A shocking piece of snivelling, cowardly blame-shifting, even for Boris Johnson. I suppose he's trying to get everything in place for the inevitable public inquiry.

An arch-denier gets the bug. A game changer?

Coronavirus: Brazil's President Bolsonaro tests positive

Only if he snuffs it. But odds are he'll be given the all-clear in a week's time and he'll up the "what's all the fuss about?" rhetoric.

An arch-denier gets the bug. A game changer?

Coronavirus: Brazil's President Bolsonaro tests positive

Only if he snuffs it. But odds are he'll be given the all-clear in a week's time and he'll up the "what's all the fuss about?" rhetoric.

Well, I won't shed a tear if he does snuff it - but yes, if he gets away with a really mild version it will just make him even worse.

A shocking piece of snivelling, cowardly blame-shifting, even for Boris Johnson. I suppose he's trying to get everything in place for the inevitable public inquiry.

Seems the enquiry is being held out in the open - and by Commons committee. I've said all along that people assume the Government ignores and ignored scientific and medical advice. And I've repeatedly challenged that view including quoting Sir Patrick Vallance and his press reported 'herd immunity' comments on the 13th March.

Well, today Chris Whitty tells the Committee that he believes the Government acted accordingly with their advisers' soundings.

And yesterday we had this excellent insight from the BBC:
Did 'herd immunity' change the course of the outbreak?

Well researched and chronologically presented, perhaps this extract alarms me the most:

The BBC has seen contemporaneous notes from the meetings and spoken to people on the calls.

At the meeting on 13 March, Mr Enright is said to have relayed information from the government's top scientific and medical advisers.

The notes say the communications chief shared NHS England's own advice on holding internal work events, but say "we are not telling you what to do".

"We want people to be infected with Covid-19," the notes say. "The best way of managing it is herd immunity and protect the vulnerable."

Mr Enright was clear where the idea had come from, according to the notes. It was on the "direct advice" of the chief medical adviser and chief scientific adviser.

And so football matches, Cheltenham etc. continued for several days thereafter.

Meanwhile, there was an apparent lack of advice around Care Homes and policy inertia as a result:

Dr Hall, co-chair of the Sage group advising on care homes, told the BBC that forecasts of the spread of infections in care homes were not conducted until early April. It was not done previously because of a lack of data on the outbreak in care homes.

"We didn't see the care home outbreaks back in March arising," he says.

Dr Hall says the links and infection risk between care homes, hospitals and the community were not well documented.

"I didn't appreciate personally the level of the amount of staff that move between care homes and the potential for staff to introduce disease," he says.

This not an issue of blame per se, i.e. I am not seeking to blame those advisers - this was new, and as they say 'unprecedented'. But equally, some (certainly not all) of the unfounded criticism of Government is also wrong. Sometimes you have to examine your unconscious (or conscious) bias simply because it's not the Government of your liking.

I would encourage everyone with an opinion to read this article (or watch the Panorama programme it is based upon).

A shocking piece of snivelling, cowardly blame-shifting, even for Boris Johnson. I suppose he's trying to get everything in place for the inevitable public inquiry.

Seems the enquiry is being held out in the open - and by Commons committee. I've said all along that people assume the Government ignores and ignored scientific and medical advice. And I've repeatedly challenged that view including quoting Sir Patrick Vallance and his press reported 'herd immunity' comments on the 13th March.

Well, today Chris Whitty tells the Committee that he believes the Government acted accordingly with their advisers' soundings.

And yesterday we had this excellent insight from the BBC:
Did 'herd immunity' change the course of the outbreak?

Well researched and chronologically presented, perhaps this extract alarms me the most:

The BBC has seen contemporaneous notes from the meetings and spoken to people on the calls.

At the meeting on 13 March, Mr Enright is said to have relayed information from the government's top scientific and medical advisers.

The notes say the communications chief shared NHS England's own advice on holding internal work events, but say "we are not telling you what to do".

"We want people to be infected with Covid-19," the notes say. "The best way of managing it is herd immunity and protect the vulnerable."

Mr Enright was clear where the idea had come from, according to the notes. It was on the "direct advice" of the chief medical adviser and chief scientific adviser.

And so football matches, Cheltenham etc. continued for several days thereafter.

Meanwhile, there was an apparent lack of advice around Care Homes and policy inertia as a result:

Dr Hall, co-chair of the Sage group advising on care homes, told the BBC that forecasts of the spread of infections in care homes were not conducted until early April. It was not done previously because of a lack of data on the outbreak in care homes.

"We didn't see the care home outbreaks back in March arising," he says.

Dr Hall says the links and infection risk between care homes, hospitals and the community were not well documented.

"I didn't appreciate personally the level of the amount of staff that move between care homes and the potential for staff to introduce disease," he says.

This not an issue of blame per se, i.e. I am not seeking to blame those advisers - this was new, and as they say 'unprecedented'. But equally, some (certainly not all) of the unfounded criticism of Government is also wrong. Sometimes you have to examine your unconscious (or conscious) bias simply because it's not the Government of your liking.

I would encourage everyone with an opinion to read this article (or watch the Panorama programme it is based upon).

Yes Frank. 'Examine your ..bias because its not the Government of your liking' Or perhaps because it is in your case.


From the BBC also'

"This is chaos," says Richard Horton, editor of the medical journal The Lancet, who has criticised what he sees as the failure to heed early warnings from China. "This is no way to manage a pandemic.

"What it shows is that at the heart of the government's response there was no clear command-and-control structure as to how we were going to manage this outbreak.

Usual poor attempt at deflection BG. You see I’d be an idiot if I hadn’t read that quote from the editor of a medical journal, so yes I did read that and he is of course entitled to his opinion. But then it’s clear the Government were acting on the advice given - if Whitty says so, that must be true. So who would you suggest he is (inadvertently) actually criticising?

But then it would be more Idiotic to ignore the presented evidence of - and about - the chief scientific and medical advisers to Government - like you have.

Get what I mean?

Your post is typical of why I just can’t be arsed with this any more. Just thought it would be useful to post something factual. See ya.

Usual poor attempt at deflection BG. You see I’d be an idiot if I hadn’t read that quote from the editor of a medical journal, so yes I did read that and he is of course entitled to his opinion. But then it’s clear the Government were acting on the advice given - if Whitty says so, that must be true. So who would you suggest he is (inadvertently) actually criticising?

But then it would be more Idiotic to ignore the presented evidence of - and about - the chief scientific and medical advisers to Government - like you have.

Get what I mean?

Your post is typical of why I just can’t be arsed with this any more. Just thought it would be useful to post something factual. See ya.

So of course the opinion of the editor of The Lancet is worthless. He can speak independently of course whereas Whitty..... Perhaps that might just be relevant?
Interesting that you throw all your toys out of the pram whenever somebody disagrees with you. Bit childish isn't it?

Usual poor attempt at deflection BG. You see I’d be an idiot if I hadn’t read that quote from the editor of a medical journal, so yes I did read that and he is of course entitled to his opinion. But then it’s clear the Government were acting on the advice given - if Whitty says so, that must be true. So who would you suggest he is (inadvertently) actually criticising?

But then it would be more Idiotic to ignore the presented evidence of - and about - the chief scientific and medical advisers to Government - like you have.

Get what I mean?

Your post is typical of why I just can’t be arsed with this any more. Just thought it would be useful to post something factual. See ya.

So of course the opinion of the editor of The Lancet is worthless. He can speak independently of course whereas Whitty..... Perhaps that might just be relevant?
Interesting that you throw all your toys out of the pram whenever somebody disagrees with you. Bit childish isn't it?

Nah, not childish. And nor did I throw any toys out of my Bugaboo Bee 5 state of the art pram - I'm far too fond of them to do that.

Nope - just fed up with debating with worthless comments like these. I've enjoyed debating with Quinny, Ave_IT, MickyD and others like them in years gone by, but whilst they and I have demonstrated that they can accept the failings of 'their side' (if that even exists), you simply cannot see beyond your clouded judgement. Even here, despite everything written and said, you have to cling on to the tiniest thread that might see your obvious far left influenced views justified.

But I'm happy that you have a new posting partner. It's been almost comical to watch you fawning and latching on to every other post they've made on the BLM thread. Oh, and before you go down that road, on that particular subject I should add that my opinions are closer to yours than those of the targets you've identified on that thread.

Meanwhile as a re-born casual observer, my life is better without your constant agitation and antagonism. I just smile. As my Dad always says 'Happy days'.

Usual poor attempt at deflection BG. You see I’d be an idiot if I hadn’t read that quote from the editor of a medical journal, so yes I did read that and he is of course entitled to his opinion. But then it’s clear the Government were acting on the advice given - if Whitty says so, that must be true. So who would you suggest he is (inadvertently) actually criticising?

But then it would be more Idiotic to ignore the presented evidence of - and about - the chief scientific and medical advisers to Government - like you have.

Get what I mean?

Your post is typical of why I just can’t be arsed with this any more. Just thought it would be useful to post something factual. See ya.

So of course the opinion of the editor of The Lancet is worthless. He can speak independently of course whereas Whitty..... Perhaps that might just be relevant?
Interesting that you throw all your toys out of the pram whenever somebody disagrees with you. Bit childish isn't it?

Nah, not childish. And nor did I throw any toys out of my Bugaboo Bee 5 state of the art pram - I'm far too fond of them to do that.

Nope - just fed up with debating with worthless comments like these. I've enjoyed debating with Quinny, Ave_IT, MickyD and others like them in years gone by, but whilst they and I have demonstrated that they can accept the failings of 'their side' (if that even exists), you simply cannot see beyond your clouded judgement. Even here, despite everything written and said, you have to cling on to the tiniest thread that might see your obvious far left influenced views justified.

But I'm happy that you have a new posting partner. It's been almost comical to watch you fawning and latching on to every other post they've made on the BLM thread. Oh, and before you go down that road, on that particular subject I should add that my opinions are closer to yours than those of the targets you've identified on that thread.

Meanwhile as a re-born casual observer, my life is better without your constant agitation and antagonism. I just smile. As my Dad always says 'Happy days'.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-53484998

More evidence that despite what our Tory 'friends' would like us to believe the Government were found wanting, rabbits caught in the headlights. The truth can be hard to accept especially when it goes against your 'confirmation bias'.
Interesting that Frank considers the opinion of the Lancet editor 'worthless comments'.
'Antagonism' really? If that is what you call a different point of view.

A shocking piece of snivelling, cowardly blame-shifting, even for Boris Johnson. I suppose he's trying to get everything in place for the inevitable public inquiry.

Seems the enquiry is being held out in the open - and by Commons committee. I've said all along that people assume the Government ignores and ignored scientific and medical advice. And I've repeatedly challenged that view including quoting Sir Patrick Vallance and his press reported 'herd immunity' comments on the 13th March.

Well, today Chris Whitty tells the Committee that he believes the Government acted accordingly with their advisers' soundings.

And yesterday we had this excellent insight from the BBC:
Did 'herd immunity' change the course of the outbreak?

Well researched and chronologically presented, perhaps this extract alarms me the most:

The BBC has seen contemporaneous notes from the meetings and spoken to people on the calls.

At the meeting on 13 March, Mr Enright is said to have relayed information from the government's top scientific and medical advisers.

The notes say the communications chief shared NHS England's own advice on holding internal work events, but say "we are not telling you what to do".

"We want people to be infected with Covid-19," the notes say. "The best way of managing it is herd immunity and protect the vulnerable."

Mr Enright was clear where the idea had come from, according to the notes. It was on the "direct advice" of the chief medical adviser and chief scientific adviser.

And so football matches, Cheltenham etc. continued for several days thereafter.

Meanwhile, there was an apparent lack of advice around Care Homes and policy inertia as a result:

Dr Hall, co-chair of the Sage group advising on care homes, told the BBC that forecasts of the spread of infections in care homes were not conducted until early April. It was not done previously because of a lack of data on the outbreak in care homes.

"We didn't see the care home outbreaks back in March arising," he says.

Dr Hall says the links and infection risk between care homes, hospitals and the community were not well documented.

"I didn't appreciate personally the level of the amount of staff that move between care homes and the potential for staff to introduce disease," he says.

This not an issue of blame per se, i.e. I am not seeking to blame those advisers - this was new, and as they say 'unprecedented'. But equally, some (certainly not all) of the unfounded criticism of Government is also wrong. Sometimes you have to examine your unconscious (or conscious) bias simply because it's not the Government of your liking.

I would encourage everyone with an opinion to read this article (or watch the Panorama programme it is based upon).

But the concept of ‘herd immunity’ immunity is perfectly valid. It is the very reason that countless other diseases do not spread widely though our population and why vulnerable people are unlikely to be affected even though diseases that could kill them may still lurk at very low levels in the general environment.

So when this new disease emerged that had no cure and was only actually lethal to a small minority, then it was quite understandable for the scientists to talk about herd immunity and it is factually true to say it would be a “good thing” to reach a point where most people have already been infected. Patrick Vallance is not a politician or the one making policy. He was certainly most unwise to talk so openly about herd immunity as if it was seriously considered as the one and only plan to deal with the pandemic but he wasn’t wrong scientifically.

However, let’s not forget Matt Hancock himself said just two days after Vallance’s public musings - “[herd immunity] is a scientific concept, not a goal or strategy”. So if it wasn’t “a goal or strategy” then what was?

Well one thing that we now know is that the test-and-trace in the community strategy (that worked so well in Germany & South Korea) was effectively abandoned by the government on March 12th. This wasn’t made public at the time – indeed I posted on the 13th (through gritted teeth) that I thought the government seemed to be responding quite well as they seemed to be listening to the scientists …….and I distinctly remember a pub being closed down and everyone who visited it tracked and tested after one of the earliest outbreaks. So you see - no bias from me when it appears they are doing things well

It now seems a totally bizarre decision that such measures were then abandoned and surely can’t be blamed on the scientists – after all even if you are considering herd immunity (and remember Matt Hancock himself says they weren’t) then why throw away the best lever you have in controlling the rate of spread? It makes no sense – unless it was simply a pragmatic acknowledgement that we were woefully ill-equipped to be able implement test-and-trace as the virus spread beyond the initial infection sites. I heard Whitty saying just a day or two ago that testing was effectively abandoned because of “capacity” issues. In which case it was a political call – not one directed by the advice of the scientists who they are now trying to blame.

The Panorama programme in May exposed the appalling lack of preparedness for a pandemic with lack of basic PPE and even swabs for testing in what was supposed to be stockpiled for just such an emergency. At a systemic level Public Health England had centralised facilities as part of ‘efficiency measures’ so that we had just a handful of very large labs compared to the hundreds of smaller localised labs all over Germany & South Korea. Even more crucially local health care administrators in those countries had full authority to make decisions to react quickly to any outbreaks in their own regions – even using local universities to help test. By contrast we had a centralised command control system that was slow, clumsy and ill-equipped. So the government just doggedly pursued the lock-down in the absence of any serious test and trace for weeks which proved disastrous.

Even now – despite Johnson’s empty boast of a “world beating” test and trace system to get us out of lockdown – this £10bn programme appears to be failing. In Leicester only 65% of at-risk people were contacted – in Luton just 45%. Now guess the reason given for this pitiful performance …. Yup, that’s right – a centralised system. Private firms such as Serco & Sitel being used rather than local expertise. (See this - https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/ ... -thousands )

However you frame it - the government have been massively culpable. Nothing to do with inherent bias against them.

A shocking piece of snivelling, cowardly blame-shifting, even for Boris Johnson. I suppose he's trying to get everything in place for the inevitable public inquiry.

Seems the enquiry is being held out in the open - and by Commons committee. I've said all along that people assume the Government ignores and ignored scientific and medical advice. And I've repeatedly challenged that view including quoting Sir Patrick Vallance and his press reported 'herd immunity' comments on the 13th March.

Well, today Chris Whitty tells the Committee that he believes the Government acted accordingly with their advisers' soundings.

And yesterday we had this excellent insight from the BBC:
Did 'herd immunity' change the course of the outbreak?

Well researched and chronologically presented, perhaps this extract alarms me the most:

The BBC has seen contemporaneous notes from the meetings and spoken to people on the calls.

At the meeting on 13 March, Mr Enright is said to have relayed information from the government's top scientific and medical advisers.

The notes say the communications chief shared NHS England's own advice on holding internal work events, but say "we are not telling you what to do".

"We want people to be infected with Covid-19," the notes say. "The best way of managing it is herd immunity and protect the vulnerable."

Mr Enright was clear where the idea had come from, according to the notes. It was on the "direct advice" of the chief medical adviser and chief scientific adviser.

And so football matches, Cheltenham etc. continued for several days thereafter.

Meanwhile, there was an apparent lack of advice around Care Homes and policy inertia as a result:

Dr Hall, co-chair of the Sage group advising on care homes, told the BBC that forecasts of the spread of infections in care homes were not conducted until early April. It was not done previously because of a lack of data on the outbreak in care homes.

"We didn't see the care home outbreaks back in March arising," he says.

Dr Hall says the links and infection risk between care homes, hospitals and the community were not well documented.

"I didn't appreciate personally the level of the amount of staff that move between care homes and the potential for staff to introduce disease," he says.

This not an issue of blame per se, i.e. I am not seeking to blame those advisers - this was new, and as they say 'unprecedented'. But equally, some (certainly not all) of the unfounded criticism of Government is also wrong. Sometimes you have to examine your unconscious (or conscious) bias simply because it's not the Government of your liking.

I would encourage everyone with an opinion to read this article (or watch the Panorama programme it is based upon).

But the concept of ‘herd immunity’ immunity is perfectly valid. It is the very reason that countless other diseases do not spread widely though our population and why vulnerable people are unlikely to be affected even though diseases that could kill them may still lurk at very low levels in the general environment.

So when this new disease emerged that had no cure and was only actually lethal to a small minority, then it was quite understandable for the scientists to talk about herd immunity and it is factually true to say it would be a “good thing” to reach a point where most people have already been infected. Patrick Vallance is not a politician or the one making policy. He was certainly most unwise to talk so openly about herd immunity as if it was seriously considered as the one and only plan to deal with the pandemic but he wasn’t wrong scientifically.

However, let’s not forget Matt Hancock himself said just two days after Vallance’s public musings - “[herd immunity] is a scientific concept, not a goal or strategy”. So if it wasn’t “a goal or strategy” then what was?

Well one thing that we now know is that the test-and-trace in the community strategy (that worked so well in Germany & South Korea) was effectively abandoned by the government on March 12th. This wasn’t made public at the time – indeed I posted on the 13th (through gritted teeth) that I thought the government seemed to be responding quite well as they seemed to be listening to the scientists …….and I distinctly remember a pub being closed down and everyone who visited it tracked and tested after one of the earliest outbreaks. So you see - no bias from me when it appears they are doing things well

It now seems a totally bizarre decision that such measures were then abandoned and surely can’t be blamed on the scientists – after all even if you are considering herd immunity (and remember Matt Hancock himself says they weren’t) then why throw away the best lever you have in controlling the rate of spread? It makes no sense – unless it was simply a pragmatic acknowledgement that we were woefully ill-equipped to be able implement test-and-trace as the virus spread beyond the initial infection sites. I heard Whitty saying just a day or two ago that testing was effectively abandoned because of “capacity” issues. In which case it was a political call – not one directed by the advice of the scientists who they are now trying to blame.

The Panorama programme in May exposed the appalling lack of preparedness for a pandemic with lack of basic PPE and even swabs for testing in what was supposed to be stockpiled for just such an emergency. At a systemic level Public Health England had centralised facilities as part of ‘efficiency measures’ so that we had just a handful of very large labs compared to the hundreds of smaller localised labs all over Germany & South Korea. Even more crucially local health care administrators in those countries had full authority to make decisions to react quickly to any outbreaks in their own regions – even using local universities to help test. By contrast we had a centralised command control system that was slow, clumsy and ill-equipped. So the government just doggedly pursued the lock-down in the absence of any serious test and trace for weeks which proved disastrous.

Even now – despite Johnson’s empty boast of a “world beating” test and trace system to get us out of lockdown – this £10bn programme appears to be failing. In Leicester only 65% of at-risk people were contacted – in Luton just 45%. Now guess the reason given for this pitiful performance …. Yup, that’s right – a centralised system. Private firms such as Serco & Sitel being used rather than local expertise. (See this - https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/ ... -thousands )

However you frame it - the government have been massively culpable. Nothing to do with inherent bias against them.

But you are disagreeing with Frank and the Government Ave It so you must be 'inherently biased'!

Hey Balham, a term that Ave it used a while back, which I quite like, is 'it's better to play the ball rather than the player'.

May 13, 2020:
Yesterday, Health Secretary Matt Hancock told ITV's This Morning we won't be able to go abroad for the rest of the summer.
Asked by Phil and Holly whether summer holidays would be cancelled, he said: "I think that’s likely to be the case.
"I think it’s unlikely that big lavish international holidays are going to be possible for this summer."

Shapps confirmed this in his BBC interview this morning.

When asked whether Britons should book holidays or not, the Transport Secretary said: “I’m saying, you know, right now, you can't travel abroad.
“If you are booking it then you are clearly, by very nature, taking a chance where the direction of this virus goes and therefore where the travel advice is in the future.
“So, you know, that is not something that people would want to take lightly, of course.”