I really hope that **** ends up Mussolini’d.

I think I’ll enjoy seeing how Cummings wheedles out of this one 🙂

Could this be their chance to drop the evil overlord?

onewheelgood, I’m going to pick a nit about your assertion that R0 is a property of the virus that can’t be changed. It most definitely depends on the behaviour of the population and can vary significantly around the world. As SAGE say “Both the reproduction number and doubling time are dependent on the characteristics of the population so may be different in the UK, and may be different in different groupings within the UK.” (the point of comparison here being Wuhan, before it reached us).

Though I suspect the low numbers people calculated for China early in the outbreak were probably just wrong. The doubling time in the deaths didn’t seem very different to what we got here. People tried all sorts of fancy stuff with detailed models rather than plotting the numbers and putting a line through them.

Reported by Guardian, Mirror and Laura Kuenssberg that trip was for child care; LK saying that downing st intend to ‘tough this out’.

‘A source close to Mr Cummings defended his actions, saying he made the trip because his parents could help with child care while he and his wife were both ill with symptoms of coronavirus.’

So not essential travel, they didn’t isolate as a family, and put parents (in their 70s at a guess) at risk?

That childcare excuse makes it worse in my eyes, there are hundreds of families struggling to deal with balancing work and childcare whose lives would be made a significant amount easier if they could make use of parental help from just down the road but aren’t.

People tried all sorts of fancy stuff with detailed models rather than plotting the numbers and putting a line through them.

Not everyone 😉 . But there does appear to have been an academic focus on model first, rather than analyse first and apply models later. My entire premise was that everything looks exponential. I know from hard experience in my day job modelling drugs that you can’t estimate ratios of parameters, but a half-life is a half-life. Currently arguing on lockdown skeptics this point about models

Sadly the slipperiest of worms are the hardest to get on the hook. I hope perseverance pays off.

I have a question about the ability to track and trace 10,000 cases (people?) per day. Is this track and trace all the contacts of 10,000 confirmed cases, or track and trace 10,000 contacts of confirmed cases? These are two very different capacities.

Re the PPE, I’ve seen it countless times in chemical engineering labs where we’re trained to use it. Incorrect wearing, re-use,, not double gloving (supposed to wear thin nitrile first then thicker “marigold” style if handling certain compounds but plenty of people would just use the marigolds. and then they’d take the first glove off and, using their bare hand, take the second glove off, thus transferring all that chemical straight onto bare skin.

And these were people supposedly trained to wear them.

Gloves and masks when worn by untrained people are worse than useless but they fulfil that needd to “feel” safe. Like when you put you seatbelt or helmet on but then drive or ride like a ****.

A couple of weeks ago at the supermarket, I saw a woman wearing gloves and a mask. she was trying to open a new bag for life with one hand (other hand holding shopping to pack), couldn’t manage it so she pulled the mask down, licked the end of her gloved finger and used that to prise the bag open. Utter **** moron.

I think I’ll enjoy seeing how Cummings wheedles out of this one 🙂

Quite easily. Boris will state he has full confidence in him. The news stories will get muddled and confused deliberately, a few bots will be used to push the supportive messages, it’ll all be declared a storm in a teacup and it’ll be business as normal. Honestly, the Government long ago gave up even pretending they cared, they’re literally just a) making shit up as they go and b) laughing at us proles while voting themselves another payrise.

^ well said

Be interesting to see what my brexit loving parents make of Cummings, my dad thinks he’s the messiah

At the same time my mum lives for her grandkids & she’s missed 4 of their birthdays since lockdown started & mentally it’s been very tough on her

Source says his trip was within guidelines as Cummings went to stay with his parents so they could help with childcare while he and his wife were ill – they insist no breach of lockdown

— Laura Kuenssberg (@bbclaurak) May 22, 2020

Laura Kuenssberg. I mean. Seriously?

It means, grandparents as carers is ok. For him. Because special.

Be interesting to see what my brexit loving parents make of Cummings, my dad thinks he’s the messiah

At the same time my mum lives for her grandkids

Are your parents are my in-laws!?

He’ll get away with it for sure. Will barely register as a problem.

Edit – there you go, that LK tweet explains it. My FIL wioll repeat that without seeing the hypocrisy of us not sending our daughter to them for the past 8 weeks.

It is a storm in a teacup though, po-po had a word, slap on the wrist, job done. If we want normal people involved in politics further down the line, we need to try not to be over dramatic just cause we don’t like the panto villain.

Also Laura kuensberg doesn’t do journalism. She just does repeating what “an unnamed spokesman” said earlier. In other words, repeating Cummings. No investigation. No holding to account for veracity. No nothing except performing the function of legitimising rumour.

She’s not exactly pointing out the glaring disparity of that excuse with the Gov rules he?

Well it is and isn’t. The obvious failure to lead by example might not sound important but it kind of is in the end.

You can add Jake Berry Tory MP to the list as well.

For the latest official government advice and info please see https://t.co/cYhXxs5crP

— Jake Berry MP (@JakeBerry) March 23, 2020

I think from the lay perspective, from the media perspective, etc., the ‘model’ almost has a fetished kind of value, where you ‘go with the model’ and your decisions receive some kind of unimpeachable warrant.

from blojos own gob
I also need to remind parents that, as we have already advised, children should not be left with older grandparents, or older relatives, who may be particularly vulnerable or fall into some of the vulnerable groups and I know that will be difficult too. And I want to thank families for their sacrifice at this difficult time. I want to thank whole country for the efforts people are making to comply with these measures.

Not someone I often nod along with, but he makes a good point:

The journalists defending Dom Cummings tonight are largely the same ones who get their stories from him. It’s how it works.

— Tim Montgomerie (@montie) May 22, 2020

The the attacks on kussenberg ive not agreed with

But that Montgomery quote it’s is bang on & I think Monty is an absolute dick

A touch of humour to lighten the mood? The superb Dillie Keane is 68 today and has released a new song, a very apt one. (Warning at 68 Ms Keane DGAF and the language can be a bit strong).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0na2Y_74_mk

Tin Foil on head/

I’m not entirely convinced Short Cummings getting caught out was an accident.

/Tin foil off head

The obvious failure to lead by example might not sound important but it kind of is in the end.

If we remove the panto villain from the story for a moment, now replace with NHS staff. Is it still an obvious failure to lead by example?
A couple working on the frontline in the middle of a global pandemic potentially caught the virus and decided to take their 4 year old to their parents just in case the worst happened.
Yeah, let’s burn them we don’t want that sort in politics.

I’d have thought taking your child to your parents whilst you have symptoms was pretty much the worst thing you could do. Puts your parents in danger. You’re shedding virus round the country.

Maybe he thinks that’s fine or that we should all be ‘accidentally on purpose’ spreading the virus to the older  generation? DIY herd immunity, y’know.

There’s a small problem of precedent with Neil Ferguson and the Scottish Health Minister though.

But this will just be swept under the carpet. The metropolitan elites are truly in charge now.

Will be interesting to see what they sneak out under cover of this, or what they are going to focus the outrage machine on to distract.

Will be interesting to see what they sneak out under cover of this, or what they are going to focus the outrage machine on to distract.

#savebrexit

No-deal Brexit ‘would overwhelm local emergency teams’

Probably another Tory factions attempt to oust Dom and Jon.

I’m in two minds about Dom he may not actually be the villain in the Covid Crisis.

It’s up to the public – us – as much as the journalists to make sure it doesn’t get swept under the carpet.

How the hell could that trip not be a multiple breach of guidelines?

Ah but the guidelines change to fit the narrative 🙂

Or the tweet,it’s all about the tweet.

I’m not entirely convinced Short Cummings getting caught out was an accident.

Did cross my mind that it is the ultimate behavioural nudge on a BH weekend.

‘If he can do what the **** he likes, I’m off to the beach!’

I’m just glad that most of the population of these islands have been doing what was required to stop us having half a millions deaths, rather than acting like the team of supers spreaders that make up the core of our government. Led by donkeys.

We are 99.9999% certain we have both had the virus.

9 weeks on and my girlfriend still has no sense of smell and taste, mine stopped to but returned after about 5 days.

My girlfriend has been referred to the ENT as she spoke to the GP and he said it should have returned after around 2 weeks, but this was based on NOT having the corona virus.

Anyone else had the loss of taste and smell for a long period of time?

My friend’s daughter has been teaching key workers children. She caught C19 in early March and her sense of taste and smell has not returned. Her husband gave her a spoonful of mustard (which she hates) and she couldn’t taste it.

Anyone else had the loss of taste and smell for a long period of time?

Probably best asked on the other thread:

Have any of us actually caught the Coronavirus yet then?

You can now obtain PHE approved anti-body tests from various sources including Superdry online doctor if you want to know for sure btw.

You can now obtain PHE approved anti-body tests from various sources including Superdry online doctor if you want to know for sure btw.

Sorry, Superdrug. I don’t know if that was auto-correct gone mad or mental cloudiness 🙁

@rydster

The link first and foremost cautions against public use because the gloves are a scare resource which should be reserved for the health services. In passing it is noted that glove use by the public may increase the risk of transmission based on an assumption about missed opportunities for hygiene. That latter hypothesis is total speculation and pulled out of nowhere apparently. In academia, the use of ‘may’ indicates the least secure kind of knowledge.

But is that more likely to lead to transmission than if he didn’t wear the gloves.

There is no question that certain practices optimise the benefits of gloves but are gloves by default riskier?

I understand what you are asking but IMHO it’s not the correct Q.
I don’t think it’s possible to separate wearing gloves and practices and separating out cause and effect is complex.
That is if you ask or insist people to wear gloves they will behave differently.

To take the example … had the shopper been asked to wear gloves and monitored they would be more likely to have removed the gloves before touching the steering wheel and more likely to use hand sanitiser before touching the car and after.

Also as every lab knows what people think they are doing with gloves and masks is often not what they are actually doing, despite the “people” in this case being science graduates. I was one of them as every new hire got a Friday afternoon off in theory..in reality we had UV dust put on gloves and when lunchtime came and we were looking forwards to 1/2d off the HSSE lady walked in with a UV light… we were then told we could go home after we decontaminated the lab and ourselves. I didn’t despite handling lots of nasty stuff at grad and postgrad… the main difference being when you do something all day often vs occasionally and having a fume cupboard is a good reminder.

To my knowledge noone ever went home early.

The crux is probably that it’s easier to touch something then use sanitiser than remove the outer glove and replace or as is more likely think you’ll remember not to touch your face or clothes before you get back to the car/home

For those that want to see what is happening at a local level with new confirmed cases, I have produced this PDF which is from the https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/ website.

This analysis is the rate of new confirmed cases per 100,000 on a moving 7 day average.

https://www.scribd.com/document/462698530/Rates-by-Lower-Tier-V1

It is colour coded if you download it 🙂

My sainsbury’s has been pushing using the smart shop app – I succumbed a few weeks ago and its actually brilliant. Faster for the individual and as the 1 in 1 out policy is limited by the speed of the checkouts, good for the herd too.

Can you operate a smartphone with latex gloves? including the iphone home button?

My winter biking technique is to use my nose. I feel this is counterproductive in terms of viral transission.

NeilO – very nice! Even better, I’m right at the bottom. Its interesting to see we already have some mini second waves.

exsee
Member

If we remove the panto villain from the story for a moment, now replace with NHS staff. Is it still an obvious failure to lead by example?

Yes, because NHS staff aren’t “leaders” and so are under no expectation of leading by example. Whereas Cummings is one of the people who wrote the rules.