Thanks for the analysis Yokes.

dixiedean said:

Furthermore. I also consider the ludicrous actions of JRM and the Tory Mps who backed him to be highly irresponsible also.
We have all made sacrifices, some small, some very painful to get this bloody virus under some sort of control.
We are in danger of throwing it all away and dishonouring those sacrifices, as well as possibly creating more, just cos folk seem to feel the time is right to do whatever the heck they want.
This is not a Party political issue, but one of personal morality.

It would be fun if that JRM actions have cost the Tories their majority, even if it is only for 14 days.

You have to assume that Sharma will have been mainly in close contact with fellow Tories in the past 48 hours and there must be a fair number that he has been within 1m of at some point or another.
Coupled with the fact that there is clearly nothing like all the MPs in the house judging by the number of votes that were cast in the conga lines on Tuesday the actual majority maybe fairly small.

Not the time to have a rebellion on anything controversial over the next couple of weeks.

Boris Johnson has promised all coronavirus test results will come back within 24 hours but the small print of his pledge excludes up to a third of them.

The new commitment will not cover postal tests and might not cover those sent to care homes, Downing Street admitted later.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/news/boris-johnson-promises-faster-coronavirus-tests-as-death-toll-passes-50-000-dtq23zlc7

rcs1000 said:

FrancisUrquhart said:

China’s Huawei Technologies acted to cover up its relationship with a firm that had tried to sell prohibited U.S. computer gear to Iran, after Reuters in 2013 reported deep links between the firm and the telecom-equipment giant’s chief financial officer, newly obtained internal Huawei documents show.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-huawei-iran-probe-exclusive/exclusive-huawei-hid-business-operation-in-iran-after-reuters-reported-links-to-cfo-idUSKBN23A19B

A similar thing happened with Ubiquiti Technologies, which is a US networking supplier. They had a Dubai based distributor client that bought their kit, and then sold it to the Iranians.

Ubiquiti didn't ask too many questions of their customer (whether because as a fairly new fast growing firm they were genuinely ignorant, or because they didn't want to know), and they ended up getting into quite a lot of trouble.

The latest Huawei phones contain lots of chips they are not supposed to contain, because Huawei themselves are not (of course) prohibited from buying chips from (say) Texas Instruments. So they find intermediaries.

Yes, it’s almost impossible to keep hold of supply chains in the way that’s expected. At a basic level, an Iranian just gets on a plane to Dubai and goes to a computer shop, buys a hundred Ubiquiti routers at cash retail price and goes back to Iran with them in his luggage. There will always be black markets working around sanctions, whether the Americans like it or not.

Andy_JS said:

"Coronavirus began 'as an accident' in Chinese lab, says former MI6 boss

Sir Richard Dearlove tells Telegraph's Planet Normal podcast that new scientific report suggests key elements of the virus were 'inserted'"

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/06/03/exclusive-coronavirus-began-accident-disease-escaped-chinese/

Can’t wait for Twitter and Youtube to start blocking that one, as they’ve done to anyone else who’s disagreed with the WHO’s somewhat Sinophilic version of events.

Gallowgate said:

Lets be honest the Government from 2010 has achieved a grand total of f*ck all compared to what Thatcher and Blair achieved.

Conservative governments have proved to their own satisfaction that austerity does not work, so that is something, though I see George Osborne is at it again. There's Brexit and the weakening of the union with Scotland, and separately with Northern Ireland; whether those are good or bad is left as an exercise for the reader but they are not without moment.

FrancisUrquhart said:

You look at Trump and think my god what a disaster, you look at the alternative, and they appear to have been taken over by total I don't know what's....This guy is a nobody, but he is being retweeted by Democratic Senators. Shaming businesses that stock expensive products for taking steps to secure their locations.

https://twitter.com/WillHaskellCT/status/1268334979920146435?s=20

Maybe the companies have noticed that the peaceful protests don’t appear to end up very peaceful? Why would anyone be surprised at a jeweller securing his premises when a demonstration likely to kick off was happening in the vicinity - or do they think damaging and stealing someone else’s property is somehow justified?

George Floyd had coronavirus, according to autopsy. Floyd tested positive for coronavirus, according to a full autopsy report released by the Hennepin county medical examiner’s office. The report noted that the virus was not a contributing factor in his death and that Floyd was asymptomatic

Gallowgate said:

Lets be honest the Government from 2010 has achieved a grand total of f*ck all compared to what Thatcher and Blair achieved.

What exactly did Blair achieve? The minimum wage, some very badly thought-through constitutional reforms and an unpopular war. Nothing for ten years with three large election victories.

The more the years pass, the more extraordinary Mrs Thatcher's achievements seem.

DecrepiterJohnL said:

Sandpit said:

Andy_JS said:

"Coronavirus began 'as an accident' in Chinese lab, says former MI6 boss

Sir Richard Dearlove tells Telegraph's Planet Normal podcast that new scientific report suggests key elements of the virus were 'inserted'"

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/06/03/exclusive-coronavirus-began-accident-disease-escaped-chinese/

Can’t wait for Twitter and Youtube to start blocking that one, as they’ve done to anyone else who’s disagreed with the WHO’s somewhat Sinophilic version of events.

Hasn't this been claimed previously, and disproved? Let us see if there is any new scientific evidence. The claim is based on as yet unpublished research, according to that link, and: one of the authors, John Fredrik Moxnes, the chief scientific adviser to the Norwegian military, asked for his name to be withdrawn from the research, throwing its credibility into doubt. Scientists from the Francis Crick Institute and Imperial College London also dismissed its conclusions, it is understood.

The analysis I've seen and know quite well by now is that the main backbone of the virus is clearly a bat coronavirus, and that the spike protein is identical to a pangolin strain of the virus. This screams to me not insertion, but recombination event, which makes it even less likely to have been an accidental release from a lab, and more likely to have occurred somewhere where bats and pangolins come into contact with each other. Wet market, anyone?

That said, how virus hunting, collection building and cataloguing is done needs to be thoroughly reviewed and internationally approved biosafety and biosecurity guidelines developed for each step in the process. Personally, I think society, and not just the scientists, needs to have a debate on the value and justifiability of this type of work.

Fishing said:

Gallowgate said:

Lets be honest the Government from 2010 has achieved a grand total of f*ck all compared to what Thatcher and Blair achieved.

What exactly did Blair achieve? The minimum wage, some very badly thought-through constitutional reforms and an unpopular war. Nothing for ten years with three large election victories.

The more the years pass, the more extraordinary Mrs Thatcher's achievements seem.

Labour more-or-less ended smoking; devolution; raised the school leaving age to 21.

DecrepiterJohnL said:

Fishing said:

Gallowgate said:

Lets be honest the Government from 2010 has achieved a grand total of f*ck all compared to what Thatcher and Blair achieved.

What exactly did Blair achieve? The minimum wage, some very badly thought-through constitutional reforms and an unpopular war. Nothing for ten years with three large election victories.

The more the years pass, the more extraordinary Mrs Thatcher's achievements seem.

Labour more-or-less ended smoking; devolution; raised the school leaving age to 21.

21?

squareroot2 said:

DecrepiterJohnL said:

Fishing said:

Gallowgate said:

Lets be honest the Government from 2010 has achieved a grand total of f*ck all compared to what Thatcher and Blair achieved.

What exactly did Blair achieve? The minimum wage, some very badly thought-through constitutional reforms and an unpopular war. Nothing for ten years with three large election victories.

The more the years pass, the more extraordinary Mrs Thatcher's achievements seem.

Labour more-or-less ended smoking; devolution; raised the school leaving age to 21.

21?

He means the stupid increase in the number of worthless degree courses I imagine.

Yokes said:

So it appears that the reported plans to send the regulars positioned around DC back to their home bases has been shelved by Secretary Esper.

Something odd is going on. In what seems to be a clear set of statements by military and the ex Defence Secretary making much mention of the constitution, there looks to be a bit of a struggle going on.

The important thing to note is that the deployment of regular military versus the National Guard is a whole different ball game. That internal deployment in the event of unrest is one of the key National Guard roles, its not something the US regulars get involved in unless its exceptional and honestly, this is not right now..

Bearing in mind that military style uniforms are part of anti riot kit are worn by other federal agencies at times and that in the DC area you have not just the local police, you have the Parks Police, federal prison personnel, the National Guard and god knows who else, its not exactly clear that regular military personnel have yet been manning the lines.

It sounded very much as though Esper was told to change his mind or be sacked, and buckled, after his earlier statement of principle.
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/06/03/mark-esper-military-deployment-protests-298314

Meanwhile, it’s hard to tell just who some of the paramilitaries are:

https://twitter.com/davidfrum/status/1268286439743258625

Nigelb said:

Meanwhile, it’s hard to tell just who some of the paramilitaries are:

twitter.com/davidfrum/status/1268286439743258625

In a country where it seems that almost everything is up for sale, it should be no surprise to find people running around looking like law enforcement and probably armed to the teeth....

Also perhaps relevant.

SARS, SARS-Cov-2 and MERS are the Same Viral Species, Clades within Bat Beta-Coronaviruses
https://osf.io/ntc8w/
SARS-CoV-2 and SARS are human coronaviruses of zoonotic origin that first transferred from bats to humans in China. They are regarded as sister clades within the viral species Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome-Related Coronavirus. A chain of bat beta-coronavirusstrains links SARS and SARS-CoV-2. Here I report phylogenetic tree reconstructions inwhich SARS and SARS-CoV-2 are placed together with related bat strains. Single-species models are favoured over speciation models. This is also the case when the phylogenetic trees for MERS and its related beta-coronaviruses in camels, bats and hedgehogs is recon-structed, and even when the datasets are combined. Dated phylogenetic reconstruction suggest that both SARS-like and MERS-like beta-coronaviruses have been circulating for many years. I therefore propose that SARS, SARS-CoV-2 and MERS may be better thought of as sub-clades of bat beta-coronavirus that have on occasion transferred to humans.Looking specifically at SARS-CoV-2, there are also very high levels of conservation evi-dent at the protein level, suggesting that multiple possible targets exist for vaccines or other therapeutics. Finally, these long-running reservoirs emphasise the need for ongoingwide-spread surveillance and reporting, and the importance of Planetary Health...

TimT said:

Sandpit said:

rcs1000 said:

Sandpit said:

Andy_JS said:

"Coronavirus began 'as an accident' in Chinese lab, says former MI6 boss

Sir Richard Dearlove tells Telegraph's Planet Normal podcast that new scientific report suggests key elements of the virus were 'inserted'"

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/06/03/exclusive-coronavirus-began-accident-disease-escaped-chinese/

Can’t wait for Twitter and Youtube to start blocking that one, as they’ve done to anyone else who’s disagreed with the WHO’s somewhat Sinophilic version of events.

That pretty much directly contradicts the Cambridge genetics analysis that shows the Wuhan strain is not the oldest one.

China is incredibly guilty of hiding CV-19, lying about it, and persecuting people who tried to get the word out. But, if the Cambridge analysis is correct, CV-19 was live in China at very low levels for several months before it "broke out" in Wuhan.

Wasn’t there a study reckoning it was in France as early as November, ISTR from a couple of weeks back? It’s quite possible there were hundreds of isolated cases around before the cluster in Wuhan, but I’m not sure the Chinese now care to go looking for earlier cases, nor to help anyone else deal with the massive problem they’ve foisted on the world.

The Influenza-Like Illness network for Wuhan showed a major uptick in about the second week of November, so I'd go with that as the start of the outbreak.

To my mind even the 1 December date makes the suggestion that R0 may be as high as 4-5 very implausible. Even more so a date in the first half of November. That would imply several hundred million cases by the time of the lockdown in January.

Chris said:

TimT said:

Sandpit said:

rcs1000 said:

Sandpit said:

Andy_JS said:

"Coronavirus began 'as an accident' in Chinese lab, says former MI6 boss

Sir Richard Dearlove tells Telegraph's Planet Normal podcast that new scientific report suggests key elements of the virus were 'inserted'"

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/06/03/exclusive-coronavirus-began-accident-disease-escaped-chinese/

Can’t wait for Twitter and Youtube to start blocking that one, as they’ve done to anyone else who’s disagreed with the WHO’s somewhat Sinophilic version of events.

That pretty much directly contradicts the Cambridge genetics analysis that shows the Wuhan strain is not the oldest one.

China is incredibly guilty of hiding CV-19, lying about it, and persecuting people who tried to get the word out. But, if the Cambridge analysis is correct, CV-19 was live in China at very low levels for several months before it "broke out" in Wuhan.

Wasn’t there a study reckoning it was in France as early as November, ISTR from a couple of weeks back? It’s quite possible there were hundreds of isolated cases around before the cluster in Wuhan, but I’m not sure the Chinese now care to go looking for earlier cases, nor to help anyone else deal with the massive problem they’ve foisted on the world.

The Influenza-Like Illness network for Wuhan showed a major uptick in about the second week of November, so I'd go with that as the start of the outbreak.

To my mind even the 1 December date makes the suggestion that R0 may be as high as 4-5 very implausible. Even more so a date in the first half of November. That would imply several hundred million cases by the time of the lockdown in January.

I have believed for some time that the virus is far more widespread than we thought. I also think that the reason we do not seem to be seeing the 2nd peak as predicted is because it has less effect than we think. Amongst the vulnerable it is lethal, in the general population less so.

Fishing said:

Gallowgate said:

Lets be honest the Government from 2010 has achieved a grand total of f*ck all compared to what Thatcher and Blair achieved.

What exactly did Blair achieve? The minimum wage, some very badly thought-through constitutional reforms and an unpopular war. Nothing for ten years with three large election victories.

The more the years pass, the more extraordinary Mrs Thatcher's achievements seem.

Thatcher's achievements: mass unemployment, ripping off the taxpayer by selling off nationalised industries on the cheap, pissing the North sea oil revenues up the wall, massively increasing income inequality, doing nothing to solve the civil war in Northern Ireland... You mean those achievements?

Andy_JS said:

"After the Pandemic: Bring back the 'old normal' says author Lionel Shriver
The author says keeping the public scared will make it seem as if the utter devastation of the UK economy was worth the price."

https://news.sky.com/story/after-the-pandemic-bring-back-the-old-normal-says-author-lionel-shriver-12000147

Brain-dead.

Chris said:

Andy_JS said:

"After the Pandemic: Bring back the 'old normal' says author Lionel Shriver
The author says keeping the public scared will make it seem as if the utter devastation of the UK economy was worth the price."

https://news.sky.com/story/after-the-pandemic-bring-back-the-old-normal-says-author-lionel-shriver-12000147

Brain-dead.

She's a nutter. She was complaining that we didn't have riots and burn down Oxford Street over Brexit being delayed.

Just seen a new name for Boris Johnson in the Guardian; de Piffle!

May have been used before but it's the first time I've seen it. Seems appropriate!

williamglenn said:

Chris said:

Andy_JS said:

"After the Pandemic: Bring back the 'old normal' says author Lionel Shriver
The author says keeping the public scared will make it seem as if the utter devastation of the UK economy was worth the price."

https://news.sky.com/story/after-the-pandemic-bring-back-the-old-normal-says-author-lionel-shriver-12000147

Brain-dead.

She's a nutter. She was complaining that we didn't have riots and burn down Oxford Street over Brexit being delayed.

We are all Solarians now...

squareroot2 said:

Blai achieved lots. How many have died as a result of his decision to unconditionally support George Bush when they must have known there were no WMD? How many are still dying today?. All these deaths are and should be on the conscience of Tony Blair. The ultimate irony was his appointment as a sort of Middle East peacy envoy. Some joke eh!!!

Blair's achievements certainly include the creation of a group of people who continue to be obsessed to this day about the UK's decision to participate in the 2003 invasion of Iraq seemingly above all else.