It was inevitable that there was going to be a more positive mood emanating from Downing Street following the return of the prime minister, Boris Johnson. Most of the front pages reflect this although a move at this stage to relax the lockdown could be a very big gamble and cost thousands of lives.
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Damn birdsong.
It’s been suggested that children don’t seem to have significant serious symptoms as the ACE2 receptor is not widely expressed in their lungs (though it is present in the upper respiratory tract). What about in their vascular system ?
Patient-derived mutations impact pathogenicity of SARS-CoV-2
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.14.20060160v2.full.pdf
.... Current genomic survey data suggest that single nucleotide variants
(SNVs) are abundant. However, no mutation has been directly linked with functional changes in viral pathogenicity. We report functional characterizations of 11 patient-derived viral isolates. We observed diverse mutations in these viral isolates, including 6 different mutations in the spike glycoprotein (S protein), and 2 of which are different SNVs that led to the same missense mutation. Importantly, these viral isolates show significant variation in cytopathic effects and viral load, up to 270-fold differences,when infecting Vero-E6 cells. Therefore, we provide direct evidence that the
SARS-CoV-2 has acquired mutations capable of substantially changing its pathogenicity...
They also provide evidence of viable virus from stool samples, and note a patient who remained infected for 45 days.
https://phys.org/news/2020-04-laws-nature-downright-weird-constant.html
This virus is out there in the UK population. Every measure of lifting the lockdown will cost lives.
Every measure - bar one.
The lockdown is also costing lives. The biggest measure to combat that loss of life was taken out of lockdown yesterday, with the message that the NHS is now back open for non-Covid business. It may not be schools opening or the ability to go shopping again. But in terms of the overall number of deaths as a consequence of Covid, getting the NHS through the first wave and out the other side to again be saving lives in the wider, non-Covid healthcare needs of the country - that's a huge win for the Govt.
The garden, and the farmers, need it. Not looking forward to being completely confined to the house; have rather enjoyed a 'duty walk', as opposed to a trip to the gym.
Bit gloomy. Although some rain might be good for gardens.
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/04/26/politics/jared-polis-colorado-reopen-cnntv/index.html
It will be interesting to see if DNA numbers do now start to fall back. I don't know what the "normal" DNA rate is.
WTF? You think every Government MP has a hive mind and knows what the Business Secretary is working on or will decide?
People with long term conditions are right to be wary. We may be past the peak, but several hundred are dying each day from it.
The effect it has had on the regard of journalists is one of its more devastating features. Relentless, working 24/7, it has scythed through the reputations of broadcasters.
Especially when they're invited to talk about a new bill they've been working on and are now introducing to Parliament - to expect them to answer questions in depth about something someone else is working on and has not announced anything yet seems puerile.
Its not as if Domestic Violence is a mild topic to be discussing, its a serious issue in its own right.
Living with the virus above all requires discipline. People's behaviours need to be conditioned to minimise infection. It's all about that.
"This is not the beginning of the end. But it is the end of the beginning..."
Personally, I preferred something more measured and cerebral like David Frost.
He sounded very cautious to me. The bigger risk is that because of his own traumatic experience (and bear in mind he is a fairly self-centred individual) is that he now goes too far the other way and is ultra-conservative.
He'll have to meet many people again as PM once things are back to normal.
I'd be worried in his shoes too.
There's a reason politicians fear Andrew Neil more than Kay Burley etc - everyone being Paxman is old hat while a journalist who knows what he's talking about is as rare as hen's teeth.
Firstly you are implying something about me that is completely false. I shouldn't need to say this but for the avoidance of all doubt, I'm delighted Johnson survived. I wouldn't wish this horrible disease on my worst enemy. Johnson isn't my enemy.
Secondly, your slur says far more about you, not in a good way, than it does about me or anything else.
No blushes there, except in the colours of the flowers in my not-garden :- ) .
Politicians prefer communicating over Social Media now. No hard questions, gullible audience etc.
Somebody explain to the divots that they don't come in pairs ... please.
Going for a walk in the Yorkshire Dales. Low risk. Going to a packed pub. High risk. Large scale public events. High risk etc etc. Temporary and brief exposure to potentially infected people. Probably low risk. Prolonged exposure. High risk. International travel. High risk.
"Lockdown" was a policy with the aim of elimination - except almost no countries have implemented it with that being given as the stated aim. And arguably such an aim is futile when not universally pursued once it escaped China, unless intending to stay cut off from the world indefinitely.
Arguably a large chunk of the economic activity that has been shutdown by the lockdown could have been sustained with some nuance. Maybe we just didn't know enough about the virus to risk it. But I don't know.
Apologies for channelling my inner EiT.
While that's a good idea, it could be a way of trying to avoid forensic questioning by Starmer on, for example, the 'non-stocks' of PPE.
If May hadn't run the worst campaign in living memory she could've secured a majority far greater than the current one.
A further 19% are flimsy plastic aprons
Then we have paper towels, bins, detergent
Gowns not so much
Visors nah
As it happens with 24/7 news media there is a lot of electoral scrutiny. Boris faced head to head debates with Jeremy Corbyn and as many or more interviews with other journalists as PMs in the past had faced but just not Neil.
Boris was sage enough to measure up the people involved and identify that he'd rather face Corbyn face to face and other journalists than he would like to face Andrew Neil. That showed the weakness of Corbyn and our other journalists more than it is something to condemn in Boris.
All successful leaders including David Cameron and Tony Blair also sought to avoid the forms of scrutiny they thought would be riskiest to themselves. There's nothing new in that. All future election winners will do the same too.
I wonder if in due course it will be found to be part of the plot to sink Corbyn. The alternative is that the Labour campaign was run by numpties.
Did you see how many gowns we stockpiled?
Did you see how despite warnings we failed to stockpile bodybags, gowns,visors, not buying a single one till we were at the back of the queue
Plenty of gloves though, hurrah perhaps we should throw a plenty of gloves party and serve the food using the flimsy plastic aprons, like they were intentioned for.
Otherwise Boris in 2019 might best be seen as a reaction to May's lost majority in 2017. To a large extent, Boris ran on Corbyn's 2017 platform and against May's (and by extension against Cameron/Osborne). For instance, Corbyn had attacked May for cutting 20,000 police officers. Boris pledged to recruit 20,000, the same number. Likewise more doctors, nurses and hospitals, and even state broadband.
It's not very logical to criticise the weakness of the journalists who got to interview Johnson, if he will only agree to be interviewed by weak journalists...
If we have the patience to maintain restrictions that keep R well below 1, then we will benefit for the rest of the year.
Should imagine Ed Davey is in a tizzy about whether to hire a bus or a fridge as his election guru.
Some posters could get a job at Sky news such is their low opinion of voters.
It's a little unfair to criticise the government for ordering pre-approved products.
He can run, but eventually anyway, he won't be able to hide.
The point is we didnt order a single gown in 2019 for our stockpile or indeed in January despite Government advisors warning we were critically low.
Take note, lockdown-sceptics.
Are you suggesting that Jeremy Corbyn was so weak that someone like your caricature of Boris was willing to face Corbyn while Blair was never willing to face any of his opposition?
BBC and Corbyn got played. But it probably made little to no difference anyway.
Regent then introduced a two layer glove with a gel in between that coloured if it was exposed to air
But I also wanted to make a point about politicians in general, not Johnson in particular. The more we praise politicians (on "our" side!) for this kind of cunning, the more we undermine our democracy.
I certainly also condemn Cameron and Blair for the times they avoided scrutiny, and would be disappointed in people praising such tactics just because they won.