You mean he didn’t say anything about Neil Ferguson’s point that locking down a week earlier would have reduced the death toll by at least a half? 20,000 people dying due to his laziness and indecisiveness is going to be quite a legacy.

Ferguson was actually pretty generous, he said the infection was doubling every 3-4 days prior to lockdown so locking down a week earlier would have at least halved the deaths, but 2x doubling times in a week would be more like a 4x reduction in death.

You dont need a “Scheme”, its a non taxable salary sacrifie benefit. Company just lowers your salary by x amount and buys the bike. You pay them back as your salary is reduced. Dont need to worry about who to buy the bike from, admin fees etc. They just do a letter stating your salary is now x and the bike is theres till you pay it back. Do a bit of googling and you will find the info, dont get suckered into a commercial busines that makes money out of somehting thats free.

Agree, that would be ideal, but suspect our HR department won’t want the hassle/extra work of administering a scheme themselves, I think if the bike is over £1000 they would need to get themselves approved as a credit broker with the FCA from what I read.

That would destroy all the holiday companies and airlines as they’d have to foot the bill.

Maybe, but I think it’s better to maintain the lockdown and get ourselves Covid free like New Zealand, surely this is a much better position overall for the economy, jobs, business and public health.

is the 14 day quarantine thing enforceable?

Lots of moaning from the airlines, travel companies suggesting we shouldn’t have a quarantine as our infection rates are much higher than the rest of Europe. In reality it doesn’t matter if the countries they are flying to have no infection, it’s the being crammed into a plane for 3-4 hours with 200 people that’s the problem. If we go back to thousands of flights a day surely this will cause another spike. It would be better if the government just turned around and said no foreign holidays this year.

I was definitely getting the feeling Van-Tam was pretty pissed off with Cummings at the daily briefing, if only the journo had asked him outright at the end if he should be sacked, I don’t think he would have held back.

Update:- I called The hospital eye casualty clinic who referred me to a local optometrist for an initial assessment. Thankfully I’ve been given the all clear. Will definitely be wearing goggles next time!

How’s the eye this morning OP? All good or regretting not taking all the advice above about getting it checked??

Eye feels fine, I’m 95% sure I’ve got away with it. I’ve looked really carefully in both eyes up close with a torch and I can’t see any fragments. I have looked at various YouTube videos of what grinder sparks look like if they get embedded in the eye and I think I’d be able to see them if they were there. I might still give the local eye causality clinic a call to see what they think but to be honest I’m more concerned about the Covid risk of spending time in a hospital.

Thanks for the advice everyone. I’ve found there is a daily emergency eye clinic at my local hospital, I will call them in the morning to see if they want to see me. Still feels fine though, hopefully I got lucky.

Oh bugger, not really the reassurance I was looking for.

My eye feels and looks ok, could it of just bounced out? Has anyone had similar, not gone to A&E and been fine?

…or will I definitely wake up in the night crying like a baby?

That and the complete over reaction to everything and anything. I’ve seen Boris called a murderer on my Facey today. He isn’t really, is he?

His refusal to sack Cummings has seriously undermined the lockdown and will undoubtedly result in more infection/deaths.

Johnson must know this but has made the calculation that Cummings is more important to him than the lives of the British people.

Does that constitute murder? Maybe, at the very least it’s manslaughter by gross negligence

It’s pretty much irrelevant now where he went or whether he was right or wrong. If he doesn’t go it will undermine the lockdown and people will die.

Doctors, nurses, key workers have laid down their lives fighting this virus and now he must quit to save lives and protect the NHS.

ICU doctor threatening to resign if Cummings doesn’t go….

https://news.sky.com/story/coronavirus-nhs-doctor-threatens-to-resign-if-dominic-cummings-does-not-11994170

still on USA site
https://spectator.us/getting-coronavirus-bring-clarity/amp/?__twitter_impression=true

Looks like only the UK version removed, Dom must be getting sloppy, though I expect he is very busy trying to cover his tracks.

I found the spectator article from his missus on a window left open on my phone (link now no longer working)

Mary Wakefield
Getting coronavirus does not bring clarity
From magazine issue: 25 April 2020
Getting coronavirus does not bring clarity
(iStock)
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I had thought that actually getting the coronavirus would bring clarity — that there would be some satisfaction in meeting the enemy, feeling its spectral hands around my lungs. No such luck. Uncertainty is the hallmark of Covid-19. Even its origins are murky: wet markets or the Wuhan Centre for Disease Control? Who knows, and who would ever believe the Chinese government anyway? When you’ve got it, the sense of medieval unknowing only deepens. Is this definitely it? Will it get worse? Will it come back?

My version of the virus began with a nasty headache and a grubby feeling of unease, after which I threw up on the bathroom floor. ‘That’s disgusting, Mum,’ said my four-year-old son, handing me a towel with a look of patronising distaste.

I’ve never known a bug treat its victims so differently. My friends have reported stabbing sore throats, a loss of taste and smell, and numbness in their fingertips. The Huazhong university in Wuhan has just updated its list of official first symptoms which now includes: headache, dizziness, muscle inflammation, fever, diarrhoea, vomiting and coughing.

One slight but sad effect of this great variation in symptoms is that it makes phoning friends to share Covid stories peculiarly unsatisfying. ‘Weren’t the muscle aches awful? Oh, you didn’t get them. Nope, no sore throat for me. Oh well.’

That evening, as I lay on the sofa, a happy thought occurred to me: if this was the virus, then my husband, who works 16-hour days as a rule, would have to come home. I let myself imagine a fortnight in bed with ‘mild symptoms’, chatting to Dom and son through an open door. More fool me.

My husband did rush home to look after me. He’s an extremely kind man, whatever people assume to the contrary. But 24 hours later, he said ‘I feel weird’ and collapsed. I felt breathless, sometimes achy, but Dom couldn’t get out of bed. Day in, day out for ten days he lay doggo with a high fever and spasms that made the muscles lump and twitch in his legs. He could breathe, but only in a limited, shallow way.

After a week, we reached peak corona uncertainty. Day six is a turning point, I was told: that’s when you either get better or head for ICU. But was Dom fighting off the bug or was he heading for a ventilator? Who knew? I sat on his bed staring at his chest, trying to count his breaths per minute. The little oxygen reader we’d bought on Amazon indicated that he should be in hospital, but his lips weren’t blue and he could talk in full sentences, such as: ‘Please stop staring at my chest, sweetheart.’

My son, in his doctor’s uniform, administered Ribena with the grim insistence of a Broadmoor nurse
When do you go to hospital? Do you really wait until the lips go blue? Cedd, in his doctor’s uniform, administered Ribena with the grim insistence of a Broadmoor nurse, and this might be my only really useful advice for other double-Covid parents or single mothers with pre-schoolers: get out the doctor’s kit and make it your child’s job to take your temperature. Any game that involves lying down is a good game. My other corona tip is to order at least a litre of PVA glue. As Dom lay sweating, Cedd and I made a palace out of polystyrene packaging. I’ve laughed in the past at men who obsess over model railways. I won’t laugh again. In a chaotic and unpredictable environment, there’s nothing more comforting than having total control over your own tiny world. Long after my son lost interest I was busy gluing on towers, and cutting coloured acetate to make window panes. When Dom finally made it into the kitchen, he found me manically applying cheap plastic stick-on gems to a loo-roll tower. ‘Mum’s busy playing,’ I heard Cedd tell Dom, as he trotted off to fetch the oximeter.

Just as Dom was beginning to feel better, it was reported that Boris was heading in the other direction, into hospital. I’ve been a slack Christian during this era of biblical plague. Churches are shut, even Catholic churches, and somehow that makes more of a difference than I thought it would. One of the reasons I converted was because the doors of Catholic churches were always open, the sanctuary lamp lit, and now they’re closed it feels as if someone’s turned off the spiritual stopcock. But what’s there to do for the sick now except pray? I left my polystyrene palace and got to my knees for Boris, and found to my surprise that my prayers flowed easily, as if carried along in a current of others.

After the uncertainty of the bug itself, we emerged from quarantine into the almost comical uncertainty of London lockdown. Everything and its opposite seems true. People are frightened and they’re calm; it’s spring and it’s not. Queueing’s a pain in the ass and the most fun you’ll have all day.

There’s been much talk of the spirit of the Blitz, but there’s something of the spirit of East Berlin, too. Social distancing is supposed to be a helpful and communal act, but people smile noticeably less. I think it’s guilt by association. Because it’s natural to steer clear of someone you dislike, when you keep your distance for other reasons, you feel instinctively hostile. There’s a woman jogger I’ve seen a few times now who runs around scowling with an arm held out horizontally to keep everyone at bay. If I didn’t have a child in tow, I’d be tempted to walk straight into her.

But then there are the birds, which are chirpier now there’s less noise to compete with, and the strange and wonderful feeling of returning to a world in which waiting is a thing. It’s like the 1990s all over again, people leaning on walls, staring into the distance, scuffing their trainers for something to do. And when you do meet a friend by chance on the street and stop for a guilty, distanced chat, it feels utterly joyful.

I notice the link I posted this morning to the pack of lies his wife wrote in the spectator article chronicling their struggle with Covid (minus the Durham trip) no longer works. Disappointing the press didn’t pick up on this at the briefing.

If Cummings was acting within the rules why did his missus decide to blatantly omit these details?

My husband did rush home to look after me. He’s an extremely kind man, whatever people assume to the contrary. But 24 hours later, he said ‘I feel weird’ and collapsed. I felt breathless, sometimes achy, but Dom couldn’t get out of bed. Day in, day out for ten days he lay doggo with a high fever and spasms that made the muscles lump and twitch in his legs. He could breathe, but only in a limited, shallow way.

Mmmm doesn’t sound like he should have been driving 260 miles in that condition

https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.spectator.co.uk/article/getting-coronavirus-does-not-bring-clarity/amp

+1 Shapps denying the second visit. Should be able to determine from motorway cctv if Mr. Burns did travel back up. Also good point from Sophy Ridge on if they used the services on the 4.5hr journey.

Pretty sure it was very busy in Cornwall

A lot of the pics I have seen in the media of “crowded” beaches/parks have clearly been shot with telephoto lenses which have the effect of bunching everything near and far close together, so making things look a lot more crowded than they actually are.

The graph there shows positive tests by SPECIMEN DATE. It shows we are down to 500 new cases/day now.

As it takes a number of days to get the results tests by specimen date will not give an accurate picture over the last few days as most of the tests taken in the last 24-48hrs will still be pending results. Also can’t believe results take 2-5 weeks, surely that is 2-5 days.

And for some bad news, an outbreak on two mink farms hints that there may be other reservoirs if/when the virus becomes endemic.

There has also been reported cases in domestic cats (In Australia and China) which is more worrying.

I’m still puzzled about where it is all going. There’s plenty of bread in the supermarket, so why is there still so much demand for yeast?

Freshly baked bread only really lasts a day, so if you are limiting the number of trips to the supermarket to once a week it makes sense to bake your own. Plus you know it’s not been sat on a shop shelf with people coughing, sneezing or prodding it.

Bought some on Amazon earlier in the week. Arrived today, quite pricey, but couldn’t get any in the shops.

For those who live in Oxfordshire, be careful please.
This is a graph of the number of new cases per day. Oxfordshire is in Blue. Germany in green as a comparison, with the peaks aligned to help guide what should have happened.
It might be linked to increased testing in hospitals or care homes. I only have the data, not what is happening behind the scenes.

The image/graph doesn’t display

Anyone hear Sunetra Gupta on Radio Scotland just now?. Professor of theoretical epidemiology at Oxford, seemed very sure that at least 40% off the UK, and potentially 60% have been exposed to CV.

Just goes to show even professors of epidemiology can be clueless fools.

>>>red is total deaths so far what 32k plus the blue so I reckon 90k

You bugger, you’ve sussed it already! And here was I trying to bootstrap my confidence limits for the sum from a non-linear mixed effects analysis of England and Wales NHS regions. The plots really are blue and red too 😉

Your guess is in the right ballpark too. But with numbers like this you want to have a bit more confidence.

@tired Out of interest are you factoring in care home deaths to your tail predictions? I think in the general population we don’t have any significant immunity and the epidemic is still in its very early stages, however in care homes unfortunately it is running rampant and sadly in the next month or so I can imagine a lot of care homes residents may be dead or immune. So in this environment herd immunity could force R down (for care homes), so the rate of deaths could drop much faster than in the wider population. As they are the most susceptible to this virus they make up a significant number of reported deaths. The same principle would apply to elderly or sick hospitalised patients.

Edit:- so what I’m saying is once it has burnt itself out in care homes/hospitals I’d expect the overall deaths to come down more quickly, though I expect this will just prompt further lifting of restrictions to replace them.

While you’d expect a video put out by momentum not to put the govt in a good light, it’s hard to argue with what is presented here (comparison between UK and NZ)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQDPQ8bz7cU

I think this 5 level alert system will act as a feedback loop to manage a steady stream of the “herd” into the gas chambers. Better not close those nightingales just yet.

Lots of numbers, not much data

Was referring to the data on outbreaks in restaurants/call centers showing seating plans of who got infected etc.

https://erinbromage.wixsite.com/covid19/post/the-risks-know-them-avoid-them

Thanks @oldnpastit, the most practically useful article on CV I’ve seen so far.

+1, some interesting data.

Sounds like enclosed buildings could be the enemy. As we head into summer I wonder if it may help getting schools/businesses to work outside where possible?

….Or if not possible ensure all windows/doors are opened.

I’m not sure 1 week from now or 8 weeks from now will make it any better or worse

Lifting now will nudge the R0 towards 1, so we will effectively lock in the current infection/death rate. We’ll just plateau at 6-700 deaths/day.

We should be trying to minimise the area under the curve and if anything tighten the lockdown further to get the infection right down (or at least wait it out a few more weeks). Then when we lift a little and the R0 goes toward 1, we’ll hopefully be plateauing at a much lower number of deaths/day.

I suspect the govt strategy is still relying on an element of herd immunity, if they can get even 20% infected then it will help get the R0 down a bit lower and mean they can lift a bit more. Don’t think they’d admit to that though.

>>If we had 97,845 of real tests conducted on the day would that honestly be a failure?

Indeed not – which is what makes HandCock’s compulsive lying on the subject so remarkable.

Tests down again today to 69K, I guess this is closer to the true capacity. Find it insulting they think they can fool the public with 100K+ tests “in a day” rather than 100k+ tests “per day” as promised. What is worse is I assume they had to stockpile test kits in the weeks before the end of the month to pull this deception off. This means people would have been denied tests that were potentially available earlier just to make the govt look good. Unbelievable.

I’d personally go long scale. That’s what 90%+ of people use. Short scale might be a bit easier if you have tiny hands, however there are plenty of virtuoso small children on YouTube you play miles better than me and most of then handle a long scale just fine.

Nicely put Neiloxford.

It’s a real pity the journalists asking the same old questions to the government at the daily briefing lack any kind of maths/science understanding to be able to raise a point similar to what Neil has made. I’d like to see Valance/Hancock justify our delay when presented with that fact.

Our friends down under look to have avoided any significant deaths…

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/new-zealand/
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/australia/

Does anyone know at what stage they introduced lockdown?

That YouTube video posted earlier is bollocks. It only applies if you are looking to achieve herd immunity. If they’d applied the measures mid Feb and kept R0<1, then it would have never taken off and we might have got away with a few hundred deaths. We’ll likely end up with around 40K dead after the first peak and we’ll effectively just be putting ourself back in the position we were in, in Feb. I.e the virus at large in the community, no discernible ‘herd’ immunity and ready to pounce if we don’t keep the measures in place.

Electro acoustic bass any good for a beginner?

I’d probably just get an electric. Acoustic basses aren’t really loud enough to jam with an acoustic guitar. You can still practice on a electric bass unplugged or get a cheap headphone amp. I did look at get an acoustic bass a while back but after reading up on it I came to the conclusion most bassists thought they were a waste of time.

Ref online lessons…, SBL is good, but he does waffle on a bit so it can take 5 minutes or so before he gets down to the nitty gritty. Prefer Mark from talkingbass.net. Both put out tons of free stuff on YouTube so you can work through this first before deciding which to spend money on.

I took up the bass about 3-4 years ago and my playing really improved in the last year when I joined a band and started gigging, so I’d push yourself to do this as soon as you can.

What would be interesting to know is how many of the 78 still have igM antibodies after 3,6,12 months etc.

>WHO are saying some people don’t produce antibodies

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence

I should have been more specific….They found serological “testing” didn’t show any discernible antibodies (in some patients)

So for the purpose of the discussion absence of evidence is indeed clear evidence that serological testing cannot be entirely relied upon to determine the prevalence of infection in a population (and case aquisition rate). Furthermore it also raises concerns about immunity to repeat infections in some people.

There are different sorts of immune response and it is possible to fight off infections without antibodies.

>Sorry can you explain what case acquisition rate is?

It’s the fraction of all true infected subjects who are detected and counted as a case (and in this case tested COVID19 +ve). In the UK I believe it is about 5%

Ah, ok. That is the million dollar question that nobody really knows the answer to.

Worth mentioning that the WHO are saying some people don’t produce antibodies, so serology data might not be accurate.

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/17/who-issues-warning-on-coronavirus-testing-theres-no-evidence-antibody-tests-show-immunity.html

They probably weren’t. But the case acquisition rate was likely higher than the approximate 5% in the UK. The previous SARS outbreak was most likely the cause for this.

They definitely were…. And they were also using smartphone data to make sure they got all the contacts
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/18/covid-19-south-koreans-keep-calm-and-carry-on-testing

extract from article
“By retracing how someone came to be infected, South Korean authorities have been able to give the public details about new infections and identify infection clusters early on.
After an employee at the call centre tested positive, authorities quickly set up a tent to test everyone who worked or lived in the Koreana Building, as well those had visited the premises.”

Sorry can you explain what case acquisition rate is?