[Ed P]

I just read an article that purports to claim that Japan has successfully avoided a lock-down and had very few  Covid deaths by them encouraging their citizens to avoid areas where the ‘Three C’s’ overlap.

The C’s are:

a) Confined area

b) Crowded places

c) Close conversation/shouting/singing

For example an in-door basketball match would be a very bad Covid risk area.

A nice simple concept and one we should pick up.

[Ed P]

Did Covid pinch part of BoJo’s brain???

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/eclinm/article/PIIS2589-5370(20)30228-5/fulltext

[Ed P]

Not many will have access to N95 masks but if you need to use one for personal or job reasons, you may get concerned at the relatively high cost of regular replacement. However research has shown that cooking at 100c for one hour will keep the mask sterile and reusable.

This simple procedure looks to be the way of conserving precious mask stocks.

[Boris]

It is broken ?
Not sure if this is impending doom ! – or more cut backs.
https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk

Never trust an atom - they make up everything !

[Ed P]

Other than cutting back on updates it SEEMS ok on the cases trends.

What does stand out is that a much lower proportion of covid cases now require hospitalisation. (e.g. covid cases rising, hospitalised falling). From this I infer that all the new cases in the relatively few hotspot areas are young. Also most of these hotspots are in cities.

The young have been made to suffer disproportionately in this epidemic. I hope that the Government consider bribery when trying to convince this group to take up vaccination. (e.g. Wetherspoons/Pizza Express vouchers to be handed out post vaccination). Without it I can see the young just saying no to vaccination.

[Ed P]

If the Government’s handling of the crisis looks terrible the answer is simple – just fiddle the numbers and make it go away. The solution is to  keep people in ICU long enough not to count before pulling the plug!

Mushroom Matt – you can fool some of the people some of the time . . .

[Ed P]

Sack Dido Harding!

Given her proven ‘organisational’ abilities at Talk-Talk, why was she ever even considered for the job?

I find it b-embarrassing that our ‘world laughable’ contact tracing system was so shambolic we required most of the EU to help rescue our OUTSOURCED pathetic attempt to develop a contact tracing app. link.

It is even more embarrassing given the existence of a proven app (the BBC Pandemic app) that could have been used before the virus even hit the UK as a stop-gap measure.

[edit] I made a Freudian slip by saying ‘contract tracing’. I wish we did have an app for tracing Government Contracts as some have more than a slight whiff of corruption attached. (I do not think the VMWare app contract has this, but others certainly do)

[The Duke]

I keep hearing stuff about contact tracing, but apart form pubs what contact tracing is going on.

And I’d love to know how a list of names and numbers from the day, is gonna help. By the time an outbreak of highlighted, 2 to 5 days later maybe, and the people are called, they will of been in contact with a load of people and them the same.

I have about 100 people a day through the pub, time an issue is hilighted the number of possible infections would be on the tens of thousands. It’s a farce.

And as far as I know, the pubs are the only one taking names. You want to see see Rhyl highsteet atm, it’s not been so busy in decades. It’s been sholder to sholder. to add to that, masks are not pushed in Wales. A few wear them less than 10%

We need app based tracking system, that sences who you pass, and if one person catches it, and it is logged, and auto ping goes out to all that has been logged.

The problem is, alot would be freaked out by knowing they are being tracked. Not knowing that Google is doing it as default already.

[Dave Rice]

Problem is detecting phones proximity to each other. GPS and Bluetooth just aren’t accurate enough.

I’m not sure there will be anything better, plus it needs a large majority to join in. Faith in this Govt isn’t exactly high, it’s becoming clear they just cannot think things through, even the bleeding obvious.

[The Duke]

That’s the thing ,I don’t know there is anything better either.

I can’t see any system that is workable. The current one is a joke, and won’t achive anything substantial if needed.

We should seal the boarders and have 14days house arrest for the whole nation, penciled in for say 30 days time to minimise panic buying. Punishable by death, so stop people breaking it.

 

[Ed P]

My take would be more nuanced than yours Steve. I would just have house arrest for all BAME and people over 60 for a period of three months. Anyone caught breaking it would lose all medical rights. I would then remove all restrictions on everyone else and let them work and party their way to herd immunity!

[Boris]

Ed P wrote:

I would just have house arrest for all BAME and people over 60 for a period of three months.

If you also banned them from getting provisions it would automatically create a massive decrease in obesity/diabetes etc. for this sector too !

Never trust an atom - they make up everything !

[Ed P]

There is only one word for the way this Government has handled the Covid Crisis — Shambolic!

In addition to unnecessarily privatising parts of PHE’s track and trace system under Dido Harding’s incompetent misrule, and even forgetting all the U-turns and confusion over quarantines, and Dominic Cummings gutless destruction of confidence, you can now add a total stuff-up of the examination process for A-levels leaving thousands of school leavers in complete limbo.

On this track record, Brexit will dismember and totally destroy the UK.

[Dave Rice]

I’m afraid that might have to happen for people to wake up. I don’t see so much excuse making for the Govt as I did at the start. You know, Germany has a lower rate because its rural, that sort of thing.

Boris is all for levelling up, “I believe in building people up, giving everyone growing up in this country the opportunity they need, whoever you are, whatever your ethnicity, whatever your background.” then  presides over a system that penalises or boosts you depending on where you live and what school you went to. So much for championing the individual.

Like Trump, when the governing gets too hard just bluster your way through it and double down. After all it’s 4 years until the next election. Plenty of time to rewrite history.

[Ed P]

Even worse – useless Dido Harding is rumoured to be taking over a reorganised Public Health England in an effort by shambling Mushroom Matt to shift all the blame for Government mismanagement onto PHE.

[edit] re levelling up, Private Eye had a cruel cartoon that showed all the Covid as initially in the South but levelling up shifted it to the North.

[Ed P]

I’m not in favour of a military coup, but at least the military are trained in how to take and make both strategic and the corresponding tactical decisions. The bunch of ‘ankers we have in Government could not organise a proverbial booze-up in a brewery. They would all probably get lost in Barnard Castle en-route!

Perhaps someone should point them at the simplest way of making reasonable decisions that weigh up all the risks. i.e. Bow-Tie decision making for Klutz.

[Dave Rice]

Latest trace and trace madness, people from the West Country being sent to Wales for tests because it’s closer. Maybe if you’re a crow or a dolphin. I gather it’s happening elsewhere you find pesky things like estuaries or chains of hills / mountains.

So that’s a design flaw followed by no testing. Dido up to her usual quality standards.

[Les.]

There is a guy in the US with whom I have communicated a many times (Motor cycle matters) but he recently “went quiet”.

Today he was back, having thought he had covid-19 for the last month. Tests were negative for Covid. He bought some N95 respirators early on from China (I think China, certainly far East) and wore them 8 to 10 hours daily. It seems his “not covid-19” problem was caused by  inhaling something mildly toxic (to him) from the respirators. Formaldehyde was suggested, but it was decided the problem developed much slower that they thought it would have done had it been that.

Samples have been sent for analysis, but no results as yet.

It seems you can be ill if you get it, or ill if you don’t get it. Funny thing is this CV19.

Les.

[Ed P]

Although not peer-reviewed (frankly I do not see how this will be replicated), it is reported that a supercomputer has analysed all the covid-19 data and reached some new and perhaps far-reaching conclusions. link

Picking the bones out of the report, the main finding is a refinement of the previous finding that death is caused by the immune system running amok. The new finding is that it is a bradykine storm that kills rather than a cytokine storm. This of itself gives some leads on potentially important treatments.

However, the medical world grinds slowly and many deaths will result before these new treatments become accepted (on previous history this equates to another 50000 deaths in the UK). So what can the common herd do within the limits of off-prescription treatments?

First it appears that Vitamin D is very important. As are probably zinc and vitamin C, so make sure your supplement shelves are kept stocked. Second there are some non-supplement foods that may help:

“Linseed or flaxseed oil may decrease inflammation caused by bradykinin and histamine. Linseed oil contains a very high percentage of alpha-linolenic acid, an omega-3 fatty acid, which acted against bradykinin and histamine in rodents.

Ginger may decrease some of bradykinin’s negative effects. One component of ginger, 6-shogaol, blocks the production of inositol triphosphate in tissue studies. Bradykinin normally stimulates the production of inositol triphosphate, so this effect suggests that 6-shogaol may decrease bradykinin.”

So drink ginger wine and sprinkle flax and linseeds on your brekkie.

None of these are guaranteed to help, but applying the precautionary principle, none of these measures cost very much but may do some good.

Btw covid causes potassium levels to plummet, so I’d suggest that maybe drinking apple juice at lunch time may be a good idea. (not cider, much as I like it, as covid attacks the liver! )

[Ed P]

Sack Dido Harding!

from today’s Guardian:

“Health officials are scrambling to contact more than 200 British holidaymakers on a flight from Crete last week after authorities failed to alert the airline that eight passengers had tested positive for coronavirus.

The teenagers, from Hampshire, were diagnosed after returning to the UK on a Wizz Air flight to London Luton airport on 25 August. The positive tests should have triggered an urgent response to track down the other 204 passengers on board, but Wizz Air said it had not been made aware of the cases until contacted by the Guardian.”

There should be no excuse for incompetent management, but it seems to be par for the course for this Government.

[Author]

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