It is both bizarre and ludicrous.

Local authorities are closing parks if too many people us them.

Police will move you on if you sit on a park bench.

Yet you can go onto a London bridge and have a party and the police stroll by unconcerned.

 

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Lots of doom and gloom in here this evening. Understandable. 

On the plus side it was a hugely significant day today. In terms of a vaccine, the first human trials in Europe at Oxford University. This is a pivotal moment. 

Also positive noise about the “army” of contact tracers that are being lined up, but we’ll see. 

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I had a situation like that where one nostril was blocked.  It was something called a "concha bullosa". I had to have surgery to have it corrected.

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Makes you wonder if they locked a few billionaires in a room and just got them "creating wealth" instead of asking for handouts, we might solve all of humanity's problems.

First person to point out that wealth is actually created by legions of low paid workers, go to the back of the class.

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The official scientific assessment is that R0 is around 0.7 at the moment.

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Driving home from work this evening at 22:00 and the roads weren't really too different to how they'd normally be at that time. There's definitely been more traffic on the road this week. I echo what some other posters have been saying in that we will see a gradual unofficial easing of the lockdown. More and more businesses will open, calling themselves "essential" and more people will look for excuses to make "essential" travel.

I full expect HMG to extend the lockdown itself past 6 May, but it will only become a de-facto lockdown - we're officially under one, but daily life may not be too much different from normal. As the frustration increases, people will start taking this into their own hands, sadly.

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Yes, I can see how the police breaking up a crowd applauding the NHS wouldn't attract any negative media coverage.... None at all.....

Just think of Chunky Pea's reaction, for example, and all those of a left-wing persuasion on Twitter citing an example of the police overreacting.

Rather than being incandescent why not think through the implications of what you're advocating?

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People in this Country are so thick most have no idea what 2 metres is anyway. Maybe they should have used non EU units and said 7ft.

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I read an interesting twitter thread looking at a study on a restaurant where a number of people were infected in one incident. All the people that were infected were in a direct line of the air conditioning, indicating spread by droplet not aerosol. No one else was infected despite being well within 8m of the super spreader. 

Also a study claiming aerosol spread has been retracted - https://retractionwatch.com/2020/04/22/study-claiming-broader-spread-of-aerosolized-coronavirus-is-retracted/

Eek! My acquaitance who has just been let out of hospital has apparently been told he has a small blood clot on his lung.

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I wonder how intense the hot spots are generating these numbers. i was discussing this with a friend on the phone. We are in a highly populated region (although not densely, with very few flats). We have one friend in common who was hospitalised with it and appears his wife might have had it mildly before him but nobody else we've spoken to amongst friends and relatives have had it or know anybody who has.

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I went for a walk today in the woods and I could hear someone coughing heading my way. A bloke came round the corner and stood to the side and waited while I passed him - more than 2m away - I walked on a bit and heard him cough again. I was worried even though he didn't cough anywhere near me, I was out in the open, and I didn't go within a few meters of him.

As I walked on I started thinking what the hell is it going to be like when the kids come back to school? Sitting in a class with coughing children; crowded into a staff room for morning briefing etc. 

Looking on the dark side it feels like a race between what gets me first, Covid or mental breakdown. 

I don't think it'a a matter of debate or opinion, the numbers are clear: the countries that locked down early have (relatively) very few deaths so far. I also don't accept that these countries will eventually be like us. The only way I could see this is if a vaccine is never found.

 

 

My wife had to go to Tesco's today to get some shopping. Said it wasn't too bad. Since it started she went once then stopped. We've had one delivery and done one click and collect from hell at Asda's which I've mentioned before where they seemed to have a plan to take out as many people as possible.. It is impossible still to get delivery slots at any supermarkets and I have no intention of putting others at risk making a special trip for us.

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I believe, it’s not that he thinks the police should be breaking it up. The problem is that with the ‘bridge clapping’ they’re the flaming ringleaders!

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Interesting article basically saying that international co-operation is the best way forward. Has been happening in the scientific community but probably won't in the business and political world.

https://uk.yahoo.com/news/coronavirus-vaccine-050000721.html

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Shocking report on our local news tonight of a young man who deliberately and provocatively coughed right in the face of a police officer claiming that he had Covid 19 and was subsequently charged, was convicted today but only given a suspended prison sentence......In more positive West Sussex news, the good folk of Chichester seem to be adhering to social distancing pretty well..I can very much confirm Dew’s report....roads around here still very quiet...Waitrose was like a morgue this evening...walked straight in...barely a soul around....even got lots of cheap bread! Pasta seemed to be the only really empty section....toilet roll aisle was full to overflowing with stock...

Personally I think it'd be a mistake to continue the lockdown beyond May. The idea for it was to avoid overwhelming the NHS, bring the number of new infections down and buy us time in order to go back to a proper test,- trace - isolate strategy.

At the moment, the lockdown might well have brought the number of new infections significantly down in the community, but care homes and hospitals could well be hotspots and the problem is we don't know as we are still not testing properly (huge mistake).

PS. I think the term lockdown is wrong. The Chinese had a proper lockdown, they closed public transport and supermarkets and they locked people inside (in some cases they even barricaded the entrances to apartment blocks). People were not allowed outside for any reason. Ours is more of a shutdown as people can go outside at will. Arguably, this is more suited to a western democracy, but there could be a price with that. 

What about flour? Flour is not in any supermarket, we'd been looking for weeks.

It's no good for you on the south coast, but we got some flour from Brakes. Coincidentally they are a customer of mine; as a company they normally supply food to pubs and restaurants, and that side of their business has all but dried up. So they are now selling to the public out of their 11 depots. You ring them up to order, give them your car reg number and go and collect at an agreed time. When my wife went, no-one else was there; it was quick and easy.

https://www.brake.co.uk/food-shop

We ordered a 16kg bag of plain flour and a 16kg bag of self-raising. My wife likes baking, but that's ridiculous! The problem in the system is not the amount of flour, but the capacity to bag it for supermarkets. By buying sacks in bulk, we were helping.

So we offered flour to our neighbours on our recently created WhatsApp group, and so far we've sold or given away about half of it - it turns out everyone else was out of flour and desperate to get some too.

Brakes said to spread the word, so that's what I'm doing. We also bought a big pack of burgers and steaks, and I had a burger on the barbecue this evening which was very tasty. 

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Here I can report that roads are only a little busier and that is mainly farmers moving stock about, plus a few tradesmen. Visitors seem to have gotten the message, which is good. The thing is not to spread the virus from community to community - by which in rural terms I mean from one largish district to another, and if we can keep city folk away that will continue to work for everyone. It is all about buying time, however futile that may seem to some. The longer we can keep it this way, the more time science has to throw everything at it. What's the alternative?

Worst case scenario is vaccine impossible and herd immunity very limited or nonexistent - I do not need to spell out the consequences in that case - but let's keep going and have some hope in these dark times. Better things are possible.

The man is certifiable.  He seems to want to inject people with sunlight and bleach.

25th amendment soon, surely?

 

"The disinfectant, where it knocks it out in a minute, and is there a way we can do something like that by injection inside, or almost a cleaning. It gets in the lungs" -- Trump seems to suggests that injecting disinfectant inside people could be a treatment for the coronavirus pic.twitter.com/amis9Rphsm

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) April 23, 2020

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Thats terrible.  If the Tories hadn't messed  up so badly you would be in a better position.  Shame you dont live in Germany or Aus, NZ or many European countries.

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Shame, as the scientist actually came up with some very good news - sunlight and humidity kill the virus. We knew that anyway by the lack of cases in hot countries 

But when the weather gets colder again, the second wave could be worse just like Spanish flu

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