Boris on at 5pm tonight

[Fruityfriday]

This has just come up on my news feed. Hope it's good news

Listening - questions seem random

Is it only on sky ?

Random? I'm a few minutes behind, had a phone call, but the Sun??? Wah wah summer holidays....

And all the bloody football stuff (just give the FA all your support)

Couldn’t hear it all but the football stuff but something about his affair I thought they vetted better than that ;

@Elieza

Thanks both.

I agree, the wait is just letting more potential carriers into the country. But if England hasn’t done the enforced hotel quarantine before it may take time to set up legislation or procedures?

For England managed quarantine and all the associated procedures(i.e; enforced hotel quarantine) have been in place for arrivals from countries on the "Red List" for two months now.

www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/explainers/hotel-quarantine#:~:text=The%20UK%20government%20has%20announced,within%20the%20last%2010%20days.

www.gov.uk/guidance/booking-and-staying-in-a-quarantine-hotel-when-you-arrive-in-england

I've just got to the affair question... that's a journo we won't see again.

Jet zero blather continues...

Yes! To the affair question and off they pop! 😁

Ha yep!

is it not just a bit bizarre to state that they will come up with two treatments to be taken at home as a pill by autumn, and that they've assigned a task force to come up with them?

Surely scientists have been working on this all year, and if they have promising leads, they would be publishing and trialling them, and they'll be ready when and if they work. You can't just decide that they'll have something ready, in pill form, by the autumn, that will treat this disease that the world has been battling for a year. It just sounds so very arrogant! It'd be great if it happens, sure. But to just announce that this is the plan? I hope I've missed something in the media reporting of it (haven't been able to see the actual conference)

They have them already, have had them for a while - the unpronounceable anti virals like dexamethasone

He announced a task force to see if they could be ready, tested, passed for use by autumn. They would be for those who can't have the vaccine, wouldn't offer the same coverage, could be used as a booster, that sort of thing.

He was quite upbeat, newspaper headlines are a bit ott. GPonline and others have a more measured version.

I thought that was a steroid.

But I hadn't realised he was talking about already available drugs, which makes more sense I guess. The headlines I saw said things like 'the task force has been given the job of finding the anti-virals', which just sounded a bit arrogant, like nobody had ever thought of doing that before!! But of course it would be ever so easy now that Boris has tasked them to do that. Glad to hear it's not quite as it sounded.

Don't ask me what it is, I c+p the word from a Chris Whitty speech 😊

I presume an anti-viral task force would be trying to emulate the success of vaccine procurements so looking at what’s being developed globally and where to invest/buy in advance. I could be wrong but that’d be a good idea.

That's how I thought of it. Yes?

Oh sorry, did he clarify that? I haven’t actually watched him - it’s like staring at a magic eye picture and gives me a headache!

@CuriousaboutSamphire

I've just got to the affair question... that's a journo we won't see again.

Jet zero blather continues...

Yes! To the affair question and off they pop! 😁

What was the affair question? What did he say?

@Cornettoninja

I presume an anti-viral task force would be trying to emulate the success of vaccine procurements so looking at what’s being developed globally and where to invest/buy in advance. I could be wrong but that’d be a good idea.

I think that’s probably part of it, but it does involve finding the effective drugs first. It’s probably more akin to the Therapeutics task force which discovered that dexamethasome and tocilizumab reduced the death rate.

He definitely seems to be talking about antivirals and not other drugs and being given as a prophylactic as well as treatment in the same way Tamiflu was during the swine flu outbreak.

Has anyone developed any effective antivirals that can be taken at home? The ones they have now can only be used in hospitals.

babba something about did he feel he had been ethical/ fair having his affair in the marital home. It was a bit convoluted, the journo wanted to get his entire column into it: she said, you said, rights and wrongs and something stupid about ethical conduct during and affair.

He got a "yes, tara" response.

www.gov.uk/government/news/government-launches-covid-19-antivirals-taskforce-to-roll-out-innovative-home-treatments-this-autumn

Government website data on it.

Could they develop something similar to Tamiflu that was given to people who had swine flu when that was a pandemic? That's an antiviral in tablet form. (Yes I know covid is not flu...)

I expect that is what they're hoping for, and it would be great if they could. It just sounded odd the way he seemed to expect that it could just be invented and developed 'to order', by the autumn please, oh and in pill form too, if you don't mind.

@FlattestWhite

is it not just a bit bizarre to state that they will come up with two treatments to be taken at home as a pill by autumn, and that they've assigned a task force to come up with them?

Surely scientists have been working on this all year, and if they have promising leads, they would be publishing and trialling them, and they'll be ready when and if they work. You can't just decide that they'll have something ready, in pill form, by the autumn, that will treat this disease that the world has been battling for a year. It just sounds so very arrogant! It'd be great if it happens, sure. But to just announce that this is the plan? I hope I've missed something in the media reporting of it (haven't been able to see the actual conference)

Bizarre yes, but it's classic Boris and he's learned from Trump.

His core supporters never seem to care that he spouts garbage. In making this announcement, intelligent folk are going WTF, but they probably won't be voting for him anyway!

It's not really any different to his "moonshot" project, bridge to Ireland, or the garden bridge, or for that matter, today's announcement to bring forward our carbon commitment by 15 years. It's all just gas intended to impress those who are unable or unwilling to look beyond the headline.

Like Dex this time last year they’ll almost certainly be looking at existing antivirals. Boris mentioned remdesivir in the press conference but i’m pretty sure the conclusion on that is it has minimal effect.

I’m not convinced Boris knew quite what was being set up from that conference to be honest. And the Dr Kanani sounded a bit like she’d been surprised by the whole thing at the last minute. Even the press release isn’t completely clear.

This bit made me laugh though.
A competition to identify a chair for the Antivirals Taskforce will be launched shortly, and further details on the structure of the taskforce will be set out in due course.

Otherwise known as ‘Matt’s still got a few mates left we haven’t given a job too.’

Beneath the bluster it was said that it was not a replacement for a vaccine.