Coronabollocks..

[Boac]

....and the UK 'Health Minister' 'Herbie' Hancock who with no undue delay contracted the virus?

[Seenenough]

"One of her co-People was the hostess of that dinner in Chelsea and was one of his 'wifelets'." "

Had a similar experience .The Chaiman of our UK operations, invited my wife and I on one of our my business trips to London,out to Epsom and enjoy a Sunday Roast with he and his family ,which we enjoyed very much.

He then later on in the week invited us to have Dinner with him but when his Secretary made the booking with me she warned us that we should expect the dear old fellow to be accompanied by his very long standing "city companion" and that we should not be worried by their affection for each other.I was later told that his actual wife ,who we found to be a very pleasant lady, was quite OK with the arrangement.

I digress-maybe we should talk a bit on a another thread as I have a very funny story about a situation that took place at Rules Restaurant in London several moons ago

[TheGreenGoblin]

I digress-maybe we should talk a bit on a another thread as I have a very funny story about a situation that took place at Rules Restaurant in London several moons ago

If I digress perhaps you will use it as a cover to recount your Rules anecdote...

Your story about the old chap and his "companion" brought this to mind...

[barkingmad]

On the topic of confidence in the UK guvvment;
1. Health gaffer sez the temperature of hand washing hot water will kill the virus...
2. We are constantly being treated to the sight and sound of the erstwhile Health Secretary, one Jeremy *unt, who presided over the decline, underfunding, mismanagement and the biggest desertion rates in years of skilled experienced health professionals. He is now permitted to stand and tell us and Downing Street how it should all be done. Enough of this crap, off to the falling Gillette blade with him ASAP!
3. Today we are similarly ‘treated’ to an interview with David Cameron’s former Chancellor of taxpayers’ money, a co-conspirator with the aforementioned *unt in starving the UK NHS of resources under the guise of austerity. Another name on the list for my guillotine’s first outing...
4. Because a few miscreants got together in a London park in the good weather flouting the rules on social distancing etc, the Health Tsar Hancock is threatening to ban the use of the outdoors for keeping fit purposes for everyone in the country!
Current figures for my terrestrial parish of just over half a million bodies states I have a one in 2,600th chance of catching the bug...
16+ miles of hilly bicycling today with an obscene HR going up the longest hill means I’m trying to keep my crappy ould body out of the pre-existing condition which would render me a waste of resources for the few beds and ventilators available to our gallant NHS staff. But events in a city park 300 miles south mean that activity may soon become an offence meriting a fine for me and all the other workload on our hard-pressed Plod.
Is it any wonder I and others with whom I have spake, at 6’ 6” distance and more often by phone, are suspicious and cynical of SOME of the measures introduced in a panic by the guvvment?
They ignored the 2016 warning from their own eggspurts and drifted into this mess whilst leaving our supposedly controlled borders less secure than the average primary school at turning out time.

[G-CPTN]

They ignored the 2016 warning from their own eggspurts and drifted into this mess whilst leaving our supposedly controlled borders less secure than the average primary school at turning out time.

You have obviously not been to a primary school recently.
As a grandfather waiting to collect grandson you are scrutinised and questioned by the caretaker - no chance of uncontrolled access!
Younger children will only be released by teachers to 'known' adults.

[barkingmad]

CPTN, precisely my point, security at the P S exceeds by some margin that at our national (late of EUSSR) borders!
What did I say to indicate otherwise?

[G-CPTN]

CPTN, precisely my point, security at the P S exceeds by some margin that at our national (late of EUSSR) borders!
What did I say to indicate otherwise?

My mistake.

[TheGreenGoblin]

Boris Johnson has been admitted to hospital...

A Downing Street spokesperson said: 'On the advice of his doctor, the Prime Minister has tonight been admitted to hospital for tests.

'This is a precautionary step, as the Prime Minister continues to have persistent symptoms of coronavirus ten days after testing positive for the virus.

His pregnant fiancée Carrie Symonds, who is due in the early summer, is also self-isolating in her London flat after symptoms surfaced.

Health Secretary Matt Hancock, who tested positive on the same day as the PM but has since recovered, today said Mr Johnson was doing 'ok'.

News of the PM's hospitalisation broke shortly after the Queen's televised speech, in which she urged the nation to follow government social distancing advice.

From The Daily Wail

I suspect he is not so insouciant now...

5903 new cases and 621 new deaths in the United Kingdom today...

[G-CPTN]

Scotland's Chief Medical Officer has saturated our TV screens with her adverts " Stay home, protect the NHS, save lives" and then during this and last weekend she drives with her family for more than an hour from Edinburgh to East Neuk to her second home and stays overnight. Talk about hypocritical! At least she has now been removed from our screens in future briefings and adverts.
https://www.thescottishsun.co.uk/news/5 ... -lockdown/

she has the full confidence of Sturgeon, normally the first step to resignation.... ) as the public medical face of the Scottish government and will not be making any more videos

Scotland's chief medical officer Calderwood resigns.

[OFSO]

I watch Catalan TV news every day to check on the situation there. Medicos today complaining there is no protective gear for them, no masks for the public to wear, no tests. More and more infected, more dying. FUBAR.

[Seenenough]

I digress-maybe we should talk a bit on a another thread as I have a very funny story about a situation that took place at Rules Restaurant in London several moons ago

If I digress perhaps you will use it as a cover to recount your Rules anecdote...

Your story about the old chap and his "companion" brought this to mind...

Gob maybe something funny will relieve the covid depression.

Rules as you likely know is a very high end restaurant that is frequented by the movers and shakers of London.It is very old school with all of the feel of mingling with the Aristocracy while enjoying the finer foods, beverages and cigars of life has to offer and this funny event was very much about cigars.

I'm going back a bit but it must have been in the early 2000's that it took place.

The tables in the restaurant are pretty close together,as are most things in London,and back then there were smoking sections and a non-smoking sections .Several of us smoked at the time so we ended up in the smoking section. After meals, the cigar humidor comes around offering cigars ,naturally at eye watering prices

At the table alongside us was a couple who heard our SA accents and over the evening we had struck up a conversation between the tables.He was a true Londoner who had struck it big time selling pet insurance.Diamond encrusted Rolexes and high end bracelets and jewellery everywhere.

Any way he buys one of the Hundred Quid Cigars and lights it up and orders a bottle of Remy which he shares with us .So we sit and talk enjoying ourselves but then on the other side of the table next to him a lady asks the guy smoking his cigar and to put it out because she does not like people smoking while others are eating.Being a true Londoner he suggests that the lady if she does not like smoking should be sitting in the non-smoking area in a less that curtios way .At this time the main course ,that the lady complaining had ordered, had not yet been served.

So he carries on puffing away and at some stage he ends up talking to us with his cigar held out on the side of the table towards the lady who complained.She sees that he is not looking ,as he is talking with us ,so she takes her glass water and pours some of it over his cigar which was now in her reach.

A big halabaloo breaks out and the management arrive all apologetic to the pet guy ,who we later found out was quite a frequent patron.They calmed the issue down by moving the complaining lady and her partner to a table in the non-smoking section as one had recently become available and then to also gave the guy a brand new cigar, on the house ,which he then duly lit up.

The table that they moved the couple to happened to be on the route that you would have to take to go to the restrooms which our wylie Londoner had observed.Any way he sat there puffing away and then all of a sudden he stood up and excused himself with cigar in hand telling us he was going to the rest room but with the warning that we should keep an eye on him as he he felt he to go over and apologize to the couple for being so rude.

It turned out that he had sat waiting the the relocated lady's main course to be served to her. We watched him walk over to the couple with the lit replacement cigar behind his back and talk to them for a second where upon he very calmly took the lit cigar from behind his back and stubbed it into the ladies food .He had apparently ,before stubbing the cigar ,told couple to enjoy their meal and not to worry as he would pick up the bill for their meal.

Naturally chaos ensued but it remains one of the funniest karma things I experienced.

[TheGreenGoblin]

The Scottish medical bint has resigned...

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/heal ... 48586.html

[Seenenough]

So Gob-We probably agree that the virus is a "black swan event" as it fits the description of "an unknown unknown "which Taleb argues can never properly be planned for because if you are not aware of something you cannot prepare for it.

So in truth it was never was possible for any government to have millions of quantities tests ,medicine and vaccines stored away and ready for for a virus that nobody knew existed up until the moment it struck.

Likely because of this fact it was called the Novel Corona Virus when it became known that it existed.

[TheGreenGoblin]

Dominic Cummings, Boris Johnson's "advisor", who tested positive, has sadly lost his uncle, a well known and hugely respected judge...of course Cummings was a supporter of the "herd immunity" hypothesis. One wonders what he thinks now?

https://www.theguardian.com/law/2020/ap ... oronavirus

[TheGreenGoblin]

So Gob-We probably agree that the virus is a "black swan event"

Nope, it is not and never has been a Black Swan event. It was entirely predictable. It was only the timing that was in question and difficult to predict. Multiple governments are culpable in what is unfolding, including yours in the USA.

https://theweek.com/articles/900400/cor ... swan-event

[Seenenough]

So Gob-We probably agree that the virus is a "black swan event"

Nope, it is not and never has been a Black Swan event. It was entirely predictable. It was only the timing that was in question and difficult to predict. Multiple governments are culpable in what is unfolding, including yours in the USA.

So at best it was a "known unknown" as it is impossible to have the profile of a virus that nobody knew existed.

[TheGreenGoblin]

So Gob-We probably agree that the virus is a "black swan event"

Nope, it is not and never has been a Black Swan event. It was entirely predictable. It was only the timing that was in question and difficult to predict. Multiple governments are culpable in what is unfolding, including yours in the USA.

So at best it was a "known unknown" as it is impossible to have the profile of a virus that nobody knew existed.

The general profile of corona viruses, has been around for decades. Think ostrich, willful ignorance, complacency, sheer recklessness and stupidity, and you may understand better how we have come to be where we are..

[TheGreenGoblin]

And we had just better pray that this virus doesn't mutate and become endemic in cattle, fowl, domestic animals etc...

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/worl ... 48576.html

[Seenenough]

"The general profile of corona viruses, has been around for decades."-agreed except there was one small problem wil this virus in that it was was similar but was not the same so it was for obvious reasons called the Novel Corona Virus when it was found and thus no one was able to in advance know what its effect on humans and animals could have been.
Incidently the have just found the virus in a tiger at a zoo here in the US.

When exactly,Gob was the first acurate profile of Covid - 19 established and when was the first time they were able to accurately establish the effects it had on humans.?

[Seenenough]

AFRICAPublished 6 hours ago
Africa bracing for ‘complete collapse of economies’ as coronavirus takes its toll.

This is only the start, I fear