Part of The latest from around Europe
From BBC news ticker:
An EU agency which monitors infectious diseases has been accused of underestimating the virus threat. The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) considered coronavirus low-risk when it met on 18 February, just three days before the outbreak in northern Italy made headlines. Spain’s El País newspaper reports that the agency made no urgent recommendations for special measures and concludes, citing other medical experts, that it did not respond robustly enough.

Who would of thought, eh?

Yes, collective madness going on. The logic is presumably if Greece open for business, Spain don’t want to be left behind etc etc. It strikes me that people of all nations should have ‘staycations’ this year and support their own economies. 

Applies only if you can be sure that any patients so transferred are free of the virus. Otherwise care homes would and have emulated cruise ships in spreading infection.

Where were the etsts then?

The lesson is that international travel spreads the contagion - that much should be "bleeding obvious".

Latest from China confirms that:

https://thehill.com/changing-america/resilience/natural-disasters/498277-millions-under-lockdown-in-china-after-cluster

"...

The highest-ranking Communist Party official in Shulan was removed along with five other government officials as a result of the new outbreak. 

It’s not clear where the cluster of new cases originated, but health officials say it may have to do with people returning from Russia, which currently has the second highest number of cases in the world, with more than 290,000. 

..."

Of course, countries which rely on tourism are desperate to get it going again, but that is not our (UK) problem - we need to protect our borders to bear down on transmission.

We cannot eradicate coronavirus, expert warns
From the BBC news ticker:
The coronavirus cannot be eradicated, the House of Lords has heard.
Prof David Robertson, head of viral genomics and bioinformatics at the University of Glasgow, told the House's Science and Technology Committee that Covid-19 was a highly successful virus.
He said: "It is so transmissible, it's so successful, we're so susceptible, that actually it's a little bit of a red herring to worry about it getting worse, because it couldn't be much worse at the moment in terms of the numbers of cases."
He contrasted coronavirus with Ebola, which killed many more of the people it infected but was therefore easier to control as people stopped spreading it.
"This virus is infecting so many people with asymptomatic to mild symptoms that it's almost uncontrollable.
"I think we have to be clear that we're not going to be able to eradicate this virus. It's going to settle into the human population and in several years it will become a normal virus."
There was also a warning that people who have had coronavirus may not develop significant immunity.
John Edmunds, professor of infectious disease modelling at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, said evidence from survivors of Sars (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, a different form of coronavirus) suggested immunity-giving antibodies reduced over time.
"So that's potentially bad news for us, that immunity may not last that long against this virus," he said.

So what do we do guys, hide away forever or try to do normal life as best we can?

I guess they left out "and stating the bleedin' obvious" from his title.

This is just a coronavirus, as I keep saying: a nasty one, but just a variant of what we already know. So yes, antibodies will indeed diminish over time. It's why it won't be a "have a jab and be done with it for life" thing, rather it'll be closer to the "every year" flu jab that you can get.

SARS antibodies last between 2 and 3 years, btw. I see no reason why SARS-CoV-2 would be any different...

Source: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2851497/

This I agree with - foreign holidays should be the very last thing to return to normal.

I took a break from these threads and the news for a few days and a quick catch up this morning suggests I should stay away for longer:

• we still don't have a proper testing capacity (we are not testing enough people and we are not getting the results quickly enough)


• the TTI strategy is still not in place


• the outbreaks in the care homes are still not under control


• The number of new infections is till too high


• Despite the shambolic handling of the epidemic in care homes, the govt continues to lie openly and brazenly (the PM said that there was a lockdown in care homes before the general lockdown and Hancock said that there was a protective ring since February)


• The truth is that not only adequate PPE and testing was not made available to care homes, but they were forced to receive hospital patients without a test, with the authorities essentially seeding and spreading the virus in care homes


• Many people still refuse to acknowledge the catastrophic errors made by the govt; they are effectively legitimise them and they contribute towards lower standards of governance and leadership

Although I am not confident, I still think that we'll probably avoid a second significant surge and we'll just 'muddle through' in a relatively low plateau of new infections and deaths for several months culminating in the worst number of excess deaths in Europe, despite our hugely significant time advantage compared to the rest of Europe. 

I see another argument that seems to be 'trendy' recently, that the lockdown has caused and is still causing deaths for other reasons. Yet, there are several other countries (Greece, Israel, CEE countries etc.) which had more strict lockdowns than ours and not only they have no excess deaths, but in some cases all cause mortality has dropped below normal.

I am not convinced we ever had a "time advantage", given the volume of international travel going through this country.

The virus was already rampant in the community before the lockdown - the reason why the government switched from track and trace to the "delay" phase was simply that we had exhausted our then testing and tracing capacity. From that moment, the die was cast - where I think the UK scored well was in preventing the NHS from being overwhelmed - that was the sole Government priority at the time - even sending people from hospitals to care homes was part of that overriding aim.

When looking at those who have died with COVID-19 - we need to separate those who should have survived from those who were on their last legs and maybe had their lives shortened by a few weeks or months.

Celebrating a nonagenarian recovering from COVID-19 is all well and good, but it does not amount to a hill of beans - I would rather celebrate the patients in their 50s and 60s who recover.

Regarding a summer holiday season - it was partially the winter holiday season, ie skiing trips, which really helped spread it so that should be a warning sign! Obviously wasn't the only way it spread though.

Am sure there are a lot of people putting a lot of effort into thinking how some kind of an international summer holiday season can be salvaged this year. If infections continue to decrease then august and more especially september could see some kind of season with appropriate precautions. I suppose you would be outside a lot, could have windows open etc, fewer people, temperature checks getting onto the plane. Who knows what the infection rates will be though, a lot of uncertainty.

Perhaps not. It just made all the other residents more vulnerable...

There needs to be a public enquiry into the failings which have led to the shameful result of CV19 running through care homes literally like the pox.

That handicaps the British in particular, given our summers are predominantly a pile of steaming, f***ing sh*te.

Quite. In countries which use more blunt language it would be called a slaughter.

You are missing the point there - the positives of a lockdown are immediate - people stop spreading the virus - the negatives are long term - people are jobless, depressed and in economic penury.

They don’t seem to be using that term?

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/16/across-the-world-figures-reveal-horrific-covid-19-toll-of-care-home-deaths 

NHS England has reported 174 new hospital deaths up from 90 yesterday

Last Tuesday. NHS England reported 366 new hospital deaths

Government basically saying they have been fed rubbish by the scientists.

Now the government blames SCIENTISTS for Coronavirus failures: Furious finger-pointing breaks out over testing fiasco and failure to protect care homes as Cabinet minister Therese Coffey says blunders were down to 'wrong' science advice

A furious blame game erupted today as a Cabinet minister claimed government coronavirus blunders were down to 'wrong' science advice.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8333513/Several-lessons-learnt-handling-Covid-19-MPs-say.html