See also Donald Trump and Newt Gingrich, leaders of the Party of Family Values.

Planigale, you posted a link to the government/SAGE website with a claim that it contained the information that the open letter was asking for. After looking through it I couldn't find that information. Can you link to the specific section of that website where you found the information?

Haha, nice!

Family values, until those values coincide with people who no longer pay tax. You forgot McConnell.

So I read the letter (published 16 March) unlike you,

They are asking for evidence to support "behavioural fatigue" as a driver to a herd immunity policy. This concept (herd immunity) was mentioned by Sir Patrick Vallance, the U.K. government’s chief scientific adviser on March 13, however, on 15 March Matt Hancock (secretary of State for Health) said, “herd immunity is not our goal or policy” when they introduced social distancing for high risk groups including over 70s. Subsequently increasing interventions for social distancing occurred with pub and club closures on 20 March and a complete lockdown on 23 March. They were asking for evidence for something that was not government policy. The evidence for the policy the government followed is on the SAGE web site.

The authors seemed familiar with the term 'behavioural fatigue'. Whether the particular term is used is used in the SAGE evidence is irrelevant. This is the evidence for the policy the government followed which is what they requested, not research on the term itself.

kinder to just let them die. right. Collateral damage.

When you have to make the decisions you can decide which is kinder; to let someone pass peacefully, or keep them struggling on for weeks in distress with drips, blood tests, feeding tubes, catheters, chest suction.

One of the things you have to recognise is that sometimes treatment is futile, this is a difficult decision, one has spent years training how to treat people for illnesses, and having to make the decision that doing nothing is the kindest and best thing is never easy.

These people aren't collateral damage, they are our patients. They are people we hurt, who scream and hit out at us when we examine them, do tests on them. Spit out tablets. It is traumatic for them and us.

Why not ask them?

So has anybody pointed out this baby seems to be TWO months early?

Who cares, really ..

We do. You'd be surprised how many people feel they have lived there lives and just wish to pass peacefully. Some are able to say this to their children, but in some cases we have to explain to families that we are not doing tests e.g. for cancer because the person has said what ever the results they would not want to have treatment for cancer. Sometimes children have trouble letting go of a parent, even when their father or mother knows that their time has come.

Of course in many elderly patients they suffer from dementia and cannot express themselves. Sometimes they have previously expressed an opinion but all too often not. However it is hard to think it is moral or ethical to drag out a life in a state of distress by weeks when the person is struggling against that treatment. As a doctor sometimes one has to recognise that people are reaching the end of their lives, that they cannot be cured, and the best one can do is to keep them comfortable. That can be done best in peoples own home, and hospital is not always the best place to die. Most people if asked would prefer to die at home rather than in hospital.

May be because the mother was ill from covid-19 and distressed by the subsequent life threatening illness of her partner? If the child is premature it will be a sad and worrying time for the parents.

What's the point of backdating the start of the pregnancy? It's not like they're married or anything. Maybe she just thought she should go ahead and pop it out so she could get back to keeping an eye on him.

No. It can be deceptive, depending on how things are presented, but otherwise it is just imprecise. "Deceptive" implies intent.

Darat's box had forty gloves. Mine has 150. Which has more potential for deception, counting by box or by glove?

If one or both of her parents gets that sick from Covid-19 then there will be little she could do, and she probably wouldn't be allowed to see them.

I understand the emotional anguish, but flying to another country to (possibly) succor someone with a virulent disease is probably not the healthiest strategy.

The governments of the four nations of the UK seem to be choosing groups to test somewhat arbitrarily. This seems to be done just to do more tests to satisfy criticisms of not doing more tests. There does seem to be any clear strategy for testing. One concern is that since there is a fairly high rate of false negative tests a negative test in a symptomatic person may encourage return to work when they really are infected.

Did they ever say when the baby was due?

It's funny. You quoted part of the letter and yet ignored the entire first paragraph of what you quoted in order to straw man the rest of it.

It'd probably have been quicker just to acknowledge that you didn't read the site that you linked to and are now aware that it doesn't actually contain the evidence that you linked to it for.

The government "may not meet" its 100,000 a day coronavirus testing target, a senior minister has admitted.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-52484345

Are we surprised?

More lies.

Quite frankly I was expecting the government to claim that capacity for 100,000 tests existed but that it's the NHS' fault for failing to carry out sufficient tests and/or it's good news because that means there are fewer people than anticipated in need of testing.

Arbitrary targets are arbitrary, so as long as everything is tickety-boo then there's no real issue that the test target has been missed. My understanding however is that a range of people including epidemiologists, care home workers and residents, NHS personnel, and other key workers are crying out for tests but they're insufficiently available.

The UK now has the third highest death toll from Coronavirus. Is this just bad luck ? Is it a feature of the way the numbers are calculated ? Is it because we have London and the London airports ? Is it because the UK government has mismanaged the epidemic ?

Why is the UK Coronvirus death toll so high ?

It was already claimed by some minister or othyer last week, hedging their bets.

My local MP just repeated it in the local paper.

“We will deliver the capacity to do 100,000 tests”
“It’s very unfair that you’re judging us against targets we set”

Seems the most important story today is some old guy is 100 and they made him a Colonel.

Something about death toll passing 26,000 (not including nursing homes) on page 6

See all papers.

An unremitting diet of bad news is inclined to give the nation indigestion. It's important that there are good news stories and all the better if they seem to offer some relief from the bad news.

This is one of those stories.

IIRC the 26,000 figure now includes care home deaths

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-52478085

I'm gobsmacked. I was absolutely sure they were going to do it, and I'm positive that every other British citizen was, too.

And the 6th highest per capita death toll. That includes San Marino and Andorra having higher numbers on 41 and 42 deaths, respectively.

My vote goes for the latter. A lack of perparation, mismanagement, and a healthy dollop of exceptionalism, aided and abetted by a press who are still not really hammering home how much of a big deal this is.

I'd be very interested in hearing from non-Brits as to how the situation in the UK is being reported in their countries (as much as it actually is, of course). I listened to a podcast yesterday in which one of the commentators said that friends from other countries are calling him expecting that he's in a warzone, with a population who are rioting against the shambles of a government, whereas here in the UK the vibe seems to generally be "just rubbing along nicely, perhaps we'll be able to re-open again soon. Boris has done okay, hasn't he?"

These are today's headlines. I'll transcribe the main ones:

The Sun: Happy Birthdays: Good News At Last For Britain (about Boris' baby)
Daily Express: "Together We Will Beat This Enemy" (quoting Captain Tom on his 100th birthday)
Metro: Captain Tom Now Colonel
Telegraph: Johnson To Dash Lockdown Hopes
Daily Mail: She's Safe...Thanks To Mail's £1m Airlift (about a campaign to provide medical professionals with PPE)
The Guardian: Hospital Chiefs Condemn Testing Failures Amid Growing Frustration
i: Care Homes: The New Frontline
Daily Mirror: A National Tragedy: UK Death Figures On Course To Be Worst In Europe
Daily Star: 12 Pints Of Larger & A Packet Of Crisps, Please: Joy As Spoons Gets Set To Reopen In June

It seems to me that the Mirror is the only one really encapsulating what's going on.

And obviously the target was chosen because it "sounded" good not to hit any scientific or clinical need.

So yes it doesn't matter in one sense if they don't hit it but as you say it appears we aren't able to test all those that we need to. For example care workers.

But it is nice to see government's feet being kept to the fire, usually what would have happened is that a target would be announced, never spoken of again and our media would move onto the next story long before the target was due to be hit.

It is like the PPE - they really have struggled to cope with being held responsible after they've said the usual magic spell that is meant to make their troubles go away "we are doing everything we can".

Given the early 'Oh, Italy is a hellhole' reports, and the current lack of a grilling the press is giving the government, I find the linked map to be informative.

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/t...ear=2020-04-29

It was widely reported, though I don't know where the information came from originally.

Colonel Tom has had a train named after him and he gets a documentary about his military career in WW2 next week.
What was that about testing numbers?

Bread and circuses.

https://i.imgur.com/dDfgwJq.jpg?1

Compiled from the information on this page, with the UK mislabelled as "England".

I've been looking at that chart most days. I don't think we'll get worse than Spain or Belgium going by this chart:
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/c...RA+BEL+ESP+ITA

We are past the peak according to Boris.

Maybe we are (at least for this cycle) but that doesn't mean that tens of thousands more aren't going to die - depending on the length of the tail.

Then again I'd rather a well respected epidemiologist were to make that call rather than a politician with a desperate need for good news.

I had gone through the documents last month (which is a long time in covid-19 terms), perhaps you should admit you had not read the letter, and that it was misdirected since the politicians denied following a herd immunity policy so the entire impetus of the letter was misdirected. (FWIW I do not have a positive view of politicians, many are creeps, and many self serving; but I think the 'herd immunity' concept is not one to be ignored, it may be the outcome we end up with, though I think more likely as I have previously posted is an effective vaccine will be rolled out before year end.

(As any scientist I make predictions, if my predictions are falsified then I am happy to be called out on this.)

Nigel Farage is now claiming that he is a 'key worker' after being criticised for travelling 100 miles to make film about migrants. He went from Kent to Pett Level in east Sussex before moving on to Hastings, where he attempted to investigate the number of migrants that were still coming to Britain during the pandemic, he spoke to a local man about what he had seen.

To be explicit the key criticism is this,
So it is clear in retrospect that earlier would have been better. This criticism is that there were four days between a scientific report being produced (not published) and the government acting on this report, and seven days before the government enforced the findings of a non peer reviewed scientific paper.

I cannot find this graph on this link, can you link to the source of the graph?

I think this is a very important point. To quote Churchill, "Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning."

The truth is that the world will have many more deaths from covid-19. It is too early to count winners and losers, and in any case all will be losers. There may be a time to ask how could we have done better, but now we have to ask how will we do better? If we want to save lives we need to look to the future not the past. It is incumbent on us all to do our part, whether guided by wise government or despite foolish leadership. Every one of us can do our part, and it is easy, all we need to do is stand apart. It may be difficult but by separating ourselves physically from our friend and neighbours we can save their lives.

I would do my best for him if he was my patient, but I wouldn't cry any tears if my best was not good enough.