Dramatic turn of events according to the Tele which is suggesting the virus could be wiped out in London within weeks. Great news if true. 

Edit: Obvious q. If it can be "wiped out" in London why can't it be wiped out in the rest of the UK and other European countries too? Perhaps we'll be getting back to normal much sooner than expected.

 

London has just 24 new coronavirus cases a day

Capital's lockdown questioned as Public Health England models suggest virus will be wiped out in June

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/05/14/london-has-just-24-new-coronavirus-cases-day/

 

Well, it's impossible to wipe it out when people are coming into London from outside.  You only need one person and the R value of SARS-Cov2 means you sow the seeds of the next outbreak, in the same way that this pandemic started.

Nabarro from the WHO was interviewed this morning and made the point strongly that we will have to deal with multiple outbreaks going forward and it's how well we manage this that determines whether we get another upsurge.

The other salient point is that the national R value doesn't tell you what's happening locally, which is what matters now.  It could be 0.2 in, say, a little village (say, in the North Yorks Moors) but 1.5 in a commuter town.  That's going to be much more challenging because it will need local measures and local messaging: how's that going to be achieved?

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James O'Brien - what a piece of work he is! So what does the cretin think about David Blunkett giving the teaching unions a bashing for letting down children from disadvantaged households?

James O'Brien is a gobshite like Owen motormouth Jones.

I disagree with Blunkett, if he said what you claim. Perhaps he hasn't seen the latest science that children do indeed carry the virus and spread it. And also this new inflammatory disease linked to Corona that has emerged recently

I don't have kids as you know, but if I did, I certainly would not be sending them back in June. 

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I disagree with Blunkett, if he said what you claim. Perhaps he hasn't seen the latest science that children do indeed carry the virus and spread it. And also this new inflammatory disease linked to Corona that has emerged recently

I don't have kids as you know, but if I did, I certainly would not be sending them back in June. 

Ridiculous - Beast you were the one urging Boris to let the pubs stay open!

Point is that schools are going back across Europe, the return to school in June is very restricted and the schools have been given plenty of time to prepare for it.

Why is the left so against easing the lockdown? The economic and psychological damage from maintaining it is worse than easing it now.

 P.S. Blunkett on the teaching unions:

https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/david-blunkett-teaching-unions-reopening-plans-june_uk_5ebd08ecc5b630c3461d5b32

 

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From the evening Standard:

The congestion charge will be hiked to £15 a day under the Government's coronavirus bail-out for London's transport system, the Evening Standard can reveal.

The central London levy, suspended on March 23 as part of the lockdown to make it easier for key workers to get to work safely, will be re-introduced on Monday, about two weeks earlier than expected.

It will increase from £11.50 to £15 - a 30 per cent hike - from June 22 and be enforced seven days a week, rather than just on weekdays at present. Its operating hours will temporarily extended in the evening from 6pm to 10pm. The charge will continue to be levied from 7am.
The changes are among the conditions imposed on mayor Sadiq Khan and Transport for London in return for the £1.6 billion bail-out agreed last night.

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National Express has started selling coach tickets for a restart to services on Wednesday 1st July.

Travel for these bookings will subject to government confirmation in the days and weeks ahead they can resume.

This will get Maunder's juices flowing

 

Tempted to say: WTF does this kid know about anything? But I'll leave it at: WTF does she know about the coronavirus? https://t.co/KJu6sLVyET

— Kevin O'Sullivan (@TVKev) May 15, 2020

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Just removed most of the OT posts. 

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Yes, you can ease lockdown safely only when cases are very low as in these countries

Both we (England) and the US have ended it prematurely. The US death toll is rising by over 1000 a day and now at 86,000. Cases have plateaued, dropping in some states but rising in others which didn't have a proper lockdown before

But Trump doesn't even want to talk about Corona anymore. The Corona task force hasn't even met for over a week

I mentioned a few days ago, it's being proposed that it be disbanded.

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Epidemic ends in Slovenia. Things starting to move quickly now. It's a bit like the start of the Grand National. All countries will be chaotically trying to get a slight edge on their competitors as economies are fired up. Interesting times ahead. In the UK I expect the quiet men to start turning up the volume. 

Slovenia has become the first European country to declare an official end to its coronavirus epidemic. The Balkan EU member state has a population of two million and has seen only a handful of daily cases in the past fortnight. In total it reported 1,464 cases and 103 deaths. There'll be no more quarantine if you're travelling to Slovenia from another EU country. [dource: BBC]

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R-value in Germany yesterday was estimated at 0.75

https://www.rki.de/DE/Content/InfAZ/N/Neuartiges_Coronavirus/Situationsberichte/2020-05-14-en.pdf?__blob=publicationFile

Epidemic ends in Slovenia. Things starting to move quickly now. It's a bit like the start of the Grand National. All countries will be chaotically trying to get a slight edge on their competitors as economies are fired up. Interesting times ahead. In the UK I expect the quiet men to start turning up the volume. 

Slovenia has become the first European country to declare an official end to its coronavirus epidemic. The Balkan EU member state has a population of two million and has seen only a handful of daily cases in the past fortnight. In total it reported 1,464 cases and 103 deaths. There'll be no more quarantine if you're travelling to Slovenia from another EU country. [dource: BBC]

Could it be that in some countries, the virus is slowly but surely starting to burn itself out? Let's hop so.

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This will get Maunder's juices flowing

 

Tempted to say: WTF does this kid know about anything? But I'll leave it at: WTF does she know about the coronavirus? https://t.co/KJu6sLVyET

— Kevin O'Sullivan (@TVKev) May 15, 2020

Sigh, I'll do my best to try and explain why this is a stupid idea without just mindlessly ranting.

Let's say there is a spectrum going from -10 to +10 from people who believe in climate change at +10 to those that deny it at -10. Greta is great at getting all the 8s,9s and 10s to turnout (although it seems like the 'greta effect' had worn off before COVID happened). Obviously she can't get the -8s, -9s and -10s on board, but I question whether she has a positive effect on the -1s, 0s and +1s too.

Now let's come back to COVID. Some climate change deniers will still accept the science of COVID, what sense does it make to deliberately push them further into the conspiracy camp by inviting on an activist type figure? And if Greta's ability to polarize is anything like the same as it is on climate then she will struggle to get the -1s, 0s and 1s on board too which is exactly what you need to do.

Now compare a political activist with a scientist. Generally the later have much higher approval ratings in the public eye and better credibility. By keeping this as apolitical as possible you get get a broader appeal of the message. Greta has no special insight that particularly merits her presence on any of these panels and the only likely outcome of her being there is to annoy a bunch of people and make it more likely they will ignore the science on COVID.

The media is supposed to care about how messaging appeals, now is not the time to make screw ups like this. How many people who were kinda on the fence to accepting that self isolating is a good idea will now suddenly view it all as some kind of 'liberal conspiracy'? Probably not many, but perhaps enough for it to be a problem.

 

 

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Well, it's impossible to wipe it out when people are coming into London from outside.  You only need one person and the R value of SARS-Cov2 means you sow the seeds of the next outbreak, in the same way that this pandemic started.

Nabarro from the WHO was interviewed this morning and made the point strongly that we will have to deal with multiple outbreaks going forward and it's how well we manage this that determines whether we get another upsurge.

The other salient point is that the national R value doesn't tell you what's happening locally, which is what matters now.  It could be 0.2 in, say, a little village (say, in the North Yorks Moors) but 1.5 in a commuter town.  That's going to be much more challenging because it will need local measures and local messaging: how's that going to be achieved?

 

Let's be honest, Peter, it won't be.   I doubt testing capacity is anywhere near large enough   to provide that kind of "granularity"  and the  App looks  less than "fab" IMHO.

 

 

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I suspect through fatigue and other reasons, many governments are switching away from CV19 concerns so there will be a concerted attempt to encourage "normality".

I'm all for it as those who are concerned about catching it will continue to exercise due diligence.

Others can play Russian roulette which is probably good for the gene pool 

Sigh, I'll do my best to try and explain why this is a stupid idea without just mindlessly ranting.

It is CNN - the tosspots have zero self awareness about how ridiculous they look. Greta has done a great job raising the public profile of the climate issue, whatever you may think about it (or her). But she has less than zero credibility on the COVID-19 pandemic - this is knee jerk leftism of the most risible kind - they might as well have appointed ChiChi the Panda to their "expert coronavirus panel" - at least she is Chinese.

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This is quite a cool idea/look 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/world-europe-52663568/coronavirus-amsterdam-trials-covid-safe-restaurant

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It is CNN - the tosspots have zero self awareness about how ridiculous they look. Greta has done a great job raising the public profile of the climate issue, whatever you may think about it (or her). But she has less than zero credibility on the COVID-19 pandemic - this is knee jerk leftism of the most risible kind - they might as well have appointed ChiChi the Panda to their "expert coronavirus panel" - at least she is Chinese.

I agree this is ridiculous.

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I agree this is ridiculous.

Do NOT diss Saint Greta! 

 

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It is CNN - the tosspots have zero self awareness about how ridiculous they look. Greta has done a great job raising the public profile of the climate issue, whatever you may think about it (or her). But she has less than zero credibility on the COVID-19 pandemic - this is knee jerk leftism of the most risible kind - they might as well have appointed ChiChi the Panda to their "expert coronavirus panel" - at least she is Chinese.

I've said from the start that Covid-19 has reduced CO2 emissions to a far greater extent than Greta has - she's almost redundant in that respect.

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Good example of where the EU adds value and potentially saves lives. The EU approved the Roche antibody test 10 days before the UK. Were we following EU certification we would have saved 10 days and avoided duplication of work. 

 

The Roche test received a conformity assessment, known as Conformité Européenne, or CE mark, from the European Union on April 28 and received Emergency Use Authorization from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration on May 2.

...

Tests carried out by Public Health England at Porton Down, a laboratory that provides sensitive and specialist scientific services to the government, concluded on May 7 that the Roche test detected the exact antibodies prompted by the virus. The findings were only made public late on Wednesday.

https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-britain-roche-hldg/uk-follows-eu-u-s-in-approving-roche-covid-19-antibody-tests-idUKKBN22P362

 

 

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