Colonel Bumcunt

Yawn. Should just be straight knockout this year.

Class. Feeds into the myth that Vallance and co are due to do another heart-to-heart with us tomorrow, with BJ on backing vocals.

I'm going to become a millionaire by flogging "i survived winter 2020" t-shirts. Seriously though, this winter will be a struggle for many, not least because there's no holiday to look forward to, but I'm just going to use the downtime to focus on a few things. Weight-training, doing a bit more distance-learning, home improvement bits, have to set some mini-goals. Alongside that, my mood will brighten immeasurably if Biden wins in November. I'll just get drunk for the next four months and await the downfall of the Tories as a result of that. PS, does anyone know where to send film or tv scripts or novels online? Might be a nice sub-thread, get people's creative juices flowing all winter, see if anyone can do it, bounce some shite off each other.

ICU and ventilators are rising rapidly, but not seemingly exponentially? I mean, we were at 3,000 cases last week, which should probably translate into more ICU visits one week later than perhaps we are seeing?

Let's face it, we were having 15,000 cases a day during the spring, perhaps more. This current total is high, but it's not in the same ballpark as what happened previously.

All I've heard so far here, with our outbreak, is a bunch of PR bullshit. In our case, the public health lead (not the Director of Public Health, her general) is an American woman, who sounds like she invented penicillin, data protection laws, is a surgeon, and has seen this movie tons of time before and know exactly what to do. Public Health have actually achieved nothing for years, decades, ever in the UK. What, some flimsy Foot and Mouth response? Tell people to stop smoking? She is in direct conflict with the lead GP here who completely disagrees with her on everything. The public back the GP, which has wound-up the local authority and public health, they now actively hate him and are seeking to undermine him. The politicisation of public health roles has created this. Much like the creation of PCC's to politicise police chiefs. It's all damage-limitation, risk-aversion, and silver-tongued sociopaths. This is happening in all your areas, you just don't know it. I only get to see it here because I'm in the middle of these meetings and see the behind-the-scenes antics.

Am loving that Brexit is in the middle of the 6 month winter horror. No parties or celebrations, just a cold hard stare at your rising taxes and fall in wages. No bombastic party scenes in Westminster, just solemnity and grim faces. It their worst nightmare, a Brexit night they can't mask with a massive street orgy and fireworks.

Has been a great effort so far, but today came the bombshell...Isles of Scilly just had it's first ever covid-positive case. The council announced it cryptically, with no details as to where or who or how, so the islands are now petrified. People are fucking fuming at the council for the way it announced it. The local GP found out about it from the council Facebook feed! He wasn't informed by PHE, or the council. And I need to go to the Coop (the only grocery shop, basically) for some fucking milk. This means queuing for 20 minutes with other people staring at each other suspiciously....

Obviously I agree, but what is the solution? He holds no cards, this is all about the Tories and enough of them growing a conscience, so I wouldn't hold my breath.

I just now sat through a short local outbreak board meeting where the office of the Director of Public Health was quite relaxed about the situation nationally and said there was no need to panic at all in her opinion. She emphasised that the testing data now is unparalleled compared with the first outbreak where the general public weren't tested, whereas now they are, at high rates. As such it's like an early-warning system for real problems and the local lock-downs are used to bring those community outbreaks back down, as was intended. She did urge everyone to stay off work or school with any illness, Covid or not. I'm up for that. Test and trace app launching this Friday. Basically QR codes in all shops/etc. Not sure if it's mandatory, and some businesses may not take part. My advice to you is to not give your trade to businesses who don't take part.

What, exactly, is the Sweden model and what data is there to support it, other than Sweden's own case figures?

One of the reasons for a slow reaction to it is the nationalistic attitudes in our government, in America, in Brazil, in India, in China, in Russia. Combined, we could have knocked this out of the park.

Agree with this. There is a common cause, a benevolent cause, to stop older people and vulnerable people dying earlier, and in great pain. To stop the NHS from being flooded with victims, to the point it kills many other people in need of other medical treatments. To stop putting nurses and doctors in harms way. Far too many people being blase about Covid, you are being cunts. Remember how in the early days we actually mourned victims, treated them like humans? https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/18/not-ready-to-go-tributes-paid-to-uk-first-named-victims-of-coronavirus The government is choosing Brexit over Covid. It can afford Covid, it can't afford both.

The biggest breakthrough will be in testing, not in vaccines. To have an accurate 2 minute test will be the game-changer to open society back up to normal.

I think FSG have done the right things since they've been here, even when it's gone wrong. The employ of Rodgers for example, that was left-field for a club our size, but y'know I quite liked the idea of taking a gamble on someone young and with fresh ideas. I applaud that decision. And then Klopp comes along, and remember to FSG he's possibly not a standout candidate in terms of winning things. There will be a couple of 'football men' in FSG, but for the most part they would look at the CV of the likes of Mourinho, Guardiola, Ancelotti and consider Klopp to be inferior to them, but with the same contract demand more or less. I mean, do you really think John Henry was impressed by Klopp's Dortmund team, or was he impressed with the approach and ambition of the man? And, say, the Klopp thing had gone wrong, what then? Well, to be honest, I'd personally have been ok with that. Sometimes you need to remember that the journey is just as much fun, if not more fun, than the lifting of the trophies. Personally I get more enjoyment from signing Harvey Elliott for £7m (or whatever it was), than I would from signing Mahrez for £60m, or Pedro, or Bale etc. I like being on the journey with a young set of players, some unknown players, some players with things to prove. I'm not sure that Man City's owners would necessarily have approved of Pep buying a player like Andy Robertson, or persisting with developing Gomez and Trent instead of just buying the latest £50m full back from Portugal or 'being fine' with using Milner there. There's an honesty to Klopp, if he doesn't want big name players then I implicitly trust that he genuinely doesn't want to operate that way. And of course that's better for FSG financially when it goes right, but if it went wrong then the fans turn on them for not spending loads, but in truth surely they were just letting their manager do what he wanted to do. If you want we can segueway into furlough discussion, but they learned and they learned fast. And perhaps some people would do well to remember that for every million we don't spend in this window, that's being used to support people's wages.