New UK cases four times higher per head of population than in Victoria, but lockdown is lifting while Australian state re-imposes
As Boris Johnson announced further relaxation of the UK’s lockdown – applauded and supported by Keir Starmer – the Australian state of Victoria was re-imposing its own lockdown.
Because of 25 new cases.
Today, the UK had almost 1,000 new cases – in reality far more, as the Tories’ continuing lack of testing and tracing means the government has little real idea of the country’s pool of infection. Victoria has a tenth of the UK’s population, so its 25 cases were equivalent to 250 in the UK.
That’s cases, not deaths – yet the Australian state’s government knows how rapidly the virus can mushroom and is taking no chances, unlike Boris Johnson.
Similarly, Germany – from a point where the virus was almost absent – is currently seeing an ‘R’ rate of new infections of just under three, in spite of a far smaller overall reservoir of infection. In the UK, 280 deaths were added – taking the government’s massively-understated total to almost 43,000 (the real UK death total is recognised to be approaching at least 70,000).
The UK’s case numbers – at least what the government knows about without testing properly – have plateaued and have shown no significant fall in about three weeks. Yet Johnson thinks it’s time to relax further.
The UK’s Chief Medical Officer Chris Whitty said, when social distancing was in its early days, that the 2m-distance rule would,
need to be in place as long as the pandemic lasts.
Johnson has always followed the money and political expediency, rather than the science. But it’s now apparent that in spite of the evidence and in spite of the lead set by other countries showing far more care and caution, Johnson has decided to abandon even the pretence of a science-led approach.
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Johnson is a not just a political animal but fiercely partisan with it. He lifts lockdown recklessly and knows now if there is blame to be cast the Labour Party goes with him thanks to Nicely-Nicely Starmer.
Even if you click on the bars on the histogram in sec7 of ONS weekly roundup, you get a total which is above 50,000 WITHOUT INCLUDING the excess death figures used by the media
Prof Susan Michie of SAGE on RT now re Sage warned re easing. Didn’t advise change alert level.
Easing 2m to 1m is mystery to her re it’s origin.
She says govt must share info it is using.
Transparency re govt absent.Govt has trust building to do.
Super Saturday??? Risky
Transmission risk massively increased by 1m vav 2m. Not fine inside.
Govt must get best advice & feedback. Should keep Alert level 4. No good TTI so WHO right re not reducing alert level
Don’t worry Britain, Capt. Fred Scuttle is in charge.
https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/06/23/the-bojo-follies/#gsc.tab=0
Thanks Jack, glad I read the counterpunch piece – I’d meant to comment on BloJob’s ‘casually’ racist use of the phrase “giant cashpoint in the sky” to justify merging the FO and DfID but forgot all about it. Getting old and feeble-minded.
There’s a clear implication in that phrase of ‘undeserving natives’ exploiting the generosity of the civilised UK.
We’re meant to think that International Development does nothing more than create a ‘cargo cult’ leading its recipients to build imitation ‘runways’ in the forest from grass and twigs and wait for the big silver god to return with more goodies from the sky – instead of getting off their arses and bettering themselves.
He really is the most racist fucker since Hitler.
I woke up about three minutes ago – does anyone else here occasionally awake with what seem at the time like flashes of insight?
Today’s is that BloJob is so incompetent as a PM because he only won the leadership of his party by being such a self-promoter – a lifelong campaigner for Boris.
The ‘insight’ part (?) is that the least-intellectual scions of intellectual families might be programmed by that self-knowledge to become either shameless self-promoters or junkies and wasters – hence his constant attention to his TV image.
Gravitating to journalism, speechwriting, TV and politics would seem like a natural career path to such people with nothing real to contribute.
Writers of good catchphrases, soundbites and slogans must be very popular at election times but imagine the dearth of talent in a party that would elect someone leader on the strength of such a minor one – there’s clearly little intellect at the bottom of a man whose civil servants have all found him wanting and whose waking insights were bridges across shipping lanes.
I’ve previously put his personality down to trying to fit in at Eton as one of the sons of the less wealthy but now I wonder if this explains him better.
Or at all – I only said they seemed like flashes of insight 🙂
Good article Jack,the quote from Macbeth seems more appropriate for our knight of the realm “his title hangs loose about him” than the psychopathic Johnson.The joke of a titled vile individual will come to haunt the hypocrites who voted him into the Labour party leadership for many years to come.
For information :
Currently there are reported to be c.1 in 2 million of the population serious cases of this virus in the UK (Worldometer), Corporal Jones.
I’m really shitting myself at the prospect of imminent death. 🙂
RH We have no choice in the mstter of death,its like the tide coming in and going out. Aceppt the inevitable and dont tempt fate…you will then find peace and tranquillity on the great journey of life and death regards RH…!
O’Keefe, Toffer and Son of Thatcher : the Three cartoon Duggie Ducks all in a row, paddling around hysterically fearful circles in the pond of imminent death.
… none of whom can see the absurd comedy in the statement :
“Australian state TIGHTENS restrictions. Because of *25 new CASES*” (of a mild virus)
I am honoured by this assemblage of witlessness.
I’m really shitting myself at the prospect of imminent death. 🙂
Shame, that. ‘Cos I can think of at least 300 others not remotely arsed about your impending demise.
Teehee
Sounds like a threat, RH. Remind him in 6 months time when you’re still alive!
Believe me, we in the skeptical camp pity you all for your uncharacteristic gullibility but it’s you who will have to live in your self-built psychological prison. The rest of us will be getting on with living life!
Here’s the latest post from Medialens:
‘Six Months To Avert Climate Crisis’: Climate Breakdown And The Corporate Media
Last November, the world’s most prestigious science journal, Nature, published a study by eminent climate scientists warning that nine major ‘tipping points’ which regulate global climate stability are dangerously close to being triggered. These include the slowing down of ocean circulation in the North Atlantic, massive deforestation of the Amazon, and accelerating ice loss from the West Antarctic ice sheet. Any one of these nine tipping points, if exceeded, could push the Earth’s climate into catastrophic runaway global warming. There could even be a ‘domino effect’ whereby one tipping point triggers another tipping point which, in turn, triggers the next one and so on, in a devastating cascade.
https://www.medialens.org/2020/six-months-to-avert-climate-crisis-climate-breakdown-and-the-corporate-media/
And check out the Guardian article it links to about the heatwave in Siberia
Allan, like many I believe it may already be too late for humankind – that we’re living on borrowed time. Unrestricted growth of populations and stripping the planet of its natural resources can’t go on forever.
I find the domino effect extremely plausible and the disappearance of the ice sheets from the poles probably inevitable.
Some of us would survive climate change – a few might even survive ocean life being choked out of existence by microplastics – but not indefinitely.
The Conservative and unionist party are in total control of your lives and deaths The Opposition has returned to normal service and the Democratic socialist and Labour party has gone .But even though the ship is sinking we are not yet entering the Apocalypse,but the clock is running down and time to wake up to what greed V poverty has done to humanity and the limited resources of life on earth.
The Eugenics movement( the oligarchs of the US helped fund a lot of it) before WW2 believed that to put it simply only the rich and powerful should inherit the Earth.
The notion of population control was dropped like a stone because of what the Nazis did who were linked to some of the US oligarchs, industrialists and bankers plus many in the UK aristocracy and leading business men plus politicians prior to 1939.
One of the main causes of the over exploitation of the Earths resources is the total unequal distribution of it, an insane system driven by unsustainable economic growth system and avarice which by the top 0.01% can never be satisfied.
Population control has now come into vogue again look at who resurrected it!!!
When there is a Tsunami of money going to top 1% and trickle down for rest of us then it’s only a matter of time before Financial system collapses
Never forget it was Gang of Four and General Galtieri who saved Thatchers sorry arse in 1982 and our very own Red Tories who denied us victory in 2017
The future is what you make it,
Rejoin and recruit
It’s interesting Doug that after the betrayal by Blair and the cabal:the membership began to drop like a stone but they didn’t give a toss, they set to de facto encouraging the left to leave with statements by Blair of they have no where else to go. It didn’t matter in the slightest, just as it doesn’t to the Tories, that members leave because big business, big money, big influence sets the agenda. The notion that by leaving the party and being a voice in the wilderness will change things is fanciful thinking. All the concessions our forefathers won for us came because of solidarity not by splintering in to factions which has always been the modus operandi of the establishment to suppress dissent amongst the great unwashed and we can watch that in operation today in the democratic socialist Labour Party.
Those here urging the rest of us to stay in Labour and make allowances for their neo-Tory bosses – who only want our money, our votes and our numbers so they’ll be less humiliated by Corbyn’s numbers.
Starmer and the rest of the Blairites will never do anything to upset those rich donors that back both Labour and the Tories for safety.
That means guarantees of no corporation tax increases or increased HMRC vigilance on avoidance whoever wins the pointless elections. Tax avoidance is just tax evasion with a nod and a wink from the government.
With either a Tory or a Blairite-led Labour government the 1% still own everything in a few decades at most – because ONLY redistribution will reverse the ever-faster-growing wealth gap.
Paying trolls to sow confusion and despair on the left is nothing to these people – just a cost of doing business like paying accountants, lawyers or any other shit-eating flunkies.
If they can talk us out of forming a new, genuinely socialist party, they win.
“Real Labour.”
Now.
Richard Horton: the system has failed
The longstanding editor of the medical journal The Lancet, is scathing about the establishment’s handling of the coronavirus crisis. He told Socialist Worker why.
https://socialistworker.co.uk/art/50271/The+system+has+failed