Whitey Grandad

Well, not so much a joke. Carrie Symonds has joined him at Chequers from their flat in London.

The evidence that there is suggests that he caught the disease at a meeting of COBRA and Neil Ferguson is the likely suspect. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/27/covid-19-coronavirus-westminster-uk-pm-health-secretary

This is where you are mistaken. There is a lot of petty empire-building within this government. Duncan Selbie as the founder and chief executive of Public Health England for eexample. He jealously protects his personal empire.

I was thinking of house parties an social barbecues. "Police shut down 494 house parties in four days in Greater Manchester" DJs, bouncy castles, fireworks? https://news.sky.com/story/coronavirus-police-shut-down-494-house-parties-in-four-days-in-greater-manchester-11971032

Because sunbathing is never going to involve catching the disease or passing it on to another. It’s also good for your vitamin D.

The government chose which advisers to follow. Prof Neil Ferguson of Imperial College has a very patchy history and is widely criticised. His handling of the foot and mouth epidemic led to the unnecessary slaughter of over 6 million animals. Now we are slaughtering hundreds of thousands of Britons. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8164121/Professor-predicted-500-000-Britons-die-coronavirus-accused-having-patchy-record.html

It’s not keeping the streets empty that’s the problem. It’s stopping domestic social gatherings of people from different households. The lack of PPE is due to the insistence on central purchasing.

It’s not that easy to manage the death rate by regulating the lockdown but even if we could sustain it within the NHS capabilities we would be looking at many more months of this. I reckon we’ve got three more weeks at least.

Yes, definitely a need but the schools aren’t open on weekends or bank holidays and the need is still there. The lockdown arrangements have to take account of this.

You didn’t say which day this was. Anyway, key workers tend to have to work bank holidays too. We just don’t know.

That there is now very little need for schools to act as childminders.

My daughter is classified as a key worker. She supervises the dinner ladies at our local infant school. Two weeks ago they had 60 children in the school. A week ago they had four.

Agreed. We cannot comment on people we see out having a walk because we don’t know their circumstances. But people like my neighbours who obviously had some smalll gathering going on yesterday in their back garden are wasting all the sacrifices that most of us are making.

Now that is what really annoys me. The police won’t raid because they’re too busy scaring off sunbathers.

I agree, that is very wrong, but we have no way of knowing the circumstances of the people we see. Just suppose, a single mother with two young children is an anaesthetist at a local hospital. Who looks after her kids on a Good Friday? Two grandparents have their grandchildren living with them. There is nothing wrong with them all going out together.

The example of apparently older people being seen out with what appear to be very young people.

They’ve been like that for years.

Do you know for certain that they were their grandkids? They may have all been members of the same household. You just don’t know. Why are you getting so worked up over it? They’re not a threat to you or anybody else and they are not under threat themselves. Let’s keep a sense of proportion here. .

You don’t have to be a key worker to be allowed to go to work. Anyone is free to do so if they cannot work from home. This example was not increasing the chance that either they or their loved ones might catch the disease or die from it. Nothing irresponsible about their action.

They are doing nothing wrong. Stop being mad and look after your own health.

Not only unbeaten but no goals conceded.

We are both over 70 (just) and have the flu vaccine every year. They are tailored to the expected strains of flu but cannot ever be perfect. You can usually get these jabs in you local pharmacist but last autumn they had stocks of the wrong vaccine. Apparently there are different cocktails for the elderly and for the youngsters.

Our condolences to your Good Lady and to your families.

2021?

Legally we have left but for all practical purposes we haven’t. Yet.