Has Trump been watching Star Trek? There was an episode where people were infested with a parasite and the only way to kill the parasite, the creatures that infected them and not the host was a dose of UV light

---

Mr Trump went on: "I'm not a doctor. But I'm, like, a person that has a good you-know-what." (and before yur imagination runs riot, e was pointing to his head. BTW, though, his head was thinking that injecting disinfectant would cleanse the body. of the virus. I see Beast (late yesterday) and KevBrads (this morning, moved to to today's thread)  have also picked this up

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-52407177

Off you go with the serious stuff.

---

Anyone remember the character Frank Drebin from Police Squad and the Naked Gun films? 

Trump is the political version of this character and he's the President! It would be hilarious if it  so many lives weren't at stake. 

Someone put it perfectly, he suggested about light and getting it into the body is because he thinks he's perfect as he thinks the sun shines out of his backside.

---

The moment of truth for the UK is approaching rapidly. Will R0 stay below 1 as things begin to move again?

Doing ⁦@bbc5live⁩ tonight from my home studio. Talking about a 5-10 % increase in traffic this week and 20% increase in ⁦@TheAA_UK⁩ breakdowns. pic.twitter.com/Dqx8blNiuJ

— Edmund King OBE (@AAPresident) April 23, 2020

---

Perhaps he (Trump) should lead by example and volunteer to demonstrate the effect of things like his disinfection treatment? I’m sure that would inform the public.

---

The problem is many Americans will conclude that their Drs must be retards because they can't see what is obvious to the greatest ever POTUS Trump. I expect his popularity will increase and it wouldn't surprise me if a number of people have catastrophic outcomes after trying the disinfectant treatment. 

---

Just following on from a couple of posts yesterday - I have a feeling the Government are quietly losing their battle on lockdown enforcement , more and more people are out on foot , many groups of 3 or more , traffic is most definitely on the up also 

---

Unscientifically, I noticed more traffic about yesterday while out for a walk - no longer possible to cross main roads at will.

---

Reading about Cummings and Harries. Don't know what their underlying health is like but C19 sounds bloody awful. Even if you don't require hospitalisation.

---

Tips for two of the supermarkets:

Iceland: slots are released at random half-hour intervals. Keep checking every half hour (just after the hour/half hour) and you will get a slot

Tesco: slots open at midnight, on the dot, and they'll be for 3 weeks out (as they get snaffled up pretty quickly). Log on about 10 to midnight (as there are queues) and when the queue pops you'll be able to book.

M&S and Morrisons do food box deliveries - little choice on what you get, but better than nothing.

If anyone has similar tips for the other supermarkets, it'd be interesting to collate them.

(As I seem to be quite good at getting slots I now contact the neighbours and see if they need anything, they do the same if they're going out. It's proving a good system! I'm lucky to be in an area where us neighbours all know each other - my friends in more typical areas say that as nobody knows each other, this collating orders just isn't happening.)

 

---

News from abroad via the BBC

Good - There have been no reported deaths from Covid-19 in South Korea in the last 24 hours - the first time in a month that's happened.

Bad - In Pakistan, Ramadan begins on Saturday, but there is already controversy as clerics demand exemption from lockdown measures

---

He is a threat to humanity, he needs to be sectioned or imprisoned, or get the treatment above. 

Who needs a vaccine? R0 would presumably take a hammering if everyone smoked.  Perhaps the big decline in smoking in recent decades is one of the reasons corona virus has been able to spread so effectively.

Smoking ‘may lower coronavirus risk’

The team at La Pitié Salpêtrière hospital in Paris found that smokers appeared to have five times less chance of being infected than non-smokers. However, tobacco users were likely to face graver consequences if they developed the disease. The government reminded the public that smoking kills 73,000 people a year in France.
...
Professor Changeux, a neurobiologist, said that nicotine appeared to play a role in preventing the virus from entering the body. “The hypothesis is that by attaching itself to cell receptors used by the coronavirus, nicotine prevents the virus from establishing itself there,” he said.
...
“It is without question that there is something in tobacco which protects people against the coronavirus but you should absolutely not conclude that you should smoke because there are many other toxic and dangerous components in cigarette smoke.”
...
A Chinese study published last month by New England Journal of Medicine, found that smokers accounted for 12.6 per cent of a group of 1,099 Chinese people infected by coronavirus. Tobacco is smoked daily by 52 per cent of Chinese men.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/smoking-may-lower-coronavirus-risk-l2l9wjxdh

 

 

---

Also good - there are now 5 countries/territories who are now virus free (having had it), Greenland, St Lucia, St Barts, Mauritania and Yemen. 

---

With the antedotes on traffic. It was interesting that the transport graphic wasn’t shown yesterday.

I had noticed the day before that traffic was above 40% for the first time in weeks.

The cynic in me suggests they didn’t want to show it because it would have shown that people where adhering not as well. This is illustrated by the tweet from the AA guy.

---

The tweet only mentions a 5-10% increase. 

Antedotes??

---

All we need now is some evidence that alcohol reduces the blood clotting risk and we can reopen the pubs (and put the ash trays back on the tables).

---

Interesting.

If it's nicotine latching onto stuff stopping the virus, then presumably you could bung on a nicotine patch.  I wouldn't advise it because  most likely you will get addicted  to the patches, but I wonder if something else, no addictive and harmless could be found.

 

 

---

Cannabis gives you permanent  immunity and other super powers. 

 

Apparently nicotine patches are being tested. 

---

But where are these people going?

---

Beware random isolated preliminary scientific studies. There is a relationship over time between the renin-angiotensin system and smoking and even between nicotine and ACE2 receptor expression. The significance of that and Covid-19 is unknown. The potential long term harm for a short term knee jerk unproven fix is very disturbing.

---

Perhaps dipping a cigarette in disinfectant before smoking it would provide the ultimate vaccine and cure in one package? 

---

Thanks Donald 

---

Another interesting (but not reviewed yet) study. A team from Imperial College tested most of the population of a small town in N.Italy at the beginning of the lockdown and again at its end:

• At the beginning of the lockdown they tested 86% of the population and they found 2.6% to be infected


• At the end of it, they tested 71.5% of the population and 1.2% had it


• 43% of those infected were asymptomatic


• They found no statistical significance in the viral load between asymptomatic and symptomatic carriers

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.17.20053157v1