Rick's b.log - entry 2020/08/01

Shopping

Mistake.

It opened at half eight, and I was there for quarter to nine. The place was extremely busy.

For God's sake people, it's August. Have a lie in! Leave the place empty for me! ☺

Positive cases rise alarmingly in France

Stupid people demonstrating their stupidity

Besides, the "elite" already have all the power they need. They run the global financial institutions. You know, the ones that are suffering right now because of this pandemic. Now, you could, I suppose, argue that they are playing the long game of eradicating the poor, however "the poor" tend to do the sorts of jobs that people with qualifications wouldn't ever consider doing. And they don't tend to strike much, basically because strike action has a direct impact on their ability to feed their families. Plus, given the volatility of the markets and how different countries are managing or mismanaging things, I can't help but feel that this undefined "elite" creating the virus would pretty much be a spectacular own goal.
But, that degree of analysis is far beyond the reach of the right wing nutters that I've had the misfortune to meet in life. Generally their response to words of more than about three syllables is to want to bash something.

And so, a bunch of people who refuse to get it are going to go and group together and protest. Oh joy, just what the virus wants - stupid people in a group.

Blocking Spain

Now if we concentrate on Europe, specifically the imposition of enforced quarantines on people arriving to the UK from Spain, because of how bad things are in Spain... we can see some grain of truth in the idea that the British government is trying to make some sort of point, as recently suggested in the comment by David Pilling.

Reported cases: UK - 302,301; Spain - 285,430.
Deaths: UK - 45,999; Spain - 28,443 (marginally less than France).
Confirmed in the last 14 days: Spain - 25,175; UK - 5,493.
That last one, the 14 day rate, is the highest in Europe (asides from Russia, which is sort of not-quite-Europe-maybe-it's-complicated).

However, an interesting thing is that according to the NHS website, you can get a free testing kit if:

• You have symptoms
• You live with somebody with symptoms
• You have been told to be tested before a hospital admittance
• You live or work in an area with an outbreak (such as Leicester)

Which implies that I, having no apparent symptoms, could probably not get tested if I lived in England.

This is important, as the French figures show that opening up testing to the public will bring in a number of positive cases in people with no symptoms. So, it is clear that the UK's statistics will be artificially low if they aren't trying to test everybody but only concentrate on those with symptoms. Is Spain doing likewise, or are they, like France, testing more people and discovering the rise due to asymptomatic people?
Luckily for the British, Andalucía has the lowest per-population infection rates in the country (the lowest rate is the bit attached to Morocco, but that's not mainland). So the Costas and beaches are much safer than, say, Madrid or Catalonia (Barcelona).
Unluckily for the Spanish, Brits on holiday seem to have very little concept of practicing basic anti-viral measures. But, then, this is nothing new. The police had to intervene because of crowds at Bournemouth beach yesterday.

Meanwhile, the government has done an abrupt U-turn on a number of things that would have opened today. Why? Well if we consider that Spain is reporting a little over a thousand new cases a day, which isn't good; it stands in stark contrast to the Office for National Statistics which is suggesting an inferred (non-tested) infection rate in the week of 20-26 July of around 4,200 new cases per day (95% credible interval: 2,200 to 8,100).

Which leads to one single observation. While Westminster might wish to make a point by closing off Spain, they may want to be very careful doing such a thing, lest other European countries take a look at the UK's true figures and ask themselves why the hell they're still letting British people in.
You know - what goes around comes around.

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Sparky, 4th August 2020, 00:44

The NHS are also doing random tests. My sister who had no symptoms was invited to bee tested. She accepted and the courier came to collect it Saturday. Not sure how many random invites there has been but not just those with symptoms are being tested. Before doing the test, she had to arrange a collection. They sent her a self test kit. Instructions were test (nose and throat swab) had to be done on the day.

Sparky, 5th August 2020, 00:10

Follow up. Sister had covid result. She hasn't got it? Er I thought they would tell her if she had had it in the past? They didn't say. Perhaps the point of these ramdoms are to see jow many symptomless carriers there are?

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