Salvaging something in the Wreckage. by Les May

THERE’s an understatement!

Last Thursday was not a good day for Labour. I’ve heard three explanations so far; Mandleson ‘It was a hangover of Jeremy Corbyn’, Starmer ‘We lost the trust of working people’, my wife ‘Labour should have focussed on Tory stinginess towards the NHS workers’.

I have a different view. My guess is that what scuppered Labour under Starmer is what scuppered Labour under Corbyn. It’s called Brexit. The people who wanted it in 2019 still want it in 2021. They associate the Tories with Brexit, Labour with being at best lukewarm about it and at worst against it. Whether its downside will have become apparent by 2024 or 2029 is unknown. Perhaps the older Brexiteers will have fallen off their perch or the young ones begun to wonder what all the fuss was about. For the moment Labour is stuck with Starmer and we are all stuck with Boris.

So what can be salvaged. Starmer is probably feeling safe for the moment because the rest of the front bench is so unprepossessing. It’s just possible that Starmer will come to realise that eventually he has to reconnect with those supporters who gave the Labour party a distinct ‘buzz’ under Corbyn and are now leaving or just drifting away from it, though I doubt it. Many of these will be the people who went out ‘on the knocker’ at election time to drum up support from Labour. They won’t be doing that in 2024.

And what about chancer in chief Boris? As we are stuck with the Tories for at least three more years what can we make of this? Curiously enough the results may have an upside. Remember all those particularly nasty sounding Tories who had such a lot to say during the Brexit debate? Remember how Boris had to find a new Chancellor who was more amenable to spending money to fund furlough during the pandemic? Waiting in the wings are a lot of ‘small state’, low public spending zealots. For the moment at least they are unlikely to be able to eject Boris.

********************************************************************

BUS DRIVERS UNDER fire and rehire attack!

Unite the union February 2021

IN the next two weeks we need your help.

Bus drivers in Manchester are being bullied and threatened with the sack if they don’t agree to work more hours for less pay in a fire and rehire attack. They've voted to strike and will launch an all out strike later this month.

That gives us just over two weeks to pile the pressure on the company, Go North West and the Go Ahead Group to stop with its fire and rehire threats and get back around the negotiating table.

Will you join us in emailing the CEO, David Brown? The email’s all ready to go. You just need to click and add your name

.

Email the the Go Ahead CEO

Our members have worked throughout the pandemic, risking their lives to keep Manchester moving. The last thing they want is to strike, but being bullied and threatened with the sack for refusing to sign new contracts on inferior terms, and losing their sick pay too was the last straw.

With your help we can keep the pressure on. Join us in calling on the CEO of the Go Ahead group David Brown to act. He’s the top chief of the entire group and our best bet of getting the company to take fire and rehire off the table.

Please email him now. You just need to click here and add your name.

Email the CEO

Thank you

Ritchie James

Unite regional secretary

COVID-19: FOR HOW MUCH LONGER?

In this weekend's FT TIM HARFORD THE UNDERCOVER ECONOMIST ASKS 'COVID-19: HOW CLOSE IS THE LIGHT AT THE END OF THE TUNNEL?

'IN THE UK, Margaret Keenan receive a first dose of vaccine on December 8, but it needs a couple of weeks to prove much protection. She and her fellow first-day vaccinees were much safer by Christmass...The UK had vaccinated (with the first dose) about 1 per cent of its population by Christmas, but funeral directors will not notice the effect of that until Valentine's Day.'

*****************************************************************

Steve Baker calls on Boris to publish Freedom Plan

From Lockdown Sceptic Website

by by Will Jones / 15 January 2021

Steve Baker, the Deputy Chair of the anti-lockdown Covid Recovery Group (CRG) of Conservative MPs, has issued a rallying cry to the group’s members. The Sun has the story.

In an explosive rallying call to fellow members of the lockdown-sceptic Covid Recovery Group, the ex-minister blasted: “People are telling me they are losing faith in our Conservative Party leadership.”

The group represents dozens of Tory backbenchers who are worried about the side effects of long lockdowns.

Mr Baker urged those colleagues to make their concerns directly to Mr Johnson’s Commons enforcer, Chief Whip Mark Spencer.

In a bombshell note to MPs seen by the Sun, Mr Baker writes: “I am sorry to have to say this again and as bluntly as this: it is imperative you equip the Chief Whip today with your opinion that debate will become about the PM’s leadership if the Government does not set out a clear plan for when our full freedoms will be restored.”

He told them to demand “a guarantee that this strategy will not be used again next winter”.

The major intervention reads: “Government has adopted a strategy devoid of any commitment to liberty without any clarification about when our most basic freedoms will be restored and with no guarantee that they will never be taken away again.”

The action appears to have been triggered by key Government advisers going public with their view that lockdowns must continue well into 2021.

****************************************************

Avon Lady Calling With The Virus by Les May

EARLIER this evening someone dropped an ‘Avon Catalogue’ enclosed in a plastic bag through my door. I could see the information that it would be collected on Sunday. If whoever did this is infected with the virus which causes Covid 19 then potentially they are putting in danger the lives of everyone in the houses to which they distributed the catalogue.

No doubt this action not specifically excluded by the lockdown regulations. But that does not mean it is a sensible thing to do. If by chance whoever did this is prosecuted I shall not waste any crocodile tears on them.

**********************************************************************

Lockdown sceptics should support this lockdown

Editorial Comment: THE Spectator ran an article on the 6th, January by Alistair Haimes, who had until then been a enthusiastic lockdown sceptic, which called on others to support the current government Lockdown. As a consequence of this both Will Jones on the LOCKDOWN SCEPTIC WEBSITE and Les May on the NV Blog have responded with their views on posts displayed below on the NV Blog.

*************************************************

Scepticism is supposed to be the bedrock of science. But where scepticism shades into cynicism it can be as blind to changing events as the unexamined credence it claims to displace. Scientific belief should be based on informed supposition which is then rigorously tested against the evidence — that is the basis of the scientific method. There should be no shame in changing opinions and assumptions when facts change. We start with assumptions, test them against the evidence (which itself changes) and then use that conclusion to repeat the process, ad infinitum. So if conclusions don’t change when facts change, something might have gone awry.

As an example: your view on the merits of the current winter lockdown versus the Halloween lockdown. First: do you think a lockdown is prima facie defensible? To some people, ‘no!’; to far more people, ‘normally no, but it depends’. Whatever initial view you put into your decision hopper, now try to bend that assumption around the first input of information: the healthcare system either (a) clearly has capacity left, apparently running at below average levels for the time of year, as it was in October; or (b) might credibly need to triage fairly basic healthcare within, say, three weeks as seems to be the case now, or so we are told. Whether we are in (a) or (b) should change your opinion; if it doesn’t, you might be doing this wrong.

Now, add in the game-changer of approved, effective vaccines. Your opinion should be different before and after the approval of the vaccines (2 December for Pfizer, 30 December for Oxford). Put simply, it is perfectly justifiable to be against open-ended restrictions in a world with no vaccine, but to think a brief period of restriction while vaccines are rolled out is sensible, and personally I know many lockdown sceptics whose views pivoted on the day the first vaccine was approved.

Finally, consider the pace of the epidemic. Have cases apparently stabilised, as at end of October, or has there been an out-of-leftfield development like the Kentish variant, which experts believe might be at least 50 per cent more transmissible with no obvious sign of deceleration? Whatever the state of your opinion on lockdown so far, this development should alter it at least somewhat.

You might be stridently, philosophically, against lockdowns whatever the consequences, or you might be a dour socialist zealot who instinctively thinks that the cilice should always be tightened in a crisis; but for everyone in-between, allowing opinion to change with evidence like this is likely an excellent idea. Where opinion becomes rigid it can also become brittle, and often doesn’t age well.

Personally (not that it matters given I’m just a punter rather than in government) I have unashamedly been sceptical of the government’s use of interventions throughout the epidemic, though I’m closer to the moderate than the fundamentalist wing. I thought that the March 2020 lockdown was sensible and inevitable while disease parameters and treatment protocols were clarified and healthcare capacity was built, but believe it dragged on far too long, inflicting incredible social, economic and collateral health damage when the first wave of Covid was obviously waning with the seasons. It appeared the government was allowing opinion-polls to lead it down a path of ever more severe restriction rather than examining realistic targeted alternatives that could tide us over sustainably until a vaccine arrived (which I admit came miles faster than I’d imagined possible), and hadn’t stopped to gauge the damage done along the way.

You can of course understand the bind. There is a crisis, the government needs to do something, lockdown is something it can do, so it does lockdown. It might well be the only lever to pull initially, but that doesn’t mean the lever should stay pulled. Who knows, it may even be the best answer in the medium-term, but it is hard to believe that scrutinising every cost and alternative along the way wasn’t a very worthwhile exercise even so.

For lockdown two, like many others, I thought that the case in November was not well argued, was farcically presented with scary out-of-date death charts and poorly administered (creating the boom Halloween weekend by leaking plans on the Friday night was absolutely unforgiveable).

Every intervention, after all, has a beginning and an end, and the degree of social mixing from the ‘one last shindig’ at the beginning to the ‘thank God that’s over’ effect at the end may conceivably outweigh the temporary reduction in R — such ‘forcing events’ cause discrete social circles to overlap which otherwise wouldn’t intersect.

But in the event, the key moment in autumn (possibly during lockdown) wasn’t underground kids parties or news presenters’ knees-ups, it was the emergence of the Kentish variant. Some have hypothesised that the variant emerged from the way we treat Covid sufferers. Hospitals with chronically ill patients create living petri dishes for mutation (it is worth remembering that a quarter of all infections are still presumed hospital acquired). Add in treatments like convalescent plasma (blood extract containing antibodies­) and there are then all the pressures needed to evolve a mutant strain. We will, like good scientists, have to await more data.

Lockdown three, I’m sorry to say (and I can hear the howls from sceptics as I write this), is justifiable, practically and ethically. Given the rollout of the vaccine, the emergence of the new variant and the plausible risk of the healthcare system falling over, there is probably now no realistic alternative. Whatever one’s objections to the first two lockdowns, on both cost-benefit and libertarian grounds, it is at least a defensible position to acknowledge the merit of a brief lockdown during a maximum-speed vaccination campaign to minimise morbidity and mortality along the way.

The calculation is entirely different now from that of the previous two lockdowns. Given the vaccine, the variant and the healthcare situation, the current restriction can be supported (regretfully) without cognitive dissonance by those who opposed the previous lockdowns vehemently and vocally. It is either bad logic, bad faith or fundamentalism to argue otherwise.

This is a position that will make no friends. The zero-Covid Sanhedrin (whose ship sailed long ago in a connected Europe) and the libertarian sceptics (very few of whom are actually anti-vaxx by the way) will both find reasons why this nuanced view is outrageous.

The big, big difference this time is this: an opening in a rock without an exit is a cave — but if you can see an exit, it’s a tunnel. The previous two lockdowns were caves. It was dark and nasty, possibly involving bats, and we had no idea how we were going to get out except back into the same world we’d entered from. But this time really is different: we’re going not into a cave but into a tunnel, there is a credible exit strategy that we can see and believe in, and we’re scheduled to emerge in about 100 days (give-or-take) into a country where almost all the most vulnerable will have been vaccinated and where lockdown is not just lifted but dismantled, hopefully never to be seen again, and good riddance.

*******************************************************

Scepticism About The Sceptics, by Les May

I AM responding to the piece by Will Jones taken from the ‘Lockdown Sceptics’ website.

Let us start with a few statements which I think are sufficiently well established that we can call them facts.

1. The cause of the disease known as Covid 19 is a virus.

2. The virus has the ability to infect humans.

3. The virus can be transmitted between humans.

4. The virus can enter the body via our eyes, our nose and our mouth.

5. Infected people carry virus particles in their upper respiratory tract.

6. Speaking, singing, coughing, sneezing and breathing cause infected people to shed into the air virus particles in droplets and aerosols which do not settle immediately, but may do so after a time depending on their size.

7. Virus particles can be inhaled as droplets or aerosol.

8. Droplets settle out of air more rapidly than aerosols.

9. People who are infected may shed the virus without showing clinical symptoms.

10. Virus particles settling on surfaces remain capable of causing infection for variable amounts of time depending on the nature of the surface.

11. Virus particles can be transferred to our hands by touching a contaminated surface.

So what do these tell us about how we can reduce the spread of infections?

Point 4 suggests we should so far as possible avoid touching our eyes, nose or mouth.

Points 10 and 11 suggest we should take steps to decontaminate surfaces regularly or if this is not possible place anything entering our house in quarantine for a period.

Points 4, 10 and 11 suggest we should wash our hands regularly.

Points 3, 5. 6, 7 and 9 suggest we should try to encounter as few people as possible.

Point 7 suggests that if we do encounter people we should attempt to keep as far away from them as possible and that a physical barrier such as a mask, worn by them and us, may help to protect us from inhaling droplets, but unless produced to n95 specifications will not fully protect us from aerosols.

All the above methods of reducing the spread of infections are ‘non pharmaceutical’ methods. Taken alone, none will guarantee that we will remain free of infection, but each incrementally reduces the likelihood of picking up the infection. That’s why hospitals implement similar, but more stringent methods. In other words, contrary to what Will Jones claims, non pharmaceutical methods do work.

Will Jones may not like what the government is doing, but however flawed their methods are they are simply an attempt to use what we know about the virus and how it spreads, to reduce the number of infections.

The restrictions which have been implemented will cause economic damage, and they will restrict children’s education, but not making any attempt to halt the number of infections also has its costs.

Is he suggesting that in order to allow hospitals to continue functioning as they did before the pandemic they should effectively close their doors to Covid 19 patients? Is he suggesting that it is acceptable to expect nurses and doctors to treat a continuing stream of Covid 19 patients when any one of them may be the cause of their death? Is he suggesting that an increase of more than a million (1,013,190) new infections in the three week period 19 December to 9 January will not have economic and social costs? Is he able to assure us that the behaviour of himself and his lockdown sceptical friends has not resulted the death from Covid 19 of anyone who had the misfortune to encounter them?

He claims that it would be ‘inhumane to expect the vulnerable to shut themselves away’. These are fine words. I am one of the ‘vulnerable’ as is my wife and most of our friends. Since last March the only time I have been more than 200m from my house taking exercise, is a visit to the doctors for a flu jab. And one reason for that is because I don’t know when I am going to meet someone who does not take the guidelines on distancing and the other non pharmaceutical interventions seriously, in other words a ‘Lockdown Sceptic’. One could say their ‘freedom’ is my ‘prison’.

In his autobiographical account of the development of British radar during WW2 Robert Watson-Watt says that when under pressure to improve the equipment he always accepted the 3rd best solution. His reasoning was that the 2nd best would be too late and the best would never arrive. Lockdowns may be a third rate solution to controlling infections, but they may also be the best we are ever going to get until, people like Will Jones recognise that their behaviour may be contributing to prolonging the pandemic.

*****************************************************************

Government to Close Schools

THE Government has announced targeted school closures for England in an attempt to control the spread of the virus (though it’s unlikely to help much, as Toby explained yesterday). The Telegraph has the details.

One million primary school pupils will not return to classrooms as planned next term as Boris Johnson unveiled sweeping school closures and warned more could follow.

The Prime Minister said that in order to combat the spread of the new coronavirus variant, the majority of secondary school pupils will now stay at home until “at least” January 18th, two weeks after term was supposed to start. Those in exam years 11 and 13 will return on January 11th.

Only the children of key workers and vulnerable children will go back on January 4th, the scheduled start date. It means the staggered start to term which had previously been announced will be moved back by a week.

Primary schools in “high infection areas”, estimated to affect one million pupils, will also close for the first time since the spring for at least two weeks as Mr Johnson said “even tougher action” was needed because of the “sheer pace” of the rising infections.

The Prime Minister said there was no guarantee that the January 18th return date would not slip further, as the latest data on infection rates would be reviewed at that point.

He added: “I want to stress that, depending on the spread of the disease, it may be necessary to take further action in their cases as well.”

The announcement came as three quarters of the population of England were quarantined in Tier 4 as of this morning, with the rest of the country left in the scarcely less restrictive Tier 3, creating a new national lockdown in all but name.

LOCKDOWN SCEPTICS' Stop Press: In Sarah Vine’s column in yesterday’s Daily Mail she opposed school closures, saying “it’s madness to treat our schools like nail bars or nightclubs“. Yet her husband Michael Gove is reported to have sided with Matt Hancock and opposed Gavin Williamson’s efforts to keep schools open. Trouble in paradise?

*******************************************

LOCKDOWN SCEPTICS & a new strain of virus!

TODAY TIM JONES on the Lockdown Sceptics website asks: 'If the new strain has a biological advantage that makes it more transmissible why isn’t it taking over in every region?'

He continues: 'However it is a real question that needs answering, and one that’s also being asked by Professor Francois Balloux on Twitter:

'The new 'UK #SARSCoV2 variant' (lineage B 1.1.7) which has recently gone up in frequency in the UK has been identified in numerous countries including in Denmark, where its frequency remained at ~1% in mid-December.

1/ https://t.co/ElOC2zqTAW

— Prof Francois Balloux (@BallouxFrancois) December 29, 2020 'A number of media outlets have reported on the new technical briefing from Public Health England that shows considerably more being infected by carriers of the new variant than carriers of other variants. Here’s the report in the Times. 'Contacts of people with the new coronavirus variant are 54% more likely to develop the disease, according to new analysis from Public Health England. 'They found, however, that it did not appear likely to cause more severe disease or higher death rates.

'Researchers found the “secondary attack rate”, or proportion of contacts of confirmed cases that develop the disease themselves, was 15.1% for people with a confirmed case of the new variant and 9.8% for people confirmed to have another variant.'

The figures were published yesterday in a technical report on the variant, now named VOC (variant of concern) 202012/01.

Ministers pointed to the variant’s increased infectiousness when announcing higher Tier 4 restrictions for much of England earlier this month.

However, according to Tim Jones, 'the PHE briefing does not draw any conclusions about transmissibility from the data it presents (it doesn’t mention transmissibility at all). Is this because the authors are aware that this may be just coincidence? In other words, that it appears to be more transmissible just because most of the infections with it happen to be in the areas that are currently surging? This by itself would explain why the secondary attack rate (the proportion of contacts who become infected) for the new variant in England is higher in recent weeks – because it happens to be the variant most prevalent in the areas of the country where more people are currently being infected. To know whether it is the new variant itself that is responsible for the higher secondary attack rate, or something else, we would need to see it higher in other regions, not just the one currently surging. And as Loftus and Prof Balloux observe, there is not currently evidence of that.'

***********************************************************

Zhang Zhan, sentenced to 4-years by Shanghai Court for reporting on pandemic outbreak

Chinese Citizen Journalist Jailed For 4 Years For Wuhan Virus Reports

Zhang Zhan, a former lawyer, was sentenced at a brief hearing in a Shanghai court for allegedly "picking quarrels and provoking trouble" for her reporting in the chaotic initial stages of the outbreak.

Shanghai:

Updated: December 28, 2020

A Chinese citizen journalist was jailed for four years Monday for her reporting from Wuhan as the Covid-19 outbreak unfurled, her lawyer said, almost a year after details of an "unknown viral pneumonia" surfaced in the central China city.

Zhang Zhan, a former lawyer, was sentenced at a brief hearing in a Shanghai court for allegedly "picking quarrels and provoking trouble" during her reporting in the chaotic initial stages of the outbreak.

Her live reports and essays were shared on social media platforms in February, grabbing the attention of authorities, who have punished eight virus whistleblowers so far as they defang criticism of the government's response to the outbreak.

Beijing has congratulated itself for "extraordinary" success in controlling the virus inside its borders, with an economy on the rebound while much of the rest of the world stutters through painful lockdowns and surging caseloads a year on from the start of the pandemic in Wuhan.

Controlling the information flow during an unprecedented global health crisis has been pivotal in allowing China's communist authorities to reframe the narrative in their favour, with President Xi Jinping being garlanded for his leadership by the country's ruling party.

But that has come at a serious cost to anyone who has picked holes in the official storyline.

The court said Zhang Zhan had spread "false remarks" online, according to one of her lawyers Zhang Keke, but the prosecution did not fully divulge its evidence in court.

"We had no way of understanding what exactly Zhang Zhan was accused of doing," he added, describing it as "a speedy, rushed hearing."

In return the defendant "didn't respond [to questions]... She refused to answer when the judge asked her to confirm her identity."

The defendant's mother sobbed loudly as the verdict was read out, Ren Quanniu, another member of Zhang's defence team, told reporters who were barred from entering the court.

Concerns are mounting over the health of 37-year-old Zhang, who began a hunger strike in June and has been force-fed via a nasal tube.

Her legal team said her health was in decline and she suffered from headaches, dizziness and stomach pain, and that she had appeared in court in a wheelchair.

"She said when I visited her (last week): 'If they give me a heavy sentence then I will refuse food until the very end.'... She thinks she will die in prison,"Ren said before the trial.

"It's an extreme method of protesting against this society and this environment."

China's communist authorities have a history of putting dissidents on trial in opaque courts between Christmas and New Year in an effort to minimise Western scrutiny.

Example made

The sentencing comes just weeks before an international team of World Health Organization experts is expected to arrive in China to investigate the origins of Covid-19.

Zhang was critical of the early response in Wuhan, writing in a February essay that the government "didn't give people enough information, then simply locked down the city".

"This is a great violation of human rights," she wrote.

Rights groups and embassies have also drawn attention to her case, although diplomats from several countries were denied requests to monitor the hearing. "Zhang Zhan's case raises serious concerns about media freedom in China," the British embassy in Beijing said, urging "China to release all those detained for their reporting."

Authorities "want to use her case as an example to scare off other dissidents from raising questions about the pandemic situation in Wuhan earlier this year", added Leo Lan, research and advocacy consultant at the Chinese Human Rights Defenders NGO.

Zhang is the first of a group of four citizen journalists detained by authorities after reporting from Wuhan to face trial.

Previous attempts by AFP to contact the other three -- Chen Qiushi, Fang Bin and Li Zehua -- were unsuccessful.

(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)

********************************************************************

The Covid 19 Vaccine Has Pros and Cons.

by Les May

THE new vaccine developed to provide protection against the SARS Cov2 virus which causes the disease which we know as Covid 19, has one huge advantage; it does not contain any attenuated or killed virus particles. Potentially this makes it an even safer candidate for extensive use.

The four letters mRNA stand for messenger RiboNucleicAcid. Viruses whether they infect, bacteria, fungi, plants or animals, are essentially strings of instructions, (messages) which tell infected cells what to produce and how it should assemble the components. An mRNA vaccine works by copying just a small part of these instructions. It’s the bit which instructs the cell how to produce just the molecules (antigens) found on the surface of the virus which the immune system of our body recognises. The immune system then produces antibodies which can lock onto the antigen on the surface of any virus particles if the individual becomes infected.

Because the synthesis of the mRNA is essentially a chemical process done in the laboratory there is no possibility of virus particles being introduced into the vaccine. But there’s some bad new as well.

The molecules of mRNA are not stable at higher temperatures and in this case ‘higher temperatures’ are still very much colder than your average deep freeze. After manufacture the vaccine must be kept at about minus 80 degrees Celsius at all times, otherwise it will degrade and become non-functional.

This is not a problem for laboratories and hospitals, but it is for local surgeries and pharmacies, both of which have been suggested as locations where the vaccine could be administered.

*************************************************

Pushing Public Health Messages by Les May

ROCHDALE THE 'WORST AFFECTED' BY VIRUS!

I LIVE in Rochdale, one of the metropolitan boroughs that make up Greater Manchester. Last Saturday lunchtime I was treated to the sight of our local council leader speaking on a BBC news programme about the negotiations with the government about the financial support which would be available if ‘Tier Three’ restrictions come into force. He also raised doubts about whether the additional restrictions were necessary, citing the fact that the negotiators had been presented with ‘old data’ about infection levels.

Last Wednesday I watched the Deputy Chief Medical Officer, Jonathan Van Tam, present graphics showing how in the past few weeks rising Covid 19 infections, which were substantially affecting young adults have spread initially, are now moving into the older parts of the population in my town and others like it. These of course are the people whose illness places greatest strain on the NHS and who are most likely to die.

The next day Sky News ran a piece which made the claim that my town, Rochdale, is the borough worst affected by the virus.

Now I don’t wish to suggest that Allen Brett, or Bretty as he likes to style himself, was being deliberately misleading in his comments about the infection levels in Rochdale, but I will say that I find it a little surprising that our council leader seemingly had not taken the trouble to be briefed by Rochdale’s Director of Public Health, Andrea Fallon, about the situation in the town. She’s the expert in these matters, not him. Or perhaps it’s not really so surprising.

Since March when the initial ‘lockdown’ was imposed it can hardly be said RMBC has been proactive in its approach to handling the pandemic. Residents have received precisely two communications about Covid 19, one A5 leaflet came in late March and the second a couple of months ago. No doubt the response would be that there is comprehensive information about the ‘rules’ we are supposed to adhere to on the RMBC website.

Indeed there is, but in the jargon of the computer world, this is a ‘pull strategy’. In other words if you want to get the information, which is liable to change at any moment, you have to be sufficiently motivated to go and find it. If you are a MS Windows user are you sufficiently motivated to access the Microsoft website every time you switch your computer on to make sure that your machine has the latest security patches? Knowing that you are not, MS adopts a ‘push strategy’. Each time you switch on the new patches are sent to your machine automatically; you don’t have to do anything to keep your machine safe.

Some of the money being given to local councils in the Greater Manchester area should be spent on implementing such a ‘push strategy’ to disseminate the latest information about the status of Covid 19 infections in our towns as assessed by the Director of Public Health. This could be done by running an Internet based service dedicated to doing just that. Residents would initially register an e-mail address with the service, and would receive regular updates, encouragement to continue self isolating if asked to do so and advice about infection control in their daily routine. Why should it have taken a query to a local councillor to supply evidence to support a statement she had made to unearth the fact that there was an interactive map* showing the rolling seven day number of new infections in the area I live in? How many councillors are themselves aware of this?

This virus is not going to go away quickly and we have to learn to live with it. The optimistic view of how the future is going to unfold is that at some time not too far ahead, an effective vaccine will be discovered. If we are lucky this may happen. But even if it does the first recipients will be those in involved in health care who are daily putting their own lives at risk treating Covid 19 patients and those who are particularly vulnerable due to existing conditions. The rest of us, and that includes old people like me, will have a lower priority. It may take two or more years before everyone who wants it has been given the vaccine.

The pessimistic view is that we will never have an effective vaccine or effective therapeutic drugs. This is at least a possibility which should not be discounted. Many colds are caused by coronaviruses and in the past one or two million years we humans have never evolved immunity to ‘the common cold’. So in the absence of medical methods of removing the threat to human life presented by this virus, be it for another couple of years or stretching into the future, we are left with public health interventions to mitigate its danger. This should be part of any ‘roadmap’ for the future.

In the fight against this virus it is not enough for us to be passive entities obeying rules we did no make and perhaps do not understand the logic of. Our first priority should not be to acquaint ourselves with the ever changing ‘rules’; it has to be doing whatever is necessary to keep ourselves and our families safe from infection. It is no use local politicians complaining that hospitality venues should not be closed because community transmission is highest where households mix, unless they also have a strategy for discouraging household mixing. To do this we need to have all the information available about where the infection rate is highest, where it is increasing at the fastest rate in our local area and regular reminders about why this is happening and the part our behaviour is playing in this.

Getting this information and advice on a regular basis to residents in the boroughs around Greater Manchester and similarly affected conurbations, isn’t ‘rocket science’. It simply needs a bit of imagination and effort on the part of local councils. If they cannot even manage this what makes anyone think they could run a less shambolic ‘Track and Trace’ system than the present government?

* Initially this map could be found at;

https://www.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/index.html?id=47574f7a6e454dc6a42c5f6912ed7076

If you go to this site you will be redirected to;

https://coronavirus-staging.data.gov.uk/details/interactive-map

This is more detailed and more informative, but the text is not so easy to read.

If the links above are not ‘live’ then copy and paste the link into your browser.

Covid 19: Pandemic Or Endemic? by Les May

THIS morning a ‘Lidl Weekly’ brochure dropped through my door telling me all the wonderful offers available in Lidl stores between 15 and 21 October. It’s just the most recent of a line of similar brochures from different retailers stretching back to long before the world had heard of Covid 19 or Donald Trump. In every case the intention of whoever promoted it, was to shape, change, manipulate, choose your favourite epithet, my behaviour so that I would spend some money with them. Before every election what drops through my door are leaflets, not asking me to spend money, but to buy into the policies promoted by one or other of the parties. So it would seem that our politicians realise that if you want to influence someone’s behaviour mailshots are quite an effective way of doing so. Or do they?

Yesterday morning I watched Robert Jenrick, Secretary of State for Housing Communities and Local Government, being asked about the new ‘Three Tier’ restrictions proposed by the Government which it hopes will suppress the dangerous rise in new infections, hospital admissions and deaths resulting from the Covid pandemic. How are we to find out which ‘tier’ we are in? Go to www.gov.uk says Mr Jenrick, and find out for yourself!

One of the things we have learned in recent months is that there has been a decline in the willingness of some people to comply with what is expected of them. Only one fifth to one quarter of people who are told they should self isolate after being in contact with an infected person, actually do so. It’s not clear that everyone even knows what ‘self isolate’ actually means.

A frequent excuse for non-compliance with this and other restrictions is that people don’t know what the ‘rules’ are. Personally I put much more reliance on the World Health Organisation’s common sense rules like meeting as few people as possible, keeping as far away as possible from anyone I do meet and disinfecting anything anyone else might have touched, to protect my wife and myself, rather than anything the government tells me. But common sense seems to be in short supply in some quarters

.

Unless the government makes an effort to cut through the fog of confusion and excuses the new ‘Three Tier’ system will not work. Restrictions like those proposed will be viewed as a massive inconvenience to many people, perhaps especially to those who feel they are a least risk of picking up the virus or becoming seriously ill if they do get it. So why expect them to go out of their way to find out for themselves just how much freedom of action they are about to lose?

My understanding, gleaned from news reports is that Rochdale, as part of Greater Manchester, is in ‘Tier Two’. Telling people to find out for themselves what the new restrictions are by visiting the web sites of national and local government seems to me a recipe for failure. Some people cannot and some people will not do it.

Since March my criticism of the government’s strategy of been restrained, not because I particularly like what it has been doing, but because I am sceptical that anyone else would have been able to do much better.

But all along it seems to have been ‘penny wise and pound foolish’. It has relied too much on technology because it appears to be a cheap short cut to getting things done. We’ve had the fiasco of the ‘world beating app’, when the money might have been better spent on old fashioned shoe leather and door to door methods of tracing contacts. Telling people to go to a website to find out the rules in their area is just another example of this.

Starmer and Johnson may spar across the floor of the Commons, each claiming they know how to cut down the number of new infections. Neither seems to have paused to reflect upon the fact that this virus is not going to go away. It is going to be with us for the foreseeable future and possibly forever. If that pessimistic assessment is correct then we have to learn to live with it by changing our behaviour to accommodate that fact.

If we are to live anything like a normal life again we have to make doing the things that will keep the virus in check, and ourselves and others safe, second nature. By not doing this we have squandered all the effort and inconvenience that was needed in Spring to get the virus under control.

As I pointed out in an article on the NV blog on 16 August the number of cases was already beginning to rise again. Instead of delaying taking action until something as drastic as a ‘circuit breaker lockdown’ was needed, the time could have been better spent in reminding everyone that public health measures like physical distancing, mixing with as few people as possible, wearing a face mask when inside buildings with people not of your household and scrupulous hand washing, were still important.

The virus is apolitical; Labour or Tory it can kill you if you become infected. Starmer and Johnson need to stop playing politics and start to look at how we can avoid once more squandering the effort and inconvenience which will be needed to bring the virus under control

.

Though I take much the same view as the economist J. K. Galbraith, that advertising is just another way of boosting consumption, hence profits, by creating demand where none would otherwise exist, it may be just what the government needs to turn to, to get the public health message across.

Seven weeks ago on 27 August I wrote something on the NV blog with specific reference to Rochdale Council, but the same applies to the government:

‘These are irksome things to do for most of us. We’ve a devil dancing on our shoulder telling us to just get on with our lives. We need constant reminders as to why these things are important. It’s got to be Education, Education, Education! A nd this is where I think Rochdale Council has failed miserably because it is "just going through the motions". Where are the large notices on every lamp post and every shop window and every billboard, reminding people of what they need to do to beat the virus? Non-existent so far as I can tell.’

******************************************************************

Long, Long Covid 19? by Les May

SCOTLAND’s Sunday Post newspaper reports that Health Boards in Scotland have placed on-line advertisements in an attempt to recruit staff to act as contact tracers during the present pandemic. The contracts being offered are of eighteen months duration. This suggests that there is a growing recognition that Covid 19 is going to be with us until at least 2022 and possibly far longer. *************************************************

An Indirect Route of getting Covid-19 by Les May

AT intervals throughout the day Sky News (Channel 233) broadcasts a short information piece dealing with the key points in protecting ourselves against becoming infected with the Covid 19 causing virus. One of these is a reminder that the virus can remain infectious for a period if it contaminates hard surfaces, including metal surfaces. In her daily briefing a couple of days ago the Scottish First Minister, Nichola Sturgeon, reminded people to avoid touching hard surfaces when in the hospitality venues which have been allowed to remain open.

Unlike in the case of close contact between individuals which can result in direct transmission of the infection, the path of transmission from an infected person to a previously uninfected individual via a hard surface, is indirect. In both cases it involves the infected person ejecting minute virus laden droplets of mucus from the nose or of spittle from the mouth, by sneezing, coughing, singing, or even speaking excitedly or loudly. The largest of these rapidly fall to the ground and are unlikely to travel more than two metres. Smaller particles fall more slowly, persist in the air much longer and may be carried further by air currents caused by body movements.

If these minute droplets are inhaled they are likely to come in contact with the mucus membranes of the nose and throat; they can also drift into the eyes of bystanders. Each route provides a means for the virus to enter the body and initiate and infection.

Droplets which otherwise would fall to the ground can be intercepted by hard surfaces; supermarket trolley handles, door surfaces and handles, tables and chairs, milk bottles and metal cans… the list of things with hard surfaces which have the potential to hold infectious virus particles is endless. In the worst cases virus particles can remain viable and able to reproduce within the human body, for up to three days.

Anyone who comes in contact with a surface carrying virus particles is in danger of picking them up on their hands. Touching their face with a virus contaminated hand can result in a Covid 19 infection becoming established in the body, even though they have not spent any significant time in close contact with an infected person. No ‘App’, nor ‘Track and Trace’ can alert us to the fact that an infected person shed virus particles onto a surface which we later came into contact with. The ONLY defence against this is to avoid touching our face and either wash our hands regularly with soap and water, or apply a sanitiser gel containing at least 60% alcohol, every time we have touched a surface in locations outside our own home.

The importance of this indirect method of passing on the infection has been overshadowed by the problems of getting the ‘App’ to work at all and ‘Track and Trace’ to work effectively. We need to reinstate it.

Do I practice what I preach? Yes I do! Before any bottle or can is allowed into the house it is sprayed with dilute bleach (one part bleach plus ten to twenty parts water) and left for a few minutes before being rinsed with water. Anything else is quarantined for three days. If anyone other than my wife or myself touches a door handle, door knocker, mail flap, bell push is is wiped over with soapy water or alcohol. In the case of our waste bins on collection day before they are brought back into the garden the handles and flap of each of each bin is sprayed with dilute bleach.

Pedantic? Yes! But I make my own rules about what I think will keep my wife and myself safe. That way there’s no confusion about what is and what is not ‘allowed’.

*******************************************************

Orwell's Politics and the English Language

From THE LANCETT:

Richard Horton

ALSO ON THE THE ORWELL Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/TheOrwellSociety

The Orwell Society - Home | Facebook The Orwell Society. 1.4K likes. The Orwell Society aims to promote the understanding and appreciation of the life and work of George Orwell. Join here:... www.facebook.com

GEORGE ORWELL, in his 1945 essay Politics and the English Language, wrote that “to think clearly is a necessary first step towards political regeneration”.

The Moscow press briefing held last week on the Russian COVID-19 vaccine quickly turned into a platform for national rivalry. The research, led by scientists at the N F Gamaleya National Research Centre for Epidemiology and Microbiology, found encouraging evidence of an immune response using their prime boost strategy of a two-component, human recombinant adenovirus vector-based vaccine. The study was small, non-randomised, uncontrolled, and did not include those most at risk of severe disease. The Russian team recognise these limitations and are proceeding with large randomised trials. The first results were released by Russian President Vladimir Putin on Aug 13. “I know that it works quite effectively”, he said, “forms strong immunity, and I repeat, it has passed all the needed checks”. At last week's event, more big claims were made. The “poorly researched approaches” by “western” nations were criticised, and one speaker challenged western governments to respond to these alleged concerns—“would you please show your citizens” evidence about the safety of western vaccine candidates given the “poorly developed platforms” you are using, he said. “It doesn't make any sense to use poorly researched approaches”, he argued. His view was that a human adenovirus vector was safer than a chimpanzee adenovirus vector (the basis for the Oxford COVID-19 vaccine, for example). A press conference to present the results of a scientific study became the venue for renewed Cold War conflict.

Russia isn't the only country to use COVID-19 as a tool to fight perceived adversaries. US President Donald Trump routinely refers to SARS-CoV-2 as the “China virus”. He is seeking to amplify the American public's fear of China to wound his opponent in the current presidential campaign. In Latrobe, PA, on Sept 3, President Trump suggested that, “Joe Biden wants to surrender your jobs to China”. The message is clear—China is America's enemy, it is the cause of a pandemic that has destroyed the US economy, and the policies of the Democrat candidate will only strengthen America's chief international competitor. There is not one shred of evidence to support these claims. The twisting of language in public discussion of the pandemic is now standard fare. “Thanks to the efforts of Operation Warp Speed”, said President Trump in Wilmington, NC, on Sept 2, “we remain on track to deliver a vaccine very rapidly, in record time”. He has suggested a vaccine might be available by the end of October—an important claim given that the US election will take place on Nov 3. Yet there is no possibility that a COVID-19 vaccine will be ready for public use before the US election. Orwell's reflection that language is used “with intent to deceive” in “the sordid processes of international politics” could not be more apposite.

***********************

Walking the Covid tightrope: a Bluffer's Guide

Taking a chance on exposure to Covid-19

TIM HARFORD at the end of August in his Financial Times column measured the risks of going outside and the perils of the pandemic on the street. A friend of his asked: 'What I want is a survival guide for life in the age of Covid,' The man is in his sixties and has barely left home since March mostly because of the risks of travelling on the underground seem too great. Yet the man knows that his instincts may be wrong.

Tim Harford writes: 'The typical English resident, then, has a 44 in a million chance each day of being infected. In the US, the midpoint of epidemiological models suggests around 150,000 new infections a day, or 450 per million people per day, about 10 times the risk in England. In South Korea, despite the recent spike in confirmed case, the risk of infections is probably closer to 1 or 2 per million people per day.'

These averages include folk who take precautions, people who work in exposed professions and everyone inbetween. So Mr Harford says he can only guess how much his friend's risk increases if he should decide to venture outside. Yet he estimates that for his friend Covid-19 currently presents a background risk of a one in a million chance of death or lasting harm, every day. And he claims that the 'risk of death alone is one in 2m.'.

Finally Tim Harford FT article concludes: 'But simply existing in a country where the virus is uppressed but circulating is not so risky. It depends on age, gender, geography, behaviour and much else. But on average it is half a micro-mort a day-similar to taking a bath, a going skiing, or a short motorbike ride, and consideringly less risky than a scruba dive or a skydive.'

Later Tim Harford following much publicity about the risk of taking a bath, has had to admit that he was wrong and that in truth one would have take a bath for a year to run an equivalent risk, but the risk of sky diving, and scuba diving is considerably more dangerous. What really worries Mr. Harford, the host on the Radio Four program 'MORE OR LESS' dedicated to understaning statistics, is the danger of the virous surging back; and he writes: 'We cannot afford to relax just yet, because we will be walking a tightrope this autumn.'

************************************

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.

**************************

Selfishness or Racism?

by Les May

I’M just back from a stroll with my wife in Rochdale’s Springfield Park.  As well as a golf course and running track there’s a length of a synthetic material which forms an all weather wicket for impromptu games of cricket.  At one end of this we noticed a man and a woman using it as an outdoor gym complete with equipment for weight training.

Whilst we were strolling a group of two dozen young men who I don’t think would object to being called Asian, though I prefer to think of them as fellow Rochdalians gradually arrived.  Carrying bats and balls they were clearly intent on a game of cricket.

Now one might reasonably have expected that the duo would have moved off the surface intended as a cricket wicket and so let the game proceed.  But no, selfishly they stayed put and the young men had to content themselves with a bit of bowling practice with a wicket at the other end.

I’ve called this selfishness, others who observed it might choose to call it racism. Selfishness privileges one’s self over others irrespective of their skin colour; racism privileges one’s self over others because they have a different skin colour. Which of these motivated this pair to behave as they did I don’t know and nor does anyone else. To me these motivations seem awfully alike and equally reprehensible. Or maybe that is just my ‘white privilege’ talking.

************************** 

The dark factories in Britain’s garment trade

Leicester's Shameful Industries & Covid-19

ON the 17th,May 2018 Sarah O'Connor in the Financial Times [FT] asked: 'How is it possible to make cheap clothes in a country where the minimum wage for over-25s is £7.83 an hour?' 

She suggested:   'Online retailers’ nimbleness and lower overheads allow them to pay more for products while still giving consumers a good price. In addition, there are manufacturers that use technology to make clothes more efficiently' and she added 'factory owners in Leicester say some take a different route, one more reminiscent of the 19th century than the 21st.  They call these places “dark factories”.'  

At that time it seemed part of May 17 2018’s garment industry in Leicester had become detached from UK employment law, 'a country within a country', where '£5 an hour is considered the top wage', even though that is illegal.  And one man said he had worked in places with blocked fire escapes, old machines and no holiday or sick pay.

Now a week ago Sarah O'Connor in the same FT wrote:
'Covid-19 has found its way into the neglected cracks in our economies. In the US, Europe and Asia, poor working conditions in care homes, meat plants and factories have helped to spread the virus.  This week [3rd, July 2020], a campaign group blamed clothing sweatshops in the English city of Leicester for contributing to a local surge in cases.  The story of Leicester’s garment district is worth knowing, because it reveals something important about how the British economy evolved in the decade between the financial crisis and this pandemic.  It also demonstrates what it will take for the country to “build back better”, as UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson promised to do this week.'

Sarah O'Connor describes how in 2018, she investigated Leicester’s clothing industry which she concludes was 'a bizarre microeconomy where £4 to £4.50 an hour was the going rate for sewing machinists in many factories (£3 for packers).'  Based on tiny sweatshops that were crammed into crumbling old buildings and legally compliant factories using expensive machines were being outcompeted by illegally underpaid humans.

When she exposed this industry two years ago she likened it to be more like the  19th Century than the 21st Century.

It seems that large scale buyers of Leicester’s clothes are based online as 'fast fashion' retailers, which have done well in the pandemic owing to the proximity and speed of their UK suppliers.   And Boohoo, which sources about 40 per cent of its clothing in the UK, much of it in Leicester, prospered in lockdown by switching nimbly to producing leisurewear for the homebound, while rivals were left with shipping containers from Asia full of summer party dresses.

It seems that the big boy on the block Boohoo’s co-founder Mahmud Kamani has become a billionaire and is set for a £50m bonus if Boohoo’s share price continues to rise.  And the campaign group Labour Behind the Label has alleged that the some of company’s suppliers contributed to the spread of coronavirus; meanwhile Boohoo says it adhered to all government guidance and that its supply chain adheres to all labour laws, though it does not publish a list of its suppliers.

Sarah O'Connor reports that:
'Leicester’s sweatshops, which comprise part but not all of the city’s garment sector, were an open secret even before my investigation began. In fact, a senior Whitehall official first told me about them.  A local official in Leicester warned me in 2018 that, if I published my story, I would cause mass unemployment for people with no other options. In fact, nothing changed.  After publication, I was invited to testify at a parliamentary select committee hearing into the costs of online fast fashion.  The government rejected every one of the committee’s recommendations.'


Ms. O'Connor writes:  'As unemployment rises in the months ahead, it will be vital to focus on jobs.  But to prioritise quantity while turning a blind eye to quality would be to repeat past mistakes.' 

Tellingly she points to the crucial coming dilemma:  'As well as the feared harm to public health, Leicester’s economy will suffer from a prolonged lockdown and fall further behind more prosperous parts of the UK.  So much for “levelling up”.  In truth, there was always an economic cost to allowing labour exploitation to flourish.  The garment factories are a microcosm of Britain’s productivity problem.  Job creation boomed after the financial crisis and ministers did not worry initially about their quality.  They pushed up the minimum wage but left it badly under-enforced, while cutting back health and safety inspections to free up “entrepreneurialism”.'

This is all too reminiscent of other industries which have suffered like the British building trade and outsourcing.

*******************