Social distancing – the price There were some interesting posts on the overnight thread which perhaps should be given a wider audience. This from Cyclefree is one of the best and is on the impact of the the metres apart regime that all of us are having to handle. No hugs, no kissing. No intimacy. No quiet conversations or simply being close to someone. No choirs, no theatres, no concerts or gigs, no dancing, no visits to the cinema. No…
A strange day with differing developments. The thing that sriked me as most important has been what has happened in Germany – the European country that seemed to be doing best. I get a sense of greater restlessness.
By far the biggest development so far in WH2020 has been Trump’s comment a few days ago that people could inject themselves with bleach to fight the the coronavirus. This has been widely ridiculed and there have been reports from many parts of the US of people actually ingesting bleach and other such liquids and having to be treated by the emergency services. Of all the crazy things that this President has said so far during the campaign this is…
The above was painted by my daughter-in-law, Lucille Smithson, who is a professional portrait painter based in Los Angeles and is producing a number of works relating to the coronavirus pandemic. This is what she wrote about this painting: This is Nicola and Gwen. Nicola is an advanced nurse practitioner on a #covid-19 ward in Edinburgh. Gwen who is her grandmother, tragically passed away on the same ward last month from coronavirus. Yvonne, Nicola’s mother, reached out to me here…
Back in November PBer Philip Thompson had a great guest slot here in which he suggested that the 200/1 then being offered by Ladbrokes was was great value bet. It came during the GE2019 campaign shortly after Rishi Sunak had been chosen by Johnson to act as the Tory rep on one of the set piece debates. The bet in fact was better than that. Ladbrokes was offering an odds boost which made this a 250/1 shot not a 200/1…
It was inevitable that there was going to be a more positive mood emanating from Downing Street following the return of the prime minister, Boris Johnson. Most of the front pages reflect this although a move at this stage to relax the lockdown could be a very big gamble and cost thousands of lives. Certainly the latest numbers of the total fatalities are down sharply and if this does indicate a trend then clearly the time might be right for…
As just about the whole world waits for a vaccine to be available there’s some positive news tonight about what’s going on in Oxford in the New York Times. The report notes that: “…scientists at the university’s Jenner Institute had a running start on a vaccine, having proved in previous trials that similar inoculations — including one last year against an earlier coronavirus — were harmless to humans. That has enabled them to leap ahead and schedule tests of their…