Good to see Boris Johnson blaming care home employees for the Coronavirus death toll rather than taking any responsibility on behalf of the government.

So much like his mentor :mad:

BREAKING NEWS: President Jair Bolsonaro has Covid-19 symptoms

Agreed... I seem to be spending a significant time on Twitter arguing against dangerous idiots claiming that lockdowns don't work, and herd immunity has happened already.

As soon as it becomes clear they're zealots arguing from an entrenched position, I block them. Life's too short.

There's some sweet karma.

You know which other president has denied all the way through and is surrounded by people with positive tests?

My karma meter will explode if he comes down with it.

Meanwhile in the USA, anti-vaxxers are having "COVID parties" to intentionally infect their own children. Including, in at least one case, one who was immuno-compromised.

Carsyn Leigh Davis

Congratulations lady, you killed your daughter. Now she's using her daughter's death to raise money.

Back in April, she posted this on Facebook:
https://floridacovidvictims.files.wo...igh-davis3.png

That's what I used to do, but now, if I come across them, I do engage, not for them, but those who might see their exchanges.

Some have graphs that superficially look convincing, but are very dodgy, and the iffiness can be explained pretty simply.

It seems that his comments were "misunderstood" :rolleyes:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/worl...ost_type=share

Except that's not what Boris Johnson said at all. The next step will be to suggest that Boris Johnson was just joking.

The British Conservative Party really is indistinguishable from the Trumpist GOP.

Before the middle of April, care homes which refused to take covid-19 patients in from hospitals were sent letters from government threatening them with removing their funding.

Boris Johnson has blamed them for the number of deaths.

Boris Johnson lies.

‘Dominic Cummings did the right thing’

‘Care home workers did the wrong thing’

Blimey.

It's a shame that the UK media cannot summarise the situation as succinctly as this. Instead we either get apologist channels insisting that care homes were never threatened in this way or outlets which feel obliged to present both sides even if one side is a tissue of lies.

It certainly would make an interesting question in PMQ, except that it would be far too obvious and Boris Johnson would simply dodge it entirely by talking about the pubs being open (cheers from the Tory benches) and people being able to go on holiday (ecstasy from the Tory benches).

If only the care home workers would contrive to develop a set of policies to keep him in office, then Boris Johnson wouldn't feel able to throw them under the bus. :rolleyes:

Pathogenic battery. Lock up the parents and extinguish their parental rights, have the children adopted by sane people.

More cold water being thrown on the plans of any country hoping that herd immunity will be a solution to the Coronavirus crisis:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-53315983

If it's taken 6 months for that few people to get infected (and presumably become immune to future infection for a period of time) then it's likely that people infected early will have their immunity running out well before enough people have have been infected.

I guess the good news is that Coronavirus seems to be a lot less infectious than we had first feared (although clearly lockdown has had a dramatic effect on infection rates).

I try to get in a few tweets that will be seen by inquiring minds, but I won't engage for long.

Mind you, I actually came across one who wasn't a zealot and understood my explanations. We had quite a fruitful discussion and he thanked me for the information. Come to think of it, that was a "we'll probably never have a vaccine" one. Good news! We very probably will.

This is somewhere government could make a real difference.

Assuming a vaccine is developed and its safety is in line with most other vaccines we use nationally the government should be preparing and organizing right now to ensure everyone gets vaccinated as quickly as possible. Plus they should be trying to disrupt "anti-vaccine" messages and help establish a mindset that everyone will vaccinate, by the time one is ready people should just be waiting for when they will get it, not thinking if they should get it.

Given that this vaccine, when it comes, will have of necessity been subject to less safety testing than usual, I'm a bit uncomfortable at the idea of making it compulsory. My bias is very much towards taking it but even I want to know a fair bit about it and about the testing that has taken place before I go for it.

My goddaughter was asked to take part in the clinical trial of the Oxford vaccine, but declined. Thinking about it, subject to being given sufficient information, I'd have done it. But we should all have the choice.

Before I retired one of the lecture topics I introduced into the animal health course was vaccine safety and adverse reactions. We have the non-specific reactions which are either very rare (anaphylaxis) or trivial (temporary malaise, soreness at the injection site), then we have specific adverse reactions. I could come up with very little in the veterinary field.

• Reversion to virulence of the Chlamydophila abortus vaccine for sheep
• Vaccine-site fibrosarcomas in cats related to FeLV and rabies vaccine
• Bovine neonatal pancytopenia (bleeding calves) caused by the adjuvant in a BVD vaccine raising anti-bovine antibodies in cows
• Canine parvovirus probably having been spread worldwide by a contaminated canine distemper/hepatitis vaccine in 1988

None of these things seems at all likely to affect a coronavirus vaccine, although it does depend on how the vaccine is produced. It's notable that the BVD vaccine that caused the bleeding calves was fully tested and licensed long before the problem emerged. Was there a change to the adjuvant? I suspect so. That adjuvant will never be used again in any vaccine.

The Oxford vaccine is a DNA (or RNA?) vaccine. These have been used in animals but never before in man as far as I know. The concept is seriously cool. Is it safe? There's been enough work in animals that I think someone would have noticed by now, but on the other hand the poster child for these vaccines is a rabies bait vaccine given to wildlife and how closely can you monitor wild foxes? There is at least one known case of accidental innoculation of a woman by that rabies vaccine and although the vector (vaccinia virus) gave her cowpox (because she was on immunosuppressive treatment) she seroconverted to rabies and had no longstanding ill effects.

If the trial results are made public and everything looks good, I'll certainly take a coronavirus vaccine.

Gov’t today, “How were we to know about asymptomatic transmission back in March?”

Gov’t in March, “We know asymptomatic transmission occurs and that it’s a very significant challenge.”

Herd immunity was an insane strategy.
Based on the New York numbers you'd be sacrificing, at best, 0.3% of the population or 150,000 people. Which requires the CMR not to increase, which is inevitable in large scale epidemics.

Boris Johnson did more to protect Dominic Cummings from getting the sack than he did care home patients from getting Coronavirus

Tory conference cancelled and replaced by virtual event due to coronavirus

Schools and pubs are safe though, the virus knows the difference.

To paraphrase one of his fellow Americans:


"Ask not what your country can do for you – ask what you can do for your Cummings"

There is a subtle point here. Epidemiologists aren't trying to achieve no cases next week, they're trying to achieve a reduction week on week. They recommend activities based not on the belief that they're safe, but that they'll get away with it in terms of not causing too many new infections.

Individuals who don't want to be one of these reducing numbers will make their own risk assessments and won't do things just because they're allowed.

And that doesn't even take into account the possible long term effects that some may suffer. I've been reading more and more about chronic fatigue linked to infection by Covid-19. There is also the risk of blood clots leading to heart attacks and strokes, which apparently isn't connected to the severity of the initial infection.

This is an article from New Scientist:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/scienc...62407920311416

The concern with a COVID-19 vaccine is Antibody Dependant Enhancement, something that has been an issue in both SARS and MERS vaccine candidates. ADE occurs when the presence of antibodies from a vaccine makes subsequent infection more serious/deadly.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antibo...nt_enhancement


It's possible ADE is why some cases of COVID-19 are very serious even though most are mild. In this scenario, the initial immune response and antibody production is insufficient to kill the infection, ADE sets in with the and the infection becomes much more serious.

The fact that they have studied this previously with SARS and MERS gives a head start in getting around the issue with COVID-19, but I'd want to see very thorough testing done before taking a vaccine. If not caught in testing ADE would not be immediately apparent when the vaccine is distributed and only show up when people start dying in much greater numbers.

Yes, I've read about that. It's one of the things I'd be looking for evidence had been addressed and was not likely to be a problem before I went for the vaccine.

They lie, safe in the knowledge that the only people who will bother to check are those who are already opposed to the government. The newspapers are too busy posting pictures of people outside pubs or "fruity" girls enjoying a glass of champers to worry their readers about the government killing their mum/gran. :mad:

Does that make this the first virus to demonstrate good taste?

That came up at the recent House of Commons Committee meeting and was addressed by Prof. Gilbert:

Looks like it's something the scientists are aware of.

Being aware of it and knowing how to get around it are 2 different things. ADE is part of the reason there has never been a successful vaccine for Dengue, AIDS, SARS or MERS.

The real risk, however, is political not scientific. A vaccine is being viewed as a magic bullet that will solve all the issues around COVID-19 and allow everything to return to the way it was. There will be enormous political pressure to fast track any vaccine that shows potential, but this invariably means lowering standards for testing. That would be bad at the best of times, but for a virus family already known to elicit ADE inadequate testing could be a disaster.

LOL! Hope he dies!

If he doesn't, then I reckon he'll double down on his "it's nothing more than a bit of a sniffle" rhetoric.

Having a really pretty bad case of Coronavirus doesn't seem to have taught Boris Johnson much about the disease, how dangerous it could be for the UK or how important it is to have an effective plan to tackle it. :mad:

Three pubs which reopened their doors for the first time on Saturday have had to close again after customers tested positive for coronavirus.

https://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/p...-a4490576.html

Interestingly, it seems like it was the pubs' decision to close rather than being required to do so:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-53315702

Which is not unexpected.

Wow - must have been one of those 1:2000 chances.

Unpopular decisions being avoided by this government, I'm shocked I tell you!

So, (rule of), is Farage facing any sanctions for his quarantine violation?

Hence, we have just told a relative we will only see him on good days when he can sit outside, as he has been socialising with multiple households.

He lives alone in a tiny flat and generally he has been very good, but, he has clearly had enough and is now prepared to take risks.