Off Topic Coronavirus - 606 tales from the Inquiry

Infection rates and fatality rates have stopped declining in the UK.
Numbers are about the same as those of a week ago. Slightly up today.

Bit of a rise in Portugal too.
In the USA they have a really serious problem, however much Trump and Pence want to deny it.

 

It will be interesting to see what the figures are like in a couple of weeks time after all the shenanigans at the coastal resorts this week

 

According to this article, experts are saying Scotland could be Coronavirus-free by the end of summer...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-53192024

If they want to keep it that way, I'm afraid they'll have to close the border.
English tourists will reintroduce it.

 

Is this down to lack of money changing hands up there , tight bastards

 

So... what's happening in Leicester then?

Anybody know? Does the Government know? The Local Council? The people?
Got a spike in cases. Is it a big spike? A little spike? What's the source?
Maybe another lockdown there...
Maybe extending the pub & hairdresser opening dates from 4th July to 18th July...
Maybe nothing at all...

I admire a Government that takes decisive action.
Pity we haven't got one.

 

I saw that on the news, saying there is a 'spike'. At what level does a spike lead to a lock down? We have 24 small outbreaks here in Spain, and as far as I know, there is one block of flats where the occupants have been advised to stay put for 10 days. The messages are a bit conflicting, we had something like 180 new cases in the whole of Spain yesterday, and a total of 18 deaths in the last seven days, but there is no doubt lockdown easing is going to provoke some new cases no matter what.

 

Over in the UK our "world-beating" test track & trace system is barely up and running.
I understand the bespoke NHS one was abandoned in favour of a Google one.
And the app isn't available until Christmas (or something like that).

Result? No bugger has a clue what's going on.

 

BBC's Panorama is exposing some sobering truths about the UK response to Coronavirus right now.
There are a couple;

• 20% of Coronavirus cases in the UK were contracted in hospitals.

• Staff manning the drive-through testing stations in the UK are not doctors or nurses. They are virtually untrained, low paid employees of private contractors, who often don't know how to use PPE properly. There are NO staff from the NHS at UK testing stations, even though the NHS logo is used all over them. Because of the poor training of sub-contracted staff, visiting a UK testing station actually exposes people to a risk of picking up the infection while there.

• In Germany testing stations are manned by medical staff and every station is supervised by a doctor, who is there all the time. Germany was also testing & tracking from the middle of March, when in the UK we only began in June.

There was a lot more, but the above ones did surprise me.

 

Leicester is now being locked down again for at least two weeks;

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-leicestershire-53229371

The Health Secretary says the city accounts for 10% of all new Coronavirus cases reported, which is a rate 3 times higher than the second highest rate recorded for a city. So all non-essential shops are being closed again, and schools are closing again.
Pubs and hairdressers who were preparing to re-open in 5 days time must also now remain closed.

We can understand why action is necessary, if the virus is spreading out of control in the area.
What we are not being told however is why and how it is happening.
The people who are being told to lock down their lives again have a right to know.

If no information is forthcoming on this, the default conclusion the Government seems content for the wider nation to adopt, is that the whole population of Leicester has been slacker than the rest of the country when it comes to following the Coronavirus rules, like social distancing.
But that seems unlikely to me, as well as being far too generalised a theory (being based on no evidence at all aside from the higher infection rate there).

So - who are the people in Leicester who are getting infected at the highest rates?
Are they more often from the poorest areas of the City?
Are they more often members of the BAME community?
If so, which communities?

This information must be available.
It might be that the data could be used to focus the efforts to cut infection rates much more specifically if required, rather than throw a blanket lockdown over an entire city - affecting the lives of huge numbers of people who may have nothing to do with the spike in cases.

If you're going to order an entire city to lock itself down again while the rest of the country enjoys ever more freedoms, the people whose lives are disrupted because of that lockdown have a right to know how the situation in their area has deteriorated.

Is that information being withheld for reasons of political correctness?
Is it being withheld because authorities fear it might lead to an increase in discrimination and prejudice against certain ethnic groups in the City?
If so, then that amounts to those authorities (local and national Government) playing politics with the Coronavirus crisis.

If knowledge of why the virus spikes in some areas is kept from the public, and not used to allow the most effective and best targeted measures to be taken to combat jumps in infection rates, then political correctness is being put before people's livelihoods, people's health and people's lives.
All the while that questions are not answered, that will be the suspicion.

If there is no connection between virus spikes and poverty or ethnicity (if these spikes can be traced to specific events for example) then that information should also be out in the public domain.

The darkness of ignorance is the perfect soil for growing conspiracy theories, and tensions between different communities.
Lack of knowledge and understanding are the very life blood of prejudice.
Only information and education can fight that - except in the minds of a tiny minority of racial or religious hate-mongers who use prejudice to empower themselves. Sometimes political correctness actually helps them.

~

Unless it is a matter of National Security (which this clearly is not), the authorities should not consider it within their power to keep information from the people for political reasons.
Particularly in a situation where many traditional freedoms are being surrendered by executive order.

We volunteer to temporarily give up those freedoms.
We are not slaves of a dictatorship that can decide to keep us in the dark whenever it wishes to.

 

let’s hope the people of Leicester haven’t been going on jolly jaunts up and down the country - in my mind Bumbling Boris should of implemented a “Stay in local area “ rule when allowing us to relax the lockdown initially.

 

I've read in one of the newspapers this morning that the spike in Leicester is being linked with textile factories re-opening some weeks ago.
If that is the case, those factories should be investigated for possibly failing to operate safely.
Also, the means of transport the factory workers used should be checked.

A million people should not have to suffer because of the poor behaviour of a few greedy employers.
Are these factories 'sweat shops'?
Are the employees properly looked after? Are they on low wages or zero hour contracts - or any contracts at all?

Let's get to the root of what's going on in Leicester.
That's what they'd be doing in Germany with a spike like this. Rooting out the cause and dealing with it properly.
Here, I'm afraid to trend will be just to shrug and put it down to 'one of those things'.
Which is why we'll lose 50,000 people in the UK to this virus before Germany loses 10,000.

 

Scientists have identified a new kind of Flu in China. Could have potential to go pandemic...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-53218704

The new Flu virus has NOT yet mutated into a form easily transmitted between humans. But it may do.
Let's hope the World reacts swiftly and decisively this time around, should the virus mutate.

 

Think all Chinese tourists and imports should be screened and quarantined , what is it with bloody China ??

 

Bit of a warning from Spain. I met a nurse last night wo is mother of a boy in the same class as one of my daughters. She told me that in Spain, the health care staff are being ordedred to get all their holidays out of the way during the next two months - no holidays permitted from mid to late september, as the second wave of covid-19 is pretty much accepted as a given, and Will coincide with the usual flu we get every winter. Looks as if we have a bit of a long winter coming up.

 

Reading the reports of the pubs opening yesterday, it was no surprise to see bedlem around the country. All 'celebrating' pubs being open.

I have got used to having a few from the comfort of my balcony at home, that shall remain for a while.

 

The people who flock immediately back to anything which has just re-opened (pubs, beaches etc.) are by-and-large the most impulsive ones.

The folk who are most prey to their frustrations, and who plan ahead the least before taking action.
A few were interviewed on the TV news;
Motorhome drivers stuck on congested rural roads, who were genuinely surprised that thousands of other people just like them had decided to drive to the coast at the same time. How much forethought does it take to anticipate that? Not very much.

People who just had to go out and have a drink (and damn the consequences) made up a fair number of the boozers yesterday.
More sensible folk will take their time.
But these scenes of crowded city streets late into the night may lead to spikes and lockdowns.

 

Who will then be the first to complain if we have another lockdown.

 

It is beginning to look like conditions in the sweat-shop clothes factories in Leicester are a factor in the rise in local infections.
This is the true price of cheap dead-end jobs where workers are just exploited.

Low paid, low skilled jobs and Third World conditions are NOT a solid foundation for a healthy modern economy.
The Tories need to accept that this isn't Victorian Britain anymore.

 

3rd July update:

7 more days of data added.
Also I removed Denmark from the tables and replaced it with Portugal.
This was in response to talk of infection rates rising there.

Even though the death rate in the UK is still falling, it is still by far the highest in Europe.

The highest infection rate seems to be fluctuating at the moment between the UK, France and Sweden.
But rates are still falling in the UK.

 

Spain is heading back in the wrong direction now. Yesterday, the town of Lerida and surrounding suburbs (approx 210,000 people) went back into lock down. Oddly though, they can't get in and out, but they can still mingle freely inside the town, and so pass the virus along. Daft.
In quick succession there has been another lockdown in part ofbAlbacete, and another in Santiago. Belgium is now logically reconsidering whether they want Spanish visitors. It's all been creeping up for a week or two, and the same response as march, of 'it's all under control'.
Andalucia now has 13 small outbreaks. If you are thinking about a cheeky trip to Spsin, as a travel agent I wouldn't advise it. Bad moon rising...