Westminstenders: No pubs till Christmas?

[RedToothBrush]

Today the news has moved towards acknowledging covid-19 reality: Nicola Sturgeon has explicitly stated that some social distancing will carry on until the new year in all likelihood.

When Matt Hancock asked if this was true for England too, he refused to say yes but he said that Scotland was working from the same framework as England.

In case anyone does still need this spelling out, this means the outlook for the hospitality and leisure industries is bleak.

There are extremely unlikely to be many enjoying a holiday in the sun any time soon, whether it be in Devon or Spain.

We won't be celebrating birthdays in restaurants nor having a pint in the pub.

Conversations on the doorstep from a couple of metres away is as good as it gets.

That means if you can't adapt you may not survive.

To add into the mix changes to customs to those companies who are operating seems insanity. But that's a political not a scientific decision to be made.

Whether reality in this will kick in, in the next six weeks or so before EU budgetary decisions relating to an extension have to be made remains to be seen.

Until then, there is no news but covid-19.

@BigChocFrenzy wtf is he talking about - licence fees ??

That's not really my field! But possibly along the lines of patents? Other companies can produce a patented widget if they pay a license fee to the company that holds the patent. Very common way of sharing while protecting IP. If that's the case I'd hope that at least initially those fees would be nominal, to maximize vaccine production, with perhaps provisos for renegotiation if it turns out to be a regular seasonal need.

Miljea, I imagine that this is very much how it was during the War. Some people being neighbourly, some people being law abiding, but on the other hand there were the spivs and the black marketeers and neighbours snitching, plus looting bombed out properties.

"you were assuring me that politics would have no part to play in the science of distributing a UK vaccine ? "

DGR < wags finger disapprovingly >

I posted that I could not see any reason why
the UK would suffer far more deaths from a vaccination program than any other country,
which was in reply to your original post

Refusing to licence other countries to produce the vaccine

• because they might produce and distribute it more quickly than a shambolic UK system -

is very different

.... possibly a cunning plan to ensure the UK doesn't suffer more COVID deaths than the rest of Europe

Thanks, Mship
I think Western countries would be able to pay whatever the price - if the UK was somehow well ahead of everyone else,

but I was concerned Hancock might be hinting / raving there would be no licence release to anyone else until the UK is well on the way to being vaccinated
which would be crazy, evil and not workable anyway

Normal countries and organisations like that of Bill Gates have been saying they would make any vaccine available to the world

Hancock seems to be saying something quite different

My SIL (Alabama) put a truly frightening prayer on Facebook yesterday about thanking God for the CV and knowing he will cure and bless those who pray. She thinks it is a Biblical plague...

1 Thessalonians 5:18: Give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.

IMO, a very hard thing to do. And of course, God might decide that it's the Christian fundamentalists who die, and not the other (godless) people, which is what they all seem to think!

She's a Mexican Catholic as it goes but , yes, I do think she thinks the Godless might go first.

On the subject of schools, French and German, there is an interesting article in The Times today which suggests that all is not peachy and rosy in the countries planning returns to school. And what concerns me there is that these are countries much more given to thoroughly plan and discuss how to do things than us, it seems.

Obviously, it is behind a paywall but worth a read,

but I was concerned Hancock might be hinting / raving there would be no licence release to anyone else until the UK is well on the way to being vaccinated which would be crazy, evil and not workable anyway

This is all of a piece with their attitude though. Wasn't he making excuses for charging fees for foreign citizens to use the NHS, including those who work in the NHS, on the grounds that it's not a National Health Service, not an International Health Service? Never mind that they pay taxes here - a little detail that he overlooked. Perhaps that last detail is not surprising since it's a party supported by wealthy tax dodgers.

Sorry that should read it is a National Health Service - but I think you would get the gist.

I just caught a bit of Hancock on telly. He was definitely (once more) blaming the public. This time it was our fault that he has not met his testing targets.

I don't really understand this blaming the public malarky - isn't the will of the people absolutely paramount?

Piggy I am definitely nervous about the German relaxation - because Merkel so obviously is.

Also some parents and teachers have been very vocal about their concerns wrt achieveing social distancing in schools, or on school buses

Leopoldina (the German National Academy of Sciences) a couple of weeks ago recommended schools reopening asap
The hospitals announced they were on top of the pandemic, had massive spare capacity and enough PPE

So ...
Merkel really had to start relaxing measures, but she and other federal politicians keep warning about how we are walking a tightrope with exponential growth lurking to pull us down;

that if R0 increases even to "only" 1.1, the Germany health system will be overwhelmed by October
Worse R0 scenarios have this happening by June

The massive testing and contact tracing programs here are being further increased,
both to get early warning of this and to reduce the potential for exponential growth
Only this makes it an acceptable risk

She has just warned that some of the 16 German states are moving too quickly to relax measures
(the federal system gives considerable latitude to the individual states

• must be like herding the Westministenders' royal Siamese )

Worst case scenario if it all goes wrong is 1 miilion dead in Germany,
with 12,000 is it goes well - which tbh would be a very acceptable number in a country of 83 million, to restart the economy

Anyway, the UK has time to observe what happens on the continent and hopefully learn what works and what doesn't

Piggy
I can't get behind the paywall, but there is a lot of unsettled reaction here in France to the 11th May return to school plan.
The health minister said this morning that all evidence shows under 10s are not spreaders of the virus, but I think a lot of people are wary at sending kids in who might then return and infect family members.

And hygiene is a real issue: there is often no soap or hygienic hand-drying methods, etc. Neither of my 2 DSs have ever used the loos in primary at all.

Then there is the question of transport to/from school, buses in rural areas, etc.

Teachers unions are not overjoyed, either.

I read about their parents' unions! They sound a pretty feisty bunch!

I really do hope BCF that the UK watches and learns re exit strategies. I am not optimistic, massively!

DH has a small involvement in a care business looking after vulnerable adults.
He was on a conf call yesterday with the CEO who touched on the disaster that is the testing.
So not only are the testing centres miles away for some staff. They have to go in a car registered to them at there home address..... so license has to match address the car is registered too , and ownership also has to be in the name of the person being tested. So she had staff who borrowed cars, or maybe have one car but registered in a partners name - couldn't get tested.

It's so exasperatingly useless that it beggars belief. The result is hardly any of there staff are being tested.
They also have huge staff shortages - because they used to share staff around multiple locations - but now for disease control obviously can't do that..... on top of staff being off sick - they can't take the risk of a staff member coming in with the mildest symptoms.

It's almost like they don't want to test....

I think an expression I learnt here covers it ..... it really boils my piss....

I must say I don't think the British public would put up with quite the heavy handedness of the Gendarmerie, though.
Harder to argue with someone with a gun, perhaps? 😨

The Gendarmerie are a branch of the Army though, aren't they? They are not a Police Force. What would people in Great Britain think when faced with the Army on the streets?

We've seen that the population in Sweden have far more trust in their authorities and experts
and were far more compliant in following their advice

BJ initially seemed to be going that route and if the British public had been compliant,
I wonder if lockdown would even have happened, at least before the death rate rose to say a few thousand per day

Not a Civilian Police force, that should say, because they have some Police Force duties.

They are our police force out in the countryside Peregrina. The municipal police are in towns, but the gendarme would be the ones stopping us to see our paperwork.

I wonder what would have happened if we had all been ordered to wear masks? It's still very much an optional activity - some do wear them, some don't.

I was surprised when we came back from France that we weren't stopped at all. We were expecting to be stopped at a big roundabout going out of town, (which used to be the hang out of the gilet jaunes), or then at the airport. Not a sausage, and we had our attestations all correctly filled in.

mrs that is crazy!