All about defeating the SARS2 coronavirus and the COVID19 disease it causes
For more detailed onjectives and the author's biography, please see https://bit.ly/blogobjectives
PRESS CONFERENCE LED BY PM JOHNSON 28 May 2020
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Henry is the Features Editor at the Financial Times. He summed up concisely what everyone else was saying:
See larger version below My motto for COVID-19 is “Hope for the best, but prepare for the worst”. This is especially relevant to whether the UK is going to need another lockdown. My assessment as I write on 19 May is that there is at least a 50:50 chance of a lockdown being needed before the end of this May. But I am hoping I am wrong: The R factor will almost certainly be above a national average of 1 before the end of May, which means COVID-19 will be rising exponentially again. It has already risen from an estimate in the range of 0-5-0.9 a week ago to 0.7-1 a week later. Keeping below 1 in the next two weeks seems rather too optimistic. Conversely there will be enormous pressure on the government from their backers and the right-wing press to avoid another lockdown. Despite the risks of a lockdown and leading to far worse economic damage. Yet the government will be keen that the death count will not become even further ahead of the rest of Europe ...
Written Sunday 10 May 2020, before PM Johnson's presentation to the UK. In the previous post, we looked at how the UK has got to where it is with COVID-19 and the tragic count of deaths. Yet the importance of easing lockdown rapidly but safely. Now let's look to the future. What needs to be in PM Johnson's "roadmap"? WHAT'S IMPORTANT TO REALISE? What's important going forward?: Vaccines won't be available to the general public for months, perhaps never. This SARS 2 coronavirus is different from flu, and no vaccine is guaranteed either effective or safe. Any vaccine needs to be both Medicines and devices are bieng evaluated. Promising progress with medicines already proved effective against other viruses, and which are known to be adequately safe. But still probably months away against COVID-19 Testing for the virus using swabbing is unreliable, especially for self-swabbing. "False negatives" mean that those with symptoms ...
Waiting for the bus I’ve just had an unplanned bus tour of the infamous Blackbird Leys estate. In 1991 it hit the headlines for the riots when police cracked down on a joy-riding craze. It reminds me of estates in my industrial home town. Blackbird Leys is an estate of mainly terraced houses, the occasional semi, but nothing posh. It was purpose-built from the 1950s to clear city centre slums and house workers for the nearby Morris Motors factory. The point is that I was the only person on the bus who was wearing a face covering or mask of any kind. Yet the advice from the government is to wear one whenever on public transport. It was only as we got closer into the city that people were getting on wearing facemasks. Every single one of them. Why such a difference? [Update: On the journey back, only one other passenger had a face covering. The first journey certainly wasn't a one-off.] Blackbird Le...
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