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Labour leader Keir Starmer asks why coronavirus testing has fallen since 30 AprilBoris Johnson says "capacity currently exceeds demand, we’re working on that… the ambition clearly is to get up to 200,000 a day by the end of this month"#PMQs https://t.co/HBfSPbDpCp pic.twitter.com/1W5JYwSgLV
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In terms of the league table of Coronavirus deaths in Europe, Spain, Italy and Belgium all have more deaths per million than the UK
The country will be better for it. The country will be better for having a competent opposition - and long may Labour be a competent opposition for the good of the nation.
I must have missed that one.
There may be a need for greater capacity when we go back to trace, isolate and test. If so, Boris should explain that and further explain that how many tests are done right now is actually rather meaningless.
So just to clarify, that's an ambition rather than a target?
At least one lesson seems to be learned from JFK Hancock.
I don't think I'm on to a winner.
Remember the reason why people flocked to the Tories at GE19 was to stop a Corbyn victory. Now he's out of the way the world has changed
The problem with testing at the moment is that it can only tell you if you currently have the disease in sufficient quantities that it is picked up, not if you once had it or have only just caught it.
https://twitter.com/IpsosMORI/status/1258005751982948352?s=20
I did not watch PMQs but if the bit in the thread header is typical what we are going to get is more coherent and testing questions without any particularly obvious bite. I don't think Boris will be too worried.
https://twitter.com/paulwaugh/status/1257956992435597312
As Leader of The Opposition, John Smith appeared to be forensic in his approach to PMQs, but he was a plodder in comparison to Tony Blair. It remains to be seen if Starmer is able enough to overcome the damage resulting from 4 + years of Corbyn's leadership.
The *only* useful data are going to be excess deaths against a baseline, but these are months away for a lot of countries, no matter how much commentators want them RIGHT NOW.
It was getting Brexit done and a pro Boris vote that won the Tories marginal seats in the North and Midlands in 2019 and an overall majority
And only 53% of German's strongly disagree with the statement they are proud of Germany's role in WWII.
WTF is up with that?
Reporting walking around, gets to train station, fiddles about in pocket, produces mask, puts it on.
Then they go outside a department store, person after person, walks up, fiddles about in their bag or pocket, produces mask puts it on (or has masks around their neck and pull it up), goes in...as soon as they come out, whips masks off (hand grabbing the textile) and puts in pockets.
So if they have touched anything contaminated with coronavirus, they have just put it on their hands and within minutes they are going to be touching their eyes or mouth.
Also, no goggles. All the medical experts have said if this does transmit via touching something contaminated and then touching your mouth, your eyes are exactly the same avenue for infection.
Maybe I am just a freak, but I have proper safety goggles and mask.
Would he win an election tomorrow? Is he polling at Blair 1995 levels? Definitely "no" and "no". But it's a marathon and he's set off at a reasonable pace and is looking fit.:
As Tess and Claudia would say at the end of Strictly - keep digging (that hole).
https://twitter.com/youngvulgarian/status/1258014016846336005?s=20
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8291857/Police-unmask-plague-prankster-teenage-boy.html
Remember that what did for IDS was not public perception -- the Conservative Party did rather well at elections under IDS -- it was the crushing of Tory backbench morale when every week their champion was carried out on his shield.
That is the danger for Boris. Not that the public is entranced by Starmer but that Conservative MPs see the PM lose most weeks and start to flirt with the idea of Rishi Sunak in Number 10.
Boris wasn't crushed at PMQs, far from it, and having just won a crushing election majority its funny to think Boris is going to go any time soon.
I may have tipped Sunak but that's for the long term not this year or soon.
It may be that -
- Capacity is in the wrong place.
- Capacity is not being gatekept.
It's not like England where you can't avoid references to it all the bleeding time.
Obsessed.
I expect there are even a few Britains proud of the Amritsar Massacre and defeating the Easter Rising
To be honest, while the current situation is a pain in the arse, we're doing fine. Not least because the three of them have each other.
However, I've just heard that a friend of my oldest daughter is currently undergoing something of a mental breakdown. She doesn't have sisters to pal up with, and the enforced isolation from playmates has got too much for her to bear.
I understand the reasons for the lockdown. I may question what impact closing schools has on transmission of the virus, and indeed whether the virus can be successfully contained - but presumably those taking the decisions are sufficiently well informed to take probably the right ones. But the impacts - health, as well as economic - of the lockdown don't seem to be getting the attention they deserve.
Meanwhile (while I'm in rant mode) the quality of input they are getting from their school is, well, inconsistent. Some teachers are really going the extra mile for their pupils. Others think that writing 'well done' once a week for each of their 30 children is enough. (The latter rarely raises his standard of teaching to adequate at the best of times.) I fear it's going to be very difficult to get some teachers back to work.
https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps/
"The aim of the EuroMOMO project (European monitoring of excess mortality for public health action) is to operate coordinated timely mortality monitoring and analyses in as many European countries as possible, using a standardized approach to ensure that signals are comparable between countries."
Boris is far more like Blair, a charismatic flashman.
The question is whether Covid and hard Brexit turns out to be Boris' Iraq War?
Of the three apparently above us:
- One (Belgium) is clearly counting numerous deaths in the community which we would ignore based on suspected cause alone and when the comparison is made on currently available comparable figures - hospital deaths alone - it is behind us.
- one (Italy) has a similar methodology based on deaths in all contexts confirmed by testing but has probably attributed more deaths than us to the virus simply because its cumulative testing rate is twice that of ours. It's daily death count is now also far behind ours so we are catching up.
- one (Spain) appears not to be counting all the cases that we are so we are clearly further behind than the stats suggest, although again we are catching up.
The only other country close to our levels (France) has also cast a wider net so we are further ahead of them than the official figures suggest.
Conclusion: On a comparable basis we are currently probably third in the world, and likely to move into second place in the world within a month. And this despite us being well behind the timeline of other countries such that we had a much better opportunity to act effectively to contain the virus.
The patients who just can't shake off Covid-19
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-52548843
Felicity, 49, from London,
"So it was actually in the fifth week of being ill that my partner had to call A&E because I was experiencing such horrific abdominal pains that I was just calling out in just extreme agony."
7 day trend line still linear...
It is telling that by far the best forensic, well-argued, persistent and persuasive inquisitorial performances by an opposition Labour front-bencher were those of Robin Cook before 1997, which left Blair to do the soundbite, big-picture stuff as the party leader. That was a truly effective combination.