Honey Honey

I remember getting mixup's on the way to school every day with a scratch card in it The prizes were things like a box of eclairs, not £100,000 unfortunately.

Just got an email from Duncan Bannatyne asking me to sign a petition to reopen Gyms chancer

Classic civil service. From a couple of people I've spoken to in Westimster over the past couple of years they have been doing fuck all one week then working mad at scoping an idea that gets ditched the next week. Obviously it depends what department you're in.

If someone has symptoms they should be tested and then everybody they've been in contact with must isolate and potentially be tested. If the system is set up properly. I just don't see how offices can exist any time soon. The whole rotating staff is still a recipe for business disaster. Safest option is office staff don't mingle full stop.

Given that UK government has order 30 million vaccines for September on the condition the trials are successful I'd say there's no way UK can justify anything but suppression until that vaccine is ready or written off. They've committed to the idea that it can be ready in September.

I don't think Cummings line has much to do with it. That mainly gained traction in the FBPE bubble. If a vaccine is genuinely 4 or 5 months away then why would natural herd immunity be the right choice?

Herd immunity. They want to cocoon the vulnerable (the tactic that argubly didn't work in Sweden) whilst slowly infecting the community in a so called managed way with kids and their parents being considered as the utilitarian target. What is often forgotten is that the reason for lockdown in the west was not to stop the virus it was to prevent the health care service collapsing. Now health care hasn't collapsed the argument should be returning to a question of do you spread death out over time (Sweden, Netherlands) or is there a case for complete suppression (New Zealand, South Korea). The UK is so culturally toxic that we'll probably not have that conversation publicly, I expect the government will attempt some sort of PR balance.

Dutch version of SAGE openly had and want Schools opened in the Netherlands to help spread the virus.

I was in primary school so don't remember exact details of this but when my sister got chicken pox I recall my mum being eager for me to get it from her. My dad had to stay away from us for 2 weeks as he'd never had it. As for Sweden, I read this morning that the lead epidemiologists there are blaming care homes for Sweden's death count. They make up 50% of it. The Swedish public are also apparently polling in favour of the approach.

It's in the Mirror with quotes from the Welsh finance minister. Be odd if not true.

R rate in London is below 0.4. Fewer than 24 cases per day according to PHE and Cambridge University research.

This is a positive sign. Starmer's QC approach in the crisis is landing well with swing voters and even some quarters of the conservative backing press. This latest is an indication that he's coming to be considered a threat. The early weeks he was palmed off as being boring and a candidate of continuity remain to enough of a degree that he wasn't taken seriously. The crisis is a chance to build a reputation outside of the polarised world that came before it.

South Korea have now tested 24000 people linked to the nightclub spread of coronavirus. Finding 120 infected. This is impressive track and trace.

Sweden's epidemiologists took the view early on that they needed to flatten the curve until a vaccine came along and in case a vaccine did not come along. That take was common in the west, including the UK. Lockdown's occurred for fear of health care services not fear of life. The result of lockdown in some countries is that they now believe they can suppress the virus until it no longer exists, without needing to achieve herd immunity. Swedish scientists insist this isn't possible in a globalised world. We are all at a cross roads now. Do you suppress the virus to kick it out of your country (South Korea, New Zealand) or do you slowly allow the population to get infected until herd immunity is achieved (Sweden). This is where the latest estimates that only 5% of France and Spain, 11% of Madrid having had the virus means allowing further infection could take the death toll for those countries into the hundreds of thousands without a vaccine.

Suppose key will be antibody test? If you are testing for who has it right now that will give different reading. There have been random community tests in England which have led them to believe current R in London is a lower than elsewhere in the country.

Both France and Spain have released models suggesting only 5% of their populations have had COVID. 11% in Madrid. Note that UK estimates from different models are higher, 20% London, 12% England. Suppression or vaccine the only option in that circumstance.

It is highly unlikely to be any of this. Largely due to the scale in reality, but also as a lot of that is just bad anthropology. Much of the problem does seem to be in the delivery.

We don't have anyone here to argue otherwise. This website has low diversity of thought. But what I'm hearing from some and seeing in the data is that a lot of people don't think it is ambiguous at all. One thing I've heard is a blame on the media for confusing people a d whipping up a frenzy, saying if you go on the actual government website it's clear what the rules are. The data does suggest some possible degree of reaction based on a sprectrun of nanny state to libertarian.

The latest polling is suggesting that the outcry against and support for the latest lockdown changes are drawn on former political grounds. The country is split down the middle. I've certainly been hearing offline a few people who don't think there's anything wrong with what was said or the slogan. Perhaps the split is between those who think you need rules for everything and those who prefer to make their own judgments and risk assessments.

I recommended we move it to outside local jurisdiction, somewhere like Wales

I've been invited to a BBQ There are people out there who have never really stuck to the rules, they made their own rules up based on their own risk assessment and now lockdown is easing they are pushing that boundary further.

I'd like to know what data suggests to relax lockdown in the North East? Sunderland, Gateshead, Middlesbrough and South Tyneside have more cases per 100k population than anywhere else in England. London was 2-4 weeks ahead of the North East so should relaxation be the same time? Is it that cases and deaths in the last couple of weeks have been down to care homes and hospitals? What is the R and new cases when excluding hospitals and care homes?

Who can go back to work tomorrow then? I've got no idea what's going on.

Meanwhile in South Korea they eased some restrictions, allowed bars and night clubs to open. Someone with COVID who was asymptomatic at the time and didn't know went into 5 night clubs. 3 days later the symptoms showed up. Through track and trace they have now found 40 COVID cases spread in these night clubs and the number is rising. All bars and night clubs have been ordered to shut again for 30 days. If your goal is 0 cases then constant lockdowns until a vaccine is inevitable.

This period is key. Over half those sampled didn't have an opinion of him 3 weeks ago. It will be interesting to see the shift in the polling in two weeks. His early favourability and trust ratings will be decided by his COVID response. An absolute political gift right now.