A Horror Story

October 2016
Exercise Cygnus
Exercise Cygnus was an attempt to assess the NHS's preparedness for a pandemic, just like Covid-19. It discovered what we now know - it was not prepared. Jeremy Hunt was in charge of health at the time, he did nothing. Why? Cost-benefit: the cost of a few thousand lives was weighed against the benefit of pumping the money into the funding of crazy PFI hire purchase schemes.

01/12/19
Bat Flu?
The first known case traced back to Wuhan, Hubei, China. At first a wet market, supplying live animals, including bats, was identified as the source of the virus. Subsequently, suspicion was turning to experiments being carried out in a virology lab in Wuhan. The ant-eating pangolin was also identified as a potential source, though the evidence was slight. 

27/12/19
Omertà
Virus spreading widely, Wuhan doctors told to keep quiet, some disappeared.

30/01/20
Virus goes global
The World Health Organization declares a global emergency.

31/01/20
Virus Arrives in UK
The first positive cases of coronavirus in the UK
The NHS is said to be "extremely well-prepared" to tackle the coronavirus.

31/01/20
Quarantine
Arrowe Park Hospital was used to quarantine 83 British nationals who were flown back to the UK from Wuhan.
Wirral Hospital NHS Trust,said Arrowe Park would be using that experience as a "blueprint" for treating the new group. The risk of catching the coronavirus, for which no specific cure or vaccine existed, was considered "low" in the UK.

09/02/20
Quarantine in Milton Keynes
118 Britons evacuated from coronavirus-hit Wuhan spent two weeks in quarantine, Kents Hill Park training and conference centre, in Milton Keynes.

22/02/20
Quarantine for cruise ship passengers
British nationals evacuated from a coronavirus-hit cruise ship in Japan arrived at Arrowe Park where they spent two weeks in quarantine.

Note: that was the end of quarantine, a few hundred people and millions of travellers were entering the UK, without being tested.

25/02/20
Virus spreading widely
World Health Organization says the virus is spreading like a pandemic but it's not a pandemic.

Hand Shaking Chump
03/03/20
Boris Johnson visited a hospital and decided to shake lots of hands, not a bright thing to do, he contracted Covid-19 and ended up in intensive care. People around Johnson were concerned that he was not taking the virus seriously. He could not be bothered to turn up to a number of Cobra meetings discussing how to deal with Covid 19.

Pandemic declared
11/03/20
The World Health Organization declares Coronavirus a pandemic.
It wasn't difficult for the WHO to figure this out, by now the virus had spread across the globe.

Contain abandoned
12/03/20
This was a key date. One day after a pandemic is declared, Chris Whitty declares they we were giving up on our efforts to contain the virus.

Herd Immunity
13/03/20
Herd Immunity: Sir Patrick Vallance said: "Our aim is to try and reduce the peak, broaden the peak, not suppress it completely; also, because the vast majority of people get a mild illness, to build up some kind of herd immunity so more people are immune to this disease and we reduce the transmission."

Daily Briefing begin
16/03/20

To keep the public fully ill-informed the government begin daily Covid briefing featuring chief medical adviser Chris Whitty and the UK's chief scientific adviser Sir Patrick Vallance, standing to the right and left of some tea boy for the day, lying about progress.

19/03/20
PPE not that important
The Virus threat level was downgraded, so that the Gov. would have no legal obligation to give health workers the right amount of PPE kit.

Pubs closed
20/03/20
Boris Johnson announced pubs, bars and restaurants would close for the foreseeable on Friday 20 March,

23/03/20
UK in Lockdown
UK was put into lockdown in an unprecedented step to attempt to limit the spread of coronavirus. Lockdown rules set out The police seemed to be a bit confused by the new rules.

Note: July 16, Matt Hancock claimed that he locked down a week earlier than he actually did? This probably had something to do with his chief scientific advisor, Sir Patrick Vallance, being honest talking at a Commons Science and Technology Committee. He said the lock down was too late.

25/03/20
Coronavirus Act goes live.
British Transport Police arrested Marie Dinou at Newcastle Central. She was arrested for loitering on a railway station and refusing to comply with our Covid-19 lockdown laws. She appeared in court the following day and was fined £600, with costs of £85. She was also ordered to pay a £66 victim surcharge. The victim was not called to give evidence. Her conviction was thrown out, the police used the wrong legislation.

21/04/20
EU joint procurement
Sir Simon McDonald told a parliamentary committee the UK was invited to take part in the joint procurement with the EU of ventilators and PPE, but turned it down. Michael Gove said we had never been invited and blamed "communication confusion". Matt Hancock seemed to think we were signed up to the scheme. McDonald wrote a letter of apology for being so ill-informed.

22/04/20
Turkish PPE gowns to the rescue
The RAF landed with tons of surgical gowns from a Turkish supplier of sports apparel. This occurred at the same time as UK producers were shipping PPE across the EU because their requests to help were being ignored by Downing Street.

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24/04/20
Testing on-line
Gov. rolled out a scheme for firms and key workers who suspect they or someone in their family might have Covid 19 could order home testing kits or testing slots from a website. By 8.30am on the 24th, they were not taking anymore orders. There were only 5000 slots available. In general the car park testing regime was a shambles, in some places citizens waited more two hours to be tested, elsewhere people were in and out in minutes.

29/04/20
Coroners told to forget about PPE
Coroners have been told that inquests into the death of NHS staff should not examine systemic failures to provide PPE.

30/04/20
The Peak
The PM said the UK was now "past the peak" of the outbreak. The number of people who have died after testing positive for Covid-19 in UK hospitals and the wider community was now 27,571.

01/05/20
Testing Target Met?
The Government set itself a target of carrying 100,000 tests by the end of April. At the daily Covid briefing Matt Hancock claimed that 122,347 coronavirus tests were provided across the UK. Note the word, provided, because 40,000 of his 122,347 number were home test kits sent out - not tests carried out.
It's been suggested that the 800,000 people who work for the NHS will need to be tested about once a week.

Note: for the following five days the testing target was not met.

05/05/20
Test, Track and Trace
Isle of Wight announced as first phase of new ‘test, track and trace’ programme.

Note: At the end of May no one is talking about the success or otherwise of the pilot scheme on the Isle of Wight?

Turkish gowns parked in a warehouse
07/05/20
We learnt that the Turkish gowns, acquired from some Turk Del Boy, could not be used. In short, they were rubbish. Matt Hancock had been missold PPE.

Alert System
11/05/20
The government unveiled its new Alert system. The prime minister said it would help decide how tough social-distancing measures should be.

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Quaranteen reintroduced
22/05/20

Home Secretary Priti Patel announced quarantine plans for new arrivals to the UK, which will be in place from Monday, June 8. Those arriving in the UK by plane, rail, road and air will be subject to a 14-day quarantine. After arrival, visitors would be expected to travel to where they are going to quaranteen, using public transport - absurd. And giving the job of ensuring these travellers stay in quaranteen falls to the Border Force.

Dominic Cummings breaks all the rules
23/05/20

Two newspapers reported that Cummings, the PM's number one advisor, broke all the rules by driving 260 miles for child care and then whilst supposedly staying isolated in a cottage, he drove 30 miles to test his eyesight - to ensure a safe trip for the family back to London.

The upshort of Cummings stupidity - the end of the lockdown and the end of trust in the government ministers after they backed Cummings.

Lockdown eased
28/05/20
The number of people, not from the same household that can meet socially was increased to six. This notice was issued alongside a lot of silly instruction on how achieve a social gathering in a garden without contaminating everyone in the gathering. And children will be returning to school from June 1. Boris's scientists are growing less happy by the moment. They say it's too early to ease the lockdown, the R-number is still too high. So we are not following the science anymore.

A nationwide test, track and trace scheme was announced. Johnson said it would be world beating. The man does talk some bollocks. The app that is needed to make the scheme work was not ready to roll out. Silly Matt Hancock suggested that an app was the "cherry on the cake", i.e., not essential.

Cummings petition
29/05/20
Over a million people signed a petition calling on Boris Johnson to sack Cummings.

Return to school plan dropped
09/06/20
The plan for all primary school years in England to go back to school before the end of term was dropped by the government.

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Hardly World Beating
11/06/20
The head of England’s coronavirus test and trace programme, Baroness Dido Harding, admitted the system was not yet “gold standard”, as new figures showed that a third of people testing positive failed to provide details of their recent contacts. Now, everyone is asking why we did not borrow a tried and tested world beating system from elsewhere, rather than trying to produce our own.

Support Bubbles
13/06/20
New rules allow households to create “support bubbles”.

The PM said: "There are too many people, particularly those who live by themselves who are lonely and struggling with being unable to see friends and family. So we will allow single we will allow single adult households - adults living alone, or single parents with children under 18 - to form a support bubble with one other household."

Government ditches world beating tracing app

18/06/20
The Government has just announced they're ditching the "world-beating", GCHQ-backed, data-centralising contact tracing app that was a failure from the start - and are replacing it with a more privacy-friendly decentralised app provided by Google and Apple. Most of Europe are using the decentralised app but for some mad reason the UK decided to design its own and failed miserably. More months wasted in the battle against bat flu.

Note: it was well into September before the switch to the Google/Apple app was looking likely?

Daily lying charades come to an end

23/06/20
The PM announce at the daily briefing on Covid 19 that there would be no more because we were making such good progress on defeating the virus. He should tell that to the elderly people in care homes that he allowed to die.

No matter, pumped up and full of Red Bull, Boris set out the unlocking measures, due to come in on July 4.

The NAO tells us that 25,000 hospital patients discharged into care homes before there was widespread testing. More than one in three care homes in the country have suffered outbreaks of Covid-19. Care homes were at the back of the queue for both PPE and testing and only got a small fraction of what they needed from government. Out of sight and out of mind.

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Face masks now law

24/07/20
Health Secretary Hancock told us that face coverings would be mandatory in shops and supermarkets.

Random 14 day quaranteen for holiday makers

At any given moment the government is introducing 14 quaranteen on travellers returning from countries where the R number is on the rise. Beating the deadline for return has proved a costly business for family holiday makers. Many people attempt to dash back early to beat the quaranteen and possibly losing their jobs.

New Covid test announced by Johnson

11/09/20

As ever pumped up with energy drinks BJ talked of enabling people to do a test at home similar to a pregnancy test. Take the test, have your coffee and the result will be ready. The government is now talking nonsensically about doing 10m tests a week?

Test, Track and Trace App - disarray

12/09/20

The Isle of Wight experiment disappeared and went unmentioned by those talking of a world beating system app for track and trace. Ministers insisted that letting people, rather than an app, do the tracing was the way forward. Yes, the NHS nee Serco experiment was the way forward. Well, Serco proved to be as useless as the lsle of Wight app. So it was finally acknowledged the Apple/Google app was the way forward. Oddly, half of Europe worked that out from day one.

Testing, or rather the availability of testing was having problems. The car park testing centres were empty, people were being instructed to travel hundreds of miles for a test. The problem was not the testing, it was a lack of lab' facilities to process the tests.

Lockdown returns amid mixed messages

Some chump in the government finally realised that the virus was still with us. So the all the messaging about eat out to help out and go back to work was causing a bit of confusion. However, instead of a national lockdown a series of local lockdowns have been put in place managed by local experts. This seemed to be proving more successful than the centralised approach.

The Rule of Six

15/09/20

New rules have been introduced making it illegal to have gathering in or outdoors of more than six people. Fines of up a thousand pounds are possible. The new rule will also see the introduction of Covid Marshalls on the streets. Their role apparently is to encourage and discourage. They will have no powers but they can call the police to scenes where people refuse to comply. A policeman said, bollocks to that.

 

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Matt Hancock on 16,000 missing coronavirus test results

06/10/20

Matt Hancock commented on how Public Health England lost 16,000 coronavirus test results. Consequently, those people were oblivious to their Covid status and went on their merry way spreading the virus or not. Hancock said teams have “acted swiftly to minimise the impact”. Not true! The error went unreported between Sept. 25 and Oct. 2. In turned out someone was using an old copy of Excel with limited space. Why, ask Deloitte.

Deloitte lead the fight on Convid 19

More than 1,000 consultants from Deloitte on Test and Trace programme. Deloitte, better known for money grubbing management are now actively engaged on the creation and management of the testing system. Its consultants charge up to £2,360 a day. In total Deloitte has 1,114 giant brains working on the testing system?

Bonkers introduces three tier restrictions

12/10/20

The tier arrangement will mean that increasingly restrictive socialising will be introduced depending on the number of new positive covid tests in a given area. Tier three, the most severe, has mainly been applied to northern cities. Labour now wants a full lockdown for two weeks

Selly Oak get second hand swabs

15/10/20

Used coronavirus swab tests were accidentally given out to households in Birmingham, council officials said. About 25 kits had been given out by mistake in the student area of Selly Oak as part of its “drop-and-collect" testing service. The City Council said the error was quickly realised, the kits remained intact and there was no evidence of cross-contamination.

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Virus Mutating

21/10/20

That's what viruses do, they mutate.However, the UK, South Africa and Brazil variants could be much more contagious or easy to catch. All three have undergone changes to their spike protein - the part of the virus which attaches to human cells. As a result, they seem to be better at infecting cells and spreading.

 

Another Lockdown

31/10/20

On 21 September Bonkers Boris was told by Sage to introduce a two week lockdown. Boris, the follower of the science, ignored their advice. Now, with the death toll rising and the contagion spreading throughout the land, a four week lockdown has been imposed. Quite simply, his three tiered system has not worked.

PPE Chumocracy

18/11/20

The Department for Health and Social Care doled out contracts to the chums of MPs and Lords a leaping to firms, some without a track record of providing PPE. Much of the PPE sourced had a Turkish kitemark, i.e., it was useless. The DHSC says: "We have a robust process to ensure orders are of high-quality standard and meet commercial due diligence." Almost 500 suppliers with links to politicians or senior officials were allowed to pitch directly for work. The National Audit Office tells us there was a “lack of transparency and adequate documentation” The truth is £10 billion was spent on PPE, much of it wasted.

NAO Report

24/11/20

The NAO highlighted four areas of concern in the government response to the pandemic.

Unprepared for the pandemic, in terms of resources
Before the Covid-19 pandemic, there were two emergency stockpiles of PPE: one as part of the Pandemic Influenza Preparedness Programme, the flu stockpile, as well as having shortages of some key items, did not include any gowns or visors despite the fact they had been "recommended for inclusion in June 2019 by the New and Emerging Respiratory Virus Threats Advisory Group (Nervtag).
one built up in case of a no-deal Brexit But the NAO said: "The EU exit stockpile held few items of PPE other than a large number of gloves."
Too slow to act, caught out by price rises in a sellers’ market
Public Health England told the NAO it had been analysing the market to work out which gowns to buy, when the pandemic had begun, which it said was the "normal approach" to find a lower price.
Use of Del Boys as go-betweens meant unnecessary spending on inadequate PPE
£12.5bn, including hundreds of millions on "unsuitable" items, much of it passed its expiry date.

The Christmas Bubble

23/11/20

Between 23 and 27 December, three households will be allowed to form a temporary "Christmas bubble". They can mix indoors and stay overnight. The bubbles will be fixed, so you will not be able to mix with two households on Christmas Day and two different ones on Boxing Day. Households in your Christmas bubble can't bubble with anyone else.

Schools

Relatively few pupils have tested positive, but hundreds of thousands have had to learn from home after being required to self-isolate.

Vaccine Roll Out

28/11/20

Nadhim Zahawi, minister for business and industry, has been placed in charge of overseeing the deployment of the Covid-19 vaccine, Downing Street announced.

November lockdown comes to an end

02/12/20

The lockdown ended but must of the country woke up to find themselves in Tiers 2 and 3. Only remote and out of the way places managed to stay in Tier 1. There was much wailing from the hospitality/leisure industry. Behind the scenes it was now becoming obvious, even to the brain dead that the lockdown achieved nothing and was hampered by the ineffective track and trace system, managed by Serco.

There were two elements to the failure. Between May 28 and Nov. 4, tracers reached and obtained details of contacts from just two-thirds of the 767,074 people who tested positive for COVID-19. These people identified 2.1 million contacts, tracers only reached two thirds of these. The result, only half of those who might be infecting others were told to isolate.

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First Covid Vaccine Arrives

05/12/20

The jab, produced by Pfizer/BioNTech is the fastest vaccine to go from concept to reality, taking only 10 months to follow the same steps that normally span 10 years. The UK has already ordered 40 million doses of the jab - enough to vaccinate 20 million people.

The plan was to inject care home staff and residents but the vaccine needs to be stored at minus 70c, so NHS staff will get the jab first. The roll out to care homes will be complex, it has to be kept in batches of 1000, hence a huge amount of vaccine being wasted.

The main bonus here is that Serco et al will have nothing to do with the roll out.

Note: Vaccination will be managed by the health services in each of the four UK nations, Nadhim Zahawi was appointed minister in charge.

Christmas Bubbles cancelled

21/12/20

"I must tell you we cannot continue with Christmas as planned," Boris Johnson said, as he set out fears over a new COVID strain. He also introduced the whole of the south east to the Tier 4, virtual lockdown.

New Lockdown Announced

05/12/20

Children went back to school for a day and then were told to stay at home. Initially Johnson said he expected the lockdown to last until mid-February.

 

Update: Mid-February arrived and the lockdown was still very much in place.

Vaccination, big success

14/02/21

The Government set a target of vaccinating the the top four priority groups in the UK. The first person was vaccinated on December 8 last year, now the 15 million mark has been reached.

Hotel quaranteen at last

14/02/21

Arrivals to the UK from 33 red listed countries will be forced to quarantine in hotels from midnight for 10 days and will have to pay £1,750 for their stay. Crown Commercial Service are being used to book the hotels, they have 16 lined up to take part in the scheme. People who run hotels and the workers unions are not happy with the governments planning. Air conditioning appears to be a big problem, most hotels here tend to have central systems, unlike the continent, where they tend to use individual systems. Also, in many hotels, the windows in rooms to do not open. There is also concern from the GMB union: “If you've got people getting off planes from the Red List countries, then being crammed into areas with passengers who aren't going into quarantine – and staff as well - you've failed at the first hurdle.”

 

Covid-19 in India out of breath

02/05/21

Hospitals and crematoriums overwhelmed, widespread shortages of oxygen and medicines, that sums up the state of India. Eight months ago a plan was put in place to set up 160 oxygen plants, only 37 have so far been realised. That sums up India's key problem the abysmal performance of its managers, first among them, the dreadful Modi. That performance leaves Modi clueless on how many people are dying in the villages of India. The ones who do not have the wherewithall to taxi from one hospital or another looking for a bed or some oxygen.

 

Indian variant

17/05/21

Hancock lied in Parliament when asked why India had not been added earlier to the Red List:

"The truth is that when we put Pakistan and Bangladesh on the red list, positivity among those arriving from those countries was three times higher than it was among those arriving from India."

Pakistan and Bangladesh were put on the Red List on the 9th of April, India was added on the 23 Apr 2021. Boris Johnson announced it was 'Only sensible' to cancel his India trip. It was Johnson’s planned trip that delayed India being added, he did not want to upset Modi during trade talks.

 

WHO renames Covid variants

31/05/21

Kent variant is now Alpha

South Africa is now Beta

Brazil is now Gamma

The Indian variant is now Delta

The WHO said this was to simplify discussions but also to help remove some stigma from the names.

 

Indian variant rampant

14/06/21

Thanks to Johnson's stupidity in delaying India's addition to the Red List thousands of travellers retuned from India to spread the variant nationwide.

This spread brought about delaying the planned Road Map full opening on June 21. Socalled Freedom Day is now 19 July.

 

 

 

 

The Road Map Out of Lockdown

22/02/21

Boris Johnson set out his so-called road map to ease the lockdown. Schools are due to go back on March 8. Single person visits to care homes will be allowed. And it will be possible to go for a walk and stop for a coffee, without getting arrested.

Note: a big problem will be managing the testing of large numbers of children in schools.

Boris Johnson's four stage roadmap out of lockdown:

• Step 1 (part one) - March 8

- All schools and colleges will reopen, as well as after school clubs

- One plus one recreation will be allowed; for example, people will be permitted to meet one other person from outside their household to socialise

- Stay at home order will remain

• Step 1 (part two) - March 27, at the earliest

- Rule of six to return for outdoor meetings, including private gardens as will two household rule.

- Outdoor sports facilities to reopen

- Stay at home order to end

• Step 2 - No earlier than April 12

- Non-essential retail and personal care such as hairdressers to reopen

- Public buildings such as museums and libraries will return - Indoor leisure facilities such as gyms will reopen

- Outdoor hospitality will reopen but customers must be seated - No requirement for a substantial meal to purchase alcohol and no curfews on opening times

- Self-contained holidays within the UK to be allowed - Funerals allowed up to 30 guests, while wakes, weddings and receptions will be allowed 15

- Outdoor attractions such as zoos, theme parks and drive in cinemas

• Step 3 - May 17 at the earliest

- Most restrictions on outdoor socialising to be removed; no more rule of six

- Gatherings of more than 30 will still be illegal - Indoor mixing to be allowed with rule of six or two households

- Indoor hospitality can reopen with same restrictions

- Weddings will be allowed with up to 30 people - Large events can resume with spectators, though there will be restrictions;

- Indoor events will be allowed up to 1,000 spectators or 50% of capacity, whichever is lowest

- Outdoor events will be allowed up to 4,000 or 50% of capacity, whichever is lowest

- Outdoor seated events, such as football matches, will be allowed 10,000 fans or 25% of capacity, whichever is lowest

• Step 4 - No sooner than June 21

- All limits on social contact, such as rule of six, to be removed for both indoor and outdoor settings

- Rest of society to reopen, such as nightclubs and other businesses which did not reopen following first lockdown

- Social distancing will remain in place until Step 4, with a review taking place ahead of that date looking at how the advice can be removed

Update: Step 4 put on hold until July 19, due to the continued spread of the Indian variant.

 

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Guide to Covid Contracts

During the pandemic, the government has awarded thousands of contracts to private companies, spending billions of pounds of public money in the process.

Rules on buying

Start a "competitive tendering process". Publish a spec of what's needed. Companies tender, stating price, time, quality.

Government checks that the chosen companies can deliver the goods and looks for value for money.

Buying can be a lengthy process. However, the government has pre-approved suppliers to save work on checking.

The government must publish a "contract award notice" within 30 days of signing any contracts for public goods or services worth more than £120,000. It is also required to publish the details of every contract worth over £10,000.

The government can skip the competitive tendering process in an emergency. This is called making a 'direct award'.

Between March and July 2020, new contracts worth £17.3bn were awarded to suppliers. Of those:

• £10.5bn were awarded directly without any competition
• £6.7bn were awarded directly to pre-approved suppliers (although they were not necessarily pre-approved for the products they were selling)
• £0.2bn were awarded using a competitive process (NAO)

The government must provide details of all contracts, however, provided. Given the amount of unuseable PPE they bought.

"Government had permission to procure equipment at pace and without tendering under the law, but acting fast did not give it licence to rip up record-keeping on decisions," (PAC)

The government introduced a "high-priority lane" on 2 April, 2020. Urgency if they came from a supplier recommended by ministers, government officials or MPs and members of the House of Lords, from any party.

About 1 in 10 supplies came from chums recommendations. For companies outside the Chumocracy the numbers were 1 in 100.
"The Cabinet Office did not manage to keep a proper account of who recommended a particular supplier, which opens it up to accusations of cronyism." (Institute for Government)

A government spokesperson told Reality Check: "Proper due diligence is carried out for all government contacts and we take these checks extremely seriously."

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26,000 reported cases of suspected Furlough fraud

In March, reports of possible furlough fraud topped 26,000, raising fears that chancellor Rishi Sunak’s job protection scheme has been abused

A company that won £40m in COVID contracts made its staff work “flat out” when they were meant to be furloughed – and threatened to fire anyone who spoke out.
An investigation by openDemocracy has found that KAU Media Group wrongly claimed furlough support while being handed a series of multi-million-pound government contracts to deliver personal protective equipment (PPE).
The deals were awarded without competitive tender, despite the London-based digital marketing firm having no prior experience with PPE.
One of the company’s directors, Mohammed Kashif Khokhar, quickly banked £10m for him and his wife. Over the last year, he has boasted about his expensive lifestyle – posting photos online wearing a £130,000 watch in a Lamborghini sports car, and at Wembley watching England play football in the European Championships.

Source: Open Democracy

Lockdown 1

• Shopping for basic necessities such as food and medicine. Shopping trips should be as infrequent as possible
• One form of exercise a day such as a run, walk or cycle. This should be done alone or only with people you live with 
• Any medical need, or to provide care or to help a vulnerable person. This includes moving children under the age of 18 between their parents' homes, where applicable. Key workers or those with children identified as vulnerable can continue to take their children to school
• Travelling to and from work, but only where this is absolutely necessary and cannot be done from home
• The police would be on crowd control and able to make arrests. Rule breakers could face fines. The police did not understand the new rules set out in the Coronavirus Act live from 25th March. By the end of April 10,000 fines were handed out to people no doubt crowding.

 

The Unlocking - 23/06/20

The PM said that where it is not possible to stay 2m apart, people should keep a distance of "one metre plus" - this means staying one metre apart, while observing precautions to reduce the risk of transmission.

Restaurants, pubs and cafes in England will also be allowed to reopen. Customers will also have to give contact details when they enter a pub or restaurant.

Holiday accommodation - including hotels, B&Bs, cottages, campsites and caravan parks - can also reopen,

Hairdressers will be able to reopen, Libraries, community centres, bingo halls, cinemas, museums and galleries will be able to open.

In an open letter published in the British Medical Journal, the presidents of the Royal Colleges of Surgeons, Nursing, Physicians, and GPs all signed the letter, warning Boris and Co. to to be alert to the possibility of a second Covid wave.

 

 

 

 

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Consequences

Domestic Violence and child abuse increase, nowhere for victims to escape to.

Use of Food Banks increased by 80%

Kids in care have been forgotter

Madness, support callaspes, lockdown encourages madness.

People not going to A&E and Cancer patients not attending for treatment. Urgent GP referrals down by 76% reported on 30 April, cancelled appointments for people in constant pain with back, hip and knee problems.

Economic impact, GDP falls, people losing their livelihoods and in some cases their homes. Gatwich Airport closed, unemployment in Crawley up to 60%. Virgin shed 3000 jobs in early May. Heathrow is only using one runway.

Funding for charities collapsed.

Universities in crisis, charging students for accommodation they are not staying in and giving no relief on fees.

One million foreign workers not entitled to any financial support.

No one's interested in influencers.

Adverts on TV focus on companies telling us what good citizens they are and how desparate they are to help all their customers. Every other ad' is from charities begging for funds.

 

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Police confusion

Lincolnshire Police warned of an "extremely high volume" of calls and Humberside Chief Constable Lee Freeman said his force had received "a number of calls" on the subject, which he said he was unable to answer.

Ken Marsh, chairman of the Metropolitan Police Federation, said enforcing the new restrictions would be "a real, real challenge", as there was already "large amounts of sickness" among officers across London.

Later, the National Police Chiefs' Council said officers would not be deployed on patrol specifically to police social distancing rules but would still patrol their communities "as always".

Home Secretary Priti Patel said in a tweet that the next few weeks would be "testing" for police but she would make sure officers had "the resources they need to keep themselves and the public safe".

Source: BBC

Arrested for loitering

On a railway station

03/04/20

British Transport Police arrested Marie Dinou at Newcastle Central. She was arrested for loitering on a railway station and refusing to comply with our Covid-19 lockdown laws. She appeared in court the following day and was fined £600, with costs of £85. She was also ordered to pay a £66 victim surcharge. The victim was not called to give evidence.

It has now been revealed (by the Times) that police used the wrong law to prosecute the women. And there really wasn't a victim, unless it was the poor police person who was left feeling like a school teacher, when she refused to cooperate!

 

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Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE)

Role

SAGE is responsible for ensuring that timely and coordinated scientific advice is made available to decision makers to support UK cross-government decisions in the Cabinet Office Briefing Room (COBR). The advice provided by SAGE does not represent official government policy.

Membership

The membership of SAGE depends on the nature of the emergency but it typically includes leading experts from within government and leading specialists from the fields of academia and industry.

(Source .Gov)

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Coronvirus Act 2020

March

The provisions of the Coronavirus Act, which are time-limited for two years, enable the government to restrict or prohibit public gatherings, control or suspend public transport, order businesses such as shops and restaurants to close, temporarily detain people suspected of COVID-19 infection, suspend the operation of ports and airports, temporarily close educational institutions and childcare premises, enrol medical students and retired healthcare workers in the health services, relax regulations to ease the burden on healthcare services, and assume control of death management in particular local areas.The government has stated that these powers may be "switched on and off" according to the medical advice it receives. (Source: Wikipedia)

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Sept 2021

Covid travel test firms on UK government list refusing to give refunds

“Companies included on the government’s approved Covid-19 travel test provider list appear to be flouting consumer law by refusing to refund customers for unfulfilled orders, according to dozens of travellers who have contacted the Guardian.
Boots is among the firms whose terms and conditions state that orders for tests are non-refundable even if they fail to materialise despite the Consumer Rights Act allowing customers to claim money back if an order or service is not as described or fit for purpose.”

 

Finally a vaccine to banish Covid for good? Nasal spray reduces risk of infection 86% — nearly DOUBLE protection given by shot in arm

• Phase 1 results showed the spray slashed the risk of symptomatic Covid by 86%
• The nasal spray proved a more effective booster than the FDA-approved shots
• An inhalable Covid vaccine could be a gamechanger to finally banish Covid

A nasal vaccine that could finally curb Covid infections is one step closer to a reality after promising early trial results.

The inhaled vaccine, made by researchers in Georgia, successfully reduced the risk of symptomatic Covid infections by 86 percent for three months in people who received it as a booster - almost double the protection the mRNA boosters provide.

While still in early stages, it is an exciting development that could prove more effective than the booster doses administered as injections. 

Blue Lake Biotechnology Inc.'s vaccine technology relies on a type of parainfluenza virus that has been encoded with Covid’s trademark spike protein to train the immune system to recognize and fight it off. Once inhaled, little bits of the parainfluenza virus replicate inside the nasal cavity to trigger an immune response without actually sickening the person

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