Strikes me the major news of the day just isn't being highlighted by the media.
The PM has said there will be no zero covid strategy, the disease will be endemic and we will need to live with as we do with flu.
This is a massive development. And very welcome imho. We can finally put out to grass any ideas about keeping lockdown going for months and months in a pointless attempt to get case numbers down towards zero.
Seems to me that this is much more important development than the precise date on which the pub gardens will be open.
Yes, my Trust is making plans for a permanent expansion of infectious disease ICU and respiratory wards. I think that realistic.
I read a sobering article that there have been serious pandemics roughly every three or four years over the last two decades (SARS, MERS, Swine Flu, Zika, Ebola - we have of course been living with AIDS for 40 years now) so the warning signs were there even before this kicked off. It would be niave to think this is the last one. Save maybe for swine flu this was the first beginning in the 21st century that could be described as being truly global and it would be niave to thing it is going to be the last.
Which is why the extent of obsession about it and the OTT measures taken this year is worrying given why would invest in any business that is going to be shut down by government order every few years? The key is to build the NHS capacity and forget lockdowns because nobody is going to invest in business or indeed (more tragically even) in themselves
SARS death toll 812 MERS 866 Zika - Mosquito vector not present in the UK HIV (AIDS) - spread through sexual contact, IV drug use, not getting too close to someone in the pub. Swine flu - 0.3% IFR, R0 of 1.5, 284,000 death/1 billion infections. Covid has a base r0 of at least 3, looks to have an IFR of 1 - 2%, until recently had no vaccine and a 2.5 million death toll minimum and rising. It's far more transmissible and more deadly than swine flu.
The bitterness and bile from a few presumably Labour supporters on here is remarkable.
I think we all acknowledge that there have been some big mistakes in the way the UK handled this pandemic early on. But that we’re now one of the most successful countries on the planet with our vaccine rollout.
Will lefties never be happy with British success?
Welcome to the site, Smithers. I'm delighred things are improving and think it's great that the vaccination strategy has worked out well. I was critical of Johnson for his tone last year, with its flow of false optimism and in particular the fatally ingratiating half-promise to "save Christmas", but I thnk he's doing a good job right now. If only the Government would pay adequate support for inhected people to stay home for two weeks, I'd be broadly satisfied at the moment. And you won't find a more dedicated Labour supporter here than me - I've been a member for exactly 50 years.
None of this, good or bad, will IMO affect long-term voting intentions. Ultimately it's a non-partisan crisis, and we all recognise that both success and failures will happen as we try to work through the issue.
Whoever writes the Guardian leaders has clearly gone raving bonkers (or perhaps I should say even more raving bonkers). He or she seems to be arguing that it's a dereliction of duty that Boris isn't planning, single-handedly, to wipe Covid-19 off the face of the earth:
The man is a FBPE hashtag in (vaguely) human form.
Gaurdian. It’s the only sensible front page tomorrow.
118 days to Freedom screams the telegraph. How many mentioning at least another 30,000 to die under Bojo route to freedom and triumph.
Some of you guys on here are so politically biased you have lost all sense of being able to reason.
550,000 die in the UK every year.
We just have to get used to a greatly elevated death rate this year, and for a few years coming, but increasingly less bad, as vaccines and treatments improve. Syphilis has revisited humanity, reminding us that we are very mortal, but, also, resourceful.
It is a lesson for our entire species
I suspect that 2022 and 2023 will see deaths below normal levels, as we'll have culled the herd somewhat.
Yes, I agree. The total deaths for 2020-2024 will look very like the total deaths for 2015-2019.
Unlikely, if the average years of life lost due to COVID is around or over 10.
--AS
I'm not convinced that stat is accurate.
Yes the median life expectancy from 80 may be 90 but that's median across the country. Different things vary that.
The median life expectancy for an 80 year old moving into a care home is 81, not 90.
This bug targets comorbidities etc so it's entirely possible that while many have lost 10 years, a great many won't have.
It's a well-evidenced statistic, taking comorbidity into account. It's been established by several different researchers in several different countries (and is often more like 12-15 years in other places). I believe there's a Lancet article for the UK but I'm too bleary-eyed to find it just now.
It's true that many won't have lost 10 years, of course, that's merely an average.
--AS
I'd be curious to see a citation for that. Because a fifth of all deaths are from care homes and the median for care homes is to die within a year of entry.
I've seen that stat repeatedly bandied about taking age into account, not comorbidities.
I suspect the distribution is very skewed though. A lot of quite ill very dependent people with limited life expectancy pull the median down, but there will be a long tail of people who make a decision to move into a nice care home (possibly barely a care home, with not very intensive care) and live there for a long time. It would be interesting to see the mean (the mean will be a better measure for total life-years lost).
Example: my great aunt lived 11 years in a 'care home', but the home in fact has a higher dependency section and a part that had services ranging from little more than sheltered accommodation up to a bit more help. I would have thought that she'd have been counted as a care home resident nonetheless (single building and overall it was a care home)
Strikes me the major news of the day just isn't being highlighted by the media.
The PM has said there will be no zero covid strategy, the disease will be endemic and we will need to live with as we do with flu.
This is a massive development. And very welcome imho. We can finally put out to grass any ideas about keeping lockdown going for months and months in a pointless attempt to get case numbers down towards zero.
Seems to me that this is much more important development than the precise date on which the pub gardens will be open.
Yes, my Trust is making plans for a permanent expansion of infectious disease ICU and respiratory wards. I think that realistic.
I read a sobering article that there have been serious pandemics roughly every three or four years over the last two decades (SARS, MERS, Swine Flu, Zika, Ebola - we have of course been living with AIDS for 40 years now) so the warning signs were there even before this kicked off. It would be niave to think this is the last one. Save maybe for swine flu this was the first beginning in the 21st century that could be described as being truly global and it would be niave to thing it is going to be the last.
Which is why the extent of obsession about it and the OTT measures taken this year is worrying given why would invest in any business that is going to be shut down by government order every few years? The key is to build the NHS capacity and forget lockdowns because nobody is going to invest in business or indeed (more tragically even) in themselves
SARS death toll 812 MERS 866 Zika - Mosquito vector not present in the UK HIV (AIDS) - spread through sexual contact, IV drug use, not getting too close to someone in the pub. Swine flu - 0.3% IFR, R0 of 1.5, 284,000 death/1 billion infections. Covid has a base r0 of at least 3, looks to have an IFR of 1 - 2%, until recently had no vaccine and a 2.5 million death toll minimum and rising. It's far more transmissible and more deadly than swine flu.
Is swine flu transmissible before symptoms show? That I think is the really nasty thing about C-19 (although not unique).
Anyway, must go and teach: have a good day everyone.
Which is why the extent of obsession about it and the OTT measures taken this year is worrying given why would invest in any business that is going to be shut down by government order every few years? The key is to build the NHS capacity and forget lockdowns because nobody is going to invest in business or indeed (more tragically even) in themselves
SARS death toll 812 MERS 866 Zika - Mosquito vector not present in the UK HIV (AIDS) - spread through sexual contact, IV drug use, not getting too close to someone in the pub. Swine flu - 0.3% IFR, R0 of 1.5, 284,000 death/1 billion infections. Covid has a base r0 of at least 3, looks to have an IFR of 1 - 2%, until recently had no vaccine and a 2.5 million death toll minimum and rising. It's far more transmissible and more deadly than swine flu.
Not NHS capacity - rather public health capacity (which had been run down for at least two decades prior to the pandemic). With adequate preparation, we could have been similar to Taiwan or S Korea. There's no reason we couldn't perform better should it ever happen again.
That said, I see SAGE advise: "Relaxation of a significant number of restrictions over three months starting from the beginning of April could lead to hospital occupancy higher than the January peak whereas relaxation over nine months would result in a much smaller peak." That does sound as though the 3-month opening may be too fast.
On Starmer and farming, I cannot see him winning in truly rural areas, but it may well work in liminal areas. Remember that he comes from one such area himself, donkey sanctuary and all.
I think the flaw though is that there is little agricultural employment in such areas, and a lot of that is migrant labour, so fishing for votes in a very small pond.
He needs to think more Worcester Woman, the issues in rural areas and smaller urban areas are not just about farming.
This is bang on.
I live in Dorset. There simply isn't the level of rural employment that there used to be; or rather, not in the farming industry.
A move of people from cities to work at home may affect that, surely?
Also, if it is depopulated, a smaller number of people may have an impact.
I remember a series on R4 back in the early 1990s called The Village (later went to TV). About Bentley in Hampshire. One of the episodes that I enjoyed showed something called iirc 'The Bentley Oil Company' which turned out to be a chap doing oil trading from his outbuilding.
As may (perhaps) hobby farmers / market gardeners, depending how many take it up.
A whole Green narrative is about less efficient, more labour intensive farming. I'd view that as being as head-in-the-clouds as most of the Green stuff, but there may be elements of truth there.
It amazes me that you get articles in the glossies all of the time saying things like "Queen decides to hand crown to William" when any rudimentary knowledge of the law would tell you it's not in her gift.
1) I don't read the glossies; and 2) I would be amazed if they ever printed that; because 3) you are right she can't.
Removing Harry from the line of succession requires an Act of Parliament. Neither parliament or government is going anywhere near it.
The stats in the header show people like the idea of relaxing stated measures but less so on the general idea of relaxing "lockdown". Shows how effective the brainwashing of the population was I suppose in engineering a concept of "lockdown" as being a good thing. Caveat of course that these and other lockdown surveys are done with no bias to get a certain answer ( I have my doubts) . Anyway PT on here absolutely right to challenge the absurd claim that covid victims would have ten more years of life on average, Care home residents survive in normal circumstances no more than about a year ,and that year is the worst year of their life in terms of quality and loneliness . The whole country needs to get back to normal a lot quicker than the roadmap yesterday and judging my observations people are ignoring the OTT fetish laws about not sitting on benches etc in parks which is a good start
It certainly has more in it for families than me. My running club isn't going to be able to meet until 29 March, I'll be able to meet someone outside socially from the 8th but I can meet someone for a walk or a run anyway. Six people in a garden from Easter but I don't normally socialise with people at home. So I suspect I'm being locked up for a few extra weeks so their kids can go back to school. (And that may well be the right decision). If we can meet up under the Rule of 6 at Easter I don't see why we can't do that in a pub garden.
Because it’s multiple groups of 6 in a confined space with alcohol
I read a sobering article that there have been serious pandemics roughly every three or four years over the last two decades (SARS, MERS, Swine Flu, Zika, Ebola - we have of course been living with AIDS for 40 years now) so the warning signs were there even before this kicked off..
It's not going to change while we have an obsession with eating partially charred bits of chopped up animal.
Much as I would like to be able to I can't really argue with that.
I can.
"Charring meat" is safe, not a single one of those pandemics came from domestic meat consumption.
Maybe but we are encroaching on their space and forcing ourselves into theirs. I don't think that it has caused any pandemics but I spent some time after I left school teaching in the city of Jodphur in India. When I was there, 28 years ago, the school was on the very outskirts of the city on the edge of the desert. Now it is virtually in the city centre.
I read a sobering article that there have been serious pandemics roughly every three or four years over the last two decades (SARS, MERS, Swine Flu, Zika, Ebola - we have of course been living with AIDS for 40 years now) so the warning signs were there even before this kicked off..
It's not going to change while we have an obsession with eating partially charred bits of chopped up animal.
Much as I would like to be able to I can't really argue with that.
I can.
"Charring meat" is safe, not a single one of those pandemics came from domestic meat consumption.
It's also by definition true that all pandemics come from zoonotic infection. They have to be infections our immune systems are naive to, and have to have been harboured somewhere. Measles happened when rinderpest jumped the species barrier.
The bitterness and bile from a few presumably Labour supporters on here is remarkable.
I think we all acknowledge that there have been some big mistakes in the way the UK handled this pandemic early on. But that we’re now one of the most successful countries on the planet with our vaccine rollout.
Will lefties never be happy with British success?
Of course we are. It would appear that among the few things the Govt has done right in this was to appoint someone to take charge who knew what they were talking about and leave them to get on with it. A second, of course, was to leave the NHS to run the vaccination programme, and not interfere..
It will be interesting to see what happens to the NHS after this. I expect any lingering “let’s just privatise everything” tendency left in the Conservative party to be buried deep. There have been indications that the internal market is on the way out. Could the Tories finally shoot Labour’s fox on this, making it impossible for them to campaign on the idea that the NHS is only safe in their hands, or will they blow the opportunity?
£350 million a week for the NHS has a nice ring to it...
Hancocks reforms abolish competitive tendering, but not privatisation. Perhaps just a cover so his mate from the pub can be given a contract running orthopedics...
In this context does “privatisation” mean sell off something that was run by the public sector, or keep something in the private sector that was already there?
I don't think we know yet, but effectively Private Hospitals have been bailed out by generous NHS contracts in the last year. I see that as a likely pattern.
If giving out contracts, I cannot see ending competitive tendering as progress. It does bring scrutiny, and questions over value.
That’s a very unfair way of putting it. The government decided that the NHS needed capacity so block booked the private hospitals. There was a purpose to it not a bail out.
It amazes me that you get articles in the glossies all of the time saying things like "Queen decides to hand crown to William" when any rudimentary knowledge of the law would tell you it's not in her gift.
1) I don't read the glossies; and 2) I would be amazed if they ever printed that; because 3) you are right she can't.
I read a sobering article that there have been serious pandemics roughly every three or four years over the last two decades (SARS, MERS, Swine Flu, Zika, Ebola - we have of course been living with AIDS for 40 years now) so the warning signs were there even before this kicked off..
It's not going to change while we have an obsession with eating partially charred bits of chopped up animal.
Indeed. Until we learn to cook them thoroughly, there will always be risks.
Have a good morning.
You can have my rare steak when you can prise it from my cold, dead hands.
Sir Keir Starmer will call on farmers and people living in rural areas to take a fresh look at the Labour party, vowing to push for new investment in food and farming and a revision of subsidy payments, in an effort to move beyond the party’s urban strongholds.
He will urge people to buy more British food, and for more of the public sector’s £2.4bn food procurement budget to be spent locally, as well as calling for subsidised wages for apprentices to shore up the UK’s ageing farm workforce.
It amazes me that you get articles in the glossies all of the time saying things like "Queen decides to hand crown to William" when any rudimentary knowledge of the law would tell you it's not in her gift.
1) I don't read the glossies; and 2) I would be amazed if they ever printed that; because 3) you are right she can't.
The stats in the header show people like the idea of relaxing stated measures but less so on the general idea of relaxing "lockdown". Shows how effective the brainwashing of the population was I suppose in engineering a concept of "lockdown" as being a good thing. Caveat of course that these and other lockdown surveys are done with no bias to get a certain answer ( I have my doubts) . Anyway PT on here absolutely right to challenge the absurd claim that covid victims would have ten more years of life on average, Care home residents survive in normal circumstances no more than about a year ,and that year is the worst year of their life in terms of quality and loneliness . The whole country needs to get back to normal a lot quicker than the roadmap yesterday and judging my observations people are ignoring the OTT fetish laws about not sitting on benches etc in parks which is a good start
It certainly has more in it for families than me. My running club isn't going to be able to meet until 29 March, I'll be able to meet someone outside socially from the 8th but I can meet someone for a walk or a run anyway. Six people in a garden from Easter but I don't normally socialise with people at home. So I suspect I'm being locked up for a few extra weeks so their kids can go back to school. (And that may well be the right decision). If we can meet up under the Rule of 6 at Easter I don't see why we can't do that in a pub garden.
Because it’s multiple groups of 6 in a confined space with alcohol
The bitterness and bile from a few presumably Labour supporters on here is remarkable.
I think we all acknowledge that there have been some big mistakes in the way the UK handled this pandemic early on. But that we’re now one of the most successful countries on the planet with our vaccine rollout.
Will lefties never be happy with British success?
Of course we are. It would appear that among the few things the Govt has done right in this was to appoint someone to take charge who knew what they were talking about and leave them to get on with it. A second, of course, was to leave the NHS to run the vaccination programme, and not interfere..
It will be interesting to see what happens to the NHS after this. I expect any lingering “let’s just privatise everything” tendency left in the Conservative party to be buried deep. There have been indications that the internal market is on the way out. Could the Tories finally shoot Labour’s fox on this, making it impossible for them to campaign on the idea that the NHS is only safe in their hands, or will they blow the opportunity?
£350 million a week for the NHS has a nice ring to it...
Hancocks reforms abolish competitive tendering, but not privatisation. Perhaps just a cover so his mate from the pub can be given a contract running orthopedics...
In this context does “privatisation” mean sell off something that was run by the public sector, or keep something in the private sector that was already there?
I don't think we know yet, but effectively Private Hospitals have been bailed out by generous NHS contracts in the last year. I see that as a likely pattern.
If giving out contracts, I cannot see ending competitive tendering as progress. It does bring scrutiny, and questions over value.
That’s a very unfair way of putting it. The government decided that the NHS needed capacity so block booked the private hospitals. There was a purpose to it not a bail out.
Indeed and it would have been absurd not to utilise fully equipped capacity at a time when we were also investing in Nightingales. No need to renew though and I suspect private medicine will not be that bothered as the massively increased waiting times on the NHS will generate all the business they want and then some over the next 2-5 years.
The stats in the header show people like the idea of relaxing stated measures but less so on the general idea of relaxing "lockdown". Shows how effective the brainwashing of the population was I suppose in engineering a concept of "lockdown" as being a good thing. Caveat of course that these and other lockdown surveys are done with no bias to get a certain answer ( I have my doubts) . Anyway PT on here absolutely right to challenge the absurd claim that covid victims would have ten more years of life on average, Care home residents survive in normal circumstances no more than about a year ,and that year is the worst year of their life in terms of quality and loneliness . The whole country needs to get back to normal a lot quicker than the roadmap yesterday and judging my observations people are ignoring the OTT fetish laws about not sitting on benches etc in parks which is a good start
It certainly has more in it for families than me. My running club isn't going to be able to meet until 29 March, I'll be able to meet someone outside socially from the 8th but I can meet someone for a walk or a run anyway. Six people in a garden from Easter but I don't normally socialise with people at home. So I suspect I'm being locked up for a few extra weeks so their kids can go back to school. (And that may well be the right decision). If we can meet up under the Rule of 6 at Easter I don't see why we can't do that in a pub garden.
Similar for me.
But the 'large events' in May should get our book fairs back running. Which is excellent. They're linked to around 1/5 of my business, and about 4/5 of my joy in working life; cannot wait to get back to those!
I'm hoping for parkruns and running races (annoyingly the roadmap doesn't say what will happen to mass-participation events as opposed to those with spectators) and maybe after 17 May I will be able to start planning some sort of foreign travel.
Which is why the extent of obsession about it and the OTT measures taken this year is worrying given why would invest in any business that is going to be shut down by government order every few years? The key is to build the NHS capacity and forget lockdowns because nobody is going to invest in business or indeed (more tragically even) in themselves
SARS death toll 812 MERS 866 Zika - Mosquito vector not present in the UK HIV (AIDS) - spread through sexual contact, IV drug use, not getting too close to someone in the pub. Swine flu - 0.3% IFR, R0 of 1.5, 284,000 death/1 billion infections. Covid has a base r0 of at least 3, looks to have an IFR of 1 - 2%, until recently had no vaccine and a 2.5 million death toll minimum and rising. It's far more transmissible and more deadly than swine flu.
Not NHS capacity - rather public health capacity (which had been run down for at least two decades prior to the pandemic). With adequate preparation, we could have been similar to Taiwan or S Korea. There's no reason we couldn't perform better should it ever happen again.
It amazes me that you get articles in the glossies all of the time saying things like "Queen decides to hand crown to William" when any rudimentary knowledge of the law would tell you it's not in her gift.
1) I don't read the glossies; and 2) I would be amazed if they ever printed that; because 3) you are right she can't.
By “glossies” he means national enquirer
But that's where you get the real news, have you not seen MIB?
Sir Keir Starmer will call on farmers and people living in rural areas to take a fresh look at the Labour party, vowing to push for new investment in food and farming and a revision of subsidy payments, in an effort to move beyond the party’s urban strongholds.
He will urge people to buy more British food, and for more of the public sector’s £2.4bn food procurement budget to be spent locally, as well as calling for subsidised wages for apprentices to shore up the UK’s ageing farm workforce.
Don't want to go taking the knee in that field. Not unless you want it covered in bullshit....
SKS could get the farmers' vote by promising to join the EU when we are not in it, and leaving it when we are. It's like negotiating with the DUP.
I think that perhaps has a half life, depending on how post-Brexit beds in when it has done.
I'd say it's a little like the Red Wall - Tories will keep or lose it depending on how far their concerns have been answered, and changes are seen to be in place, in say 30 months' years time.
Perhaps it will also depend on how far we have diverged.
It amazes me that you get articles in the glossies all of the time saying things like "Queen decides to hand crown to William" when any rudimentary knowledge of the law would tell you it's not in her gift.
1) I don't read the glossies; and 2) I would be amazed if they ever printed that; because 3) you are right she can't.
Removing Harry from the line of succession requires an Act of Parliament. Neither parliament or government is going anywhere near it.
Does it? I though Peter Philips just disclaimed it when he married Autumn?
I read a sobering article that there have been serious pandemics roughly every three or four years over the last two decades (SARS, MERS, Swine Flu, Zika, Ebola - we have of course been living with AIDS for 40 years now) so the warning signs were there even before this kicked off..
It's not going to change while we have an obsession with eating partially charred bits of chopped up animal.
Much as I would like to be able to I can't really argue with that.
I can.
"Charring meat" is safe, not a single one of those pandemics came from domestic meat consumption.
It's also by definition true that all pandemics come from zoonotic infection. They have to be infections our immune systems are naive to, and have to have been harboured somewhere. Measles happened when rinderpest jumped the species barrier.
100%
I spend a lot of time thinking through OneHealth - sat on a long panel discussion about it yesterday
The stats in the header show people like the idea of relaxing stated measures but less so on the general idea of relaxing "lockdown". Shows how effective the brainwashing of the population was I suppose in engineering a concept of "lockdown" as being a good thing. Caveat of course that these and other lockdown surveys are done with no bias to get a certain answer ( I have my doubts) . Anyway PT on here absolutely right to challenge the absurd claim that covid victims would have ten more years of life on average, Care home residents survive in normal circumstances no more than about a year ,and that year is the worst year of their life in terms of quality and loneliness . The whole country needs to get back to normal a lot quicker than the roadmap yesterday and judging my observations people are ignoring the OTT fetish laws about not sitting on benches etc in parks which is a good start
It certainly has more in it for families than me. My running club isn't going to be able to meet until 29 March, I'll be able to meet someone outside socially from the 8th but I can meet someone for a walk or a run anyway. Six people in a garden from Easter but I don't normally socialise with people at home. So I suspect I'm being locked up for a few extra weeks so their kids can go back to school. (And that may well be the right decision). If we can meet up under the Rule of 6 at Easter I don't see why we can't do that in a pub garden.
Because it’s multiple groups of 6 in a confined space with alcohol
I`m confused by Hancock`s answer this morning to a question posed by Nick Robinson.
Robinson asked when people could travel within the UK to see parents and grandparents again. Hancock said from 17 May. This is wrong I`m sure.
The current bubble arrangements allow for such visits already - and outside of bubbles the "Stay at home" message is dropped on 29 March and replaced with "minimise travel" .
So I don`t understand Hancock`s response. What`s the relevance of 17 May in this respect?
On Starmer and farming, I cannot see him winning in truly rural areas, but it may well work in liminal areas. Remember that he comes from one such area himself, donkey sanctuary and all.
I think the flaw though is that there is little agricultural employment in such areas, and a lot of that is migrant labour, so fishing for votes in a very small pond.
He needs to think more Worcester Woman, the issues in rural areas and smaller urban areas are not just about farming.
This is bang on.
I live in Dorset. There simply isn't the level of rural employment that there used to be; or rather, not in the farming industry.
Given the religious belief that all "development" is bad, the countryside will become even more of a jobs desert over time than it is at present.
That said, I see SAGE advise: "Relaxation of a significant number of restrictions over three months starting from the beginning of April could lead to hospital occupancy higher than the January peak whereas relaxation over nine months would result in a much smaller peak." That does sound as though the 3-month opening may be too fast.
Another comfortably off older bloke (living in the leafy suburbs, no less), and a self-confessed lockdown-lover (wonder why?) advising a long, long lockdown.
Strikes me the major news of the day just isn't being highlighted by the media.
The PM has said there will be no zero covid strategy, the disease will be endemic and we will need to live with as we do with flu.
This is a massive development. And very welcome imho. We can finally put out to grass any ideas about keeping lockdown going for months and months in a pointless attempt to get case numbers down towards zero.
Seems to me that this is much more important development than the precise date on which the pub gardens will be open.
Yes, my Trust is making plans for a permanent expansion of infectious disease ICU and respiratory wards. I think that realistic.
I read a sobering article that there have been serious pandemics roughly every three or four years over the last two decades (SARS, MERS, Swine Flu, Zika, Ebola - we have of course been living with AIDS for 40 years now) so the warning signs were there even before this kicked off. It would be niave to think this is the last one. Save maybe for swine flu this was the first beginning in the 21st century that could be described as being truly global and it would be niave to thing it is going to be the last.
Which is why the extent of obsession about it and the OTT measures taken this year is worrying given why would invest in any business that is going to be shut down by government order every few years? The key is to build the NHS capacity and forget lockdowns because nobody is going to invest in business or indeed (more tragically even) in themselves
SARS death toll 812 MERS 866 Zika - Mosquito vector not present in the UK HIV (AIDS) - spread through sexual contact, IV drug use, not getting too close to someone in the pub. Swine flu - 0.3% IFR, R0 of 1.5, 284,000 death/1 billion infections. Covid has a base r0 of at least 3, looks to have an IFR of 1 - 2%, until recently had no vaccine and a 2.5 million death toll minimum and rising. It's far more transmissible and more deadly than swine flu.
It didn't take an enormous leap of imagination that a SARS type virus with far greater transmissabiliy, albeit maybe with a marginally lower IFR, was going to emerge. Indeed, famously, Matt Hancock watched a movie about it. And its not as if worse hasn't happened within (just about) living memory in 1918-20.
I`m confused by Hancock`s answer this morning to a question posed by Nick Robinson.
Robinson asked when people could travel within the UK to see parents and grandparents again. Hancock said from 17 May. This is wrong I`m sure.
The current bubble arrangements allow for such visits already - and outside of bubbles the "Stay at home" message is dropped on 29 March and replaced with "minimise travel" .
So I don`t understand Hancock`s response. What`s the relevance of 17 May in this respect?
Maybe he interpreted “parents and grandparents” as being at the same time - ie multiple households?
I`m confused by Hancock`s answer this morning to a question posed by Nick Robinson.
Robinson asked when people could travel within the UK to see parents and grandparents again. Hancock said from 17 May. This is wrong I`m sure.
The current bubble arrangements allow for such visits already - and outside of bubbles the "Stay at home" message is dropped on 29 March and replaced with "minimise travel" .
So I don`t understand Hancock`s response. What`s the relevance of 17 May in this respect?
Most families won't qualify under the below "bubble" arrangements currently:
Who can make a support bubble Not everybody can form a support bubble. However, on 2 December the rules changed to widen eligibility for forming one.
You can form a support bubble with another household of any size if:
you live by yourself – even if carers visit you to provide support you are the only adult in your household who does not need continuous care as a result of a disability your household includes a child who is under the age of one or was under that age on 2 December 2020 your household includes a child with a disability who requires continuous care and is under the age of 5, or was under that age on 2 December 2020 you are aged 16 or 17 living with others of the same age and without any adults you are a single adult living with one or more children who are under the age of 18 or were under that age on 12 June 2020 You should not form a support bubble with a household that is part of another support bubble.
I think the bubble arrangements are likely either deliberately or accidentally misunderstood fairly widely though.
It amazes me that you get articles in the glossies all of the time saying things like "Queen decides to hand crown to William" when any rudimentary knowledge of the law would tell you it's not in her gift.
1) I don't read the glossies; and 2) I would be amazed if they ever printed that; because 3) you are right she can't.
Removing Harry from the line of succession requires an Act of Parliament. Neither parliament or government is going anywhere near it.
Does it? I though Peter Philips just disclaimed it when he married Autumn?
Harry could cut himself out by converting to Catholicism but I would not count on it.
Which is why the extent of obsession about it and the OTT measures taken this year is worrying given why would invest in any business that is going to be shut down by government order every few years? The key is to build the NHS capacity and forget lockdowns because nobody is going to invest in business or indeed (more tragically even) in themselves
SARS death toll 812 MERS 866 Zika - Mosquito vector not present in the UK HIV (AIDS) - spread through sexual contact, IV drug use, not getting too close to someone in the pub. Swine flu - 0.3% IFR, R0 of 1.5, 284,000 death/1 billion infections. Covid has a base r0 of at least 3, looks to have an IFR of 1 - 2%, until recently had no vaccine and a 2.5 million death toll minimum and rising. It's far more transmissible and more deadly than swine flu.
Not NHS capacity - rather public health capacity (which had been run down for at least two decades prior to the pandemic). With adequate preparation, we could have been similar to Taiwan or S Korea. There's no reason we couldn't perform better should it ever happen again.
Excellent point.
Is it though? In normal times we are heading towards spending 8% of GDP on health. Do we really want to spend 10% for the next decade on the off chance that Covid 2 comes along? Is that the best way for us to recover from the economic hit of this one? I am not so sure.
Personally, I would look to see what we can do within existing structures. We need to continue and enhance our vaccine making capacity in the UK. That should be easy as we make a generous contribution to vaccinating the world. We look at where the other bottle necks arose such as vials. We think about keeping more of the PPE manufacturing capacity we have created. These are relatively cheap hits (although there will no doubt be endless whinging about contracts for the latter going to cronies rather than cheaper producers abroad). We look at what worked and what didn't.
And other than that we try to get back to normal as soon as possible. The last thing the economy needs right now is an additional health spend burden to finance.
The bitterness and bile from a few presumably Labour supporters on here is remarkable.
I think we all acknowledge that there have been some big mistakes in the way the UK handled this pandemic early on. But that we’re now one of the most successful countries on the planet with our vaccine rollout.
Will lefties never be happy with British success?
Of course we are. It would appear that among the few things the Govt has done right in this was to appoint someone to take charge who knew what they were talking about and leave them to get on with it. A second, of course, was to leave the NHS to run the vaccination programme, and not interfere..
It will be interesting to see what happens to the NHS after this. I expect any lingering “let’s just privatise everything” tendency left in the Conservative party to be buried deep. There have been indications that the internal market is on the way out. Could the Tories finally shoot Labour’s fox on this, making it impossible for them to campaign on the idea that the NHS is only safe in their hands, or will they blow the opportunity?
£350 million a week for the NHS has a nice ring to it...
Hancocks reforms abolish competitive tendering, but not privatisation. Perhaps just a cover so his mate from the pub can be given a contract running orthopedics...
In this context does “privatisation” mean sell off something that was run by the public sector, or keep something in the private sector that was already there?
I don't think we know yet, but effectively Private Hospitals have been bailed out by generous NHS contracts in the last year. I see that as a likely pattern.
If giving out contracts, I cannot see ending competitive tendering as progress. It does bring scrutiny, and questions over value.
That’s a very unfair way of putting it. The government decided that the NHS needed capacity so block booked the private hospitals. There was a purpose to it not a bail out.
Indeed and it would have been absurd not to utilise fully equipped capacity at a time when we were also investing in Nightingales. No need to renew though and I suspect private medicine will not be that bothered as the massively increased waiting times on the NHS will generate all the business they want and then some over the next 2-5 years.
IIRC the government block booked the private hospitals without really giving them an option - the only nego was on price. Which was lower than the per-bed cost in the NHS...
That said, I see SAGE advise: "Relaxation of a significant number of restrictions over three months starting from the beginning of April could lead to hospital occupancy higher than the January peak whereas relaxation over nine months would result in a much smaller peak." That does sound as though the 3-month opening may be too fast.
I`m confused by Hancock`s answer this morning to a question posed by Nick Robinson.
Robinson asked when people could travel within the UK to see parents and grandparents again. Hancock said from 17 May. This is wrong I`m sure.
The current bubble arrangements allow for such visits already - and outside of bubbles the "Stay at home" message is dropped on 29 March and replaced with "minimise travel" .
So I don`t understand Hancock`s response. What`s the relevance of 17 May in this respect?
Maybe he interpreted “parents and grandparents” as being at the same time - ie multiple households?
I thought Mar 29 was 2 households?
29 March rules say "No household mixing indoors", so you can go and see outdoors. And, in any case, bubbles have always allowed for this (you can stay overnight under the bubble rules).
It amazes me that you get articles in the glossies all of the time saying things like "Queen decides to hand crown to William" when any rudimentary knowledge of the law would tell you it's not in her gift.
1) I don't read the glossies; and 2) I would be amazed if they ever printed that; because 3) you are right she can't.
Removing Harry from the line of succession requires an Act of Parliament. Neither parliament or government is going anywhere near it.
Does it? I though Peter Philips just disclaimed it when he married Autumn?
Harry could cut himself out by converting to Catholicism but I would not count on it.
Depends how much he wants to flick off his grandmother I suppose...
(As my daughter puts it: “you’re not the boss of me”)
For men however, the pub is the focal point of social interaction and until pubs open, many of us remain remote and cut off from our friends. You see, we tend not to meet for coffee, or go clothes shopping together. We do not do Pilates in the park or hook up when we take the kids to the duck pond. We don’t Zoom for chats.
Instead, you can find us bonding in the nooks and crannies of Britain’s pubs, or standing at bars, clutching pints, talking rubbish. These are our rituals, enshrined in us by our fathers and their fathers before them.
The bitterness and bile from a few presumably Labour supporters on here is remarkable.
I think we all acknowledge that there have been some big mistakes in the way the UK handled this pandemic early on. But that we’re now one of the most successful countries on the planet with our vaccine rollout.
Will lefties never be happy with British success?
Of course we are. It would appear that among the few things the Govt has done right in this was to appoint someone to take charge who knew what they were talking about and leave them to get on with it. A second, of course, was to leave the NHS to run the vaccination programme, and not interfere..
It will be interesting to see what happens to the NHS after this. I expect any lingering “let’s just privatise everything” tendency left in the Conservative party to be buried deep. There have been indications that the internal market is on the way out. Could the Tories finally shoot Labour’s fox on this, making it impossible for them to campaign on the idea that the NHS is only safe in their hands, or will they blow the opportunity?
£350 million a week for the NHS has a nice ring to it...
Hancocks reforms abolish competitive tendering, but not privatisation. Perhaps just a cover so his mate from the pub can be given a contract running orthopedics...
In this context does “privatisation” mean sell off something that was run by the public sector, or keep something in the private sector that was already there?
I don't think we know yet, but effectively Private Hospitals have been bailed out by generous NHS contracts in the last year. I see that as a likely pattern.
If giving out contracts, I cannot see ending competitive tendering as progress. It does bring scrutiny, and questions over value.
That’s a very unfair way of putting it. The government decided that the NHS needed capacity so block booked the private hospitals. There was a purpose to it not a bail out.
Indeed and it would have been absurd not to utilise fully equipped capacity at a time when we were also investing in Nightingales. No need to renew though and I suspect private medicine will not be that bothered as the massively increased waiting times on the NHS will generate all the business they want and then some over the next 2-5 years.
IIRC the government block booked the private hospitals without really giving them an option - the only nego was on price. Which was lower than the per-bed cost in the NHS...
Yep, they made them an offer they couldn't refuse.
I read a sobering article that there have been serious pandemics roughly every three or four years over the last two decades (SARS, MERS, Swine Flu, Zika, Ebola - we have of course been living with AIDS for 40 years now) so the warning signs were there even before this kicked off..
It's not going to change while we have an obsession with eating partially charred bits of chopped up animal.
Much as I would like to be able to I can't really argue with that.
I can.
"Charring meat" is safe, not a single one of those pandemics came from domestic meat consumption.
Maybe but we are encroaching on their space and forcing ourselves into theirs. I don't think that it has caused any pandemics but I spent some time after I left school teaching in the city of Jodphur in India. When I was there, 28 years ago, the school was on the very outskirts of the city on the edge of the desert. Now it is virtually in the city centre.
That's population growth in the developing world it's nothing to do with meat. Same thing would happen even if the world was vegan.
I`m confused by Hancock`s answer this morning to a question posed by Nick Robinson.
Robinson asked when people could travel within the UK to see parents and grandparents again. Hancock said from 17 May. This is wrong I`m sure.
The current bubble arrangements allow for such visits already - and outside of bubbles the "Stay at home" message is dropped on 29 March and replaced with "minimise travel" .
So I don`t understand Hancock`s response. What`s the relevance of 17 May in this respect?
Most families won't qualify under the below "bubble" arrangements currently:
Who can make a support bubble Not everybody can form a support bubble. However, on 2 December the rules changed to widen eligibility for forming one.
You can form a support bubble with another household of any size if:
you live by yourself – even if carers visit you to provide support you are the only adult in your household who does not need continuous care as a result of a disability your household includes a child who is under the age of one or was under that age on 2 December 2020 your household includes a child with a disability who requires continuous care and is under the age of 5, or was under that age on 2 December 2020 you are aged 16 or 17 living with others of the same age and without any adults you are a single adult living with one or more children who are under the age of 18 or were under that age on 12 June 2020 You should not form a support bubble with a household that is part of another support bubble.
I think the bubble arrangements are likely either deliberately or accidentally misunderstood fairly widely though.
Ok, so you can bubble with a single grandparent living alone but not if both grandparents are living together.
But even outside of bubbles you can travel from 29 March UK wide.
I think Hancock must have been referring to non-bubble overnight stays - in which case 17 May would be correct. I think.
I'd like to say I was amazed that this was not the focal point of press questions at Boris's press conference yesterday (since everything depends on that) but, sadly, I'm not.
I`m confused by Hancock`s answer this morning to a question posed by Nick Robinson.
Robinson asked when people could travel within the UK to see parents and grandparents again. Hancock said from 17 May. This is wrong I`m sure.
The current bubble arrangements allow for such visits already - and outside of bubbles the "Stay at home" message is dropped on 29 March and replaced with "minimise travel" .
So I don`t understand Hancock`s response. What`s the relevance of 17 May in this respect?
Maybe he interpreted “parents and grandparents” as being at the same time - ie multiple households?
I thought Mar 29 was 2 households?
29 March rules say "No household mixing indoors", so you can go and see outdoors. And, in any case, bubbles have always allowed for this (you can stay overnight under the bubble rules).
Yes. But you can see only one other household in a private garden or outside.
I am planning to celebrate my birthday (mar 30) with my mother who is in a bubble with my sister’s family (living alone/child under 5)
If properly followed the rules on bubbles are not open to everyone.
“Maximum of up to 6 people or 2 households permitted to meet outdoors from Mar 29”
For men however, the pub is the focal point of social interaction and until pubs open, many of us remain remote and cut off from our friends. You see, we tend not to meet for coffee, or go clothes shopping together. We do not do Pilates in the park or hook up when we take the kids to the duck pond. We don’t Zoom for chats.
Instead, you can find us bonding in the nooks and crannies of Britain’s pubs, or standing at bars, clutching pints, talking rubbish. These are our rituals, enshrined in us by our fathers and their fathers before them.
I read a sobering article that there have been serious pandemics roughly every three or four years over the last two decades (SARS, MERS, Swine Flu, Zika, Ebola - we have of course been living with AIDS for 40 years now) so the warning signs were there even before this kicked off..
It's not going to change while we have an obsession with eating partially charred bits of chopped up animal.
Indeed. Until we learn to cook them thoroughly, there will always be risks.
Have a good morning.
You can have my rare steak when you can prise it from my cold, dead hands.
I'd like to say I was amazed that this was not the focal point of press questions at Boris's press conference yesterday (since everything depends on that) but, sadly, I'm not.
this was one of the many similar replies to the tweet:
I`m confused by Hancock`s answer this morning to a question posed by Nick Robinson.
Robinson asked when people could travel within the UK to see parents and grandparents again. Hancock said from 17 May. This is wrong I`m sure.
The current bubble arrangements allow for such visits already - and outside of bubbles the "Stay at home" message is dropped on 29 March and replaced with "minimise travel" .
So I don`t understand Hancock`s response. What`s the relevance of 17 May in this respect?
Most families won't qualify under the below "bubble" arrangements currently:
Who can make a support bubble Not everybody can form a support bubble. However, on 2 December the rules changed to widen eligibility for forming one.
You can form a support bubble with another household of any size if:
you live by yourself – even if carers visit you to provide support you are the only adult in your household who does not need continuous care as a result of a disability your household includes a child who is under the age of one or was under that age on 2 December 2020 your household includes a child with a disability who requires continuous care and is under the age of 5, or was under that age on 2 December 2020 you are aged 16 or 17 living with others of the same age and without any adults you are a single adult living with one or more children who are under the age of 18 or were under that age on 12 June 2020 You should not form a support bubble with a household that is part of another support bubble.
I think the bubble arrangements are likely either deliberately or accidentally misunderstood fairly widely though.
Ok, so you can bubble with a single grandparent living alone but not if both grandparents are living together.
But even outside of bubbles you can travel from 29 March UK wide.
I think Hancock must have been referring to non-bubble overnight stays - in which case 17 May would be correct. I think.
Or if he was thinking of three households.
You + parents + grandparents *at the same time* is not allowed out with a bubble before May
I read a sobering article that there have been serious pandemics roughly every three or four years over the last two decades (SARS, MERS, Swine Flu, Zika, Ebola - we have of course been living with AIDS for 40 years now) so the warning signs were there even before this kicked off..
It's not going to change while we have an obsession with eating partially charred bits of chopped up animal.
Indeed. Until we learn to cook them thoroughly, there will always be risks.
Have a good morning.
You can have my rare steak when you can prise it from my cold, dead hands.
Rare steak is cooked properly.
Rare chicken not so much.
In Germany, they actually serve up pork tartare, which is gross.
I`m confused by Hancock`s answer this morning to a question posed by Nick Robinson.
Robinson asked when people could travel within the UK to see parents and grandparents again. Hancock said from 17 May. This is wrong I`m sure.
The current bubble arrangements allow for such visits already - and outside of bubbles the "Stay at home" message is dropped on 29 March and replaced with "minimise travel" .
So I don`t understand Hancock`s response. What`s the relevance of 17 May in this respect?
Most families won't qualify under the below "bubble" arrangements currently:
Who can make a support bubble Not everybody can form a support bubble. However, on 2 December the rules changed to widen eligibility for forming one.
You can form a support bubble with another household of any size if:
you live by yourself – even if carers visit you to provide support you are the only adult in your household who does not need continuous care as a result of a disability your household includes a child who is under the age of one or was under that age on 2 December 2020 your household includes a child with a disability who requires continuous care and is under the age of 5, or was under that age on 2 December 2020 you are aged 16 or 17 living with others of the same age and without any adults you are a single adult living with one or more children who are under the age of 18 or were under that age on 12 June 2020 You should not form a support bubble with a household that is part of another support bubble.
I think the bubble arrangements are likely either deliberately or accidentally misunderstood fairly widely though.
Ok, so you can bubble with a single grandparent living alone but not if both grandparents are living together.
But even outside of bubbles you can travel from 29 March UK wide.
I think Hancock must have been referring to non-bubble overnight stays - in which case 17 May would be correct. I think.
The reality is, if you meet up outside in a garden, that some of your group are going to go inside once or twice to visit the look for a wee. And, if it's really cold, they might slip inside the conservatory with a cardigan on for a spot of laptray lunch, with the windows open.
The Government I'm sure know this, and they just don't want prolonged or overnight stays, huddling under rugs on the sofa all evening, and people generally taking the piss.
It amazes me that you get articles in the glossies all of the time saying things like "Queen decides to hand crown to William" when any rudimentary knowledge of the law would tell you it's not in her gift.
1) I don't read the glossies; and 2) I would be amazed if they ever printed that; because 3) you are right she can't.
Removing Harry from the line of succession requires an Act of Parliament. Neither parliament or government is going anywhere near it.
Which is why the extent of obsession about it and the OTT measures taken this year is worrying given why would invest in any business that is going to be shut down by government order every few years? The key is to build the NHS capacity and forget lockdowns because nobody is going to invest in business or indeed (more tragically even) in themselves
SARS death toll 812 MERS 866 Zika - Mosquito vector not present in the UK HIV (AIDS) - spread through sexual contact, IV drug use, not getting too close to someone in the pub. Swine flu - 0.3% IFR, R0 of 1.5, 284,000 death/1 billion infections. Covid has a base r0 of at least 3, looks to have an IFR of 1 - 2%, until recently had no vaccine and a 2.5 million death toll minimum and rising. It's far more transmissible and more deadly than swine flu.
Not NHS capacity - rather public health capacity (which had been run down for at least two decades prior to the pandemic). With adequate preparation, we could have been similar to Taiwan or S Korea. There's no reason we couldn't perform better should it ever happen again.
Excellent point.
Is it though? In normal times we are heading towards spending 8% of GDP on health. Do we really want to spend 10% for the next decade on the off chance that Covid 2 comes along? Is that the best way for us to recover from the economic hit of this one? I am not so sure.
Personally, I would look to see what we can do within existing structures. We need to continue and enhance our vaccine making capacity in the UK. That should be easy as we make a generous contribution to vaccinating the world. We look at where the other bottle necks arose such as vials. We think about keeping more of the PPE manufacturing capacity we have created. These are relatively cheap hits (although there will no doubt be endless whinging about contracts for the latter going to cronies rather than cheaper producers abroad). We look at what worked and what didn't.
And other than that we try to get back to normal as soon as possible. The last thing the economy needs right now is an additional health spend burden to finance.
Yes - I do. It is a matter of national security. The point NigelB was making was to do with effective public health monitoring and supression of infectious agents rather than building new hospitals. I think that that could be a relatively cheap and not the financial burden you indicate.
It amazes me that you get articles in the glossies all of the time saying things like "Queen decides to hand crown to William" when any rudimentary knowledge of the law would tell you it's not in her gift.
1) I don't read the glossies; and 2) I would be amazed if they ever printed that; because 3) you are right she can't.
Removing Harry from the line of succession requires an Act of Parliament. Neither parliament or government is going anywhere near it.
Does it? I though Peter Philips just disclaimed it when he married Autumn?
Harry could cut himself out by converting to Catholicism but I would not count on it.
It is an interesting thought though, what would Harry have to say on Oprah for there to be a Parliamentary motion to remove him from the line of succession. Accuse his uncle of being a wrongun? Outing himself as a Republican? Outing himself as illegitimate?
Being a soppy woke millennial isn’t enough cause one suspects.
I`m confused by Hancock`s answer this morning to a question posed by Nick Robinson.
Robinson asked when people could travel within the UK to see parents and grandparents again. Hancock said from 17 May. This is wrong I`m sure.
The current bubble arrangements allow for such visits already - and outside of bubbles the "Stay at home" message is dropped on 29 March and replaced with "minimise travel" .
So I don`t understand Hancock`s response. What`s the relevance of 17 May in this respect?
Most families won't qualify under the below "bubble" arrangements currently:
Who can make a support bubble Not everybody can form a support bubble. However, on 2 December the rules changed to widen eligibility for forming one.
You can form a support bubble with another household of any size if:
you live by yourself – even if carers visit you to provide support you are the only adult in your household who does not need continuous care as a result of a disability your household includes a child who is under the age of one or was under that age on 2 December 2020 your household includes a child with a disability who requires continuous care and is under the age of 5, or was under that age on 2 December 2020 you are aged 16 or 17 living with others of the same age and without any adults you are a single adult living with one or more children who are under the age of 18 or were under that age on 12 June 2020 You should not form a support bubble with a household that is part of another support bubble.
I think the bubble arrangements are likely either deliberately or accidentally misunderstood fairly widely though.
"you are the only adult in your household who does not need continuous care as a result of a disability"
Blimey. All these months and that is the first time I have seen that. Has it been added recently?
For men however, the pub is the focal point of social interaction and until pubs open, many of us remain remote and cut off from our friends. You see, we tend not to meet for coffee, or go clothes shopping together. We do not do Pilates in the park or hook up when we take the kids to the duck pond. We don’t Zoom for chats.
Instead, you can find us bonding in the nooks and crannies of Britain’s pubs, or standing at bars, clutching pints, talking rubbish. These are our rituals, enshrined in us by our fathers and their fathers before them.
I`m confused by Hancock`s answer this morning to a question posed by Nick Robinson.
Robinson asked when people could travel within the UK to see parents and grandparents again. Hancock said from 17 May. This is wrong I`m sure.
The current bubble arrangements allow for such visits already - and outside of bubbles the "Stay at home" message is dropped on 29 March and replaced with "minimise travel" .
So I don`t understand Hancock`s response. What`s the relevance of 17 May in this respect?
Most families won't qualify under the below "bubble" arrangements currently:
Who can make a support bubble Not everybody can form a support bubble. However, on 2 December the rules changed to widen eligibility for forming one.
You can form a support bubble with another household of any size if:
you live by yourself – even if carers visit you to provide support you are the only adult in your household who does not need continuous care as a result of a disability your household includes a child who is under the age of one or was under that age on 2 December 2020 your household includes a child with a disability who requires continuous care and is under the age of 5, or was under that age on 2 December 2020 you are aged 16 or 17 living with others of the same age and without any adults you are a single adult living with one or more children who are under the age of 18 or were under that age on 12 June 2020 You should not form a support bubble with a household that is part of another support bubble.
I think the bubble arrangements are likely either deliberately or accidentally misunderstood fairly widely though.
Ok, so you can bubble with a single grandparent living alone but not if both grandparents are living together.
But even outside of bubbles you can travel from 29 March UK wide.
I think Hancock must have been referring to non-bubble overnight stays - in which case 17 May would be correct. I think.
Or if he was thinking of three households.
You + parents + grandparents *at the same time* is not allowed out with a bubble before May
So, to give an example: if I, my wife and our two children (under 18) (all same household) want to travel 200 miles to see a single oldie that we have bubbled with this is OK now. And we could stay over if we wanted.
If we four want to do same thing and visit a single oldie NOT within our bubble then 17 May if indoors, 29 March if outdoors assuming no-one else present (and we would not be allowed to stay over)??
I`m confused by Hancock`s answer this morning to a question posed by Nick Robinson.
Robinson asked when people could travel within the UK to see parents and grandparents again. Hancock said from 17 May. This is wrong I`m sure.
The current bubble arrangements allow for such visits already - and outside of bubbles the "Stay at home" message is dropped on 29 March and replaced with "minimise travel" .
So I don`t understand Hancock`s response. What`s the relevance of 17 May in this respect?
Most families won't qualify under the below "bubble" arrangements currently:
Who can make a support bubble Not everybody can form a support bubble. However, on 2 December the rules changed to widen eligibility for forming one.
You can form a support bubble with another household of any size if:
you live by yourself – even if carers visit you to provide support you are the only adult in your household who does not need continuous care as a result of a disability your household includes a child who is under the age of one or was under that age on 2 December 2020 your household includes a child with a disability who requires continuous care and is under the age of 5, or was under that age on 2 December 2020 you are aged 16 or 17 living with others of the same age and without any adults you are a single adult living with one or more children who are under the age of 18 or were under that age on 12 June 2020 You should not form a support bubble with a household that is part of another support bubble.
I think the bubble arrangements are likely either deliberately or accidentally misunderstood fairly widely though.
Ok, so you can bubble with a single grandparent living alone but not if both grandparents are living together.
But even outside of bubbles you can travel from 29 March UK wide.
I think Hancock must have been referring to non-bubble overnight stays - in which case 17 May would be correct. I think.
The reality is, if you meet up outside in a garden, that some of your group are going to go inside once or twice to visit the look for a wee. And, if it's really cold, they might slip inside the conservatory with a cardigan on for a spot of laptray lunch, with the windows open.
The Government I'm sure know this, and they just don't want prolonged or overnight stays, huddling under rugs on the sofa all evening, and people generally taking the piss.
Yep, Gov't knows that gardens means indoors. This is why earlier and in Scotland a distinction was made between private gardens and public spaces.
I read a sobering article that there have been serious pandemics roughly every three or four years over the last two decades (SARS, MERS, Swine Flu, Zika, Ebola - we have of course been living with AIDS for 40 years now) so the warning signs were there even before this kicked off..
It's not going to change while we have an obsession with eating partially charred bits of chopped up animal.
Indeed. Until we learn to cook them thoroughly, there will always be risks.
Have a good morning.
You can have my rare steak when you can prise it from my cold, dead hands.
Rare steak is cooked properly.
Rare chicken not so much.
The instruction in Canada it I believe: "cut off it's horns and wipe its arse".
I`m confused by Hancock`s answer this morning to a question posed by Nick Robinson.
Robinson asked when people could travel within the UK to see parents and grandparents again. Hancock said from 17 May. This is wrong I`m sure.
The current bubble arrangements allow for such visits already - and outside of bubbles the "Stay at home" message is dropped on 29 March and replaced with "minimise travel" .
So I don`t understand Hancock`s response. What`s the relevance of 17 May in this respect?
Most families won't qualify under the below "bubble" arrangements currently:
Who can make a support bubble Not everybody can form a support bubble. However, on 2 December the rules changed to widen eligibility for forming one.
You can form a support bubble with another household of any size if:
you live by yourself – even if carers visit you to provide support you are the only adult in your household who does not need continuous care as a result of a disability your household includes a child who is under the age of one or was under that age on 2 December 2020 your household includes a child with a disability who requires continuous care and is under the age of 5, or was under that age on 2 December 2020 you are aged 16 or 17 living with others of the same age and without any adults you are a single adult living with one or more children who are under the age of 18 or were under that age on 12 June 2020 You should not form a support bubble with a household that is part of another support bubble.
I think the bubble arrangements are likely either deliberately or accidentally misunderstood fairly widely though.
Ok, so you can bubble with a single grandparent living alone but not if both grandparents are living together.
But even outside of bubbles you can travel from 29 March UK wide.
I think Hancock must have been referring to non-bubble overnight stays - in which case 17 May would be correct. I think.
The reality is, if you meet up outside in a garden, that some of your group are going to go inside once or twice to visit the look for a wee. And, if it's really cold, they might slip inside the conservatory with a cardigan on for a spot of laptray lunch, with the windows open.
The Government I'm sure know this, and they just don't want prolonged or overnight stays, huddling under rugs on the sofa all evening, and people generally taking the piss.
Yes I agree, but the worry is if you get stopped by the police during your journey one needs to have a good answer in one`s defence and the police have shown that they themselves are a bit fuzzy about understanding the rules.
It amazes me that you get articles in the glossies all of the time saying things like "Queen decides to hand crown to William" when any rudimentary knowledge of the law would tell you it's not in her gift.
1) I don't read the glossies; and 2) I would be amazed if they ever printed that; because 3) you are right she can't.
Removing Harry from the line of succession requires an Act of Parliament. Neither parliament or government is going anywhere near it.
Does it? I though Peter Philips just disclaimed it when he married Autumn?
I`m confused by Hancock`s answer this morning to a question posed by Nick Robinson.
Robinson asked when people could travel within the UK to see parents and grandparents again. Hancock said from 17 May. This is wrong I`m sure.
The current bubble arrangements allow for such visits already - and outside of bubbles the "Stay at home" message is dropped on 29 March and replaced with "minimise travel" .
So I don`t understand Hancock`s response. What`s the relevance of 17 May in this respect?
Most families won't qualify under the below "bubble" arrangements currently:
Who can make a support bubble Not everybody can form a support bubble. However, on 2 December the rules changed to widen eligibility for forming one.
You can form a support bubble with another household of any size if:
you live by yourself – even if carers visit you to provide support you are the only adult in your household who does not need continuous care as a result of a disability your household includes a child who is under the age of one or was under that age on 2 December 2020 your household includes a child with a disability who requires continuous care and is under the age of 5, or was under that age on 2 December 2020 you are aged 16 or 17 living with others of the same age and without any adults you are a single adult living with one or more children who are under the age of 18 or were under that age on 12 June 2020 You should not form a support bubble with a household that is part of another support bubble.
I think the bubble arrangements are likely either deliberately or accidentally misunderstood fairly widely though.
Ok, so you can bubble with a single grandparent living alone but not if both grandparents are living together.
But even outside of bubbles you can travel from 29 March UK wide.
I think Hancock must have been referring to non-bubble overnight stays - in which case 17 May would be correct. I think.
The reality is, if you meet up outside in a garden, that some of your group are going to go inside once or twice to visit the look for a wee. And, if it's really cold, they might slip inside the conservatory with a cardigan on for a spot of laptray lunch, with the windows open.
The Government I'm sure know this, and they just don't want prolonged or overnight stays, huddling under rugs on the sofa all evening, and people generally taking the piss.
Yes I agree, but the worry is if you get stopped by the police during your journey one needs to have a good answer in one`s defence and the police have shown that they themselves are a bit fuzzy about understanding the rules.
You just say you're travelling locally to meet your family outside in a group of six.
I`m confused by Hancock`s answer this morning to a question posed by Nick Robinson.
Robinson asked when people could travel within the UK to see parents and grandparents again. Hancock said from 17 May. This is wrong I`m sure.
The current bubble arrangements allow for such visits already - and outside of bubbles the "Stay at home" message is dropped on 29 March and replaced with "minimise travel" .
So I don`t understand Hancock`s response. What`s the relevance of 17 May in this respect?
Most families won't qualify under the below "bubble" arrangements currently:
Who can make a support bubble Not everybody can form a support bubble. However, on 2 December the rules changed to widen eligibility for forming one.
You can form a support bubble with another household of any size if:
you live by yourself – even if carers visit you to provide support you are the only adult in your household who does not need continuous care as a result of a disability your household includes a child who is under the age of one or was under that age on 2 December 2020 your household includes a child with a disability who requires continuous care and is under the age of 5, or was under that age on 2 December 2020 you are aged 16 or 17 living with others of the same age and without any adults you are a single adult living with one or more children who are under the age of 18 or were under that age on 12 June 2020 You should not form a support bubble with a household that is part of another support bubble.
I think the bubble arrangements are likely either deliberately or accidentally misunderstood fairly widely though.
"you are the only adult in your household who does not need continuous care as a result of a disability"
Blimey. All these months and that is the first time I have seen that. Has it been added recently?
2nd December. The list is obviously made for single people/lone parents/carers to retain some degree of contact and socialisation with other adults.
I`m confused by Hancock`s answer this morning to a question posed by Nick Robinson.
Robinson asked when people could travel within the UK to see parents and grandparents again. Hancock said from 17 May. This is wrong I`m sure.
The current bubble arrangements allow for such visits already - and outside of bubbles the "Stay at home" message is dropped on 29 March and replaced with "minimise travel" .
So I don`t understand Hancock`s response. What`s the relevance of 17 May in this respect?
Most families won't qualify under the below "bubble" arrangements currently:
Who can make a support bubble Not everybody can form a support bubble. However, on 2 December the rules changed to widen eligibility for forming one.
You can form a support bubble with another household of any size if:
you live by yourself – even if carers visit you to provide support you are the only adult in your household who does not need continuous care as a result of a disability your household includes a child who is under the age of one or was under that age on 2 December 2020 your household includes a child with a disability who requires continuous care and is under the age of 5, or was under that age on 2 December 2020 you are aged 16 or 17 living with others of the same age and without any adults you are a single adult living with one or more children who are under the age of 18 or were under that age on 12 June 2020 You should not form a support bubble with a household that is part of another support bubble.
I think the bubble arrangements are likely either deliberately or accidentally misunderstood fairly widely though.
Ok, so you can bubble with a single grandparent living alone but not if both grandparents are living together.
But even outside of bubbles you can travel from 29 March UK wide.
I think Hancock must have been referring to non-bubble overnight stays - in which case 17 May would be correct. I think.
The reality is, if you meet up outside in a garden, that some of your group are going to go inside once or twice to visit the look for a wee. And, if it's really cold, they might slip inside the conservatory with a cardigan on for a spot of laptray lunch, with the windows open.
The Government I'm sure know this, and they just don't want prolonged or overnight stays, huddling under rugs on the sofa all evening, and people generally taking the piss.
I was intrigued that “saunas” will be allowed to open from mid May. A good chunk of policy makers are presumably pretty familiar with what really happens in there and still feel it’s less risky to open them than allow pubs to have unrestricted opening.
I`m confused by Hancock`s answer this morning to a question posed by Nick Robinson.
Robinson asked when people could travel within the UK to see parents and grandparents again. Hancock said from 17 May. This is wrong I`m sure.
The current bubble arrangements allow for such visits already - and outside of bubbles the "Stay at home" message is dropped on 29 March and replaced with "minimise travel" .
So I don`t understand Hancock`s response. What`s the relevance of 17 May in this respect?
Most families won't qualify under the below "bubble" arrangements currently:
Who can make a support bubble Not everybody can form a support bubble. However, on 2 December the rules changed to widen eligibility for forming one.
You can form a support bubble with another household of any size if:
you live by yourself – even if carers visit you to provide support you are the only adult in your household who does not need continuous care as a result of a disability your household includes a child who is under the age of one or was under that age on 2 December 2020 your household includes a child with a disability who requires continuous care and is under the age of 5, or was under that age on 2 December 2020 you are aged 16 or 17 living with others of the same age and without any adults you are a single adult living with one or more children who are under the age of 18 or were under that age on 12 June 2020 You should not form a support bubble with a household that is part of another support bubble.
I think the bubble arrangements are likely either deliberately or accidentally misunderstood fairly widely though.
Ok, so you can bubble with a single grandparent living alone but not if both grandparents are living together.
But even outside of bubbles you can travel from 29 March UK wide.
I think Hancock must have been referring to non-bubble overnight stays - in which case 17 May would be correct. I think.
Or if he was thinking of three households.
You + parents + grandparents *at the same time* is not allowed out with a bubble before May
So, to give an example: if I, my wife and our two children (under 18) (all same household) want to travel 200 miles to see a single oldie that we have bubbled with this is OK now. And we could stay over if we wanted.
If we four want to do same thing and visit a single oldie NOT within our bubble then 17 May if indoors, 29 March if outdoors assuming no-one else present (and we would not be allowed to stay over)??
Good grief - no wonder people get confused.
As @Casino has said, it's the broad thrust that is important. You are thinking about it - you might or might not end up actually doing it - and the aim is to nudge people to continue not to run free.
Of course some will do stuff against the rules (whatever the hell they are) but the broad mass won't.
I`m confused by Hancock`s answer this morning to a question posed by Nick Robinson.
Robinson asked when people could travel within the UK to see parents and grandparents again. Hancock said from 17 May. This is wrong I`m sure.
The current bubble arrangements allow for such visits already - and outside of bubbles the "Stay at home" message is dropped on 29 March and replaced with "minimise travel" .
So I don`t understand Hancock`s response. What`s the relevance of 17 May in this respect?
Most families won't qualify under the below "bubble" arrangements currently:
Who can make a support bubble Not everybody can form a support bubble. However, on 2 December the rules changed to widen eligibility for forming one.
You can form a support bubble with another household of any size if:
you live by yourself – even if carers visit you to provide support you are the only adult in your household who does not need continuous care as a result of a disability your household includes a child who is under the age of one or was under that age on 2 December 2020 your household includes a child with a disability who requires continuous care and is under the age of 5, or was under that age on 2 December 2020 you are aged 16 or 17 living with others of the same age and without any adults you are a single adult living with one or more children who are under the age of 18 or were under that age on 12 June 2020 You should not form a support bubble with a household that is part of another support bubble.
I think the bubble arrangements are likely either deliberately or accidentally misunderstood fairly widely though.
Ok, so you can bubble with a single grandparent living alone but not if both grandparents are living together.
But even outside of bubbles you can travel from 29 March UK wide.
I think Hancock must have been referring to non-bubble overnight stays - in which case 17 May would be correct. I think.
The reality is, if you meet up outside in a garden, that some of your group are going to go inside once or twice to visit the look for a wee. And, if it's really cold, they might slip inside the conservatory with a cardigan on for a spot of laptray lunch, with the windows open.
The Government I'm sure know this, and they just don't want prolonged or overnight stays, huddling under rugs on the sofa all evening, and people generally taking the piss.
I was intrigued that “saunas” will be allowed to open from mid May. A good chunk of policy makers are presumably pretty familiar with what really happens in there and still feel it’s less risky to open them than allow pubs to have unrestricted opening.
It's that hot room you go into before heading into the swimming pool at the gym isn't it ?
That said, I see SAGE advise: "Relaxation of a significant number of restrictions over three months starting from the beginning of April could lead to hospital occupancy higher than the January peak whereas relaxation over nine months would result in a much smaller peak." That does sound as though the 3-month opening may be too fast.
I think that is just SAGE demonstrating their absurd approach to life rooted in extreme safetism.
The reality is that the *speed* of opening up makes no difference to the number of cases in the medium term. What matters is the total *extent* of opening up, and the size of the vaccinated population.
Obviously whilst the vaccine program is still rolling out, there may be some need for restrictions, but I don't know which alternative universe SAGE are in if they think the rollout will take 9 months more.
We will eventually end up in a "steady state" with most adults vaccinated, and no restrictions. This will lead to a certain level of cases, with which we will have to live.
Once we've vaccinated everyone, what on earth are SAGE planning on waiting for?
For men however, the pub is the focal point of social interaction and until pubs open, many of us remain remote and cut off from our friends. You see, we tend not to meet for coffee, or go clothes shopping together. We do not do Pilates in the park or hook up when we take the kids to the duck pond. We don’t Zoom for chats.
Instead, you can find us bonding in the nooks and crannies of Britain’s pubs, or standing at bars, clutching pints, talking rubbish. These are our rituals, enshrined in us by our fathers and their fathers before them.
What percentage of men only socialise in pubs and bars?
It's certainly my main regular social contact in normal times. The others are parkrun and running club meetings. And work of course but I don't count that as social.
I`m confused by Hancock`s answer this morning to a question posed by Nick Robinson.
Robinson asked when people could travel within the UK to see parents and grandparents again. Hancock said from 17 May. This is wrong I`m sure.
The current bubble arrangements allow for such visits already - and outside of bubbles the "Stay at home" message is dropped on 29 March and replaced with "minimise travel" .
So I don`t understand Hancock`s response. What`s the relevance of 17 May in this respect?
Most families won't qualify under the below "bubble" arrangements currently:
Who can make a support bubble Not everybody can form a support bubble. However, on 2 December the rules changed to widen eligibility for forming one.
You can form a support bubble with another household of any size if:
you live by yourself – even if carers visit you to provide support you are the only adult in your household who does not need continuous care as a result of a disability your household includes a child who is under the age of one or was under that age on 2 December 2020 your household includes a child with a disability who requires continuous care and is under the age of 5, or was under that age on 2 December 2020 you are aged 16 or 17 living with others of the same age and without any adults you are a single adult living with one or more children who are under the age of 18 or were under that age on 12 June 2020 You should not form a support bubble with a household that is part of another support bubble.
I think the bubble arrangements are likely either deliberately or accidentally misunderstood fairly widely though.
Ok, so you can bubble with a single grandparent living alone but not if both grandparents are living together.
But even outside of bubbles you can travel from 29 March UK wide.
I think Hancock must have been referring to non-bubble overnight stays - in which case 17 May would be correct. I think.
Or if he was thinking of three households.
You + parents + grandparents *at the same time* is not allowed out with a bubble before May
So, to give an example: if I, my wife and our two children (under 18) (all same household) want to travel 200 miles to see a single oldie that we have bubbled with this is OK now. And we could stay over if we wanted.
If we four want to do same thing and visit a single oldie NOT within our bubble then 17 May if indoors, 29 March if outdoors assuming no-one else present (and we would not be allowed to stay over)??
Good grief - no wonder people get confused.
Most people don’t.
You are in a bubble or you are not. So you know the rules for a bubble.
And yes the second paragraph is right - all you need to remember is Mar 29 outdoors and May 17 indoors
I read a sobering article that there have been serious pandemics roughly every three or four years over the last two decades (SARS, MERS, Swine Flu, Zika, Ebola - we have of course been living with AIDS for 40 years now) so the warning signs were there even before this kicked off..
It's not going to change while we have an obsession with eating partially charred bits of chopped up animal.
Much as I would like to be able to I can't really argue with that.
I can.
"Charring meat" is safe, not a single one of those pandemics came from domestic meat consumption.
Maybe but we are encroaching on their space and forcing ourselves into theirs. I don't think that it has caused any pandemics but I spent some time after I left school teaching in the city of Jodphur in India. When I was there, 28 years ago, the school was on the very outskirts of the city on the edge of the desert. Now it is virtually in the city centre.
That's population growth in the developing world it's nothing to do with meat. Same thing would happen even if the world was vegan.
MERS (middle east respiratory syndrome–related coronavirus) found that a Saudi man who kept camels applied a herbal medicine to the noses of several of his ill ones, touching their nasal discharge as a consequence, and then subsequently fell stricken with MERS and died. Others are mosquito born. And several seem to originate in bats, which love incubating strange viruses.
You'd need to totally isolate all types of human contact with any form animal, creature or insect to be sure of containing all forms of trans-species coronavirus in future, which isn't feasible.
There is certainly something to be said for basic hygiene and sanitary standards though, and quite frankly I wouldn't object to the WTO/G20 setting global standards for this - but I wouldn't trust China to follow them, so it might be easier to simply throw a cordon sanitaire around them from an SPS perspective in future.
That said, I see SAGE advise: "Relaxation of a significant number of restrictions over three months starting from the beginning of April could lead to hospital occupancy higher than the January peak whereas relaxation over nine months would result in a much smaller peak." That does sound as though the 3-month opening may be too fast.
I think that is just SAGE demonstrating their absurd approach to life rooted in extreme safetism.
The reality is that the *speed* of opening up makes no difference to the number of cases in the medium term. What matters is the total *extent* of opening up, and the size of the vaccinated population.
Obviously whilst the vaccine program is still rolling out, there may be some need for restrictions, but I don't know which alternative universe SAGE are in if they think the rollout will take 9 months more.
We will eventually end up in a "steady state" with most adults vaccinated, and no restrictions. This will lead to a certain level of cases, with which we will have to live.
Once we've vaccinated everyone, what on earth are SAGE planning on waiting for?
Covid is not like the flu.
But it might be that we will have to live with as many people dying of Covid as die of the flu each year. 28% of flu deaths are of those below 65yrs old.
No one wants any of these diseases and if you or your family get one, or, god forbid, die of one it is a tragedy. But we have to live around them.
For men however, the pub is the focal point of social interaction and until pubs open, many of us remain remote and cut off from our friends. You see, we tend not to meet for coffee, or go clothes shopping together. We do not do Pilates in the park or hook up when we take the kids to the duck pond. We don’t Zoom for chats.
Instead, you can find us bonding in the nooks and crannies of Britain’s pubs, or standing at bars, clutching pints, talking rubbish. These are our rituals, enshrined in us by our fathers and their fathers before them.
What percentage of men only socialise in pubs and bars?
It's certainly my main regular social contact in normal times. The others are parkrun and running club meetings. And work of course but I don't count that as social.
My running club tends to head into the pub after a run.
I`m confused by Hancock`s answer this morning to a question posed by Nick Robinson.
Robinson asked when people could travel within the UK to see parents and grandparents again. Hancock said from 17 May. This is wrong I`m sure.
The current bubble arrangements allow for such visits already - and outside of bubbles the "Stay at home" message is dropped on 29 March and replaced with "minimise travel" .
So I don`t understand Hancock`s response. What`s the relevance of 17 May in this respect?
Most families won't qualify under the below "bubble" arrangements currently:
Who can make a support bubble Not everybody can form a support bubble. However, on 2 December the rules changed to widen eligibility for forming one.
You can form a support bubble with another household of any size if:
you live by yourself – even if carers visit you to provide support you are the only adult in your household who does not need continuous care as a result of a disability your household includes a child who is under the age of one or was under that age on 2 December 2020 your household includes a child with a disability who requires continuous care and is under the age of 5, or was under that age on 2 December 2020 you are aged 16 or 17 living with others of the same age and without any adults you are a single adult living with one or more children who are under the age of 18 or were under that age on 12 June 2020 You should not form a support bubble with a household that is part of another support bubble.
I think the bubble arrangements are likely either deliberately or accidentally misunderstood fairly widely though.
Ok, so you can bubble with a single grandparent living alone but not if both grandparents are living together.
But even outside of bubbles you can travel from 29 March UK wide.
I think Hancock must have been referring to non-bubble overnight stays - in which case 17 May would be correct. I think.
The reality is, if you meet up outside in a garden, that some of your group are going to go inside once or twice to visit the look for a wee. And, if it's really cold, they might slip inside the conservatory with a cardigan on for a spot of laptray lunch, with the windows open.
The Government I'm sure know this, and they just don't want prolonged or overnight stays, huddling under rugs on the sofa all evening, and people generally taking the piss.
I was intrigued that “saunas” will be allowed to open from mid May. A good chunk of policy makers are presumably pretty familiar with what really happens in there and still feel it’s less risky to open them than allow pubs to have unrestricted opening.
You heard of a Russian sauna?
It's a thing. Bulgaria offer them at spas due to a big Russian tourist market.
It's really weird. You pay (a lot) to be locked in all day with your group with several bottles of vodka and a large fish.
They love it. I have no idea why. Nor how they get the fish smell out afterwards.
I'm not sure Boris's barnet can hold out until April.
I'm sure he could have had Carrie cut it, but it was probably a decision to keep in step with everyone else (except footballers, obvs).
I thought he seemed much brighter today. Either finally recovering from Covid, or just happy not to have permanent bad news.
Boris was impressive. He handled it well and didn’t jump back at the couple of journalists who were spoiling for a fight. Sam Coates of Sky News has been in a belligerent mood for weeks.
I too thought it significant that they picked up Hancock’s comments from last week that we’ll just have to live with this like the flu virus. It wasn’t that major as the idea has been floating for some time but good to see it acknowledged at the highest level.
My only complaint about the whole thing is that many of today’s papers have printed the dates as if they are set in stone. They are NOT. They are the earliest dates by which those things may re-open and it will be driven by data. Data not dates was repeated several times. Our press are so irresponsible sometimes.
They may not be set in stone; but those dates are predicated on worst-case scenarios going forward, not best. In short, we are going to have to see something utterly unexpected not to meet them.
But leave even the slightest opening for those same belligerent journos to go on about earlier openings - and it is all they will ever talk about.
Maybe we will see some of the 5 week breaks between changes become 4. But even that would lead to questions like "Were the scientists wrong to say they needed five weeks of data to assess the impact? Or are they still right and you are the one taking risks with our lives? Which is it, Prime Minister?" So unless the results are massively ahead of their base case on the good news stakes, I don't expect changes to the timetable. I certainly don't see them making any changes until we are other side of Easter at least.
The polling is solidly enough behind him that the PM doesn't need to take risks with ANY level of tinkering. The only thing that blows us off course is if a new variant rips through schools and starts badly affecting the young. Pray that doesn't happen.
Aiui the five weeks between each step is made up of four weeks to detect any adverse changes, and then one week to provide notice of any alterations needed.
It seems to me that Australia may have just saved print journalism and could even lead to a relaxation of paywalls in the UK once we adopt similar rules.
The stats in the header show people like the idea of relaxing stated measures but less so on the general idea of relaxing "lockdown". Shows how effective the brainwashing of the population was I suppose in engineering a concept of "lockdown" as being a good thing. Caveat of course that these and other lockdown surveys are done with no bias to get a certain answer ( I have my doubts) . Anyway PT on here absolutely right to challenge the absurd claim that covid victims would have ten more years of life on average, Care home residents survive in normal circumstances no more than about a year ,and that year is the worst year of their life in terms of quality and loneliness . The whole country needs to get back to normal a lot quicker than the roadmap yesterday and judging my observations people are ignoring the OTT fetish laws about not sitting on benches etc in parks which is a good start
It certainly has more in it for families than me. My running club isn't going to be able to meet until 29 March, I'll be able to meet someone outside socially from the 8th but I can meet someone for a walk or a run anyway. Six people in a garden from Easter but I don't normally socialise with people at home. So I suspect I'm being locked up for a few extra weeks so their kids can go back to school. (And that may well be the right decision). If we can meet up under the Rule of 6 at Easter I don't see why we can't do that in a pub garden.
Because it’s multiple groups of 6 in a confined space with alcohol
Well it will be multiple groups of 6 sitting separately round picnic benches outdoors. Back gardens will be less controlled. But I suppose the pub garden does have more opportunity for milling around and groups interacting.
That said, I see SAGE advise: "Relaxation of a significant number of restrictions over three months starting from the beginning of April could lead to hospital occupancy higher than the January peak whereas relaxation over nine months would result in a much smaller peak." That does sound as though the 3-month opening may be too fast.
I think that is just SAGE demonstrating their absurd approach to life rooted in extreme safetism.
The reality is that the *speed* of opening up makes no difference to the number of cases in the medium term. What matters is the total *extent* of opening up, and the size of the vaccinated population.
Obviously whilst the vaccine program is still rolling out, there may be some need for restrictions, but I don't know which alternative universe SAGE are in if they think the rollout will take 9 months more.
We will eventually end up in a "steady state" with most adults vaccinated, and no restrictions. This will lead to a certain level of cases, with which we will have to live.
Once we've vaccinated everyone, what on earth are SAGE planning on waiting for?
Covid is not like the flu.
But it might be that we will have to live with as many people dying of Covid as die of the flu each year. 28% of flu deaths are of those below 65yrs old.
No one wants any of these diseases and if you or your family get one, or, god forbid, die of one it is a tragedy. But we have to live around them.
In many ways novel influenzas are actually worse cf 1918-20.
The bitterness and bile from a few presumably Labour supporters on here is remarkable.
I think we all acknowledge that there have been some big mistakes in the way the UK handled this pandemic early on. But that we’re now one of the most successful countries on the planet with our vaccine rollout.
Will lefties never be happy with British success?
Two of the most vociferous naysayers are former Tories. Scott and Alastair Meeks. My bitterness and bile is as a former Labourite. I think it's fair to say my bitterness and bile has been addressed to Corbyn, Drakeford and Johnson's Government in equal measure. Corbyn and Drakeford criticisms seem fine on here, but don't mess with Boris.
Vaccine rollout on the Government's watch has been excellent, they are entitled, as the incumbent, to take credit for what goes well on their watch. Johnson's message yesterday was statesmanlike, even if the delivery was less so. There are many issues during the pandemic that haven't gone well. Government supporters appear ill prepared to accept any Governmental responsibility for this.
Anyway, I promised RobD I was gone, so with that I'm dust.
Which is why the extent of obsession about it and the OTT measures taken this year is worrying given why would invest in any business that is going to be shut down by government order every few years? The key is to build the NHS capacity and forget lockdowns because nobody is going to invest in business or indeed (more tragically even) in themselves
SARS death toll 812 MERS 866 Zika - Mosquito vector not present in the UK HIV (AIDS) - spread through sexual contact, IV drug use, not getting too close to someone in the pub. Swine flu - 0.3% IFR, R0 of 1.5, 284,000 death/1 billion infections. Covid has a base r0 of at least 3, looks to have an IFR of 1 - 2%, until recently had no vaccine and a 2.5 million death toll minimum and rising. It's far more transmissible and more deadly than swine flu.
Not NHS capacity - rather public health capacity (which had been run down for at least two decades prior to the pandemic). With adequate preparation, we could have been similar to Taiwan or S Korea. There's no reason we couldn't perform better should it ever happen again.
Except for the resistance for having any form of commission that could actually result in understanding what we did wrong this time round.
Serious, sober people came up with a pandemic plan that consisted of killing care home residents and keeping international flights flying. How? Why? Without answering those questions in a no-blame setting we will repeatedly make serious, 10,000s life lost, mistakes again and again.
I read a sobering article that there have been serious pandemics roughly every three or four years over the last two decades (SARS, MERS, Swine Flu, Zika, Ebola - we have of course been living with AIDS for 40 years now) so the warning signs were there even before this kicked off..
It's not going to change while we have an obsession with eating partially charred bits of chopped up animal.
Much as I would like to be able to I can't really argue with that.
I can.
"Charring meat" is safe, not a single one of those pandemics came from domestic meat consumption.
Maybe but we are encroaching on their space and forcing ourselves into theirs. I don't think that it has caused any pandemics but I spent some time after I left school teaching in the city of Jodphur in India. When I was there, 28 years ago, the school was on the very outskirts of the city on the edge of the desert. Now it is virtually in the city centre.
That's population growth in the developing world it's nothing to do with meat. Same thing would happen even if the world was vegan.
MERS (middle east respiratory syndrome–related coronavirus) found that a Saudi man who kept camels applied a herbal medicine to the noses of several of his ill ones, touching their nasal discharge as a consequence, and then subsequently fell stricken with MERS and died. Others are mosquito born. And several seem to originate in bats, which love incubating strange viruses.
You'd need to totally isolate all types of human contact with any form animal, creature or insect to be sure of containing all forms of trans-species coronavirus in future, which isn't feasible.
There is certainly something to be said for basic hygiene and sanitary standards though, and quite frankly I wouldn't object to the WTO/G20 setting global standards for this - but I wouldn't trust China to follow them, so it might be easier to simply throw a cordon sanitaire around them from an SPS perspective in future.
You are absolutely right. Viruses have jumped the species barrier throughout history. My point is that there is no so much more interaction (by virtue of our increasing population encroaching on places humanity has never lived before) so the chances of one of these events happening is so much higher.
I read a sobering article that there have been serious pandemics roughly every three or four years over the last two decades (SARS, MERS, Swine Flu, Zika, Ebola - we have of course been living with AIDS for 40 years now) so the warning signs were there even before this kicked off..
It's not going to change while we have an obsession with eating partially charred bits of chopped up animal.
Indeed. Until we learn to cook them thoroughly, there will always be risks.
Have a good morning.
You can have my rare steak when you can prise it from my cold, dead hands.
That said, I see SAGE advise: "Relaxation of a significant number of restrictions over three months starting from the beginning of April could lead to hospital occupancy higher than the January peak whereas relaxation over nine months would result in a much smaller peak." That does sound as though the 3-month opening may be too fast.
I think that is just SAGE demonstrating their absurd approach to life rooted in extreme safetism.
The reality is that the *speed* of opening up makes no difference to the number of cases in the medium term. What matters is the total *extent* of opening up, and the size of the vaccinated population.
Obviously whilst the vaccine program is still rolling out, there may be some need for restrictions, but I don't know which alternative universe SAGE are in if they think the rollout will take 9 months more.
We will eventually end up in a "steady state" with most adults vaccinated, and no restrictions. This will lead to a certain level of cases, with which we will have to live.
Once we've vaccinated everyone, what on earth are SAGE planning on waiting for?
Covid is not like the flu.
But it might be that we will have to live with as many people dying of Covid as die of the flu each year. 28% of flu deaths are of those below 65yrs old.
No one wants any of these diseases and if you or your family get one, or, god forbid, die of one it is a tragedy. But we have to live around them.
I think it's also important to remember that COVID and influenza will be competing for the same host bodies every winter so it's not a case of simply adding COVID deaths on as a lump sum annual figure of say 30k extra deaths per year. That 30k per year dying of COVID would have been susceptible to dying of the flu or other diseases.
As I said last night, I was quite reassured when Whitty said that we can't have a situation where we treat COVID deaths differently to any other death. Once we're in a place where COVID patients won't overwhelm the NHS we're going to have to learn to live with it by getting a booster shot once a year in September/October and then living as we normally would.
That said, I see SAGE advise: "Relaxation of a significant number of restrictions over three months starting from the beginning of April could lead to hospital occupancy higher than the January peak whereas relaxation over nine months would result in a much smaller peak." That does sound as though the 3-month opening may be too fast.
I think that is just SAGE demonstrating their absurd approach to life rooted in extreme safetism.
The reality is that the *speed* of opening up makes no difference to the number of cases in the medium term. What matters is the total *extent* of opening up, and the size of the vaccinated population.
Obviously whilst the vaccine program is still rolling out, there may be some need for restrictions, but I don't know which alternative universe SAGE are in if they think the rollout will take 9 months more.
We will eventually end up in a "steady state" with most adults vaccinated, and no restrictions. This will lead to a certain level of cases, with which we will have to live.
Once we've vaccinated everyone, what on earth are SAGE planning on waiting for?
It's almost as if SAGE isn't looking forward to a world where we can make do without them...
The bitterness and bile from a few presumably Labour supporters on here is remarkable.
I think we all acknowledge that there have been some big mistakes in the way the UK handled this pandemic early on. But that we’re now one of the most successful countries on the planet with our vaccine rollout.
Will lefties never be happy with British success?
Two of the most vociferous naysayers are former Tories. Scott and Alastair Meeks. My bitterness and bile is as a former Labourite. I think it's fair to say my bitterness and bile has been addressed to Corbyn, Drakeford and Johnson's Government in equal measure. Corbyn and Drakeford criticisms seem fine on here, but don't mess with Boris.
Vaccine rollout on the Government's watch has been excellent, they are entitled, as the incumbent, to take credit for what goes well on their watch. Johnson's message yesterday was statesmanlike, even if the delivery was less so. There are many issues during the pandemic that haven't gone well. Government supporters appear ill prepared to accept any Governmental responsibility for this.
Anyway, I promised RobD I was gone, so with that I'm dust.
Scott, yes, but AM isn't a former Tory - he's a liberal technocratic centrist; a floating voter.
That said, I see SAGE advise: "Relaxation of a significant number of restrictions over three months starting from the beginning of April could lead to hospital occupancy higher than the January peak whereas relaxation over nine months would result in a much smaller peak." That does sound as though the 3-month opening may be too fast.
I think that is just SAGE demonstrating their absurd approach to life rooted in extreme safetism.
The reality is that the *speed* of opening up makes no difference to the number of cases in the medium term. What matters is the total *extent* of opening up, and the size of the vaccinated population.
Obviously whilst the vaccine program is still rolling out, there may be some need for restrictions, but I don't know which alternative universe SAGE are in if they think the rollout will take 9 months more.
We will eventually end up in a "steady state" with most adults vaccinated, and no restrictions. This will lead to a certain level of cases, with which we will have to live.
Once we've vaccinated everyone, what on earth are SAGE planning on waiting for?
Covid is not like the flu.
But it might be that we will have to live with as many people dying of Covid as die of the flu each year. 28% of flu deaths are of those below 65yrs old.
No one wants any of these diseases and if you or your family get one, or, god forbid, die of one it is a tragedy. But we have to live around them.
In many ways novel influenzas are actually worse cf 1918-20.
Won't most of us have either been affected or have a parent or grandparent affected by a flu variety ? The reason this one is so bad, although not a 1918-20 flu disaster is the lack of ANY sort of inherited immunity.
I`m confused by Hancock`s answer this morning to a question posed by Nick Robinson.
Robinson asked when people could travel within the UK to see parents and grandparents again. Hancock said from 17 May. This is wrong I`m sure.
The current bubble arrangements allow for such visits already - and outside of bubbles the "Stay at home" message is dropped on 29 March and replaced with "minimise travel" .
So I don`t understand Hancock`s response. What`s the relevance of 17 May in this respect?
Most families won't qualify under the below "bubble" arrangements currently:
Who can make a support bubble Not everybody can form a support bubble. However, on 2 December the rules changed to widen eligibility for forming one.
You can form a support bubble with another household of any size if:
you live by yourself – even if carers visit you to provide support you are the only adult in your household who does not need continuous care as a result of a disability your household includes a child who is under the age of one or was under that age on 2 December 2020 your household includes a child with a disability who requires continuous care and is under the age of 5, or was under that age on 2 December 2020 you are aged 16 or 17 living with others of the same age and without any adults you are a single adult living with one or more children who are under the age of 18 or were under that age on 12 June 2020 You should not form a support bubble with a household that is part of another support bubble.
I think the bubble arrangements are likely either deliberately or accidentally misunderstood fairly widely though.
Ok, so you can bubble with a single grandparent living alone but not if both grandparents are living together.
But even outside of bubbles you can travel from 29 March UK wide.
I think Hancock must have been referring to non-bubble overnight stays - in which case 17 May would be correct. I think.
The reality is, if you meet up outside in a garden, that some of your group are going to go inside once or twice to visit the look for a wee. And, if it's really cold, they might slip inside the conservatory with a cardigan on for a spot of laptray lunch, with the windows open.
The Government I'm sure know this, and they just don't want prolonged or overnight stays, huddling under rugs on the sofa all evening, and people generally taking the piss.
I was intrigued that “saunas” will be allowed to open from mid May. A good chunk of policy makers are presumably pretty familiar with what really happens in there and still feel it’s less risky to open them than allow pubs to have unrestricted opening.
Is that saunas over 55C for more than 10 minutes ? That is one version of the Corona deactivation temperature.
Some people do take the p*ss. Just heard of someone heading off to Mexico because their "wife needs plastic surgery to repair an injury caused by being hit by a polo ball". Also just called a client whose ringtone definately indicates being in other, presumably sunnier, climes.
The very, very fastest you could speed it up is 3 weeks. As you need 2 weeks to detect if there is a rise in cases and a week to plan the unlock.
But even that is breakneck fast as you might not be able to detect the rise in hospital admittance in two weeks.
I think the final step of June 21st is the one that is most likely to change, it could go either way too. If we don't see any massive rise in hospitalisations from the May unlock and the vaccine programme has reached a stage where all over 18s have been given at least one dose then I could see the June date being brought forwards by a couple of weeks.
The bitterness and bile from a few presumably Labour supporters on here is remarkable.
I think we all acknowledge that there have been some big mistakes in the way the UK handled this pandemic early on. But that we’re now one of the most successful countries on the planet with our vaccine rollout.
Will lefties never be happy with British success?
ON the 28 day measure 120,756 people have died of Covid 33,517 of them died in January. That's over a quarter of the deaths of a year long pandemic in a single month. Last month.
That's not big mistakes in the way the UK handled this pandemic early on. That's an utter disgraceful fuckup and dereliction of duty right now.
And moved to the head of the queue, right after HM The Queen?
Personally I find Price Charles to be outstanding. After decades of not being a fan.
But we don't have an elected monarchy. We can't pick and choose which Windsor comes next. Personally, I'm a big fan of the queen, I think Charles has improved to 'wouldn't necessarily be the death knell of the monarchy' in recent years, I'm a fan of William and my opinion of Harry has slid from second favourite royal to 'only just better than Prince Andrew'. But my opinion is irrelevant. They will come in whatever order you choose, and if you are a monarchist you have to accept that. (You could take the niche position of arguing for an elected monarchy like medeival Denmark or Poland, I suppose.)
In any case #2, Harry's older brother has so many children that his place in the line of succession is highly likely to remain of theoretical interest only.
I am not a monarchist but it would have been fascinating to know what would have happened if Andrew had been born first and be next in line.
On a completely different note, how many restaurants do we think will find it viable to reopen in April serving outside only? Very few is my guess - most won't be able to do anything like the numbers and in April in Britain every other day is likely to be a wash out.
Comments
SARS death toll 812
MERS 866
Zika - Mosquito vector not present in the UK
HIV (AIDS) - spread through sexual contact, IV drug use, not getting too close to someone in the pub.
Swine flu - 0.3% IFR, R0 of 1.5, 284,000 death/1 billion infections.
Covid has a base r0 of at least 3, looks to have an IFR of 1 - 2%, until recently had no vaccine and a 2.5 million death toll minimum and rising. It's far more transmissible and more deadly than swine flu.
None of this, good or bad, will IMO affect long-term voting intentions. Ultimately it's a non-partisan crisis, and we all recognise that both success and failures will happen as we try to work through the issue.
Example: my great aunt lived 11 years in a 'care home', but the home in fact has a higher dependency section and a part that had services ranging from little more than sheltered accommodation up to a bit more help. I would have thought that she'd have been counted as a care home resident nonetheless (single building and overall it was a care home)
MERS 866
Zika - Mosquito vector not present in the UK
HIV (AIDS) - spread through sexual contact, IV drug use, not getting too close to someone in the pub.
Swine flu - 0.3% IFR, R0 of 1.5, 284,000 death/1 billion infections.
Covid has a base r0 of at least 3, looks to have an IFR of 1 - 2%, until recently had no vaccine and a 2.5 million death toll minimum and rising. It's far more transmissible and more deadly than swine flu.
Is swine flu transmissible before symptoms show? That I think is the really nasty thing about C-19 (although not unique).
Anyway, must go and teach: have a good day everyone.
With adequate preparation, we could have been similar to Taiwan or S Korea. There's no reason we couldn't perform better should it ever happen again.
Also, if it is depopulated, a smaller number of people may have an impact.
I remember a series on R4 back in the early 1990s called The Village (later went to TV). About Bentley in Hampshire. One of the episodes that I enjoyed showed something called iirc 'The Bentley Oil Company' which turned out to be a chap doing oil trading from his outbuilding.
As may (perhaps) hobby farmers / market gardeners, depending how many take it up.
A whole Green narrative is about less efficient, more labour intensive farming. I'd view that as being as head-in-the-clouds as most of the Green stuff, but there may be elements of truth there.
I'd say it's a little like the Red Wall - Tories will keep or lose it depending on how far their concerns have been answered, and changes are seen to be in place, in say 30 months' years time.
Perhaps it will also depend on how far we have diverged.
I spend a lot of time thinking through OneHealth - sat on a long panel discussion about it yesterday
Robinson asked when people could travel within the UK to see parents and grandparents again. Hancock said from 17 May. This is wrong I`m sure.
The current bubble arrangements allow for such visits already - and outside of bubbles the "Stay at home" message is dropped on 29 March and replaced with "minimise travel" .
So I don`t understand Hancock`s response. What`s the relevance of 17 May in this respect?
MERS 866
Zika - Mosquito vector not present in the UK
HIV (AIDS) - spread through sexual contact, IV drug use, not getting too close to someone in the pub.
Swine flu - 0.3% IFR, R0 of 1.5, 284,000 death/1 billion infections.
Covid has a base r0 of at least 3, looks to have an IFR of 1 - 2%, until recently had no vaccine and a 2.5 million death toll minimum and rising. It's far more transmissible and more deadly than swine flu.
It didn't take an enormous leap of imagination that a SARS type virus with far greater transmissabiliy, albeit maybe with a marginally lower IFR, was going to emerge. Indeed, famously, Matt Hancock watched a movie about it. And its not as if worse hasn't happened within (just about) living memory in 1918-20.
I thought Mar 29 was 2 households?
Who can make a support bubble
Not everybody can form a support bubble. However, on 2 December the rules changed to widen eligibility for forming one.
You can form a support bubble with another household of any size if:
you live by yourself – even if carers visit you to provide support
you are the only adult in your household who does not need continuous care as a result of a disability
your household includes a child who is under the age of one or was under that age on 2 December 2020
your household includes a child with a disability who requires continuous care and is under the age of 5, or was under that age on 2 December 2020
you are aged 16 or 17 living with others of the same age and without any adults
you are a single adult living with one or more children who are under the age of 18 or were under that age on 12 June 2020
You should not form a support bubble with a household that is part of another support bubble.
I think the bubble arrangements are likely either deliberately or accidentally misunderstood fairly widely though.
Personally, I would look to see what we can do within existing structures. We need to continue and enhance our vaccine making capacity in the UK. That should be easy as we make a generous contribution to vaccinating the world. We look at where the other bottle necks arose such as vials. We think about keeping more of the PPE manufacturing capacity we have created. These are relatively cheap hits (although there will no doubt be endless whinging about contracts for the latter going to cronies rather than cheaper producers abroad). We look at what worked and what didn't.
And other than that we try to get back to normal as soon as possible. The last thing the economy needs right now is an additional health spend burden to finance.
(As my daughter puts it: “you’re not the boss of me”)
Instead, you can find us bonding in the nooks and crannies of Britain’s pubs, or standing at bars, clutching pints, talking rubbish. These are our rituals, enshrined in us by our fathers and their fathers before them.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/food-and-drink/pubs-and-bars/men-like-need-pubs-reopen-sooner-good-reason/
But even outside of bubbles you can travel from 29 March UK wide.
I think Hancock must have been referring to non-bubble overnight stays - in which case 17 May would be correct. I think.
I am planning to celebrate my birthday (mar 30) with my mother who is in a bubble with my sister’s family (living alone/child under 5)
If properly followed the rules on bubbles are not open to everyone.
“Maximum of up to 6 people or 2 households permitted to meet outdoors from Mar 29”
https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/health/coronavirus/household-mixing-rules-how-many-people-can-meet-outside-in-england-as-government-reveals-lockdown-roadmap-3142692?amp
Rare chicken not so much.
https://twitter.com/JolyonWhats/status/1364129816333725697
You + parents + grandparents *at the same time* is not allowed out with a bubble before May
The Government I'm sure know this, and they just don't want prolonged or overnight stays, huddling under rugs on the sofa all evening, and people generally taking the piss.
Being a soppy woke millennial isn’t enough cause one suspects.
Blimey. All these months and that is the first time I have seen that. Has it been added recently?
If we four want to do same thing and visit a single oldie NOT within our bubble then 17 May if indoors, 29 March if outdoors assuming no-one else present (and we would not be allowed to stay over)??
Good grief - no wonder people get confused.
https://www.royal.uk/succession?page=3
They can't do anything.
Of course some will do stuff against the rules (whatever the hell they are) but the broad mass won't.
The reality is that the *speed* of opening up makes no difference to the number of cases in the medium term. What matters is the total *extent* of opening up, and the size of the vaccinated population.
Obviously whilst the vaccine program is still rolling out, there may be some need for restrictions, but I don't know which alternative universe SAGE are in if they think the rollout will take 9 months more.
We will eventually end up in a "steady state" with most adults vaccinated, and no restrictions. This will lead to a certain level of cases, with which we will have to live.
Once we've vaccinated everyone, what on earth are SAGE planning on waiting for?
You are in a bubble or you are not. So you know the rules for a bubble.
And yes the second paragraph is right - all you need to remember is Mar 29 outdoors and May 17 indoors
You'd need to totally isolate all types of human contact with any form animal, creature or insect to be sure of containing all forms of trans-species coronavirus in future, which isn't feasible.
There is certainly something to be said for basic hygiene and sanitary standards though, and quite frankly I wouldn't object to the WTO/G20 setting global standards for this - but I wouldn't trust China to follow them, so it might be easier to simply throw a cordon sanitaire around them from an SPS perspective in future.
But it might be that we will have to live with as many people dying of Covid as die of the flu each year. 28% of flu deaths are of those below 65yrs old.
No one wants any of these diseases and if you or your family get one, or, god forbid, die of one it is a tragedy. But we have to live around them.
It's a thing. Bulgaria offer them at spas due to a big Russian tourist market.
It's really weird. You pay (a lot) to be locked in all day with your group with several bottles of vodka and a large fish.
They love it. I have no idea why. Nor how they get the fish smell out afterwards.
Vaccine rollout on the Government's watch has been excellent, they are entitled, as the incumbent, to take credit for what goes well on their watch. Johnson's message yesterday was statesmanlike, even if the delivery was less so. There are many issues during the pandemic that haven't gone well. Government supporters appear ill prepared to accept any Governmental responsibility for this.
Anyway, I promised RobD I was gone, so with that I'm dust.
"But...but...but... Professor Ferguson...."
Serious, sober people came up with a pandemic plan that consisted of killing care home residents and keeping international flights flying. How? Why? Without answering those questions in a no-blame setting we will repeatedly make serious, 10,000s life lost, mistakes again and again.
As I said last night, I was quite reassured when Whitty said that we can't have a situation where we treat COVID deaths differently to any other death. Once we're in a place where COVID patients won't overwhelm the NHS we're going to have to learn to live with it by getting a booster shot once a year in September/October and then living as we normally would.
But even that is breakneck fast as you might not be able to detect the rise in hospital admittance in two weeks.
33,517 of them died in January. That's over a quarter of the deaths of a year long pandemic in a single month. Last month.
That's not big mistakes in the way the UK handled this pandemic early on. That's an utter disgraceful fuckup and dereliction of duty right now.
On a completely different note, how many restaurants do we think will find it viable to reopen in April serving outside only? Very few is my guess - most won't be able to do anything like the numbers and in April in Britain every other day is likely to be a wash out.