The SNP civil war begins, or ramps up to be more accurate.

https://www.newstatesman.com/politic...-acquitted-snp

'As Salmond left the court, victoriously bumping elbows with his QC Gordon Jackson, it was said he intends to resume his political career by returning to the Holyrood backbenches at next year’s devolved election. The idea of him sitting behind Sturgeon in the chamber is almost unthinkably toxic after all that has passed. Can the First Minister survive this? What should voters make of a governing party that is so publicly and traumatically split?'

Looking forward to that. Let the battle... escalate!

He must be relieved. This is a terrible time to go to prison.

On that note Weinstein has Covid.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-52000173

This is bonkers:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/world-52000039

Bonkers indeed. Millions of job losses, total destruction of businesses, bankruptcy of the economy. But look, here's hundreds of billions of pounds to help... That you will need to pay back. With interest. You cant pay? Fine, we will just take your assets. Sunak and the banks he works for are doing to the UK what the IMF did to Greece and the third world before it. Because of a ******g common virus, apparently.

Where are you getting that this is a common virus?

It is a novel virus. The clue is in the name.

That is quite the 180 degree from the governement.
I can understand people getting confused.

It is confusing but ramping up measures has been the plan from the start. Even so, every time they ramp up measures it's portrayed as a massive change in approach when it's always been primarily about when rather than if.

Got to the front of the Ocado virtual queue and it's chucked me back to 2000th.

Super!

update: Queue is moving fast! Perhaps unsurprising as when I got to the from of that one, it just chucked me to 12000th in the queue.

This doc, "one of the most cited medical researchers in Germany"



"all these measures are leading to self-destruction and collective suicide because of nothing but a spook"

Looks like Salmond might have another day in court at some point. From the Times:

Why do you trust him over other sources?

Where do you stand on the operational impact of what is happening with the NHS, and other medical services?

To me it seems that the focus is not on the fact this is particularly deadly, or infectious, but because its not that deadly/impactful, relatively infectious, which leads to snowballing effects which mean we can't actually look after ill people

Of course cutting the Tube back to frequencies only normally seen on commuter trains in the North will negate social distancing

Do you have a specific source I can comment on?

I also follow off-guardian.org and a blog which is very well referenced and updated regularly, for instance from yesterday:

https://swprs.org/a-swiss-doctor-on-...jI9N1DVIAk4ekU

The NHS and social care were in a shocking state already with patients in corridors etc. Now the media are reporting on it with a coronavirus spin but the problems are caused by 10 years of underfunding and privatisation. Plus the additional strain of people wanting to attend clinics to get tested. We are hearing all of these personal interest stories, this or that nurse or doctor but we lack the detailed evidence being reported in the media - all very much knee jerk emotional stuff.
I also believe psychological stress has an impact on physical well being and lack of vitamins and exercise - the mass panic is becoming a self fulfilling prophecy.

Makes no sense to me. Just because they are asymptomatic does not mean they aren't infectious. You need to be able to identify those who have immunity so that they can support the economy while everyone else who lacks immunity is locked down.

That line has actually annoyed me. Whoever that source is, is talking shite.

I dunno, he seems reasonably well qualified.

I'm all for questioning authority but there needs to be a well argued rational basis for doing so. He "recommends protecting at risk groups" which is far more sensible since most people are not going to be affected severely if at all.

There is another issue of ineffective testing - the test is actually bunk according to

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32133832

A view supported by a number of other sources.

I saw a similar length of queue looking at them last night after seeing Tesco had zero slots available for the length of lockdown, I clearly wasn't going to wait two hours just to get into their site on account of

a) no guarantee there'll be a delivery spot available when I did finally get on
b) they'd sent a concurrent email telling new customers to **** off anyway

Also nice to see the government can tell mobile phone companies to ignore GDPR and spam me saying there's a bug going around, as if I hadn't noticed

If I have immunity, I want to know about it. So that I can start delivering food to my parents, who are on lockdown for the next 3 months. So that I can volounteer stacking shelves at a supermarket, or mopping floors in a hospital, anything. If I have it, and a test can confirm that, I want to be tested. It's too late now of course and we will have to wait for the anti-body test to become available. But to say mass testing is a bad idea, in my mind, goes against common sense, and WHO advice, and is contrary to the examples we're seeing of countries who have "flattened the curve".

GDPR is an EU thing, we're getting rid.

Except we're not getting rid

Mass testing is the only solution in an early phase, since the virus has a long incubation period and relatively benign symptoms for most infected people. Without mass testing in this period, you simply won't know if you have an outbreak or where it is.

This is basically what South Korea did. They had a pandemic outbreak in 2015 and had the apparatus in place to tackle this quickly. They didn't wait for the signs, but simply presumed there would be an outbreak.

But if that period has already passed, mass testing might not be very effective or even feasible. Sadly, this is the reality for many other countries. Some didn't realize they had an outbreak, others waited for actual signs of an outbreak (and thus, due to this virus' traits, were then already pretty far into a pandemic outbreak).

Yep totally: