https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/uk-54762974
Boris Johnson is due to hold a news conference from Downing Street shortly
There’s obviously a “problem” - BJ was suposed to appear at 1600 … 
That is a fact government is reluctant to admit.
Most of us know, Omah 
Want his backbench in the know before addressing the nation and who leaked this information due to announced Monday.
Covid-19: PM announces four-week England lockdown
People can leave their homes:
[LIST]
[]for education
[]for work, if you cannot work from home
[]for exercise and recreation outdoors
[]for medical reasons
[]to shop for food and essentials
[]to care for others
[/LIST]
Bars and restaurants will close, but takeaways can continue to operate - as in the spring lockdown
Essential shops will remain open
Schools and universities will be kept open throughout this period, unlike in the lockdown earlier this year
Nothing new followed by an awful lot of waffle - BJ’s address to Parliament on Wednesay may be more enlightening about the application of controls … 
Whatever ‘rules’ or advice are announced I think it our duty and to obey them whether we think them right or wrong.
Like the man (Boris) or not, he is between the devil and the deep blue sea.
‘Immediate prospect’ of rapid Covid tests
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/uk-54762974
The PM says: “Over the next few days and weeks we plan a steady but massive expansion in the deployment of quick turnaround tests,” he says.
They could be used to test “whole towns and even whole cities”, says the PM, adding that the programme will “begin in a matter of days” and will be assisted by the military.
Sounds like a “Moonshot” to me … :roll:
I agree, he is doing his best.
Sometimes, “best” just isn’t good enough …
This is a situation we, all the countries in this World alive now have never been in before. It’s trial & error to sort it & quite honestly I not want to have to. Hind sight is a wonderful thing but Boris is doing his best.
I wonder if you could have done better? I doubt it with the knowledge our government had at the start.
I doubt next time there is a pandemic that a great many countries will respond in the exact same way … this time, the first time … every world leader has to remain flexible, even if it means doing U-turns.
I seriously don’t think anyone factored in just how much it was going to damage the economy except what is the alternative?
Everyone stay shuttered indoors, never going out at all until a vaccine is found?
At this moment in time the carrot on offer, which is supposed to keep people obeying the ‘rules’ is the sort of half-promise of a vaccine in the not too distant future.
Imagine if there was no vaccine on the horizon.
I sincerely hope there is one and it’s not just a sop to reassure people as Covid doesn’t look in a hurry to go away.
Why would I do better?
BJ’s the self-professed leader with a team of experts - the government had extensive prior knowledge of a possible pandemic, the extensive prior experience of others in dealing with a pandemic and plans drawn up to deal with a possible pandemic, yet BJ dithered and waffled until it was too late to stop the “first wave” … :shock:
Of course, if he couldn’t be bothered with scientific mumbo-jumbo, he could just have watched a couple of excellent movies to get the picture of a pandemic - “Contagion” and “Outbreak” are my favourites, although I do have a “soft-spot” for “The Anromeda Strain” … 
Now, after wasting the summer months doing nothing, BJ has, again, dithered and waffled while the “second wave” gained momentum … :shock:
But the whole of Europe must also have miscalculated then as Germany and France have had to enter into a second lockdown … even though the Germans were actually applauded for their handling of the first wave.
We’ve all been caught on the hop … even the US … and it’s no wonder as it’s never happened before.
There have been multiple previous pandemics, all full documented, the most deadly being:
HIV/AIDS pandemic 1981–present (data as of 2018) Death toll 32 million
Hong Kong flu 1968–1970 Death toll 1–4 million
1957–1958 influenza pandemic (‘Asian flu’) 1 Death toll 1–4 million
1918–1922 Russia typhus epidemic Death toll 2.5 million
1918 influenza pandemic (‘Spanish flu’) Death toll 50 million+
In between times, there have been hundreds of less deadly epidemics:
When I was a child in the 1950s, epidemics still occurred. We had regular outbreaks of measles, rubella and mumps, whilst skin boils (abscesses) and impetigo were still common in Northern England where I grew up. Typhoid outbreaks still occurred in the United Kingdom, such as in Aberdeen in 1964 and the deadly disease smallpox still stalked the world. Polio was still crippling children and pneumonia was common (I was hospitalised with this as a young teenager). I also caught infectious jaundice (almost certainly Hepatitis A), which could not then be diagnosed, keeping me off school for weeks. GPs were freely available to visit the sick daily and hospital wards were run by dominant matrons imposing cleanliness and hygiene. Everyone was acutely aware of the infection threat. As health systems were steadily built up over the next decades the immediate threat of infection gradually dissipated in richer countries, due to our increasing ability to control, diagnose and prevent infections. As a consequence – we have forgotten those days.
I remember all of the above and had most of them plus “whooping cough” and dysentry, which “broke out” in the large city in which I lived as a child … :!:
Thanks, Morticia.
Omah … None of them are the same as this one.
For a start … AIDS wasn’t contracted through someone sneezing or coughing on you. It required a little more intimate contact.
The ‘Spanish flu’ , the accepted real biggie of the bunch was a different world. For a start most folk had never been abroad before they went off to fight in the war , and never went abroad again. In fact, it was wartime troop movements that spread it.
Ironic that in our day it was mainly schoolkids returning from mid-term skiing school holidays in February that sparked it off in the UK.
I’m not sure what point you’re trying to make …
Are you saying that because of past influenza outbreaks that Boris should have locked the country down from March, indefinitely, until a vaccine could be found rather than play hide and seek with it?
Obviously, you don’t remember the 1950’s … calipers, iron lungs, bloody handkerchiefs, soiled underwear, scabs, boils and non-stop coughing … :shock:
You’re welcome:-) … there’s a helluva lot of scaremongering going on with this Covid … and should have, could have, ought to have are all getting bandied around.
Oh please, don’t be so melodramatic.
I also remember having my jabs as a kid at school.
If you were unlucky you caught something … if you’re unlucky now you catch Covid. So you take precautions and adhere to the guidelines set out by the government and keep fingers firmly crossed. What else can you do?
What would you do if you were our leader?
Actually, influenza IS a coronavirus … :!:
For a start … AIDS wasn’t contracted through someone sneezing or coughing on you.
AFAIK, AIDS (Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome) is the condition caused by HIV (Human Immunodeficiency Virus) - the virus is spread through body fluids, blood transfusions and breastfeeding.
I’m not sure what point you’re trying to make …
Are you saying that because of past influenza outbreaks that Boris should have locked the country down from March, indefinitely, until a vaccine could be found rather than play hide and seek with it?
Well, he could have done what Trump’s done and then we’d have 8,000,000 cases and 200,000 dead by now or he could have imposed a lockdown sooner and not permitted the “summer of freedom” and realised that the masive population movement of school/university starts would pose a problem but, of course, he waited until the Cheltenham Gold Cup had been run, he let the “morons” (including “The Dome” Cummings) loose over the UK’s countryside and the sea and his Track and Trace expert, “Incompetent” Harding, “never saw” the schools and universities infections coming.
Now, of course, we’re back where we were 6 months ago, except there are 1,000,000 current infections (now we know that there’s no acquired “immunity”), 66,000 dead and tens, possibly hundreds, of thousands of “long COVID” sufferers.
BJ is still blustering about his “nationwide” tests and his “forthcoming” vaccine but those are pipdreams and won’t help the additional 1,500,000 infected by Xmas and the accompanying 80,000 dead … :shock: