1. Yesterday, Boris Johnson said in PMQs that “of course the Test and Trace got up and running” last Thursday. This morning on the Today programme, Brandon Lewis said “well it’s only been going a few days, you wouldn’t expect it to be fully up and running yet, would you?”

2. Yesterday, Boris Johnson said in PMQs that he was “incredibly proud of the Government’s response to the virus….”. Yesterday, there were more deaths registered in one day than in every EU country combined.

3. Yesterday, there were two documentaries, on Sky and on Channel 4, examining the Government response to the Virus. Both focussed on the published facts surrounding allowing older patients to leave hospital and go into Care Homes, WITHOUT being tested for the virus. This was in the middle of March while the Government still believed (or rather, elements of Dominic Cummings’ Sage, the advisory panel, believed) that the “Herd Immunity” strategy was the correct one, and the PM was shaking hands with all and sundry, whilst the Health Secretary Matt Hancock declared that virus infection would be at most “minor, with minimal mortality amongst the elderly”…. the government was “throwing a protective ring” around the care home system. Up to May 26th 2020, 15,500 residents of Care Homes have died with Covid-19 related illnesses, compared with less than 3000 in Germany, and zero in Hong Kong.

   https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/may/28/why-did-so-many-people-die-of-covid-19-in-the-uks-care-homes

4. Yesterday the House of Commons voted to return away from the semi-video digital assembly back to MPs sitting all close together in Parliament, thanks to a motion by Mr Rees-Mogg. Later, the Business Secretary (to my eyes, the Comedy Secretary, as his responses in interviews are truly hilarious for their absence of substance) was seen and heard to become extremely ill at the despatch box, and has since been tested for the virus, self-isolating last night. If found to be positive, the number of other MPs infected with it will be on Rees-Mogg’s conscience I suspect.

5. Yesterday, the number of tests carried out remains a mystery. The Government has been unable to provide the figures of daily tests for “technical reasons”. The highest numbers of tests recorded so far was two weeks ago, with no more than 80,000 of these being people tested for the first time. The rest are tests for research, over 40,000 being posted out tests, which are proving very problematic, as many of the tests are received back in labs “unable to be analysed”. One of the major “superlabs” has suffered huge testing failure in the latter part of May due to technical issues, and they have had to send tests to the US for results.

   https://www.independent.co.uk/news/health/coronavirus-uk-tests-how-many-daily-number-figure-chart-a9503356.html

6. Testing, Tracking and Tracing was intended to have an NHS app (still non functioning and with no arrival time) plus 25,000 tracers, recruited but anecdotally from dozens of them saying that “they are sitting around doing nothing”. Track and trace relies upon a very rapid turnaround in test results ((approximately 24 hours) so that tracers can call everybody the following day who has tested positive to self-isolate, and state whom they have been in contact with the previous week. This is currently impossible.

7. Yesterday, it was stated that the PM wanted to lower the Virus Alert Level from 4 to 3 so that more and more businesses could open. This is not possible as the “R” transmission rate is still very close to 1.0 and therefore too many people could be infected at very short notice even with a minor spike. Chris Whitty yesterday stopped this lowering happening.

   https://www.newscientist.com/article/2237475-covid-19-news-nhs-test-and-trace-not-tracing-enough-to-be-effective/

   https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/may/30/boris-johnsons-test-and-tracing-system-britain-lockdown

8. Yesterday it was announced that Ethnic Minorities received twice the number of fines for lockdown breaches in the London area (26% c/w 12% population). With the George Floyd murder in the US dominating the news stories around the world with protests galore, figures like these will cause consternation.

9. Yesterday my mates M & S received their results from privately funded Antibody (Serology) Blood Tests carried out in a Private Clinic. The tests of the Abbott nature (the Roche and Abbott tests are the only ones sanctioned worldwide as having a more or less 100% accuracy), resulted rather unusually in one partner being positive, and one negative. This shows that even being locked down in the same house for weeks may allow one person to become non-infectious after virus exposure, possibly after a reasonably short time. The Antibody Tests are being rolled out later this month by the NHS initially to Medical Professionals (my GP is having one today!).

10. Finally, yesterday in Brazil, 1250 people died, and Brazil became the fourth highest fatality count in the World (behind US, UK and Italy). The President of Brazil claims that Lockdowns cause Economic Disaster which in his opinion is worse than Deaths caused by the virus.

LIES

Politics is full of liars telling lies. Obviously. Whether you’re Johnson’s advisers or Trump, or Putin or anyone else who is extremely adroit at media manipulation, numbers on the sides of buses appear to be the way forward. Maybe it was always the way (witches and all that).

People will have to make decisions, and make up their own minds in the years to come more and more. The bile aimed at certain folks on Social Media daily makes me weep at times. A lot is down to ones opinions, but an awful lot is due to making people believe stuff that maybe they shouldn’t. That’s what I say.

I’ve been told that as “an extremely vulnerable” citizen, I can now go out for walks again. That’s what the UK government tweeted at 10 pm last Saturday night. Safer now am I? With 8000 infections/day still, and 300 deaths per day, going to parks heaving with people ignoring lockdown restrictions doesn't sound a bright idea at the moment.

COMMENTS below if you fancy.