General Chat

Nicked from my FB page - sums it up, I think!

I think I’ve worked it out...

* 4 year olds can go to school but university students who have paid for their tuition and the accommodation that they aren’t living in, can’t go back to university.

* I can go to school with many 4 year olds that I’m not related to but can’t see one 4 year old that I am related to.

* I can sit in a park, but not tomorrow or Tuesday but by Wednesday that’ll be fine.

* I can meet one person from another household for a chat or to sunbathe but not two people so if I know two people from another household I have to pick my favourite. Hopefully, I’m also their favourite person from my household or this could be awkward. But possibly I’m not. In fact, thinking about it, I definitely wouldn’t be. But as I can’t go closer than 2m to the one I choose anyway so you wouldn’t think having the other one sat next to them would matter - unless two people would restrict my eyeline too much and prevent me from being alert.

* I can work all day with my colleagues but I can’t sit in their garden for a chat after work.

* I can now do unlimited exercise when quite frankly just doing an hour a day felt like I was some kind of fitness guru. I can think of lots of things that I would like to be unlimited but exercise definitely isn’t one of them.

* I can drive to other destinations although which destinations is unclear. I was supposed to be in Brighton this weekend. Can I drive there? It’s hundreds of miles away but no one has said that’s wrong.

* The buses are still running past my house but I shouldn’t get on one. We should just let empty buses drive around so bus drivers aren’t doing nothing.

* It will soon be time to quarantine people coming into the country by air... but not yet. It’s too soon. And not ever if you’re coming from France because... well, I don’t do know why, actually. Because the French version of coronavirus wouldn’t come to the UK maybe.

* Our youngest children go back to school first because... they are notoriously good at not touching things they shouldn’t, maintain personal space at all times and never randomly lick you.

* We are somewhere in between 3.5 and 4.5 on a five point scale where 5 is all of the virus and 1 is none of the virus but 2,3 and 4 can be anything you’d like it to be really. Some of the virus? A bit of the virus? Just enough virus to see off those over 70s who were told to self isolate but now we’ve realised that they’ve done that a bit too well despite us offloading coronavirus patients into care homes and now we are claiming that was never said in the first place, even though it’s in writing in the stay at home guidance.

* The slogan isn’t stay at home any more.So we don’t have to say at home. Except we do. Unless we can’t. In which case we should go out. But there will be fines if we break the rules. So don’t do that.

Don’t forget...

Stay alert... which Robert Jenrick has explained actually means Stay home as much as possible. Obviously.

Control the virus. Well, I can’t even control my cats and I can actually see them. Plus I know a bit about cats and very little about controlling viruses.

Save lives. Always preferable to not saving lives, I’d say, so I’ll try my best with that
one, although hopefully I don’t need telling to do that. I know I’m bragging now but not NOT saving lives is something I do every day.

So there you are. If you’re the weirdo wanting unlimited exercise then enjoy. But not until Wednesday. Obviously.

'Someone won Sunday night’s Numberwang, but it wasn’t any of us. What we can do, and who we can do it with, has been turned into some sort of fake algebra with a red-and-blue PowerPoint hump. Boris Johnson, all clenched fists and lockdown hairdo, was resolute about, er, stuff. Ours is not to reason why, his is not to understand how the other half lives.

He talked of a world of golf, tennis, garden centres and people who can go to work in their own cars or on their Bromptons. England in repose. Where, apparently, no one has to think about childcare. The reality is that it is the construction workers, bus drivers and security guards (mostly middle-aged men) who are dying of Covid-19 at an alarming rate, as well as NHS staff and carers. These people are called low-skilled. Many of them are his voters. He risks losing them, so must frame the back-to-work instruction as a matter of personal choice. For now.

Never in the field of human conflict have so many talked about exercise to so few; the right to chunter along the pavements is now dressed up as a key freedom. This exhortation to keep yourself fit in the middle of a pandemic is a peculiar form of denial, but again it is clearly about moving the narrative from collective to personal responsibility. And personal failure. We are told to “stay alert”, but if alertness could conquer this virus, we would all be fine. The anxiety many of us are experiencing is actually hypervigilance. Alertness implies we can create an antiviral force-field around us. Well, it’s cheaper than personal protective equipment, testing and all that faff.

Apparently the fault is not the government’s. It is just difficult to dial down a threat such as “we’re all going to die” to “go back to work with no protection and sort of try not to get on a bus”. Instead, we have to use the dread words “common sense”. Whenever common sense is invoked, I shudder: all kinds of ideological posturing follows.

Common sense may say “I’m all right, Jack” or “ you get it from 5G” and “you only live once”. Common sense may say keep calm and carry on. Dominic Raab spoke of common sense: you can meet your parents in a park. Then a government source had to announce that “they can see both parents, but not at the same time – they would have to see them individually”. Common sense turns out to be remarkably like unpoliceable chaos. And a lost father.

This is not surprising because what common sense never does well is risk assessment. We are all spectacularly bad at this, and common sense or risk assessment tends to shift over time. When I was young, my mum thought her menthol cigarettes kept her healthy, and we all got into cars with drivers who had been drinking. No one wore seatbelts. Sure, boys died on motorbikes, and there were drug overdoses – we thought that when your number was up, there wasn’t a lot you could do about it.

It is only later in life when you examine so-called “risky behaviour” that you see the interweaving of trauma, peer pressure and the basic tenets of your personality. Once you have kids, you undertake an exercise in risk management which at some point you fail. We want to protect our kids and make them able to survive in the world when we are no longer there. I nearly lost mine (meningitis, serious bike accident) so I learned the hard way that my anticipation of risk was all wrong. Now, in the midst of this virus, I feel far from fatalistic about it.

The risk for young people is minimal and very high for old people. Every seven or eight years, your risk of dying if infected doubles. I am not complacent at all. The statistician David Spiegelhalter explained all this clearly on The Andrew Marr Show, saying that we need to be proportionate about the risk we face. He called the press briefings “number theatre” – underlining the need to communicate data properly and treating people with respect.'

Suzanne Moore

:-D :-D :

'End of the world' by Herbert W Armstrong (1892-1986) in ‘Mystery Of The Ages‘:

'Mankind is nearing the end of his rope. Today man’s world is reeling on its last legs. Wars, violence, destruction, viruses & terrorism engulf the entire globe. Half the world exists in ignorance, illiteracy, poverty, living in filth, fear & squalor.

The developed half is sick with ill-health, disease, mental stress, fear & frustration, wrecked with crime, alcoholism, drug abuse, perverted & misused sex, broken homes, unemployment, homelessness & hopelessness‘.

Goodness sake Dermot are you in a black mood>?

you can now go for as many walks as you like,

yes maybe someone out there actually understood Boris and things will get easier.. Thanks to a friend.


I think I've got it now...
Stay alert. If not staying home. Stay home if not being alert. Go to work. If not working at home. Work from home if possible. If not working from home don't use public transport to get to work. Even though public transport is available. At work do work. Safely. In a socially distanced manner. Where possible. If not possible do some other thing. Don't work at work if work is closed which lots of work is because work isn't reopening if work is one of the places of work we were told to close. After work play sport and sunbathe but only with people you live with not people you work with. Unless you live with someone you work with. Or work with someone you live with. Stay alert for the alert system which will wave about madly on a dial between green and red where red means everyone is dead. If you are sufficiently alert you might be allowed to be less alert after the 1st of June. But likely everyone will go mad on Wednesday and the needle will lurch to orange so being alert will revert to stay home and it's back to March 23rd. So, stay home. No, hang on, stay alert. Not home. But you should stay home. Unless you're at work.

:-D :-D :-D :-D

Just about sums it up!

Don't forget though, 'Stay Alert' means stay at home, and 'Back to work Monday' means (as from 11am on Monday) 'back to work Wednesday'.
So anyone who tried to get to work for 9am on Monday should be fined for breaking a retrospective rule!

In other words,,,,,,,the fire is lite we are trusting you not to put your fingers in it,...….

Bj said that if we didn't break the rules then the reward would be 14 days quarantine for people taking their hols by air. If we are naughty then hols can go ahead as planned + 80% pay and stay home. So there you have it picnic with your rellies push up R and off you go.
Clear enough, different rules for France, ROI., golf.
If you are a key or front line worker other rules may apply.

BTW nobody has a clue as to what r is cos the testing needed has never been done. A rough estimate is taken from the number of ambulance calls to care homes.

BTW nobody has a clue as to what r is...…

you don't?

Boris knows what R is in England you can do more than us in Scotland' our Avenue are not doing as NS says but hey it's a quiet Avenue away from centre of village no police about at all .not bothering who does what just plodding on till it's over ? eating well enjoying my Garden Stay safe Barbara

R so

https://www.healthline.com/health/r-nought-reproduction-number

aka as the transmission coefficient varyimg from zero , nice sunny day to 1.0 we may all fall down dead.

The big fat problem is that somebody ( quite a lot of people actually ) have to go and get the data by TESTING Joe public on a large scale which costs lotsa money. As the cunning virus moves around this has to be repeated. Another problem is that there is NO NATIONAL EPIDEMIC just lots of local ones which wax and wane. Another consideration for the would be testers is that some of the subjects will be COV +ve making PPE kit a good idea, at least a mask and visor.

For all these reasons nobody knows just what the value of R is and in any case it varies a lot over time and space. So the modellers stay happy and warm in the office with their computers , guessing. As most of the current policy is built on the value of the elusive R there is increasing pressure to catch it.

Vallence, NHSX have come up with a clean hands approach using smart phones. This designed to catch R wherever it may lurk without much actual contact with Cov+ people. This will be rolled out across the UK very soon now.
Instead of Test, Trace and Isolate we will have Fear, Uncertainty and doubt but we will have nice graphics boards for the media briefings.

If Hancock's smartphone app fails then there is a good chance of a nsty "spike" in the autumn and a much tougher lockdown. As it could be cold, dark with the money run out and brexit around the corner let's hope not.

Current problems with the app: runs phones batteries flat; only works with smartphones under 4 years old ; not compatible with Google/Android (free) version as used by everybody else inc Oz. This could matter if Brits are ever allowed to leave their island again. There is also suspicion by potential users that their data will be grabbed and used by US big pharma. Indeed it will be under the Investigative Powers Act. But the greater good heh?

It is assumed that all those with a +ve result will turn themselves in for a regime of food parcels and UC. Possibly quite a few may not do so.

The formula that Boris gave us on Sunday which he uses to work out the alert status was interesting,

It was : Covid Alert Level = R + Number of infections

That is supposed to give a result between 1 and 5.

Kense, it is really important to take on board that there is no national value of R, BJ s maths is duff. There will be an ever changing R for each outbreak, they are far from homogenous. Once identified the infected elements need to be tracked and isolated. Lock down of itself is no solution it can make temporary space for TTI. Without a vaccine TTI is all that we have other than herd immunity.

Hancock smartphone strategy is high risk.

The government could have put it this way: the R(eproduction) rate is a bit like calculating betting odds.

This is what they want to see. (1:0.5 or even better if possible) so two to one - two people with the virus but only one infected as a result. Or, as was stated, for every person infected they would like only half a person to contract the virus.

For reasons stated earlier by Rollo, why use random tests to calculate this figure when it seems first, not enough tests are being carried out and secondly, processing at MK has been problematic as some tests have been sent to the US for processing. In addition who is going to choose the random tests - quite important as calculations garnered from tests carried out in Cornwall would be quite different from those carried out in London. Results could be easily skewed to suit what Government or any one person wants to see.

Sometimes I find it hard to get my head around government statements and rationale. It makes me wonder what advisers, both medical and political (though not financial) have rattling around in their heads.

The one person who seems to have any credulity and whose word I have understood every time is our Chancellor, Rishi Sunak. I don't know what you all think?