I agree, but I think that is the overall strategy. Stretch out the period of time in which the infection spreads through the population, allowing the existing health system to cope with the added demand without suffering a catastrophic collapse.

An expert report from the State Serum Institute, released yesterday, points out the issue of having an infection rate below R1, because while it would mean Covid-19 would eventually die out, it would also leave us exposed to a very serious second wave in the fall, with not enough citizens having developed antibodies to cope with it.

Sun and Mail headlines "Happy Monday". "Lockdown Freedom"

they seem to have made up their mind that it's all finished on Monday.

So, it looks as if the UK might scrap the new tracking app and go with what everyone else is using or thinking of using...

Says it all, really.

Tweet from someone called Ian Hyland. I have no idea who he is, but I like it.

There's a thing doing the rounds on Facebook which outlines a five-phase approach to removing the lockdown over the next five or six months. I'm not clear on the provenance - it could even be something Dom is trialling to gauge public response.

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politi...-step-21986668

First step is this Monday but it's not too major a step.

The statement from Boris Johnson on the route out of lockdown will be at 7pm on Sunday according to BBC

Carefully timed to ensure parliament have no scrutiny over the decision, back to herd immunity whilst 600+ people die every day

Presumably he is recording it today because it is a bank holiday tomorrow (he doesn't work weekends) so why not just tell us now.

I did find it interesting that the messaging has suddenly changed. This morning there was a BBC story which was very much along the "Young and healthy people have little to fear from Coronavirus"

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-52543692

IMO we're being encouraged to think favourably about the reversal of lockdown and to think of the tens of thousands of resultant deaths as being:

• Inevitable
• Somehow the victims' fault in the majority of cases because they were careless enough to be old, sick, BAME, poor or some combination of those four things

Leaking to the media about relaxing lockdown a day before a bank holiday is the height of irresponsible behaviour.
Some people around here have taken it to mean the lockdown is already over.

Yeah, but almost all of those will be old or sick or a member of a minority group or poor - IOW not an important person (unless the old or sick person is a multi-millionaire but they can likely take precautions and make their own arrangements to stay safe). :rolleyes:

At least they've taken the criticism on board. I'll certainly be more likely to download it if they do, as it'll address my #1 problem - it' won't need the phone to be awake and the app in the foreground.

Seems to me like we're being cajoled into wanting to lift the lockdown, even if it results in tens of thousands of deaths:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-52566030

Regardless of the science, the government seems to have decided that we cannot afford the lockdown much longer so it's time to steer the British people in the right direction. :mad:

It's crazy. We've got the third-highest daily death rate in the world (with only the US and Brazil higher, and Brazil only by a tiny amount), and they're talking about starting to ease restrictions on Monday, and seemingly trying to push us towards thinking this is a good thing.

It's what I said the other day - the narrative here in the UK is bizarre. The situation here in the country is currently dire. One of the worst in the entire world. Yet the attitude seems to be mostly "well, could be worse. Boris is doing a good job, isn't he?"

Judging by the press and how many people are acting at the supermarket, anyway.

We know that Boris is lazy and so it stands to reason that he'd be in favour of lazy policies like this. We've been good for a while but now it's getting inconvenient so we'll take the line of least resistance :rolleyes:

The thing is that we've now become inured to Coronavirus daily death tolls in the hundreds, it's the new normal and we're no longer freaked out by it. A scant 6 weeks ago every victim was worth a headline but now 500 in a day is "meh".

So we'll release lockdown, see the numbers rise again and act surprised. Like being on a diet for a couple of weeks, losing a kilo and then piling it all back on, and more, when one fails to make the necessary long-term lifestyle changes.

Don't be such a nervous Nellie, the finest scientific minds in Britain are working on this.

Lockdown Criticism

Whatever you do - don't go to https://lockdownsceptics.org/ unless you have recently padded your brick walls.

Something to keep in mind wrt to tests is that they have a lot more value early on when you can still track where a person may have been infected and then test others who may have been in contact. South Korea stomped out the virus with a mere 7K tests per million people while the UK in it’s current situation may need to test everyone and then go back and start retesting people.

LOL a “code review”. IOW look for examples where some arbitrary coding standard wasn’t followed perfectly and then argue that that the results must be wrong.

The problem is that almost by definition, a code review will always find things that can be improved. Climate deniers have been pushing this for a couple decades because it allows them to arbitrarily reject any model result they don’t like. And, of course, Davies is one of the more prominent climate deniers in the UK parliament.
https://www.desmog.co.uk/david-davies

I don´t like to do this, but I´m afraid you have confounded arch-brexiteer and idiot David Davis with climate denier and even bigger wack job David Davies

David Davis is probable the slightly saner of the two.

Ah, sorry. The central point about “code reviews” remains the same though.

Latest news from Denmark is that the Government and the political parties in parliament has agreed to reopen a number of sectors starting monday. Nothing officially confirmed as of yet, but so far the list of sectors is at:
Shops
Restaurants and cafés
6th to 9th/10th year of primary school (10th is a voluntary option, often taken at an Efterskole)
Efterskole (continuation schools, ie. boarding schools lasting a single year and frequently with specific educational themes, such as sports, music, outdoor activities etc.).

The latter has been a touchy subject, as they were originally seen to be in the high risk category. However, when taking mitigation measures into account, it seems they can now be placed in low risk category instead, allowing for the pupils to at least have the remaining 1½ month of the year at their school. My niece is attending a handball-oriented efterskole, and has been very anxious about the possibility of not being able to return and finish the year. I attended a general sports-oriented efterskole (In no specific order I tried football, handball, volleyball, basketball, sailing, kayaking, swimming, horse riding, and even golf) in my youth and wouldn't have missed it for the world.

Unfortunately the other one is my MP :(

But, but! They were free, we only had to pay the postage!

Deputy chief medical officer Dr Jenny Harries says there was a "technical hitch" in the lab over the weekend that caused daily tests to fall below the government's target of 100,000 tests per day.

A few more details to add to the above:
Shops and malls will be permitted to reopen from May 11.

Restaurants and cafés, 6th to 10th year of primary school, "efterskoler", public libraries, and religious institutions will be permitted to reopen from May 18th, to allow for detailed guidelines to be established.

The government is now saying that reports of the way in which they propose to lift the lockdown are inaccurate. I guess the balloon floated by Dom has been shot down by public reaction.

Glad to see they're so influenced by the science.:rolleyes:

Farage defies the police

He's written a letter to the Chief Constable of Kent Police demanding an explanation as to why he was visited by police officers after he travelled to East Sussex to video a beach. He's an 'essential worker' aqpparently

200,000 tests a day by the end of the month said Boris at PMQs yesterday

Now, No10 say that is for 'capacity', not tests performed.

Boris is probably assuming he's now immune, therefore what else could possibly matter?

I bought two thousand vegetables today. Okay, three bags of frozen peas, but I decided to count them like the government counts items of PPE.

Or to count things like the government counts tests, I can report that my car has the capacity to carry over a quarter of million vegetables - although obviously I have no intention of ever actually carrying that many in it.

Channel 4 News
80% of respirators in the stockpile were out of date when coronavirus hit the UK.
200 million vital pieces of kit – including respirators, masks, syringes and needles – all expired
45% of the 19,909 boxes holding PPE supplies had exceeded use-by dates

‘Care home crisis is a bitter regret’ admits Johnson.
I don’t want his 'bitter regret' without his resignation.
Bitter regret means he's ignored warnings, failed to plan and people have paid with their lives.
How many more warnings will he ignore? What price will we pay?

Clearly absolute numbers are better than some arbitrary concept such as a box. (I learned this when I ordered a box of condoms for a research project, I expected 20, I received a box of 144 cartons of 20.) In the case of peas I suspect you order them by mass another absolute value. Which is the better description two bags or two kilograms of peas? What one wants to know is the absolute number of gloves, aprons (neither of which have been in short supply), masks or gowns. Not some arbitrary unit such as a box, or pallet. Gloves come in boxes of forty or a hundred, perhaps in other sizes. They are never sold in pairs.* When doing a rectal examination I only use one glove.

ETA
To be transparent sterile gloves for surgery come in pairs. I am referring to non-sterile examination gloves which is what we use for PPE.

But on which hand?

If you do contact tracing and extensive tracing early on, this is indeed possible. It's not just South Korea either, it's most places in the developed world that aren't Italy, Spain, France, UK, USA or Sweden.
Four of those are due to incompetence, one follows a different strategy.

McHrozni

Following further negotiations overnight, the Danish PM has announced the next stages of reopening, provided the spread doesn't get out of hand:

Phase 3 set for June 18: Cultural institutions (theatres, museums, cinemas etc.), Zoos and other outdoor attractions, adult education centres, folk high schools (Højskole), and indoor sports and other club activities.

Phase 4 set for early August: All other educations, nightclubs, music venues, gyms, swimming pools, water parks, and other indoor play areas.

The limit on gatherings of more than 500 persons is still set to last until August 31.

And what about the other one ? :p :D

Right. Five are due to incometence :o

McHrozni

[BRITISH POLITICAL LOGIC]Yes but those expired items were purchased under previous Labour Governments so it's Labour's fault[/BRITISH POLITICAL LOGIC]

I have noticed the backpedalling on Boris' big speech on Sunday. It seems all those stories about relaxing the rules were well off the mark and the latest is we shouldn't expect big changes and the speech will be laying out a roadmap.