Coronavirus: Third wave will 'wash up on our shores', warns Johnson

As I said a few posts ago, let’s wait and see whether Boris goes back on his ending of lockdown!

He’s certainly not the PM I at first thought he was.

So much for “Useless” Patel’s border controls … :shock:

Patel, like Boris, has been a disappointment to me after having expected great things from her.

I have to say that it takes guts to listen to medical advice and implement unpopular policies against the tide of mass opposition. Boris at least learns from his mistakes rather than repeat them by bowing to what must be great pressure.

Nobody can criticise the strength of the British vaccination programme. This was in fact the brain child of Matt Hancock although Boris gets credit as he is the PM. Whatever their other faults the government have done a great job to turn our situation around with unpopular decisions.

I’m not a fan but she had her work cut out basically starting at base zero infrastructure.

“You might think that; I couldn’t possibly comment.”

Well, I could comment but it would take too long - my thesis on the ineptitude of the Johnson government now runs to well over 1000 pages … :!:

True. The vaccination programme has been excellent.

It takes a government working together and a lot of guts to go out and procure vaccines that have not yet even been through their stage 2 and 3 research. A massive risk and it’s so fortunate they took that chance because we are ahead of the curve despite the variants. We are incredibly lucky to be in a country where we have the option to have a vaccine so quickly. Our elderly population are so much safer.

For all we know you could have some well chosen rude words in v large font. The circus in charge have certainly kept us entertained during this difficult time.

What infrastructure?

All she had to do was to instruct the Border Farce to turn them around.
There were always French ships accompanying them, supposedly to keep them safe. Well, let the Frogs look after them on their side of the border.

Thank God we didn’t have Boris and Priti in the Second World War.

I didn’t think we had the systems to do that? Wasn’t it all down to cuts by May when she was in the job?

Really?

The Border Farce boats are constantly picking them up and providing a free taxi service to the land of milk and honey.

What other systems do we need? A very long bridge to save them needing rubber dinghies?

We’d all be speaking German now … :shock:

Indeed it has … :023:

The history of COVID vaccine development and procurement in the UK still remains much of a mystery, though:

The Vaccine Taskforce in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland was set up in May 2020 by the Second Johnson ministry, in collaboration with Chief Scientific Advisor Patrick Vallance and Chief Medical Officer Professor Chris Whitty, in order to facilitate the path towards the introduction of a COVID-19 vaccine in the UK and its global distribution. The taskforce acts to coordinate the research efforts of government with industry, academics and funding agencies in order to be able to make timely decisions which expedite vaccine development and deployment.

The minister responsible for the body is the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, although the body is a joint unit of the Department of Health and Social Care and the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy. Oversight is by the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for COVID-19 Vaccine Deployment, and in November 2020 the first person to take this role was Nadhim Zahawi MP.

On 20 October 2020, the Financial Times reported that potential COVID-19 vaccines would be selected for testing by the taskforce towards the end of the first quarter of 2021, but this was dependent on the outcome of “characterisation studies”. The article also mentioned funding of £33.6 million being provided by government to accelerate the development of new COVID-19 vaccines by exposing human trial participants to the coronavirus in controlled conditions around 30 days after having received a shortlisted vaccine. The work of the taskforce was bolstered by a further tranche of £19.7 million in funding for clinical trial-related blood testing facilities at Public Health England, specifically at PHE Porton Down.

On 22 October, Oxford Immunotec announced that the company had been chosen by the taskforce to be the unique supplier of T cell testing for SARS-Cov-2. The move was underscored with a £3 million investment, as the Business Secretary, Alok Sharma, emphasised the importance of T cell diagnostic capabilities in assessing the performance of candidate vaccines within COVID-19 vaccine trials.

On 27 October 2020, an article by Bingham was published in The Lancet. It highlighted the taskforce’s overall strategy of a diverse portfolio of vaccines, with an emphasis on those thought capable of achieving an immune response in the over-65s. From an initial pool of 240 potential vaccines, the taskforce selected six candidates which employ four varied methods: adenoviral vectors, mRNA, adjuvanted proteins, and whole inactivated viral vaccines.

Catherine Elizabeth Bingham (born 19 October 1965) is a British venture capitalist. She is a managing partner at a venture capital firm, SV Health Investors.

In May 2020, Bingham was appointed Chair of the UK Vaccine Taskforce. Bingham had “insisted” on employing her own team of eight PR consultants at the equivalent of £167,000 per annum each.

Bingham married Jesse Norman in 1992; Dr Norman was elected as the Conservative Member of Parliament for Hereford and South Herefordshire in 2010. As of 2021, he serves as Financial Secretary to the Treasury in the administration of Boris Johnson. **

As of January 2021 she is listed as being a director of the following active companies: Mestag Therapeutics Ltd; Cybele Therapeutics Ltd; Bicycle tx Ltd; Bicycle Therapeutics plc; Sitryx Therapeutics Ltd; Pulmocide Ltd; Autofony Therapeutics Ltd; Bicycle RD Ltd; SV Health Investors Ltd (whose subsidiaries include the Dementia Discovery Fund); and SCV Health Managers LLP.

I don’t know how she finds the time to fit all those jobs in … :wink:

** Sheer coincidence … :wink:

Omah I couldn’t give a monkeys how we got the vaccine. The important thing is that we have it and it’s working.

I’ll bet that’s what BJ said, too … :wink:

Without the vaccination program we’d all be under curfew and putying the dead outside to be collected at dawn … :090:

Covid families slam ‘dithering’ Boris Johnson’s delay to act on Indian variant

Grieving families of Covid victims have accused Boris Johnson of *“repeating past mistakes”, putting us at the Indian variant’s mercy.

They spoke out amid fears his failure to restrict travel from India in early April has allowed the mutant to take seed.

On the eve of restrictions further easing on Monday, Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice warned ministers were not learning lessons – more than a year into the pandemic.

The group, which represents 4,000 families, blasted: “The Government has once again been indecisive on closing our borders – repeating previous mistakes which cost lives. After the success of the vaccine rollout, fears the Indian variant might mean cases rising substantially are harrowing for bereaved families.”

Some 122 (recorded) cases of the variant entered the UK from India before it was added to the hotel quarantine list.

BJ’s predilection for the dilly-dally and the shilly-shally is all too predictable … :102:

‘20,000 allowed to enter UK from India’

While Boris Johnson delayed India to the travel red list at least 20,000 passengers from the country travelled to the UK, the Times reports.

They may have brought cases of the mutant strain with them, which is now accounting for growing numbers of infections in the UK.

Sir Mark Walport, a member of Sage warned today that while vaccines still seemed to be protecting people from severe Covid cases, they appeared less good at stopping transmission of the Indian strain.

BJ plays fast and loose with other people’s lives while he chases the money … :shock:

No doubt about it. This is responsible for the unprecedented spread of covid. This was the number of flights yesterday afternoon…

Hi

Annie is correct.

May slashed the Budget and point blank refused to staff returning Migrants to the EU.

It is a Farce, but only because our Politicians made it a farce.

We have had 10 years of the Tories saying one thing and doing another.

Taking back Control?

Boris wanted to give all the illegals an amnesty.