Matthew Parris: 

Britain. I’ve always been sceptical about British exceptionalism. No longer. Our handling of this crisis has been exceptionally poor.

LOL you’ve just done exactly what Justin predicted you would do. 

Question: Do you think a government minister should be promoting fake news then.

And please, she knew exactly what she was doing!

There an article in The Times today saying that lung scarring is happening significantly in young people who recover from corona virus. The long term impacts are uncertain but scarring (as I understand) implies the damage is permanent. Impact on life expectancy and quality of life is uncertain. However, it throws another spanner into the works and calls into question the assumption that allowing young people to contract corona virus is a sensible approach. The young could pay a very high price later in life and come to see themselves as sacrificial lambs.

Brian - it only applies to those who have a serious infection, which is a minority of younger people.

Anyhow, also from The Times:

"...

The children’s watchdog is supporting calls for pupils to be allowed back into the classroom as soon as possible and has urged unions and ministers to “stop squabbling”. Anne Longfield, the children’s commissioner for England, called the government’s plans “sensible”. She said the evidence that prolonged periods out of school was extremely damaging was “overwhelming”, particularly in the case of vulnerable and disadvantaged youngsters.

..."

Of course not and of course she didn't.

It was fake news and she re-tweeted it. So she did.

Dorries’s tweet described the smear as “revealing”. If she had done even 10 seconds of checking, she would have found out that it was a lie. She is a minister and so must be held to higher standards than the man in the street. It is also typical of this sh1t shower which pretends to be a government that she shoots her mouth off without even basic due diligence.

We knew you would defend the Tory Party come what may. If Johnson ordered all migrants to be put up against a wall and shot, you would find some way to justify that!

Calling you Comical Ali doesn’t begin to describe the ludicrous depths you have sunk to!

She retweeted it with the comment ‘revealing’.

That is promoting a lie. You are a poltroon, Richard. We are all laughing at you.

So what? Even in 80 year olds it is only a minority of people who will croak from C19. We can't just throw minorities into the garbage truck and be done with it. In my view that would put us in the same bed as many of the most grotesque regimes that have existed through the ages.

I made a similar point to a friend yesterday - comparing the spread of a virus and ability to close borders/travel between the UK and a country 32 x larger but with only 2/5 or so of the population is a bit daft, particularly if you factor in that we're next to a large continental land mass and are more of a global hub.

The frustrating thing is the argument that we probably should have looked at quarantining visitors early on, screening etc. is a reasonable enough one, albeit I suspect no where near as simple as some like to portray, but using countries like Aus and NZ as an example is just daft as their situations are vastly different to ours. Using them as a comparison weakens the argument and seems to me to be cheap and inaccurate point scoring. Anyone who's travelled to Aus will know they already had very strict checks at the airport and a much harder attitude to travellers than the UK (or many European countries). Moving from that to quarantining all incomers isn't anywhere near as much of a stretch as it would have been for us, given they pretty much had the processes, staff and infrastructure in place already.

I think 'next' epidemic (assuming the disease is as nasty as the current one) countries will be looking at making sure:-

1) they control visitors in to the country, particularly from countries where the disease is present, probably by the 14 day quarantine at the airport (or nearby) method. 

2) They have the capacity to rapidly scale up testing once a test is available if it's a new disease and for contact tracing and quarantining/isolation.

3) They identify the most at risk groups and make a proper plan on shielding/protecting those as early as possible.

4) PPE stockpiles are maintained at a reasonable level in preparation for a new epidemic and industrial capacity is there and lined up to make more at short notice if required. I.E the kind of basic planning you'd expect in a company level business continuity plan.

5) Lockdowns - I'd expect them to stay as part of the arsenal if the disease spreads too widely.

Yes but Richard makes it his mission to defend grotesque regimes if there is even a whiff of ‘lefty’ disquiet.

Hurrah for the blackshirts!

Coronavirus: A 3rd of hospital patients develop dangerous blood clots.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-52662065

On the young peoples lung scarring front, I think it would be more sensible to look at the risk of scarring in young people versus the risk of scarring they already face and seeing if it's significant or not. If not then unless you're saying all children should be kept isolated to protect them from everything that they're already at risk of getting or suffering from, the policy should be allow them to get on with it (looking purely at this issue and not whether it would spread the disease etc. before some decides to imply that from my post).

My brother for example got pleurisy last year and ended up with scarring from that. Clearly that's bad and I imagine something that happens to people from all age groups every year. Is the risk from covid more or less than from seasonal flu and other viruses?

Something bad happening to Mildred from number 42 is terrible but not something you'd necessarily base a societal response on. Something bad happening to 1 in 1000 people etc probably would be something you'd put specific processes in place to avoid/mitigate.

It's just occurred to me that "we are following the science" has become used a bit like one of their slogans. I'm beginning to wonder if it's part of a prepared blame game if things go even worse than they have so far. Then it becomes " well we did follow the Science", like we were "just obeying orders"

I've been trying to be supportive of the government in the sense that there are a lot of dilemmas and although they weren't doing great it wasn't easy.

But that all changed yesterday for me with Hancock. It was such blatant lying and mis-representation and self congratulation regarding care homes that I no longer have any confidence in any of them.

She did! Unless she has issued a full and complete written apology and admitted she should, holding a responsible position in office, fact check stuff before retweeting it.

Regional data for new cases yesterday in England

The 7 English regions 

• London +80 (0.3%) 26,193


• Midlands +220 (0.9%) 23,658


• North West +212 (0.9%)23302


• North East and Yorkshire +217 (1.0%) 22,352


• South East +159 (0.8%) 19,935


• East of England +155 (1.2%) 12,871


• South West +40 (0.6%) 7,227

The 10 local areas with the highest cases

1. Kent +50 (1.1%) 4,358


2. Lancashire +38 (1.2%) 3,299


3. Birmingham +16 (0.5%) 3,232


4. Hampshire +23 (0.7%) 3,121


5. Essex +12 (0.4%) 3,018


6. Surrey +6 (0.2%) 2,792


7. Hertfordshire +13 (0.5%) 2,693


8. Sheffield +7 (0.3%) 2,443


9. Cumbria +7 (0.3%) 2,129


10. Staffordshire +19 (0.9%) 2,041

The 10 local areas with the lowest cases

1. Rutland +2 (6.7%) 30


2. North East Lincolnshire 145 - No change


3. Isle of Wight +5 (3.0%) 166


4. Torbay +4 (1.8%) 221


5. Bath and North East Somerset +1 (0.4%) 226


6. Bracknell Forest 235 - No change


7. Windsor and Maidenhead +1 (0.4%) 277


8. Calderdale +1 (0.4%) 279


9. Hartlepool +14 (4.7%) 295


10. Thurrock +3 (1.0%) 307

Poor Nadine, rowing with both oars has never been her strength.

This was discussed on the radio/TV last night and this morning. A major part of the problems from Covid-19 is caused by an overreaction by the immune system. It contributes to thickening of the blood and increased risk of clotting as well as being responsible for pneumonia and other organ failure, as I understand the processes involved.

A specialist was explaining the three-pronged approach as:

1. antivirals to mitigate/combat the initial infection,

2. anti-inflammatories to dampen the immune system response in more severe cases, and, of course,

3. a vaccine, assuming one (or more) can be found that work and don't produce side-effects

Hancock's words were utterly sickening yesterday. How that slimeball sleeps at night I'll never know. 

Italy will lift all travel restrictions on Wednesday 3rd June and allow travel to and from the country people will also be able to move between regions in the country again on the same day

Shops and restaurants will reopen this coming Monday if they can observe social distancing.

Protesters boo as man led away in handcuffs by police at Hyde Park anti-lockdown protest pic.twitter.com/ZpCPqmsypG

— Thomas Hornall (@Thomashornall) May 16, 2020