Watching carefully what goes on. Once lockdown is complete and it starts to seriously disrupt drug supply is when I think we'll have a problem.

With far less vehicles on the road, the police will have an easier time spotting the dealers moving the goods and I'm sure that shortages will have certain people doing desperate things to obtain supplies.

Already think I'm noticing an increase in arrests for PWITS Class A in the police twitter feeds.

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Beast will help you there. 

 Good to hear you’re feeling more positive and as I said in my reply to you, we all need to talk and we’ll all have moments of despair, when we’ll need support!  So absolutely no need to apologise!

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My hair is extremely thick and my hairline has not receded like most of my contemporaries. I have always cropped it short during the summer regardless of the fashion simply because it is comfortable. In recent years, it has come into fashion again.

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That is my approach - I have my own hair trimmer and I use it on minimum. Very easy.

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Thanks for the links. I’m normally quite attentive but I can’t recall any broadcast advice suggesting anything longer than 48hrs for residual.

I think there probably needs to be a more extensive roll out of procedures with taking receipt of food deliveries for instance.

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A lockdown of 3 month is both incomprehensible and totally impossible.It will lead to so many many serious problems. A lot of people will just not abide by it for length of time.The longer it goes on the harder it will be to enforce and the biggest danger will become food shortages.

As ive said before we cannot led the remedy become worse than the disease!

This from the Tory leaning Sunday Times:

If Germany can test so many people, why can’t we?

Test, test, test. If there is one lesson that we have already learnt from the coronavirus crisis, it is that testing is the key to controlling the outbreak, determining its spread and, ultimately, to defeating it. It is good news that more tests are being made available this weekend to NHS professionals who are on the front line of this war against an invisible enemy.

It is also, however, woefully late. Some doctors and nurses have been staying at home unnecessarily because they do not know for certain whether they or members of their family have contracted Covid-19. Others may have been inadvertent carriers. The lateness of a testing regime has hampered what has been an extraordinary effort by the NHS and made an extremely difficult situation worse.

It is symptomatic of a more general failure. Some people on social media protested that Boris Johnson, health secretary Matt Hancock and the Prince of Wales were able to get tested — positively, in all three cases — when others were not, including NHS staff. You need to know when those leading the political response are affected, as you do for the heir to the throne in a constitutional monarchy.

The critics, though, had a point about our testing failure. In Europe, Germany, which has increased its tests to half a million a week, stands out as an example to the rest. It puts into perspective Britain’s planned increase to 25,000 a day .

In January, when the crisis first broke, German scientists were quick to develop a test and spread the knowledge to laboratories around the country. For some time 120,000 people a week have been tested and, while this has not prevented fatalities, Germany’s death rate is a fraction of those experienced in countries such as Italy and Spain. Now German scientists are also said to be close to the launch of mass antibody tests, key to detecting the extent of herd immunity.

....

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/comment/if-germany-can-test-so-many-people-why-cant-we-fbpv83xmm

 

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I second these thoughts completely. It is really good to hear from you haghir and I hope your mother has a speedy recovery.

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Logistically, I think that we can handle a continuation of the current lockdown. All of the essential services are operating. If any links in the chain which have been shut down need to be brought back into operation, that can be done. However, the question is whether this is psychologically and economically sustainable. 

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At best a lot of this suggests very poor communication. At worst it suggests arrogance and incompetence.

Test, test, test — how UK is failing in fight against coronavirus

The government faces fresh pressure over its repeated promises to “ramp up” coronavirus testing as it emerged that its latest drive to help NHS workers will initially involve only 800 frontline staff.

Michael Gove, minister for the Cabinet Office, announced the plan on Friday to prioritise antigen testing for health workers, which would allow healthy staff who have been in contact with an infected person to return to work. But health officials said yesterday that it could be several weeks before testing can begin. The NHS has more than 1m staff.

The disclosure comes amid scrutiny of five coronavirus policy pledges made by Boris Johnson and Matt Hancock, the health secretary, to improve the availability of antigen and antibody tests, protective equipment for staff, ventilators and hospital beds.
....

On March 11 the government said it would be increasing testing to 10,000 a day. On March 19 the prime minister vowed that would rise to 25,000 a day and then 250,000 a day.

Despite the promises, the average daily testing number last week remained at about 5,000. On Friday the test total was 8,911. This was still short of 10,000, two weeks after ministers had promised to hit the target.
...
Germany has increased its virus testing capacity to 500,000 a week, which is more than 10 times that of the UK. Anyone with symptoms can get tested, with most covered by the health insurance system and Germany’s large number of private laboratories.

Even in America, where President Donald Trump’s response to the crisis has come under fire, there are 30,000 tests being done every day.

In Britain, testing is done by 12 state-owned laboratories s run by Public Health England and other public health agencies and about 40 run by the NHS.
...
Hancock said he had ordered 3.5m such tests — with more to come. “We are ramping up,” he said, adding that the antibody tests would become available “very soon”.

It emerged this weekend that it could be May before the antibody tests are available. Experts said the tests had not yet been proven to work and even if they were validated it could be six weeks before they go on sale.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/news/test-test-test-how-uk-is-failing-in-fight-against-coronavirus-92fdpg70w

 

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 We're sanitising everything that Ocado delivers to us to reduce the risk. We're also throwing away all packaging immediately where applicable.

Edit: One tip is to buy organic fruit and veg because it is often packaged (to avoid chemical contamination) and less likely to have been pawed as a result. 

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Some jump on such comments as "heartless" and "uncaring" but the issue must be discussed because it will bite us going forward.

Just because topics are extremely uncomfortable does not mean that they should not be debated. It is akin to some shutting down debate about immigration by use of the"R" word.

Misery resulting from an extended economic lockdown will be an inevitable consequence.

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The best way of shortening the lockdown period is to tighten it now. I understand a battle about whether to shutdown non-essential construction is still taking place in government. It was also concerning to read in the ST how poorly the UK government is currently functioning. IMO they need to bring in Starmer and a few of Labour's brains (so few in the present party there won't be much competition to sift through) to up the quality of cabinet.

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Why would there be food shortages. The food supply chain is working as it should despite the initial panic buying.

Key workers and key operations are still operating.

I think you’ve been watching too much Donald Trump. Thankful even the PM seems to disagree based on the letter we are about to receive

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I've no idea about these studies but the criticism I have sometimes read about studies like this is that they use ideal conditions and levels of virus on surfaces that would rarely be found in the real world.

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Sunday Times is saying lockdown until end of May or June. 

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I don’t think there is any hard evidence yet of how long it remains on various surfaces.  There have been various time scales reported but nothing officially confirmed, so like most things relating to this virus, it’s speculation. 

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We now learn that there was a pandemic exercise in 2016 which showed that the NHS would be overwhelmed and it identified 2 key problems: lack of ventilators and lack of PPE.

The govt never published the results and never really addressed the issues. I guess there were more important priorities, like Brexit.

 

Yes correct action I believe. I also believe we need a period of more intense lockdown.

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We import a large amount of the food we consume. We already know that the docks are quiet, partly because other nations have shut down their own borders. Really, you just have to look at the traffic on a major cargo route like the A14. Where are all the trucks?

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It wouldn’t surprise me if the current lockdown is extended but there was mention of alternating between lockdown and more relaxed measures for three months or more.  I think the reasoning was it would spread the number of cases over a period of time. 

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  And elections!

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The current mob in Westminster have been working for a long time to reduce the social status of the majority of the population to something just below medieval villeinage. Lords had duties and obligations to their villeins and serfs but none to the freemen. Ironic isn't it?

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My kind of girl.

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