Coronavirus - is enough being done to contain it?

the Welsh Irish & Scottish administrations probably are looking at us and thinking : -
"This Government has no clear path out"

The news has been reporting that there are only 24 new cases a day in London.

Front page news, a reason to open up for business again :



However, the source of this data :

https://www.mrc-bsu.cam.ac.uk/now-casting/

Look at the figures for all the other regions around it and it looks almost certain that there has been a data input mistake :



I think the number is missing a couple of zeroes and should be 2,400 and not 24.



The question is, was this an innocent mistake or something done cynically to enable the headline?

With Johnson ruling out 'a return to austerity' & Sunak saying this week it is possible the UK is in ' a significant recession' I'm actually wondering if Johnson has truly grasped the fact that it is possible the UK is going to be financially f****d for a few years and the country's debt has to be repaid somehow.

On the question of a vaccine, and the likes of this Oxford group.
I'll state from the get go that I am a cynical old bugger

I've said it before, that most of the informed and educated opinion states that a vaccine would typically take years to develop. Clearly there is great interest in a covid19 vaccine, and whoever develops one will be seriously quids in, so there is probably much more research and investment in its development than other disease vaccines. Still the informed and educated seem to be putting a timescale of around 18 months at best.
This Oxford group claim to already have a viable candidate. This would have taken them just a matter of weeks to develop. Not years, not even several months, but weeks!
I just don't buy it.

It's kinda ironic that this very week there have been developments in the Theranos trial in america.
Theranos was a company setup by a young, charismatic university drop-out Elizabeth Holmes. She claimed to have designed a small portable machine that could test for over a hundred diseases and medical conditions from a single fingerprick of blood. Some of these conditions previously required a full blood draw and shipping to an appropriate lab to be completed, and this full range of conditions would previously require several such blood draws to complete.
People loved her, and invested heavily in her company, they threw billions at her, at one time it was the richest company in silicon valley. She appeared on tv shows and was featured on the covers of magazines.
Trouble was, it was all a con, the machines simply didn't work. They setup testing stations in some stores to do their tests, but had to take full blood draws and send them away to their own lab for testing, where they used commercial testing machines from rival companies to complete the tests. Their own machines at best didn't work, at worst, gave unreliable results.
Things eventually fell apart, and Elizabeth Holmes and her one-time business partner and lover are now facing multiple fraud charges.

So to this Oxford group. The government has thrown several million into the vaccine hunt. Last I recall, it was over £20mill. No doubt a good lump of that went to the Oxford Group, but what was it for exactly? They already have a viable vaccine candidate, just needed to test it. Does it really take several million quid to jab a bunch of people in the arm then sit back and see if they develop covid19?
Thing is, if this Oxford group are so damn good that they genuinely have a viable vaccine in just a matter of weeks, how come they aren't already being employed or sponsored by one of the big pharma companies. Even outside of the current situation, pharma companies would pay big money for a team that good to be studying various things on their behalf, but apparently not this bunch, apparently they require public funds for their research, our funds, our tax money!

Bear in mind how many millions we have already thrown at lost causes in this crisis.
There were some duff ventilators that weren't fit for purpose.
The testing kits from china that didn't work.
The ill-fated PPE shipment from turkey, that took an RAF plane to fetch, only to be no good.
Just this week we hear that the pandemic emergency supply warehouse is apparently in chaos and can't/couldn't cope, this warehouse is run by a private company at tax-payers expense.


So yes I am definitely a cynical bugger, but still I can't help feeling there is some wool being pulled over some eyes here, and someone is getting their pockets lined very handsomely in the process. This 'group from Oxford' pops out of nowhere after just a few weeks and has supposedly done what the best minds in the business in the most highly funded labs in the world, have barely even started looking into yet. They now have millions of tax payers pounds filling their piggy-banks, how very convenient.

I really hope I am wrong here, and if they come out with a genuine vaccine, I will eat my words and admit I am a doofus, but ....

Munch, you also might have mentioned the Nightingale Hospitals set up with all new equipment, in a tearing hurry at places like Excel presumably hired at premium rate.
They had few patients and seem to be closed/closing. What happens to all the gear now? Ebay? In the skip?

(16-05-2020 10:06 )Chrisst Wrote:  What happens to all the gear now? Ebay? In the skip?

The Nightingale hospitals are being "mothballed" in case a second wave of Covid-19 infections emerges when the government eases social distancing rules.

I think Munch is being a tad too cynical as there are no rash claims from the Oxford Vaccine Group. They have partnered with AstraZenica for production of the vaccine if it proves successful and the speed to market is governed by the approval process and establishment of manufacturing production which is where AZ come in. The OVG have a successful history and call the vaccine a "candidate" for COVID 19 which does not seem to be hype.

Oxford Vaccine Group

AstraZeneca

Meanwhile Trump yesterday announced "Operation Warp Speed" to develop a vaccine in the USA so we can all look forward to being able to inject Dettol pretty soon

(12-05-2020 16:40 )Chrisst Wrote:  what gets me is how generous they are. Either they have the money or have few qualms about borrowing it. * It makes me wonder how many years/decades the Government could keep on paying us to stay at home like this until the money really ran out...if there's such a concept.

The government have borrowed £14.25bn in this last week. £12bn of 10-year bonds on Tuesday and another £2.25bn of 20-year bonds on Thursday, the yields of the bonds being 0.35% and 0.6% respectively. So even at those measly rates of return there are still plenty of bond buyers at the moment.

(16-05-2020 12:34 )4waydiablo Wrote:  

(12-05-2020 16:40 )Chrisst Wrote:  what gets me is how generous they are. Either they have the money or have few qualms about borrowing it. * It makes me wonder how many years/decades the Government could keep on paying us to stay at home like this until the money really ran out...if there's such a concept.

The government have borrowed £14.25bn in this last week. £12bn of 10-year bonds on Tuesday and another £2.25bn of 20-year bonds on Thursday, the yields of the bonds being 0.35% and 0.6% respectively. So even at those measly rates of return there are still plenty of bond buyers at the moment.

OK. So what does that mean?
I don't know what a bond is. Are you saying that there's plenty of money available to the UK or not please?

A government bond is basically an IOU issued by the government which pays a fixed rate of interest for a fixed period of time. They can be freely traded (bought and sold) and upon maturity the government pays whoever holds the bond at that time the full owed amount (the face value).

The government is not having any problems in issuing bonds at this time, which means that despite a very modest rate of interest there are plenty of willing buyers (those who are attracted by the safety of loaning money to the government over other more risky investment options).

How long the government can keep issuing bonds is a question to which nobody knows the answer. Even if there continues to be willing buyers, which seems likely, the loans must eventually rise to a total that future governments might find difficult to meet the interest payments on.