What's particularly notable there is that that measure has been taken in a country where they have dealt well with the virus. Never mind finishing this season, you really worry when the next season will start now.

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  I think they will possibly get if finished albeit in empty stadiums but if one player comes down with it then there’s no chance

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Thanks Michael 👍

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This. 

There are exceptions to the rule.  We had a Geography teacher ("Bunter")  who was  definitely in the obese  category.   Yet he could run and  swim faster than most.  Although he seemed old to us as school kids, I guess he would have been mid to late 20s.    If he sustained that weight I very much doubt  he  would have been in the "fit" category by his 40s.  He  really was huge - when he  dived into the swimming pool, a lot  of he water got out !

In the past  I've allowed myself to become  overweight, by reference to my BMI.  At these times exercise has always been more of a trial and I get out of breath easily.   I've  recently taken action  to bring myself  well inside  my recommended BMI range.  I can now power walk for 11KM with no problem, I don't even get out of breath  on steep hills.  I   honestly believe I  could do 2 or 3 times that distance without problem if time allowed and I'm hardly in the first flush of youth !

From my perspective,  getting breathless easily and not getting breathless easily  could be quite a "big deal"   with this virus, given it's mode of killing !

 

 

 

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Would that be the one of many colours?

😀

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Interesting article in The Times this evening:

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/news/coronavirus-china-bars-safety-experts-from-wuhan-lab-brbm9rwtm

"China prevented French experts from overseeing safety at its first high-security virus laboratory, which is now facing claims that it was the origin of the coronavirus pandemic, according to French officials.

The laboratory in the city of Wuhan, where the Covid-19 outbreak began last year, was the first in China to have a biosafety level 4 (BSL 4) rating, which is reserved for institutions working with potentially fatal agents. It was conducting research into coronaviruses, some derived from bats, from which the pathogen is thought to have originated.

The facility opened in 2015 after being built in partnership with France, which was meant to supply the technical expertise with 50 high-level French researchers due to work there between 2017 and 2022. They did not do so as the Chinese came to dominate the arrangements, according to the officials.

French specialists have knowledge in building and running BSL 4 laboratories, which were described by a senior civil servant in Paris as a “bacteriological atomic bomb”. But French firms got only minor roles in the building of the laboratory, according to Le Figaro and France Inter, the state broadcaster.

France Inter said that Technip, the French company supposed to certify that the building complied with safety standards, refused to do so after pulling out of the project in 2015. In the same year Alain Mérieux, the French pharmaceutical tycoon, resigned from the joint chairmanship of the committee heading the project. The French government has refused to say whether the 50 French researchers meant to move to Wuhan were blocked by the Chinese authorities or whether Paris failed to provide the funding.

US diplomats reportedly questioned the facility’s safety procedures, and intelligence suggested that a failure to respect safety protocols there could have allowed the virus to escape during research into diseased bats. Most experts agree the virus appears to have a natural origin, passing from bats to a mammal, and on to humans."

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Raab is so out of his depth.

On the issue of PPE shortages the best he can do is offer "we're doing the best that we can"

I was wondering how that would go down if you had a car crash and your defence was, "I was asleep at the wheel and when I woke up I forgot to apply the brakes. But in th circumstances I did the best that I could."

Best read to the background sound of a jail door being slammed shut....

He's the acting PM, FFS. I wonder if he even knows what a buck looks like, never mind knowing where it stops.

Pathetic

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Did you see this 

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/04/20/exclusivemillions-pieces-ppe-shipped-britain-europe-despite/

Yes - PHE is a useless bureaucracy as has been repeatedly stated. Government Ministers are out of their depth for sure, but they have a machine designed in the 1940s to coax into action and it is found desperately wanting. Kafaesque is the word to describe the bovine behaviour of the massive NHS/PHE bureaucracy.

 

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Back when he was Brexit secretary he didnt even know about the importance of cross channel trade.  He is another stupid little prick of a man.

Him and Hancock are a good pair.

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Do they have any safety procedures or conduct audits over there it is all cost to them is it stuffed in a draw with the incorrect procedure issue being used or is the argument it is stored electronically so we don’t have up keep it Nothing sound new.

I hope the truth gets exposed about how they have caused thousands of deaths through their blind stupidity, and we can be rid of this bunch of  spineless tossers forever.

 

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Interesting post by someone called Helen Taylor on The Times website:

"There's a particular issue with some groups of people - particularly Asian and Middle Eastern, as their cells have a larger proportion of a type known as Ace2, which is used by this virus to gain entry to cells. This is well documented in the literature."

I am not qualified to know the truth of the statement, but if true, it could help explain why COVID-19 has hit some ethnicities harder than others.

P.S. Looks as though she is correct, reading the following article:

https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.01.26.919985v1

"...

The result indicates that the ACE2 virus receptor expression is concentrated in a small population of type II alveolar cells (AT2). Surprisingly, we found that this population of ACE2-expressing AT2 also highly expressed many other genes that positively regulating viral reproduction and transmission. A comparison between eight individual samples demonstrated that the Asian male one has an extremely large number of ACE2-expressing cells in the lung.

..."

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Las Vegas Mayor offers city as "control group", "we offer to be a control group" to see how many people die without social distancing. pic.twitter.com/NESE2hActE

— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) April 22, 2020

Another Times article - this one indicates that we are nowhere near getting to herd immunity:

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/news/infection-rate-is-too-low-to-establish-herd-immunity-to-coronavirus-s5jjf7p6c

"...

Studies from France, California and Wuhan, where the pandemic originated, suggested that only a fraction of the population in each region had contracted the virus. Relatively few appeared to have developed the antibodies that would be expected to prevent infection and a second wave.

In Britain the government believes that only about five per cent of people have been infected.

...

Research at the Zhongnan Hospital in Wuhan found that about 2.4 per cent of its employees and a similar share of recent patients had developed antibodies. That is far short of the 60-70 per cent likely to be needed for a population to acquire “herd immunity”, where the virus is unable to gain a foothold.

In France the Pasteur Institute estimated that less than 6 per cent would have been exposed to the pathogen by May 11, when a national lockdown is due to end. That made a resurgence of the virus highly likely if restrictions were lifted, analysts said.

..."

In Germany, they have already detected that the infection rate has started to increase again:

"...

The German authorities have been alarmed by a rise in one measure of the infection rate amid signs that the public is beginning to tire of its lockdown. As shops across the country resume trading and thousands of pupils go back to school this week, the reproduction number — the number of new cases generated, on average, by each infected person — has risen to 0.9, just short of the point where the disease would begin to grow again.

Angela Merkel has warned that if the number reaches 1.1, hospitals will be overwhelmed by October, or by July if it hits 1.2.

One of the country’s most prominent virologists, Christian Drosten, said that there was a danger of a second wave of infections that could be unexpectedly strong. The reproduction number had fallen to 0.7, indicating that the disease was retreating, in the week after Easter, but picked up again at the weekend.

There are some signs that the public may be letting its guard down.

..."

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Was just about to post that! It really does seem as though many Americans are absolutely insane.

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He is Lord Farquaad AICMFP

 

 

 

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China find 33 mutations of virus in warning to vaccine developers

 

Scientists in China have discovered more than 30 mutations of the new coronavirus, which they say may partly explain why it has been more deadly in certain parts of the world.
https://uk.news.yahoo.com/coronavirus-mutated-more-30-strains-scientists-china-123500160.html

Those findings are so hugely at variance with everything else that has been reported that I'd be very cautious about accepting it as fact.

Other studies have sound the virus to be very stable, with only three main strains.  As you will know it depends on the nature of the mutation; some may be insufficiently different to matter.

On the other hand, if there's a clearly less dangerous variant which happened to confer some immunity to the others then it might be a positive finding.

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Should SD be 4 metres new China  study reports

https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/26/7/20-0885_article

To determine distribution of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 in hospital wards in Wuhan, China, we tested air and surface samples. Contamination was greater in intensive care units than general wards. Virus was widely distributed on floors, computer mice, trash cans, and sickbed handrails and was detected in air ≈4 m from patients.

It's long been a worry for pet owners, but now it's been confirmed: domestic cats can contract the coronavirus and show symptoms.

...

In the statement, the CDC and USDA urged people not to abandon their pets, because "there is no evidence that pets play a role in spreading the virus in the US". Instead, they recommend keeping cats indoors where possible.

 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/world-52377357

 

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The highlighted part completely undermines the allegation that SARS-Cov2 was the result of an accidental release from the Lab. To suggest it went from a Lab employee and into a pangolin which then found its way into a wet market in Wuhan and then into another human being is so improbable as to be dismissed as the fantasy it is.

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I was thinking about that when they showed Hancock doing his photo opportunity with the No.10 cat today.

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That puts MM border control out of the window

 

Yes there is a report today on yahoo  that says the same interesting read but I cant find it at the minute.