Bottoms Up!

[Suff]

The review was announced by Bunter on the 14th of June. It was still in progress when Sunak made his announcement on the 20th - just one week.

It was supposed to be being carried out for an announcement to be made about events for July the 4th.

Please stop trying to excuse these chancers, incompetents and idiots.

And when did the review start? The day it was announced? Highly unlikely.

[Workingman]

The review was announced by Bunter on the 14th of June. It was still in progress when Sunak made his announcement on the 20th - just one week.

It was supposed to be being carried out for an announcement to be made about events for July the 4th.

Please stop trying to excuse these chancers, incompetents and idiots.

And when did the review start? The day it was announced? Highly unlikely.

Quit! Unless the reviewers were mind readers it probably started after the announcement.

[Suff]

Quit! Unless the reviewers were mind readers it probably started after the announcement.

So you want me to believe that a study is announced but has not been commissioned.

Quit indeed.

[Workingman]

So, the non-secret, secret, is out. Pubs, restaurants, hotels and hairdressers can open from 4th of July in England, and social distancing rules will be eased.

From what I am reading there are many millions of us who will be closely watching the numbers up to the 4th July and if the falls only continue at their current snail's pace we will not be joining in. For us the numbers need to be at pre-lockdown level and that means a few hundreds of cases per day and well under a hundred deaths - 40. If those figures were thought to be high enough to trigger a lockdown then logic dictates that they should be similar before easing it.

The much lauded dips we get for the weekend figures are not indicative of the trend, and that is still far too high.

But there is brighter news: The daily propaganda, deflection and evasion show is ending as of today. Rejoice!

Laura and Beth will be devastated, they might have to do some real journalism.

[medsec222]

And I hope this will mark the end of Nicola Sturgeon's daily briefing also.

[Suff]

When Spain, Italy and France unlocked, they were experiencing around 1,000 new cases per day and up to 300 dearlths per day.

As the unlock has continued, the infections have continued to fall as have the deaths.

Anyone watching the figures has to accept that there is a minimum lead time, on deaths, of two weeks and a maximum of 6 weeks and that is after detection. There is also a 2 week detection threshold where people are infected but not detected.

Even with the pubs and others open, the numbers, after a slight bump, will continue to fall.

Britain now has the highest number of tests done in the EU and the third highest in the world. Yet the numbers continue to fall. France, for instance, has only done 1.4 million tests. The UK has done 8.5 million. In a few weeks the UK will have done twice as many tests as Germany, or Spain, Or Italy.

Only India is catching up with testing and they have 16k new cases a day right now.

Last night we went to the pub again for the second time and we took our friends who have come over from Germany. The place normally shuts at 6pm on weekdays but was open till well after 9. Outside it was about 50% full and inside too.

There still isn't a single reported case within 15 miles of our town.

[cromwell]

There still isn't a single reported case within 15 miles of our town.

Ah yes Suff, but you live in La France Profond? Outsiders probably still think that they make sacrifices to the gods for a good harvest.

I don't understand how our figures are collated or released. If somebody dies on the Wednesday and it isn't in the figures until a week next Tuesday we don't have a clear picture of what is going on. Similarly if someone falls ill in March but passes away at the end of May.

We won't get a clear picture until this is all over.

[Workingman]

Nowhere gives 100% accurate daily figures, they are all using count-back of some sort and making periodic adjustments for results 'lost in the post'; the UK has made three such moves.

The daily figures are interesting but nowhere near as important as the trend and in the UK, although it is downwards, it is painfully slow and still too high. If we are not careful under the new rules it could well start to rise again.

[Workingman]

And on the day the UK does a quarantine U-turn for many European countries the WHO announces major concerns over 'very significant' resurgences in the area, even in countries that only eased their lockdowns once their cases / deaths were much much lower than the UK's when we did it.

What exactly does everywhere do if it flares up again?

I was cautious about the herd immunity thing in the beginning, but would have gone for it if we had quarantined the vulnerable properly. And when I say "quarantine" I really do mean full lockdown as in its literal meaning for sailing ships of old. Doors closed for as long as it takes, no one goes in and no one comes out, meals and meds delivered but without contact.

There is a strong possibility that that might be the way to go for many places.

[Suff]

The WHO would be better focusing on the 46k new cases in the US 46k in Brazil and 26k in India.

Pakistan is also making a run for it too.

There are real R0 rates of 1.5 or more measured over a week or more.

The effect not yet being reported is that of tracing, now numbers are more under control. Take the German meat factory for instance. At the peak only people with symptoms would have been tested. Now, post lock down, everyone in a cluster is being tested and they are finding that Covid-19 has lost none of its transmissibility. We are just seeing almost everyone infected instead of guessing.

What we need is positive test to serious symptoms analysis and hospital admissions.

But that tracking is not becoming visible.

As Crommers says, we won't know the true story until this is all over. However increased cases are a given with highly targeted testing, at least in the short term.

What we may not see is a huge bump in deaths.

Regardless the end of lockdown marches inexorably onwards.