General Chat

Well, the garden centres are open and there is football on the telly so all is well in the world ... maybe not quite.

There is a developing stand off between the govt and the major cities inc London. They are refusing to bring the 5-11s back to school, supported by teaching unions and the BMA.
M Gove on Andrew Marr saaid that the parents have a duty inc to accept "some risk". Who would take Gove's word for anything he is as bad as BJ. It is not 1941.

Gove claims that the govt now has 17000 people for the half baked TTI project - which is fundamental to getting primary school kids back to school and making
any significant relaxation in the lockdown rules. Even with the measures so far "R" has risen to > 7 except in London.

Science: there is v little empirical science avail re C-19 and children.

1. they can get infected with the virus but it not known when and if it goes away
2. not known if the virus goes quiescent only to emerge when teenagers
3. not known if kids pass the virus on to other kids, teachers, other adults but little reason to think otherwise [ UK ONS thinks likely, two small scale Oz studies say no ]
4. a few kids are contracting fatal conditions connected to C-19 [ it looks like this will be dealt with using a routine treatment in the near future ]
5. primary schools restarted ( with distance etc ) in Denmark but not for long enough to draw any conclusions [ very specific structure reached in agreement with the unions, all the science open, no secrets, close monitoring ]
6. working class parents unable to work from home being asked (a) to walk/cycle or take risky public transport and (b) risk their kids on top - they won't ; they are also being told not to use grandparents as minders after school
7. the government is now promising tests and masks for schools - just like they promised for care homes

The TTI (test, trace, isolate) project itself is in all kinds of trouble even though Gove/Hancock promise it is to start end May - same time as schools supposed to restart!

Problems:
1. The main contract is with SERCO who have a poor record of delivering
2. The 17/18 000 people are call centre staff with zero med knowledge. They will work from a script poss from home. Many will have been laid off from the likes of Virgin Media ...
3. Experienced local govt staff have been frozen out of the project which, as with everything led by Vallance, is top down controlled.
4. The NHSX app does not do what it says on the tin - runs smartphone battery flat , most people do not have BluetoothLE on permanently 'cos of power and security issues. Many IOW trial users stopped using the app when they encountered this problem.
5. does not work with older versions of Android and iOS
6. Maj. of over 70s do not have (or want) a smart phone
7. Privacy issues - these could be fixed by using the Google/Apple API but Vallence refuses to do this 'cos he wants to morph the app into a long term big brother. Data collected wil not be deleted and can be de-anonymousised.

A fronte praecipitium a tergo lupi.
:-|

When ALL the GOVERNMENT goes back into The House of Commons and stays there supposedly doing their jobs then the Children will go back to school.

Even if it takes until after Christmas to get rid of the Virus and all the children are 100% well

I agree with all of that Rollo.

A couple of local education authorities in the region where I live are not going to open schools. What is good enough for London with its R rate is certainly not good enough here with our higher R rate.

Wouldn't it be interesting to see how many children of MPs, advisers and captains of industry go back to school when Boris wants them to?

All of this faffing about with tests and track, trace and isolate makes me a little suspicious about whose families and friends hold high positions in the companies chosen to carry out all of this. It seems that they could not organise a booze-up in a brewery! I was appalled when tests were being sent to the US for processing.

By the way, whoever changed the name to 'track, trace and isolate'? To me track and trace mean pretty much the same so it was better named before - was it test, track and isolate?

Boris is just about bust in this neck of the woods, I think. He would be hard to trust as a school monitor and his sycophantic cohorts are no better.

We have a lot of essential workers in our neighbourhood so if school places are already been taken by their children some of us wonder whether there is room to accommodate the recommended 15 children. I know of two parents with three children fitting into those categories who are not going to send their children to school to be guinea pigs when Boris would like them to. Apart from the teaching unions disagreeing with Boris, I think it would be too difficult to keep five-year-olds apart for the whole day.

..... and I agree with you Sue.

Well I wouldn't trust Gove to do anything. To me he is completely untrustworthy and teachers as well as unions know this. Horrible man.

Well said Ginnie! :-D :-D :-D

The current incantation is "Test, trace and isolate".

I would truly like it to work from the bottom of my heart 'cos the current mess is royally screwing up my life.

What should happen is for the test result to be fed to the trace team who will find the person of interest ( by asking them nicely? ) who ( in China) would be incarcerated but here will be asked to self isolate for two weeks (at best ). In order for this to work the lab has to come up with an answer within 48 hrs of the test not something that Milton Keynes or the US Pharma have managed to date.

If all this clicks into place ( em er um ) then it will be possible to determine R for a town or country district ( there is no such thing as a regional R of any practical use inc London ) and put a team onto closing down the hot spot. That may seriously incovenience the target location for a short period.

There is also the possibility of an expensive balls up and the modellers, Vallance et al saying there you go test n trace doesn't work. Back to a sharks tooth pattern of repeated spikes, lockdowns, breaking economy and much gloominess.

I hate to rain on anybody's parade but a vaccine before Christmas is wildly improbable. Even if the Oxford team successfully test a vaccine they will have to check that the full virus won't bite back. That is what defeated the SARS research. On the basis of a hole in 1 from a distance of 10 000 light years they may get a result but to have it in the hands of doctors before mid 2021 is a long shot. However hope springs eternal. Happy feet.

The last human victories over serious virus were polio ( 1955 ), smallpox (1980) TB (1922) and Ebola (2019). There are any number of nasty virus inc corona type. Humans are living in a dangerous neighbourhood and should take more care.

Johnson seems to think, like Trump, that fortitude can defeat the virus. That has never been true all the way back to Sparta's defeat of Athens and the Fall of the Roman Empire.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/03/great-plague-athens-has-eerie-parallels-today/608545/

Desperados

https://tinyurl.com/ya38mol8

Just saw on the news Trump saying that he is taking anti-malarial drugs as he believes that will prevent him catching the virus. It was followed by a medical expert saying what dangerous side effects that drug has - heart attacks , strokes etc and vehemently advising against it being used in this way.
I suppose it's better than drinking bleach anyway, but he really must be scaring his advisers with his 'advice'.

Susie, Obama's comments about Trump, his cohorts and advisers were pretty spot on, I believe.

Isn't anyone who ignores advice and over-rules experts to the extent that he seems to do a typical despot!

The fact that Trump may get in again for another term ought to make everyone afraid. Obama is backing Biden but I'm not sure that he is electable. I feel that if he backed someone such as Cuomo, Trump's goose would be cooked.

By the way, referring to test, trace and isolate earlier in this thread, this is what I was on about.

Not for the first time did one of the honchos on Coronavirus nightly programme get out the words 'track, trace' before correcting herself. Several times I have heard it wrongly addressed as 'track, trace and isolate' but I do hope those who ought to get it right, don't get it wrong any more. They must read from their prepared spiel without engaging their brains.

Test, trace and isolate or test, track and isolate say it like it is. Sadly, TTI is not at a viable stage yet. Too much control? Too little control? Too few workers? Who knows?

Grrrrr ..... It was track and trace again on telly this evening. Grrrrr.

Do they even understand what's behind the method and why it's being done ... or about to be done if it ever gets up and running?

Must not turn into a nitpicker.
Must not turn into a nitpicker. :-D :-D :-D

There are enough of those around without me adding to their numbers. :-D

Chillin' now. :-D :-D :-D

But I do agree with Ginnie on Gove.