Mutating Corona Virus

[tobyjugg2]

2 hours ago, unclebulgaria67 said:

I don't know enough about the Covid-19 virus and how different it is to flu, but it appears to me that assurances being given by health professionals and policitians, are more about trying to improve public confidence.  There must be conversations taking place about what information should be made public, as the majority of people are not experts and therefore they could not make any assessment to guide them on their behaviours, confidence level etc.

 

I would prefer simple Honesty rather than lies and censorship

You cant manage squat when decisions (fro anyone) are surrounded by lies

 

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It is quite possible that the UK with a population of 68 million, will always have a reasonably large number of positive cases, even after 75% or more have been vaccinated.   As the Government are not going to close UK borders or require everyone who returns to the UK to enter quarantine, then we will to have to live with some people carrying the virus.  At some point, the Government will have a difficult decision to make, which will be to withdraw the free tests for most people.

 

Perhaps. But transmission= mutation whether there are symptoms or not

 

 

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The Prime Minister is going to be in a very difficult position, as there may not be a majority in Parliament, to back the Governments strategy.

 

Based on lies, s and cronyism - I certainly hope not

 

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Many Tory backbenchers are not going to be happy, when the planned 21st June changes are postponed by at least 2 weeks. As the number of Covid cases increase in the UK and elsewhere, Government will be faced with having to effectively cancel the holiday plans of millions of people.  This could well lead to many tour operators requiring Government financial assistance. 

 

The science has not supported Johnsons bull.

 

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And in regard to Labour and other parties, I am not sure they have practical policy alternatives.  A Labour shadow minister, suggested everyone entering the UK should be required to quarantine in provided accommodation.  I cannot see how that would be easily arranged and people would not be willing to pay the £1700 per person cost.

 

 

For people coming in - from places like India - too damn right they should.

If they even half-competently managed the influx both at the start, and when the infections hit highs in India, then UK people coming back from holidays that teh UK gov said were fine shouldn't be expected to isolate in forced 'camps

Brits coming home should be managed and supported, Foreigners coming in should be isolated.

 

18 million plus at teh start of the pandemic came in from the far east, plus thousands from Inda more recently

and the prats target Portugal

 

 

 

 

Edited June 6, 2021 by tobyjugg2

[unclebulgaria67]

Problems has been that some people coming back from countries that are 'red' rated, is that they have travelled via a 'green' rated country.  There was apparently an increase in people starting their flights in India, travelling to Portugal and then arriving back in the UK with no quarantine. ( someone told me this was the case, not sure on accuracy,)

 

I wonder whether this is the reason for Portugal being added to the 'amber' list.

 

This is one of the issues that Government will have to consider, when changing the traffic light status of countries.

 

I think the India to UK via Portugal issue could be possible, but still a difficult several trip leg to get to the UK..   If you look at the 'green' list it includes countries where it would not be possible or extremely difficult to travel to UK indirectly. 

 

Green list
Australia
Brunei
Falkland Islands
Faroe Islands
Gibraltar
Iceland
Israel and Jerusalem
New Zealand
Singapore
South Georgia and South Sandwich Islands
St Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha

[tobyjugg2]

4 minutes ago, unclebulgaria67 said:

Problems has been that some people coming back from countries that are 'red' rated, is that they have travelled via a 'green' rated country.  There was apparently an increase in people starting their flights in India, travelling to Portugal and then arriving back in the UK with no quarantine.

 

I wonder whether this is the reason for Portugal being added to the 'amber' list.

 

This is one of the issues that Government will have to consider, when changing the traffic light status of countries.

 

I did raise the point of country jumping, but you seem to be offering that a small self-entitled privileged few who can afford to country jump and clearly do so without penalty in the UK - as an excuse for Portugal being added to the Amber list

Where the heck has that excuse/opinion of yours come from Unc?

 

... have you considered that anyone with the money and the will could do that through any country in the world

- so rather than penalise Johnson senior and the other self entitled doing this - should the UK borders simply be closed to everyone everywhere? 

- - dramatic - but surely makes more actual sense that simply penalising Portugal rather than the perpetrators doesn't it?

 

With due respect Unc, that seems to be exactly the sort of horse dung fire from the hip utter bo**ocks excuses that Johnson et al is spouting for their agendas - whatever those agendas actually are,

and which IS expanding the mess - and certainly ISN'T driving any solutions to the real world problems they are 'pointed' at.

 

 

 

 

 

[unclebulgaria67]

As you say, only wealthy people from 'red' list countries would be able to pay for the country jumping.  But if they have a business back in the UK and can raise the money, then of course they will do what they need to do.

 

If you closed the UK borders, the economic cost would be much more.   

 

Each country on the traffic light system will have been risk assessed.  They would factor in whether a country allowed people to transit via them to other countries,  How many countries on the 'green' list would allow people from say China to transit via their airports to other countries?

 

I am not saying the actions of the UK Government are correct.  But I can guess the reason for the decision in regard to Portugal.  But this may be an incorrect guess and the Government will have other information which they used to make the decision.

 

Or perhaps the Government realised that having Portugal on the 'green' list meant that most people wanting a European beach holiday, would be going to Portugal, due to limited real options.  Meaning crowded beaches and bars, with the packed flights coming back to the UK.

 

 

[honeybee13]

If there was transparency over how decisions are made, I think people would accept them more easily. Being kept in the dark just makes them confused and angry.

[tobyjugg2]

 

Handcok in full rewrite history denial mode

 

Matt Hancock has denied claiming to have “thrown a protective ring around care homes” from the start of the pandemic – despite saying it live on television.

 

The now-notorious statement – which ignored the discharge of patients from hospital without Covid tests – came “much later about what we were doing for the winter plan”, the health secretary Insisted err lied

TV footage shows Mr Hancock made the claim in May 2020, at a Downing Street press conference, and that he was arguing he had protected care homes throughout.

 

- Indi

 

[unclebulgaria67]

Transparency would be great.  But I don't associate this with modern day Policiticians.   They probably spend more time discussing how to manage communications than the actual issues. 

 

The BBC programme "The Thick of It"  is apparently quite an accurate representation of how political advisors try to manage Government Ministers, but fail as the Ministers go off script.

 

 

 

[honeybee13]

At least two papers are saying that Typhoid Dido is considering applying for the job of the head of NHS England.

 

This is worrying.

 

https://inews.co.uk/news/politics/former-test-and-trace-boss-dido-harding-considering-bid-lead-nhs-england-1037643

 

[BankFodder]

[brassnecked]

It would put them on the sick list for rest of season.

[hightail]

The amber list is a complete waste of time.  Either quarantine arrivals under supervision or accept they will mix in the community.  My neighbour has hosted a teenager from Spain over half term, her daughter's boyfriend.  He has visited multiple times in the past year - not a single check.

[tobyjugg2]

I see dodo Harding is still refusing to apologise for, or even acknowledge there were any failings by her or test and trace

Apparently all the perceptions of failings were because other peoples 'expectations were to high'

 

I mean, what do you expect for a measly 37 Billion Pounds?

 

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/jun/07/dido-harding-defends-test-and-trace-and-says-expectations-too-high

 

 

Edited June 7, 2021 by tobyjugg2

[honeybee13]

Dido is a mate of Door Matt, I'm praying she doesn't become head of the NHS.

[brassnecked]

If she does NHS England is toast, it will have services outsourced to a new Clinical arm of Serco, oer a US health corp that bought the NHS patient data from matty the Spiv.

[tobyjugg2]

 

How the Alpha variant swept the world

The Alpha variant of the coronavirus first seen in Britain fast became the dominant variant in both Britain and the U.S., leaving scientists questioning why.

A new study points to one secret to its success: Alpha disables the first line of immune defense in our bodies, giving the variant more time to multiply and temporarily silencing the immune system’s alarm bells.

Virologists at the University College London grew coronaviruses in human lung cells, comparing cells infected with Alpha with those infected with earlier variants. They found that the Alpha-infected cells made drastically less interferon, a protein that switches on a host of immune defenses.

Knock-on effects: The authors speculate that when the delayed immune response finally happens, people infected with Alpha have a more robust reaction, coughing and shedding virus-laden mucus from not only their mouths, but also from their noses — making the variant even better at spreading. -NYT   In previous research, Dr. Krogan and his colleagues had found that Orf9b makes a viral protein that locks onto a human protein called Tom70. And it just so happens that Tom70 is essential for a cell’s release of interferon in the face of an invading virus. Putting all of the evidence together, Dr. Krogan and his colleagues argue that the Alpha variant carries a mutation that forces the production of a lot more Orf9b proteins. Those proteins swarm the human Tom70 proteins, dampening the production of interferon and a full immune response. The virus, protected from attack, has better odds of making copies of itself. -NYT

[honeybee13]

Article by Robin Burgess who was involved in the last NHS data grab. It's quite illuminating.

 

Did We Learn Nothing from the Last NHS Health Data Grab? – Byline Times

BYLINETIMES.COM

---

Robin Burgess, who witnessed the chaos of the 'care.data' scheme eight years ago, sees the same lack of consent, trust and engagement in its most...

 

[tobyjugg2]

Simple fact is people expect their private and personal medical data to remain private and personal,

and quite specifically NOT to be sold to the private sector by the people who should be ensuring it STAYS private and personal.

 

Edited June 8, 2021 by tobyjugg2

[honeybee13]

Quite, TJ. There's also the scary prospect that the whole database could be hacked.

[brassnecked]

The UK Tory Government are worse than a gang of WW 2 Spiv's or the Family Slitheen from Dr Who, the Ferengi from Star Trek TNG

 

Hancock, Johnson and SAGE should all be in jail.

[tobyjugg2]

Like dodo hardly-do-owt

 

The real NHS staff run into the ground with shortages of PPE and extended shifts ..

while Hancock, Serco and Dodo squander 36 Billion pounds of taxpayer money on call center staff (being charged to the taxpayer at twice their pay) to play games, call people 2 weeks after their alleged contact if at all,

and make as need as damn all difference to the spread of covid (as detailed previously in this thread)

 

while underfunded and understaffed local council test and trace staff make 10 times the difference on about 1% (1/100th) of that cost

 

 

If that isnt a damning condemnation of private sector interference, incompetence and greed I dont know what is.

[honeybee13]

I understand that the data grab has been deferred until 1st September to allow for more consultation.

[brassnecked]

To allow more bids on the data more like.

[hightail]

Come on people, be reasonable and believe what they tell you.  They're not selling the data, they're just 'charging for access'.

Now where else in my life does that happen?  Streaming services, phone contracts etc.  All making huge profits from not selling me anyhing.

[tobyjugg2]

and the access will be limited to carefully selected people - those who will pay - unless criminals hack the superficial safeguards and criminally get it for nothing just to show they can - fiends.

 

and Handcock is sure everyone will safely delete the data the moment it has been used for the purpose allowed by the data owners (Handcock and Serco) should he ever be forced to request it anytime in the coming years and decades and centuries

 

Should anyone other than the data owner (Handcock and Serco) or their clients ever find out what was their own personal medical data is being used for, you can be sure they will be prosecuted for misusing Handcocks data and systems and breaching corporate privacy laws.

[tobyjugg2]

So when, today, @matthancock tells you that he’s never lied, that care homes were always protected, and that he threw a protective ring round them, please remember my hospice. Exactly like the country's care homes, we were an afterthought, an irrelevance, hung out to dry

 

Rachel Clarke

@doctor_oxford

 

https://twitter.com/doctor_oxford

 

Edited June 10, 2021 by tobyjugg2