrich Merx though how any successor will follow Merkel remains to be seen.
It was good. But she was given the time and space to develop an argument and explanation.
Our media just isn’t up to standard. Imagine Piers Morgan interrupting her every 3 words.
Quite. I've said for a long time that German media are better because they give the chance to hear both sides of an argument put without interruption - we have got locked into the celebrity interviewer cult, which people watch for fun rather than information. A typical German viewer won't even know or care who the interviewer is, whereas we know Paxman/Humphries/Kuensberg better than we know Ministers.
I once had 20 minutes on R4 to discuss an issue in detail - it was an amazing experience and I never expect to hear, let alone participate in, one again.
Yes it's a shame. Call me a boring old fart but I'd quite like to see Matt Hancock doing something like the old Weekend World programme. A solid hour of quality, steered conversation on testing, PPE, the Nightingale, vaccine prospects, the key metrics for lockdown relaxation etc. Sharp but polite probing from the Brian Walden equivalent (suggest Nick Robinson) and the Health Secretary granted the time to answer properly, without fretting that a word out of place or "off message" will have him burned at the stake.
Best interviewer I see regularly on TV is Stephen Sackur, who presents a long-form interview programme called Hard Talk on BBC World News. He does his research and lets the interviewee speak.
Sackur is superb.....he is a genius...he can maintain a level playing feeling with a nuclear physicist, or a football manager, or African despot....
It may be it may not be. The virus is out in the wild and everyone will at some point or other have to catch it unless we get a vaccine or herd immunity.
It will only be when we look back that we will discover which countries did well and how the first lockdown, impacted the unavoidable subsequent ones.
All of that may be true but the most damning feature of those dither days isn't the willy nilly attitude to lockdown. It's the utter failure to prepare 1. Testing kits and 2. PPE.
There is nothing, absolutely nothing, by which it is possible to defend this Government's handling. It is Boris' good fortune that he's immensely popular, especially having very nearly taken one for the team.
And, get this, 100,000 passengers are still alighting at Heathrow every week without screening. It's staggering. Absolutely staggering.
Where do you forcible isolate 200,000 passengers?
Equally 100,000 passengers is less than 6% of the average for this time of year.
The EU's plan was to just go to the market with a big order - that doesn't work when the market is already at capacity, it's better to grab the bits you can get yourself.
There are, as ever, some interesting parallels from WW2.
Socialist Germany went with a top-down state controlled policy, the US with directed free-market. The US method worked much better.
Please sir, please sir, which method did the Soviet Union go with?
taking hand outs from the Capitalists?
Taking the deaths for them as well, would have been a different kettle of fish if they had not been there.
Yes Malc, how altruistic of them to come to our aid like that.
Nice of the communist union bods to you know, get behind the war effort when their mates in Moscow got involved too
Good or bad the crap over here that we won the war single handedly is pretty pathetic. It would have been much different if the Russians had not been doing the hard slog they did, even if they wree doing to help themselves.
I am not a WW2 expert, especially the war in the East, but on the face of it it confuses me why Japan did not invade Russia from the other side. Had that happened, I would think Russia would have been overcome. So good news for all concerned they decided to have a bash at China instead.
The last time the Japanese tussled with Russia in the far East it did not go well for them.
They also had more than enough on their plates as it was.
Eh? The Japanese thrashed the Russians in 1905, and is considered by many as a contributory factor to the 1917 revolution.
The Russians got the better of the Japanese in 1939.
Soviet rather than Russian, but pretty much a border skirmish that got out of hand, I think the Soviet losses were at least as great as those of the Japanese.
It made Zhukov though, so it probably had a profound effect on later events.
I have just come back from my legally permitted exercise walk (in the People's Republic of Lambeth). Seemed to me that traffic was busier than last Saturday, pedestrian traffic busier than a normal Saturday! Lots of cyclists and joggers, and groups of people spread out over narrow pavements. I cut short my walk.
I think lockdown is starting to crumble here.
Yesterday afternoon when I went out for a walk the roads to Cannock Chase were all pretty much as normal. Today, rather less so, but it was pissing it down and only 8am.
The lockdown is being rigorously obeyed down here in Surrey - I ventured out for a walk a couple of times in my residential suburb and met virtually nobody - not on the street, not in their front gardens, 3-4 cars passing in half an hour. Anecdotally (chatting to people online) even people who were going out for exercise have stopped - "Why risk it?" is the phrase you hear all the time.
Me and the Mrs are in total lockdown. Haven't been out in four weeks.
I would love to be involved in the regeneration of Blackpool one day. It is my long term ambition to work on projects like that. There is regeneration happening there, but it seems to be based mainly on horrid old buildings being pulled down and replaced by slightly less horrid modern ones. Which is a step forward but not likely to result in a return to former glories.
I've been ruminating on an idea for the city that would involve the gradual development of zones based on the world's great cultures/cities. They already have the Eiffel Tower so add to that the Arc de Triomphe, and make it look a bit like the Las Vegas version of Paris. Then do New York, etc. I don't know anyone in the sector so I haven't anyone to share it with at present.
My foundation helped with Blackburn - we start with local museums as they can add as a focal point for a community
That sounds wonderful. If you have a link to any more info about the project, I'd like to read up some time.
We then leveraged that to get Jack Straw and the head of Arts Council England to meet with the museum. Result was the museum was incorporated into the two centre redevelopment plan as a central part rather than being shunted off to one corner
What really gets me is that in the afterglow of Brexit we had THE perfect opportunity to be an island. We could have spotted this - bloody hell if a few people on here can then the Gov't advisors could - and gone into sharp lockdown as ukpaul describes. At the same time we should have gone hell bent on testing and protective equipment, contact tracing and deep cleaning.
We could have done a South Korea. A New Zealand.
Instead it has been an utter shambles. It's great that Boris has pulled through but just look at them all - mingling close to one another, spluttering away. We're the only country in the world whose leader ended up needing Intensive Care treatment.
It has been a shitshow. And still is.
There have been too many ‘we can’t’ arguments. ‘We can’t lockdown too early’, ‘we can’t close the borders’, ‘we can’t keep people inside all day’. We could have done each of them. The weakest and most needy could have been given more complete attention and the rest of us would have had to deny ourselves our so called ‘needs’ instead.
I said last night I thought Merkel's explanation of the reasons for and issues with lock down was superb and miles in front of anything Raab and Hancock have provided.
The issue of who will follow Merkel is due to be decided next weekend. I'm no expert in internal CDU politics but it seems Armin Laschet is likely to defeat Friedrich Merx though how any successor will follow Merkel remains to be seen.
It was good. But she was given the time and space to develop an argument and explanation.
Our media just isn’t up to standard. Imagine Piers Morgan interrupting her every 3 words.
Quite. I've said for a long time that German media are better because they give the chance to hear both sides of an argument put without interruption - we have got locked into the celebrity interviewer cult, which people watch for fun rather than information. A typical German viewer won't even know or care who the interviewer is, whereas we know Paxman/Humphries/Kuensberg better than we know Ministers.
I once had 20 minutes on R4 to discuss an issue in detail - it was an amazing experience and I never expect to hear, let alone participate in, one again.
Yes it's a shame. Call me a boring old fart but I'd quite like to see Matt Hancock doing something like the old Weekend World programme. A solid hour of quality, steered conversation on testing, PPE, the Nightingale, vaccine prospects, the key metrics for lockdown relaxation etc. Sharp but polite probing from the Brian Walden equivalent (suggest Nick Robinson) and the Health Secretary granted the time to answer properly, without fretting that a word out of place or "off message" will have him burned at the stake.
Best interviewer I see regularly on TV is Stephen Sackur, who presents a long-form interview programme called Hard Talk on BBC World News. He does his research and lets the interviewee speak.
Started on the radio with the World Service I think. As the title suggests he can give his interviewees a hard time, though for some reason there never seems to be hard feelings at the end of interviews however gruelling they might be.
Is that an irregular verb? I do logic and reasoning, you do banalities and waffle, he is a Civil Servant at the Department for Education?
As for the rest - it’s a long while since I’ve seen anyone have a meltdown like this over a subject they have so little understanding of. Are you sure Dominic Cummings hasn’t possessed you?
Look, I can't restrict my comments to matters of which I have great knowledge, otherwise it's game over for me. It would be goodbye and god bless.
Anyway. Perfectly satisfactory late night exchange and many thanks for it. All insults recalled to the pavilion.
I have just come back from my legally permitted exercise walk (in the People's Republic of Lambeth). Seemed to me that traffic was busier than last Saturday, pedestrian traffic busier than a normal Saturday! Lots of cyclists and joggers, and groups of people spread out over narrow pavements. I cut short my walk.
I think lockdown is starting to crumble here.
Yesterday afternoon when I went out for a walk the roads to Cannock Chase were all pretty much as normal. Today, rather less so, but it was pissing it down and only 8am.
The lockdown is being rigorously obeyed down here in Surrey - I ventured out for a walk a couple of times in my residential suburb and met virtually nobody - not on the street, not in their front gardens, 3-4 cars passing in half an hour. Anecdotally (chatting to people online) even people who were going out for exercise have stopped - "Why risk it?" is the phrase you hear all the time.
Me and the Mrs are in total lockdown. Haven't been out in four weeks.
Four weeks and two days for me, five weeks for my mum.
What really gets me is that in the afterglow of Brexit we had THE perfect opportunity to be an island. We could have spotted this - bloody hell if a few people on here can then the Gov't advisors could - and gone into sharp lockdown as ukpaul describes. At the same time we should have gone hell bent on testing and protective equipment, contact tracing and deep cleaning.
We could have done a South Korea. A New Zealand.
Instead it has been an utter shambles. It's great that Boris has pulled through but just look at them all - mingling close to one another, spluttering away. We're the only country in the world whose leader ended up needing Intensive Care treatment.
It has been a shitshow. And still is.
There have been too many ‘we can’t’ arguments. ‘We can’t lockdown too early’, ‘we can’t close the borders’, ‘we can’t keep people inside all day’. We could have done each of them. The weakest and most needy could have been given more complete attention and the rest of us would have had to deny ourselves our so called ‘needs’ instead.
Some of "the weakest and most needy" will be driven over the edge by lockdown. Doing it too soon would have been bad policy.
It may be it may not be. The virus is out in the wild and everyone will at some point or other have to catch it unless we get a vaccine or herd immunity.
It will only be when we look back that we will discover which countries did well and how the first lockdown, impacted the unavoidable subsequent ones.
All of that may be true but the most damning feature of those dither days isn't the willy nilly attitude to lockdown. It's the utter failure to prepare 1. Testing kits and 2. PPE.
There is nothing, absolutely nothing, by which it is possible to defend this Government's handling. It is Boris' good fortune that he's immensely popular, especially having very nearly taken one for the team.
And, get this, 100,000 passengers are still alighting at Heathrow every week without screening. It's staggering. Absolutely staggering.
Where do you forcible isolate 200,000 passengers?
In their own homes with "Stay at Home Notices" with heavy fines for those who don't.
And for the few tourists, ask to see their 14 day hotel reservation and deny entry to those who don't have one.
If the lockdown can't push R much below 1, and the virus doesn't imbue immunity on cure, where does that leave us ?
With an unknown virus it is best to assume the most likely scenario. Most viral diseases do result in immunity to the exact specific virus that caused them. HIV is an unusual virus that is an exception. Sometimes a different virus can cause the same syndrome such as a cold or the flu. There are many famous people who have had coronavirus already, but nobody famous has got it twice yet.
Has anyone at all been reported to be freshly ill with a second infection? As opposed to lingering effects of the first time? I don't think so.
The EU's plan was to just go to the market with a big order - that doesn't work when the market is already at capacity, it's better to grab the bits you can get yourself.
There are, as ever, some interesting parallels from WW2.
Socialist Germany went with a top-down state controlled policy, the US with directed free-market. The US method worked much better.
Please sir, please sir, which method did the Soviet Union go with?
taking hand outs from the Capitalists?
Taking the deaths for them as well, would have been a different kettle of fish if they had not been there.
Yes Malc, how altruistic of them to come to our aid like that.
Nice of the communist union bods to you know, get behind the war effort when their mates in Moscow got involved too
Good or bad the crap over here that we won the war single handedly is pretty pathetic. It would have been much different if the Russians had not been doing the hard slog they did, even if they wree doing to help themselves.
I am not a WW2 expert, especially the war in the East, but on the face of it it confuses me why Japan did not invade Russia from the other side. Had that happened, I would think Russia would have been overcome. So good news for all concerned they decided to have a bash at China instead.
The last time the Japanese tussled with Russia in the far East it did not go well for them.
They also had more than enough on their plates as it was.
Eh? The Japanese thrashed the Russians in 1905, and is considered by many as a contributory factor to the 1917 revolution.
The Russians got the better of the Japanese in 1939.
Soviet rather than Russian, but pretty much a border skirmish that got out of hand, I think the Soviet losses were at least as great as those of the Japanese.
It made Zhukov though, so it probably had a profound effect on later events.
The Japanese got mauled and lost all interest in further confrontation with Russia
That's a fairly substantial drop in people in hospital with Covid-19 across GB - from 18711 to 17759 over the last 24h (a little over 5%). The peak was over 20000 so quite a lot down - it's hard to see, as discussed downthread, how this won't feed into the number of hospital deaths over the next few days...
The EU's plan was to just go to the market with a big order - that doesn't work when the market is already at capacity, it's better to grab the bits you can get yourself.
There are, as ever, some interesting parallels from WW2.
Socialist Germany went with a top-down state controlled policy, the US with directed free-market. The US method worked much better.
Please sir, please sir, which method did the Soviet Union go with?
taking hand outs from the Capitalists?
Taking the deaths for them as well, would have been a different kettle of fish if they had not been there.
Yes Malc, how altruistic of them to come to our aid like that.
Nice of the communist union bods to you know, get behind the war effort when their mates in Moscow got involved too
Good or bad the crap over here that we won the war single handedly is pretty pathetic. It would have been much different if the Russians had not been doing the hard slog they did, even if they wree doing to help themselves.
I am not a WW2 expert, especially the war in the East, but on the face of it it confuses me why Japan did not invade Russia from the other side. Had that happened, I would think Russia would have been overcome. So good news for all concerned they decided to have a bash at China instead.
The Japanese were already having a bash at China (and Korea), from the mid-1930s onwards. They did also fight a nasty little border clash with the Soviets at Khalkin Gol in 1938 but got a very bloody nose. But no idea myself why they didn't ally themselves properly with the Germans.
Well the fact that both States were racist and deemed the other one their inferiors probably didn't help
I presume they had had to dial down the racial shame stuff more than a bit for expediency. Especially as they had been opponents in WW1.
I believe both countries had some of their best racial scientists (aka crackpots) coming up with theories as to why there was a racial affinity between Aryans and Ainu.
The EU's plan was to just go to the market with a big order - that doesn't work when the market is already at capacity, it's better to grab the bits you can get yourself.
There are, as ever, some interesting parallels from WW2.
Socialist Germany went with a top-down state controlled policy, the US with directed free-market. The US method worked much better.
Please sir, please sir, which method did the Soviet Union go with?
taking hand outs from the Capitalists?
Taking the deaths for them as well, would have been a different kettle of fish if they had not been there.
Yes Malc, how altruistic of them to come to our aid like that.
Nice of the communist union bods to you know, get behind the war effort when their mates in Moscow got involved too
Good or bad the crap over here that we won the war single handedly is pretty pathetic. It would have been much different if the Russians had not been doing the hard slog they did, even if they wree doing to help themselves.
I am not a WW2 expert, especially the war in the East, but on the face of it it confuses me why Japan did not invade Russia from the other side. Had that happened, I would think Russia would have been overcome. So good news for all concerned they decided to have a bash at China instead.
The last time the Japanese tussled with Russia in the far East it did not go well for them.
They also had more than enough on their plates as it was.
Eh? The Japanese thrashed the Russians in 1905, and is considered by many as a contributory factor to the 1917 revolution.
The Russians got the better of the Japanese in 1939.
Soviet rather than Russian, but pretty much a border skirmish that got out of hand, I think the Soviet losses were at least as great as those of the Japanese.
It made Zhukov though, so it probably had a profound effect on later events.
The Soviet–Japanese border conflicts heavily contributed to the signing of the Soviet-Japanese Neutrality Pact in 1941.
I have just come back from my legally permitted exercise walk (in the People's Republic of Lambeth). Seemed to me that traffic was busier than last Saturday, pedestrian traffic busier than a normal Saturday! Lots of cyclists and joggers, and groups of people spread out over narrow pavements. I cut short my walk.
I think lockdown is starting to crumble here.
Yesterday afternoon when I went out for a walk the roads to Cannock Chase were all pretty much as normal. Today, rather less so, but it was pissing it down and only 8am.
The lockdown is being rigorously obeyed down here in Surrey - I ventured out for a walk a couple of times in my residential suburb and met virtually nobody - not on the street, not in their front gardens, 3-4 cars passing in half an hour. Anecdotally (chatting to people online) even people who were going out for exercise have stopped - "Why risk it?" is the phrase you hear all the time.
Adherence seems to have been good and more or less constant throughout the lockdown up here. Other than at the shops there are few cars and people about, though still some. People still out and about mainly appear to be either exercising or carrying shopping home.
I wouldn't desist from exercise unless forced. It is offered as an exemption for good reason: the risk of catching the thing whilst out doing exercise is so small that it is easily outweighed by the mental and physical health benefits of the exercise itself.
I said this at the time and I will keep saying it. That fateful week and a half will be looked back on as the choice that condemned the British economy and cost lives in the long run. In time, we will be able to put names to this disaster, the members of SAGE who argued for ‘letting the virus pass through the population’. We could have had a shorter, harsher lockdown and the economy would have been better placed, instead we are facing months longer and the sheer laxity of it will see deaths increase week on week with the r0 being allowed to remain too high.
The problem with this argument is that we were told how well some countries like Singapore who took prompt action were doing. Singapore had 942 new cases today.
I can't help wondering if in the end Government actions won't end up mattering that much. Countries that did well in wave 1 will do worse in wave 2 and so on.
They’ve bought themselves weeks of extra time but, fatally, they were thought that containment was going to be enough. Any lockdown only really started on 7th April, way too late. At least they have illustrated to us all how containment is not enough.
I said last night I thought Merkel's explanation of the reasons for and issues with lock down was superb and miles in front of anything Raab and Hancock have provided.
The issue of who will follow Merkel is due to be decided next weekend. I'm no expert in internal CDU politics but it seems Armin Laschet is likely to defeat Friedrich Merx though how any successor will follow Merkel remains to be seen.
It was good. But she was given the time and space to develop an argument and explanation.
Our media just isn’t up to standard. Imagine Piers Morgan interrupting her every 3 words.
Quite. I've said for a long time that German media are better because they give the chance to hear both sides of an argument put without interruption - we have got locked into the celebrity interviewer cult, which people watch for fun rather than information. A typical German viewer won't even know or care who the interviewer is, whereas we know Paxman/Humphries/Kuensberg better than we know Ministers.
I once had 20 minutes on R4 to discuss an issue in detail - it was an amazing experience and I never expect to hear, let alone participate in, one again.
Yes it's a shame. Call me a boring old fart but I'd quite like to see Matt Hancock doing something like the old Weekend World programme. A solid hour of quality, steered conversation on testing, PPE, the Nightingale, vaccine prospects, the key metrics for lockdown relaxation etc. Sharp but polite probing from the Brian Walden equivalent (suggest Nick Robinson) and the Health Secretary granted the time to answer properly, without fretting that a word out of place or "off message" will have him burned at the stake.
these thickos have nothing other than a few soundbites and fake promises, they are shallow self seeking halfwits.
I think some of them could stand up to a "Walden" but most could not. Hancock, I sense would struggle. I used to not rate him at all, then in the early days of this crisis I did a 180 and thought "Mmm, he's coming over very well. I rate him. And I like him." Now I'm in the middle. I find myself still quite liking his manner - he does seem to be busting a gut and caring a great deal - but I'm starting to again rather doubt his ability.
I said this at the time and I will keep saying it. That fateful week and a half will be looked back on as the choice that condemned the British economy and cost lives in the long run. In time, we will be able to put names to this disaster, the members of SAGE who argued for ‘letting the virus pass through the population’. We could have had a shorter, harsher lockdown and the economy would have been better placed, instead we are facing months longer and the sheer laxity of it will see deaths increase week on week with the r0 being allowed to remain too high.
The problem with this argument is that we were told how well some countries like Singapore who took prompt action were doing. Singapore had 942 new cases today.
I can't help wondering if in the end Government actions won't end up mattering that much. Countries that did well in wave 1 will do worse in wave 2 and so on.
Isn't that what the Swedish expert was saying?
Yep. Johan Giesecke. Precisely what he was arguing. Come back in a year he says.
I said this at the time and I will keep saying it. That fateful week and a half will be looked back on as the choice that condemned the British economy and cost lives in the long run. In time, we will be able to put names to this disaster, the members of SAGE who argued for ‘letting the virus pass through the population’. We could have had a shorter, harsher lockdown and the economy would have been better placed, instead we are facing months longer and the sheer laxity of it will see deaths increase week on week with the r0 being allowed to remain too high.
The problem with this argument is that we were told how well some countries like Singapore who took prompt action were doing. Singapore had 942 new cases today.
I can't help wondering if in the end Government actions won't end up mattering that much. Countries that did well in wave 1 will do worse in wave 2 and so on.
Not just Singapore (though somebody may already have referred to this, I've been holed up in bed for a while - more to do with a bad back than anything CV-related): https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-52336388
Yes, it is a plateau as expected from a flatten the curve approach. The Covid Data Wranglers will be desperate to turn this into a precipitous decline on the other side though.
I await their next graphs with eager anticipation.
I said last night I thought Merkel's explanation of the reasons for and issues with lock down was superb and miles in front of anything Raab and Hancock have provided.
The issue of who will follow Merkel is due to be decided next weekend. I'm no expert in internal CDU politics but it seems Armin Laschet is likely to defeat Friedrich Merx though how any successor will follow Merkel remains to be seen.
It was good. But she was given the time and space to develop an argument and explanation.
Our media just isn’t up to standard. Imagine Piers Morgan interrupting her every 3 words.
Quite. I've said for a long time that German media are better because they give the chance to hear both sides of an argument put without interruption - we have got locked into the celebrity interviewer cult, which people watch for fun rather than information. A typical German viewer won't even know or care who the interviewer is, whereas we know Paxman/Humphries/Kuensberg better than we know Ministers.
I once had 20 minutes on R4 to discuss an issue in detail - it was an amazing experience and I never expect to hear, let alone participate in, one again.
Yes it's a shame. Call me a boring old fart but I'd quite like to see Matt Hancock doing something like the old Weekend World programme. A solid hour of quality, steered conversation on testing, PPE, the Nightingale, vaccine prospects, the key metrics for lockdown relaxation etc. Sharp but polite probing from the Brian Walden equivalent (suggest Nick Robinson) and the Health Secretary granted the time to answer properly, without fretting that a word out of place or "off message" will have him burned at the stake.
Best interviewer I see regularly on TV is Stephen Sackur, who presents a long-form interview programme called Hard Talk on BBC World News. He does his research and lets the interviewee speak.
What really gets me is that in the afterglow of Brexit we had THE perfect opportunity to be an island. We could have spotted this - bloody hell if a few people on here can then the Gov't advisors could - and gone into sharp lockdown as ukpaul describes. At the same time we should have gone hell bent on testing and protective equipment, contact tracing and deep cleaning.
We could have done a South Korea. A New Zealand.
Instead it has been an utter shambles. It's great that Boris has pulled through but just look at them all - mingling close to one another, spluttering away. We're the only country in the world whose leader ended up needing Intensive Care treatment.
It has been a shitshow. And still is.
There have been too many ‘we can’t’ arguments. ‘We can’t lockdown too early’, ‘we can’t close the borders’, ‘we can’t keep people inside all day’. We could have done each of them. The weakest and most needy could have been given more complete attention and the rest of us would have had to deny ourselves our so called ‘needs’ instead.
Some of "the weakest and most needy" will be driven over the edge by lockdown. Doing it too soon would have been bad policy.
And not doing it has made them, and everybody else, suffer more. The exponential growth in that week and a half is just terrible to think about.
Is that an irregular verb? I do logic and reasoning, you do banalities and waffle, he is a Civil Servant at the Department for Education?
As for the rest - it’s a long while since I’ve seen anyone have a meltdown like this over a subject they have so little understanding of. Are you sure Dominic Cummings hasn’t possessed you?
Look, I can't restrict my comments to matters of which I have great knowledge, otherwise it's game over for me. It would be goodbye and god bless.
Anyway. Perfectly satisfactory late night exchange and many thanks for it. All insults recalled to the pavilion.
Hard to beat a few insults back and forth, spices up the discourse
I said this at the time and I will keep saying it. That fateful week and a half will be looked back on as the choice that condemned the British economy and cost lives in the long run. In time, we will be able to put names to this disaster, the members of SAGE who argued for ‘letting the virus pass through the population’. We could have had a shorter, harsher lockdown and the economy would have been better placed, instead we are facing months longer and the sheer laxity of it will see deaths increase week on week with the r0 being allowed to remain too high.
The problem with this argument is that we were told how well some countries like Singapore who took prompt action were doing. Singapore had 942 new cases today.
I can't help wondering if in the end Government actions won't end up mattering that much. Countries that did well in wave 1 will do worse in wave 2 and so on.
Isn't that what the Swedish expert was saying?
Yep. Johan Giesecke. Precisely what he was arguing. Come back in a year he says.
yeah, the key words to be added to any analysis are 'so far'
there were vultures circling when ventilators took 4 weeks to be designed from scratch and pass safety tests. 4 weeks!
The EU's plan was to just go to the market with a big order - that doesn't work when the market is already at capacity, it's better to grab the bits you can get yourself.
There are, as ever, some interesting parallels from WW2.
Socialist Germany went with a top-down state controlled policy, the US with directed free-market. The US method worked much better.
Please sir, please sir, which method did the Soviet Union go with?
taking hand outs from the Capitalists?
Taking the deaths for them as well, would have been a different kettle of fish if they had not been there.
Yes Malc, how altruistic of them to come to our aid like that.
Nice of the communist union bods to you know, get behind the war effort when their mates in Moscow got involved too
Good or bad the crap over here that we won the war single handedly is pretty pathetic. It would have been much different if the Russians had not been doing the hard slog they did, even if they wree doing to help themselves.
I am not a WW2 expert, especially the war in the East, but on the face of it it confuses me why Japan did not invade Russia from the other side. Had that happened, I would think Russia would have been overcome. So good news for all concerned they decided to have a bash at China instead.
The Russians had defeated the Japanese in '39 at the culmination of approx 5 years of border skirmishes in Mongolia.
They had no desire to tangle with the Russians again.
I said last night I thought Merkel's explanation of the reasons for and issues with lock down was superb and miles in front of anything Raab and Hancock have provided.
The issue of who will follow Merkel is due to be decided next weekend. I'm no expert in internal CDU politics but it seems Armin Laschet is likely to defeat Friedrich Merx though how any successor will follow Merkel remains to be seen.
It was good. But she was given the time and space to develop an argument and explanation.
Our media just isn’t up to standard. Imagine Piers Morgan interrupting her every 3 words.
Quite. I've said for a long time that German media are better because they give the chance to hear both sides of an argument put without interruption - we have got locked into the celebrity interviewer cult, which people watch for fun rather than information. A typical German viewer won't even know or care who the interviewer is, whereas we know Paxman/Humphries/Kuensberg better than we know Ministers.
I once had 20 minutes on R4 to discuss an issue in detail - it was an amazing experience and I never expect to hear, let alone participate in, one again.
Yes it's a shame. Call me a boring old fart but I'd quite like to see Matt Hancock doing something like the old Weekend World programme. A solid hour of quality, steered conversation on testing, PPE, the Nightingale, vaccine prospects, the key metrics for lockdown relaxation etc. Sharp but polite probing from the Brian Walden equivalent (suggest Nick Robinson) and the Health Secretary granted the time to answer properly, without fretting that a word out of place or "off message" will have him burned at the stake.
Best interviewer I see regularly on TV is Stephen Sackur, who presents a long-form interview programme called Hard Talk on BBC World News. He does his research and lets the interviewee speak.
Agreed - he's brilliant. His Hard Talk with the current President of Sri Lanka, (alleged) war criminal Gotabaya Rajapaksa is one for the ages...
Yes, it is a plateau as expected from a flatten the curve approach. The Covid Data Wranglers will be desperate to turn this into a precipitous decline on the other side though.
I await their next graphs with eager anticipation.
Can probably do it if you fit a ninth-order polynomial.. or something.
Re. the 100,000 unscreened passengers, I'm talking about nada, nothing, zilch. They land, they pass through immigration and enter. No questions. No temperature checks. No isolation. No quarantine.
A pilot friend of mine who is flying all over the world (cargo) cannot believe the UK. Says we are the sloppiest country in the world. And that's nothing to do with politics: he's well to the right.
In answer to the questions, yes it was almost certainly coronavirus. I am not entirely sure of the figures, but somewhere around half of the residents in his care home have died in the last week and a half. The index case was a diagnosed coronavirus patient discharged from hospital into the care home.
My mother was allowed in two days ago in full PPE, but was the only one of the family able to get in. The care home staff themselves have been brilliant, working at considerable risk to themselves. One worked a full extra shift to sit with him through last night, for which I shall always be grateful.
Re. the 100,000 unscreened passengers, I'm talking about nada, nothing, zilch. They land, they pass through immigration and enter. No questions. No temperature checks. No isolation. No quarantine.
A pilot friend of mine who is flying all over the world (cargo) cannot believe the UK. Says we are the sloppiest country in the world. And that's nothing to do with politics: he's well to the right.
I doubt questioning and temperature checks would help at all, that's security theatre. Isolation? Perhaps, but they should already be doing that for the most part anyway.
In answer to the questions, yes it was almost certainly coronavirus. I am not entirely sure of the figures, but somewhere around half of the residents in his care home have died in the last week and a half. The index case was a diagnosed coronavirus patient discharged from hospital into the care home.
My mother was allowed in two days ago in full PPE, but was the only one of the family able to get in. The care home staff themselves have been brilliant, working at considerable risk to themselves. One worked a full extra shift to sit with him through last night, for which I shall always be grateful.
That’s very sad. My mother died unexpectedly before I had the chance to say goodbye (this was four years ago) and it was very difficult working through that emotionally. Best wishes to you all.
Comments
Equally 100,000 passengers is less than 6% of the average for this time of year.
They also had more than enough on their plates as it was.
Even if we overlook the obvious that the Japanese (a) did attack Mongolia (a Soviet ally) in 1939 and got thumped, and had a non-aggression pact (yes, yes, I know) with the USSR.
Like it or not, in 1940 Britain was the last hope for avoiding the complete Nazi domination of Europe, which would have made it almost impossible for the US to liberate it and much more difficult for the Soviets to receive supplies essential to their survival from the Allies. The Battle of Britain was our Marathon, Thermopylae, and Salamis all rolled into one, and since the Greeks are still dining out on those battles two and a half thousand years later, I think we've still got some mileage left in it for us
More seriously, if two weeks in lockdown followed arrival at Heathrow there wouldn't be 100,000 passengers a week.
We could have done a South Korea. A New Zealand.
Instead it has been an utter shambles. It's great that Boris has pulled through but just look at them all - mingling close to one another, spluttering away. We're the only country in the world whose leader ended up needing Intensive Care treatment.
It has been a shitshow. And still is.
An idiot with an agenda
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battles_of_Khalkhin_Gol
and as the main Japanese priority was gaining access to oil and domination of Asia, attacking the Soviet Union as well as the United States looked (and would have been) a dangerous stretching of forces. Attacking America was quite bad enough.
The Soviet ability to bring in fresh troops from the east was undoubtedly very helpful in avoiding the loss of Moscow, but most analysts think that they'd have fought on (possibly without Stalin) even if Moscow had fallen, since the movement of industry and potential for defence in depth had already been initiated. There was no equivalent of the Halifax faction pressing for opening negotiations with Germany when the war was going badly - indeed proposing it would have meant instant execution.
We had two weeks when people said we needed to lockdown...that is not hindsight..instead we now are probably already the worst in Europe in relation to fatalities....(we are not counting 1000's of care home deaths)...and we are going to be in lockdown longer....
Our economy...being primarily service sector based....is going to be particularly hit..and take longer to recover....
So well done....
And these Tories in power are still chomping at the bit about Brexit negotiations....
I thought T May's Govt was particularly bad...but fuck me....this lot of idiots, ideologues and amateurs are excruciatingly awful....
Coming and reading comments on pbCOM like your inane soundbite is not good for me....
I can't help wondering if in the end Government actions won't end up mattering that much. Countries that did well in wave 1 will do worse in wave 2 and so on.
https://www.derbyshiretimes.co.uk/health/coronavirus/coronavirus-claims-more-lives-chesterfield-royal-hospital-including-47-year-old-2539678?amp
It made Zhukov though, so it probably had a profound effect on later events.
This is the museum - effectively what we did was lift its profile with Cotton to Gold
https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/features/cotton-to-gold-the-riveting-new-show-that-mines-the-art-riches-of-industrialists-9983047.html
We then leveraged that to get Jack Straw and the head of Arts Council England to meet with the museum. Result was the museum was incorporated into the two centre redevelopment plan as a central part rather than being shunted off to one corner
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/germany/
Encouraging - potentially big moment.
Look, I can't restrict my comments to matters of which I have great knowledge, otherwise it's game over for me. It would be goodbye and god bless.
Anyway. Perfectly satisfactory late night exchange and many thanks for it. All insults recalled to the pavilion.
And for the few tourists, ask to see their 14 day hotel reservation and deny entry to those who don't have one.
This is neither complicated nor difficult.
My condolences
I wouldn't desist from exercise unless forced. It is offered as an exemption for good reason: the risk of catching the thing whilst out doing exercise is so small that it is easily outweighed by the mental and physical health benefits of the exercise itself.
--AS
https://twitter.com/ElectProject/status/1251524302811418624?s=19
I await their next graphs with eager anticipation.
there were vultures circling when ventilators took 4 weeks to be designed from scratch and pass safety tests. 4 weeks!
They had no desire to tangle with the Russians again.
A pilot friend of mine who is flying all over the world (cargo) cannot believe the UK. Says we are the sloppiest country in the world. And that's nothing to do with politics: he's well to the right.
If there are 400,000 gowns tomorrow and they are the correct long sleeved liquid repellent ones that buys a few more days and is good news.
Lets hope they dont turn out to be the inferior non repellent ones
In answer to the questions, yes it was almost certainly coronavirus. I am not entirely sure of the figures, but somewhere around half of the residents in his care home have died in the last week and a half. The index case was a diagnosed coronavirus patient discharged from hospital into the care home.
My mother was allowed in two days ago in full PPE, but was the only one of the family able to get in.
The care home staff themselves have been brilliant, working at considerable risk to themselves. One worked a full extra shift to sit with him through last night, for which I shall always be grateful.
been arrested by the Derbyshire Police for imaginary lockdown violations.