rocket_scientist

Leo Varadkar's speech was phenomenal not just for its content but its delivery. Leo has proved he has leadership qualities, sadly lacking in both Boris and Nicola.

When most clubs in the EPL have played more than 75% of their fixtures and most clubs in Scotland have played almost 80% of their fixtures, there's no debate about the possibility that the current season can be made void. It can't. Some may argue that we could finish the season now, based on current positions (on a points per played basis naturally) but that makes no sense either. Why make this season less important than the next one? We've come too far not to finish this season. The timing of the resumption determines what the next season (and possibly the one after that as well) looks like.

Discussion on The Nine on BBC Scotland just now including Gordon the Moron, ex hun and administrator. Why don't any of them THINK? It all depends on when football resumes. You can't make a decision now. If football comes back late summer, you play out this season, crown the winner, relegate etc. and immediately start next season but on a reduced scale. For the SPFL, play 11 games before a split and then a further 5. If football can't start until towards the end of the calendar year, play out this season then have an 11 game season next year. A good football administration would set out contingencies based on the one and only unknown which is the timing of restarting, on a month by month basis. Then build next season based on the amount of games that can be played from after this season can be resumed and concluded until the middle of May 2021. It's not fucking difficult and this is the ONLY solution. So tell everyone already, starting with UEFA's direction. They need to earn the big bucks. It's a simple fix.

Craig Brown (the GWT) and his bit of stuff came into the restaurant we were in tonight. So much for social distancing for the elderly but honestly, unless they're spraying the food with Covid-19 (or the staff are infected) the chances of catching it at present in a mostly empty restaurant are very remote at present. Fucking shame for the catering trade. Shame for everyone really. The wife got her re-deployment papers today (effective immediately) so we know shit's about to get real when the managers and senior personnel in most departments are being drafted to the front line, or Covid Central as it's become known.

I recommend watching Contagion: The BBC Four Pandemic hosted by the wonderful Dr Hannah Fry. You'll get it on iPlayer. It was first aired two years ago, in March 2018. It illustrates to me that we have some great minds in the U.K. but I'm not so sure that this present government and the titled chief of science and chief medical officer are amongst these great minds. Scarily, it predicts that this pandemic was always going to come. Edit: forgot to say and even more spookily, they predicted from whence it would come, Wuhan indeed being in "S.E. Asia", assuming that was ground zero and not the more colourful theories being bandied about.

I had hoped to go to Culter on Saturday but that fixture had been pulled. Desperate to fill my love of "live soccer", and with the Cove game at Cowdenbeath having suffered the cull, that's where I was planning to go. Of course I fucked up last Tuesday when planning to go to Stirling to see my first Cove away game by being too pussy based on a weather forecast and missed them scoring SEVEN but shit happens. It's not like the forecast was that bad, and improving during the day and compared to the first two visits to Balmoral Park, NOTHING could've been worse, the coldest bastard days I've watched fitba. Only the home v Hamilton in the Scottish Cup one January at Pittodrie compares (6,000 crowd only, 1-0 win, Josh P pulling the strings), a colder day than the new year game v St J when all the lights went out in the city. So it's ALL fitba that has been sent to the grave

Aye the yet to be formed Grayling Gas Pumps will get the contract.

Yeah really entertaining. Fucking hilarious. Faisal Islam just now reporting on the bail outs the airlines are going to need. Tory icon Branson has already got his begging bowl out, aye for £35bn. That's £35,000,000,000.00 of our taxpayers money he's asking for. Brilliant.

You're on your own with that one you sick fuck.

That hadn't occurred to me (tonight, over the mass gatherings) but I fear you're right. I wouldn't rule out incompetence too however. The urging of U.K. manufacturers to turn their production lines to building respirators was desperate stupidity and the "no number is too high" was a line that no businessman (or indeed anyone with a mild understanding of economics) would ever utter. I don't think he's got the brain to think through what he was saying. He may have been trying to peddle the lie that saving the people is their number one priority but it was an invitation to rape for any entrepreneur with a sniff of opportunism in his nostrils. Edit: The west end already announced they were shutting all the theatres "based on government advice". They know who their market is and where their bread is buttered. Arselicking luvvies. My poor London-based daughter will miss out this week though but the show they were going to this week was probably one she'd seen already as she's always going.

It won't be over "the next few weeks". I predict they'll close the schools within 72 hours. They have to. It's incongruous not to given the social distancing they're asking for. It will make them look like fools but nobody (apart from one former poster on here) is under any illusion that they're NOT fools. Is there one non-fool in the whole cabinet? I can't think of one.

Which was EXACTLY what Jon Snow opened with and the first question Kathy Newman just asked this health minister bitch. Edit: Kathy is NAILING this Helen bitch. We have "ramped up" testing from 5,000 to 6,000 apparently (still less than 0.0001% of the population) but she couldn't answer HOW we are testing in the community, coming back with more Tory bullshit and bluster.

Up to 55 today, more than 2.5 times more in 2 days... but only a 57% increase from yesterday so no doubt Dominic Cummings can spin that as a positive.

No mass gatherings (recommended, unsupported) and yet schools stay open. The most hideous example of how stupid Boris and his sidekicks are.

If it's all bollocks, the last hour and a half has shed some darkness. The WHO Director General said "test test test". Boris and his two arselicking sidekicks live just now are trying to make a TOTAL U-TURN from last Thursday and yet they STILL don't have the balls to go beyond "recommendations". It's still a massive shitshow, both of policy and in communications. "Sir Patrick" is a fucking arse and right now, is failing to answer the (brilliant) question (re Herd Immunity and the reinfection case in Japan) BECAUSE HE DOESN'T KNOW and it's IMPOSSIBLE to know. His bluffing his way through this, as Boris is doing throughout, is going to be slated on social media soon (and yet the BBC will be spinning strongly in half an hour). Only Channel 4 will get close to the truth and even they are handicapped by severe legally-advised restraints.

It's not odd at all. NHS 24 were trained and encouraged to fob people off. Our culture is to act only on the most extreme cases. It would have resulted in our eldest quine dying of a burst appendix if she wasn't so lucky to be home that week where her mother took control. It's another symptom of our government's priorities which does not include the welfare of the people. Boris told us "loved ones will die". Hancock said "no number is too big". Not only are they headless chickening right now, they're not even careful with the language they use, spreading further panic and alarm.

Fuck this. I'm going out in the community to spend money with people who won't have any income after this week. I don't know if we should all be self-isolating but it's not my job to know. The biggest worry for me is that our government don't know either and given that many of us don't trust them, it's a terrible situation to be in. My biggest concern right now is that the NHS gets overwhelmed pretty immediately. This doesn't appear to be the biggest concern for our "leaders", who are acting on advice that makes zero sense to a lay person like me. Spread love people. That's all we can do. Apart from to panic buyers. They're shit. Peace.

A further tragic indictment of the government's absolute incompetence thus far was their plea for our manufacturing industry to make respirators. A sane government would fund the extra capacity requirements of existing respirator manufacturers and would know that car makers and others, who have never produced highly specialised medical equipment are incapable of getting up to speed in the required time. One of the biggest acts of gross stupidity in political history. Edit: NHS Grampian talk today; the one case in the Shell office in Aberdeen did not infect any colleague, nor did any of his family get it. This virus can be contained if we don't cough on one another and exercise strict hygiene... but it would help if we know if we have it or not. There is no sensible reason not to test and failing to lock down is negligent beyond belief.

When the SFA know more than the government, you know we're in trouble! They probably just followed other football authorities but in Nicola's case, I agree she should have broken rank. If you and I smelt shite, about something we had never heard of a week ago, in a field where we have no knowledge and expertise whatsoever, then every paid politician - who's job it is to protect us - should also have been questioning. The World Health Organisation were directly addressing the UK, other countries were halting the exponential nature of the natural growth curve and we had thousands of our own experts screaming No. Even a non-clinician was ranting on QT last week (although he at least had experience of office in public health). Critical thinking path for sane people; Allow people to get sick, many turn up at hospitals, NHS can't cope, gross deaths. As Fontaines D.C. would say, is it too real for ya?

https://amp.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/mar/15/epidemiologist-britain-herd-immunity-coronavirus-covid-19?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Tweet&__twitter_impression=true

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/mar/15/trump-offers-large-sums-for-exclusive-access-to-coronavirus-vaccine

67% increase in UK deaths from 21 to 35 announced just now.

One of the biggest handicaps facing the UK is the Health Minister. Hancock makes Hunt look good and amongst the doctors, Hunt was the least popular in living memory. The problem with Hancock is that he's an exceptionally stupid man. He has today on the Marr show just ripped up what the chief government scientists have been saying as he has denied the herd immunity strategy. Even though one poster on this thread seeks to absolve our equally stupid PM of any responsibility whatsoever, it was Boris who appointed Hancock. The South Korean Health Minister (interviewed by Marr by satellite) was an articulate clear thinker. Our government still don't know what they're doing and the contrast between her and Hancock could not have been more stark. START TESTING PEOPLE FOR FUCK SAKE. It's beyond belief that we are this shambolic and incapable of coherence, both in strategy and communications.

I don't like or dislike what you post. I'm just pointing out that you speak shite. On everything. The reason you do is that you are uneducated. It takes a certain intellect and discipline to learn things, qualities you don't have. It eats you up - that you're unqualified in everything - but your attempts to present yourself as knowledgeable don't wash, as my daughter proved right now. You showed great geopolitical nous with your racist rant re the Muslims in the Balkans. You show medical fuckwittery right now but most of all, it's your educational subnormality resulting in your craving to present yourself as better than you are that is as tragic as it is comic. Thae Greeks were clever cunts

TC, your very first sentence proves that you are, like the rest of us including our leaders, not expert in this field. "Flu is not caused by coronavirus. It is caused by influenza viridae (i.e. the flu virus). It is very distinct from coronavirus, though some aspects of them can be interesting to compare (e.g. flu also doesn’t have lasting immunity, which is why there are new flu vaccines each year). Common cold is caused by a few different viruses, some of which are coronaviruses. Also rhinoviruses (rhino meaning nose here, as it gives you a runny nose!) and a few others. He is right that antibiotics do not work against viral infections because viruses and bacteria are totally different entities. The idea that viruses are animal based and bacteria are plant based is complete bollocks though, no clue where that came from. The first virus ever identified actually infected tobacco plants". I could give you the whole text but what's the point? "Some of this is reasonable speculation and some is bullshit and the fact that he is stating some nonsense as fact would make me doubt his credibility overall. It annoys me that he keeps talking with authority but is getting some things totally backwards. Not all of it mind you - some of it is right or nearly right. My assessment is that the person posting this has some knowledge on the topic, but they know far less than they think they do!" Edit: you said "for the uninitiated" which expressly states that YOU are part of the initiated. A nurse manager (retired) is not a virologist. Stop trying to come across as knowing more than you do. It's ugly to witness and further, your inability to think and write with simplicity and clarity is hard work to endure.