Virgil Caine

Well at least some footballers understand the reality https://www.thetotallyfootballshow.com/feature/a-premier-league-player-speaks-the-way-things-are-in-top-football-is-wrong-end-of/

I think lorry trailers are already routinely swapped that way not least because of restrictions on drivers hours. Perishable goods cant wait while the bloke at the wheel takes 8 hours rest and having vehicle loads idle rather than moving is inefficient and creates bottle necks in supply chains.

It does raise the scenario of countries where the virus become endemic and those where it is not. If for example the UK and the rest of Europe become an area where Covid19 is ubiquitous then any business model reliant on foreign visitors from somewhere like Asia to make its financial numbers is going to struggle. Are all those British universities churning Chinese post grads going to be that attractive to the Far East students if the prospect is potential death from coming here and pariah status when travelling back home.

Which is confirmed by the video posted by TMT earlier from the New York hospital where they started routinely CT scanning all admissions and picked up lots of potential C19 infections that had been missed by other diagnostic processes.

A lot of overpaid clapped out footballers at FC Zion in Switzerland including Song. A lot more will be ditched at contract renewal time.

The Asian nations have used temperature tests a lot to weed out potential cases. I think 80% of those with the virus run a fever least some time. One person with one of those infrared thermometers is going to be a lot quicker and cheaper at checking people multiple times than swab tests and it would appear with a not hugely worse accuracy rate in catching those potentially infected. I still don’t know why it was not mandatory at British airports. I accept it would not catch all cases but even a partial success rate would have been a lot better than nothing which is essentially what the UK did.

Well the virus is certainly impeding the movement of people which was one of the key aspects of globalisation. I don’t see that restarting anytime soon. The world will stay connected but I think the idea that people are going to be moving around so easily and cheaply may be gone. The economic impact is also probably going to dwarf 2008. I don’t see the likes of Saudi Arabia staying solvent if oil stays south of $30 a barrel for long.

I expect the fact the NHS is divided up into so many fiefdoms probably explains why it is so difficult for the government and PHE to coordinate national resources for dealing with the coronavirus pandemic. It seems it does not have a fully functioning top down command and control structure necessary for fighting this kind of war. The kind of regional structure it runs disappeared from most other central government departments some years ago. West Sussex where I live seems to be covered by at least 3 separate NHS Trusts. The whole setup appears Byzantine in its complexity. No wonder it is so hard to get anything coordinated. PHE only has about 5000 staff so in manpower terms is tiny compared to some of the other NHS entities it has to try to coordinate.

dup

Disagree. If a quick turnaround antigen test is available it should be made mandatory for all arrivals in the UK post lockdown. There is bugger all point going through this pain just to allow a new cycle of infection to be imported. If the UK does not do it you can be bloody sure other countries out there will. Indeed some have already started. For example, Hong Kong found that it had controlled the virus then had a problem of reinfection from returning ex pats. It has now introduced a mandatory 14 days quarantine https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-23/hong-kong-expats-point-fingers-over-who-s-spreading-coronavirus With regard to NHS staff they should surely be making the test compulsory. And while they are at it they should ensure that the 25% refuseniks who don’t take the annual flu vaccination each year should get that too.

My view is that the US political elite now look remarkably like the Soviet politburo in the 1980s except for the fact that Brezhnev, Andropov and Chernenko were all younger than Trump, Biden and Sanders. Tecumsehs curse on Presidents snuffing it on entering office in a year ending in zero looks nailed on this time. In fact I would not be surprised if one of them does not make it to the polls.

The media hyperventilating about testing in the UK is strangely reminiscent of what happened during the “shell famine” in 1915 during the Great War. The press have picked up on a valid issue in that the Uk governments and the NHS testing regime has been poor. However, it is clear from the embarrassing exchange between Peston and the virologist that most of the media only have the vaguest idea of the point of carrying out the tests. In the early stages of the pandemic better testing for the virus might have been able to control the initial outbreak by detecting, tracing and isolating those infected particularly at points of entry to the UK but once the virus got established in the wild just running lots of tests as Italy has done does not appear to have much impact on it once established. It’s main use would be to detect infected health and social care workers and to track geographical hotspots. It won’t make any difference to how many of those with Covid19 are going to die. The latter is down to the availability of suitable treatment which is really a measure of the respective health care systems. In fact once the UK government went for the lock down option then mass testing outside the health care system is relatively pointless since pretty much everyone is being socially isolated to a greater or lesser degree regardless of whether infected or not. Testing will become more important once the lockdown is being lifted as it is then it will be important to be able to detect those who have had the virus but recovered from those who are infected and those who have not yet caught it. And when that happens the issue will still remain of the abject failure to test and quarantine people at the point of entry to the UK and that is an issue those who are critical of Boris Johnson and his government have not addressed because it is going run completely against their globalist agendas.

Max Wall !!

He had a heart transplant in 2003 so was probably taking drugs that suppressed his immune system as well. I would imagine very vulnerable to a range of infections not just this one.

They clearly cut back bin collections before everyone died.