“We’re all in it together!” by Christopher Draper

ASDA was packed today – the woman on the till reckons it’s because we’re about to get the full lockdown treatment in Wales – “but at least we’re all in it together”. I beg to differ…

1) April 2020, Dominic Cummings visited Barnard Castle despite lockdown regulations

2) September, Tony Blair photographed leaving Mayfair restaurant in breach of compulsory 14-day quarantine on return from trip to USA

3) September, SNP Rutherglen MP Margaret Ferrier travelled from Scotland and back on public transport to speak in Parliament despite having covid. She also preached in St Mungo’s Church, Glasgow

4) March, Stephen Kinnock, Labour MP for Aberavon journeyed to father’s birthday party despite ban on all but essential travel

5) September, Jeremy Corbyn MP defied “rule of six” to attend larger dinner party

6) July, The Prime Minister’s father (and former MEP) Stanley Johnson defied travel ban to visit his holiday home in Greece. On return to England photographed entering shops without wearing mask

7) October 5th Parliamentary authorities confirm that MP’s (allegedly including Matt Hancock) continued drinking alcohol in Parliament bar after the 10pm deadline imposed on the rest of us. Parliament refuses to identify the guilty individuals.

8) April, Government Housing Minister, Robert Jenrick MP, defied lockdown and travelled 150 miles to his parents’ Herefordshire home

9) April, Dr Catherine Calderwood, Scotland’s Chief Medical Officer, ignored lockdown regulations and on two weekends travelled from Edinburgh to her Earlsferry holiday home

10) August 19th, EU Commissioner, Phil Hogan, defied ban on group meetings by attending a golf dinner in County Galway, along with other politicians and an Irish Supreme Court judge

None of the above individuals were prosecuted although tens of thousands of ordinary folk have been fined and on October 4th five Doncaster welders authorised to work on the Isle of Man Electric Railway were imprisoned for two weeks because they unwittingly breached regulations by visiting Tesco on their brief journey from the ferry to their hotel. Ironically they were singled out because they wore masks which aren’t required on the IOM.

As far as our political class are concerned, “Laws are evidently for the Little People!”

Christopher Draper, Llandudno

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ALL ABOUT EID?

HEALTH Secretary Matt Hancock has wished the country a 'Happy Eid' the day after regional lockdown measures were brought in across the north of England.
The measures prevent anyone from mixing with people from another household in gardens, houses and hospitality venues in a bid to stop the spread of coronavirus.

Taking to Twitter this morning Mr Hancock said: "I want to wish all my Muslim friends in the UK & around the world a very happy Eid al-Adha.
"This will be a challenging Eid for many, and I am grateful for your continued efforts tackling #coronavirus."

Eid al-Adha runs from July 30 to August 3 this year and is widely celebrated across the world - marking Ibrahim's willingness to sacrifice his son as an act of obedience.


Saima Afzal, a community inclusion activist and Blackburn councillor, said the Government “left it too late” to impose the restrictions.
She said people in the Lancashire town had already been warned against visiting households when it became clear to the council that infection rates were on the rise.
Speaking to PA news agency, she said: “Why did the Government leave it so late? Two hours before Eid, giving them little time to reconfigure.”
She said she understood why the restrictions had to be introduced, stating the virus affected every community.
“The issue for me is the timing, it’s really unfortunate,” she said.

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How We Can Keep the ‘r’ As Low As Possible?

by Les May

WHILST talking on Sky News about the rallies being held in London today the presenter managed to convey the impression, inadvertently I hope, that we should vary our behaviour in accordance with the ‘r’ number, the average number of people that a person infected with the virus causing Covid 19 will themselves go on to infect.

This is a classic case of ‘putting the cart before the horse’ because it is OUR behaviour which will influence the ‘r’ value.  It is what WE do which will determine whether the number of infections will continue to fall or grows exponentially.  Exponential growth will follow even if the ‘r’ number only just creeps above 1.0.

For example if the ‘r’ number is only very slightly higher at 1.01 over a period of two months 1,000 infected people will result in more than eleven thousand new infections, but if it is very slightly lower at 0.99 the number of new infections each week will decline. If you have difficulty in appreciating how small is the difference between these two numbers think of having 99p in your pocket and having £1.01p.  Smaller ‘r’ values will result in fewer new infections and a more rapid decline in the numbers.  In the north-west of England we are balanced on such a knife edge because the ‘r’ value is estimated to be about 1.01.

Based on an analysis of about 20,000 people in 9,000 households it is estimated that in the two week period 17-30^th May, one in one thousand people (0.1%) in the non-hospitalised population were infected with the virus and potentially able to infect others.   In the previous fourteen day period 3-16^th May the estimate was 0.25% of the population.  We can interpret these figures to mean that if we meet one thousand people we can expect at least one of them to be infectious. But there is a ‘gotcha’ in viewing it like this.  We do not know if the infected person will be the first, second…. person we meet, or if we are that one infected person.

Keeping the ‘r’ number below 1.0, and preferably well below this figure, is a job for us. It cannot be palmed off onto Boris Johnson, Dominic Cummings, Matt Hancock or anyone else, as someone who was billed as the shadow minister for health tried to imply in an interview with Sky News.

So what can we do to get and keep the reinfection rate below 1.0? Quite a lot if few are willing to make the effort. For the moment ‘making the effort’ means

not just sanitising hands and surfaces regularly, but also ensuring that we meet up with as few people as possible. That means anyone who we do not share a house with. If we are forced to come into contact with people we don’t live with then we can physically distance ourselves from them so that any spittle that comes from the mouth as they talk will not land on us and we can avoid eating, drinking or sharing utensils with them. Just in case we are the ‘one in a thousand’ who is infected and shedding virus particles we can wear a face covering. Even a home made mask will be effective in preventing your spittle reaching anyone nearby.  To steal a phrase I first heard used by the biologist Jared Diamond, we need to behave with ‘constructive paranoia’ in mind.

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/prevent-getting-sick/how-to-make-cloth-face-covering.html

Step by step instructions for making a cloth face mask can be found here:

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/prevent-getting-sick/how-to-make-cloth-face-covering.html

The survey results for 17-30^th May, and earlier, can be found at:

https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/conditionsanddiseases/bulletins/coronaviruscovid19infectionsurveypilot/latest#number-of-people-in-england-who-had-covid-19

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Quarantine measures may be introduced at UK airports?

John Holland -Kaye Boss of Heathrow Airport

John Holland, -Kaye, the boss of Heathrow airport, is urging the Government to introduce mass screenings for passengers - temperature checks, antibody tests, and a requirement that passengers carry health passports to "prove they're medically fit." He thinks that British airports are coming under unfair criticism over the Government's decision not to test.


At a time when British citizens are being advised to stay at home and to keep three metres apart and face prosecution and fines for violating lock-down restrictions, you might find it astonishing, that a government source has said, "More than 15,000 people arrive in the UK each day from virus-hit countries."

Incredibly, passengers are just given a leaflet at British airports and told to self-isolate for two-weeks if they feel ill after landing, and walking unchecked, onto the streets of Britain. Officials have admitted that there is no way of enforcing this.


Yet, the screening of passenger arrivals at UK airports, has been ruled out as 'ineffective' by Public Health England. While other countries have introduced screening for passengers at airports, have closed borders, and have restricted air travel, the British Foreign Office have said:


"There is no evidence that interventions like closing borders or travel bans would have any effect on the spread of the infection."


Health Secretary, Matt Hancock, has said that the flow of people coming into the country would not make a significant difference as the virus is already widespread and that screening of passengers at UK airports isn't happening because the number of people has "dropped very dramatically."


On 23 January, Hancock told the House of Commons that the Chief Medical Officer for England, Professor Christopher John MacRae Whitty, had revised the risk (of contracting Covid-19) to the UK population from low to very low and that;

"While there is an increased likelihood that cases may arise in this country, we are well prepared and well equipped to deal with them. The UK is one of the first countries to have developed a world leading test for the new coronavirus  and the NHS is ready to respond to any cases that emerge... the public can be assured that the whole of the UK is always prepared for these types of outbreaks and will remain vigilant and keep our response under constant review in the light of emerging scientific evidence."

Since the Health Secretary made this statement in January, saying that there was a very low risk to the UK population, and that the Health system was well prepared and well equipped to deal with it, tens of thousands of people in the UK have died of the virus, including many elderly people in care homes, and even Hancock, now admits, that the virus is 'widespread', throughout the UK.

Despite his assurances to the public that the government had everything under control, hospital's across England have reported a lack of personal protective equipment for front-line NHS staff - which is necessary to treat people with the virus, such as surgical gowns, face masks, visors - and a failure to test doctor's and nurses, to see if they're infected. There is also a shortage of respiratory equipment.

The Health Secretary's blase attitude towards this Covid-19 epidemic may well cost thousand of more British lives, and it is questionable, whether Boris Johnson and his government, have really abandoned their initial strategy of letting the coranavirus run its course, a kind of shock therapy, that is to be imposed on most of us.

VIP's, like Johnson, Hancock, and the Prince of Wales, have all had the virus and were tested very quickly and received first class medical treatment. For the rest of us, the hoi polloi, - who've been thrown under a bus, by Johnson, it is 'herd immunity'.

Hancock - UK well prepared and well equipped to fight Coronavirus!

As the UK’s ability to conduct coronavirus tests crawls questionably upward and his promise of 100,000 tests a day by the end of April looks ever more a perverse fairy tale, Health Secretary Matt Hancock and his boss are rightly being criticised for their lack of preparation and their failure to act quickly when the opportunity was there and the need was unmissable.

But the arrogance, complacency and incompetence that underlies the Tories’ reckless and lazy approach to what has become a horrific national crisis was plain in Hancock’s statement to the House of Commons more than two months ago.

A blasé and pompous Hancock told MPs that:

• the threat to the UK was ‘low’
• the UK was leading the world on testing
• the country was ‘well prepared’ and ‘well equipped’ to deal with ‘these types of outbreaks’
• that clinicians were ready for diagnosis of the disease and for infection control

The UK’s testing capacity, which Hancock and Boris Johnson failed to build up until the crisis was already here – and even now – is a sick joke compared to countries like Germany and South Korea, which actually prepared in advance and followed World Health Organisation (WHO) guidance.

Infection control is even worse, with NHS staff left treating infected patients for weeks with utterly inadequate protective equipment and infected care home residents sent home from hospital to infect others just as vulnerable – entirely in line with the lethal 'herd immunity' strategy the government has supposedly abandoned.

Meanwhile, NHS staff who blow the whistle on the dangers, shortages and failures face disciplinary action as health bosses try to cover up the scale of the government’s guilt and incompetence.

Nobody in the UK could credibly argue that the UK was ever ‘well prepared’ or well equipped’ – and the mere fact that Hancock could even say ‘these types of outbreaks’ shows how desperately he had failed to grasp the scale of the threat, in spite of clear warnings from China and the WHO.

Even now, the Tories are ignoring WHO appeals to ‘test, test, test‘ as the only way to defeat the pandemic.

Leading medic Dr Kailash Chand called today for an independent public inquiry into the Tories’ handling of the threat and ensuing crisis. This video should be exhibit A – but criminal negligence and manslaughter charges for thousands of avoidable deaths would be more appropriate.

Source: SKWAWKBOX - 8/4/2020