The Mad Hatter's Tea Party

[sliding tom]

Freakishly so. Was talking to my son the other day about their heavy water program. The world came so close.

A few key battles, bombings or guerilla actions lost and today Tom would be our Overlord.

God forbid....

This is the best one of Phil.... I think Tommo was behind this one....

View attachment 451455

Probably my favourite!

That's a photoshop?

Only the sign on the fence....


Good Morning folkses!


First corona fatality reported in our county....

 

[Phil47uk]

Strikes me as odd that all of a sudden, there's a p-shop pic of me in a thread I rarely visit, with no notification of it to me at all.

And after a very nasty exchange between you and I last week, one has to examine the motivation behind it.

There's a joke between friends, and there's little adolescent pot shots. The difference is, with a good-natured joke, the friend is brought into it.

No nasty exchange...
I don't really do nasty exchanges. I may well have asked you what you were talking about but you didn't see fit to reply and erased your own post as well as my reply which was perfectly civil so that really doesn't constitute much of an exchange.
I've posted that pic of you several times over the years and in the past you have laughed. Remember, the last time it was related to a water pumping station?

A pic isn't funny unless it contains a strong element of satire aimed at the absurdity of current everyday life and in the case of that particular pic it was a perfect stock pic of an absurd coronavirus hazard suit in much the same way that Vasco's motorised toilet pic reflected the shortage and hoarding of toilet rolls and the pic of Tom's sanitised hand gel.
As I have stated in the past many times , posting daft pics and cracking jokes are fine as long as they "don't " become personal i.e. with regard a person's family, religious beliefs, finances etc etc.
And of course if anyone was suffering from the virus or who had a family member affected then of course the pics and captions would be a no go area .

 

[Phil47uk]

God forbid....






Probably my favourite!


Only the sign on the fence....


Good Morning folkses!


First corona fatality reported in our county....

Hopefully testing will confirm who has had it or who is immune to it but should initially be used in my opinion to get the essential workforce of the country back up and running.
Simply testing everyone for the sake of testing to see if you've had it or not could actually make things worse for some people.
Take a couple who we know where both have underlying health issues.
They could be tested and told , no you don't have it..Go out shopping and catch it from someone a week later and therefore escalate things.
It's a difficult one at the moment but I personally think we should be concentrating on getting essential front line workers back to work.
I would like to get back into the academies teaching but I realise my priorities come way down the list at this present moment.
It's going to be hard for many out there.

 

[Phil47uk]

I think the Vader pic is an oldie... I've seen it before...


Everybody got shooped a few years ago.... Especially Fardy....

Dead right Ed..
That Vader one goes back years and there's another one exactly the same with an alien in it that says " Don't flush" which was related to Dave's pumping station and also an alien conspiracy theory thread at the time. Remember "Area 49 1/2?"
The name of the JPEG back then was entitled "Daft Ada" being a play on the words "Darth Vader" of course.

That original pic goes all the way back to 2015 where in fact Dave even gave it a like himself.

My Saturday morning close encounter

I've looked at the pics a dozen times but I still can't find the PS4...

www.mylespaul.com

.

 

[BBD]

They could be tested and told , no you don't have it..Go out shopping and catch it from someone a week later and therefore escalate things.

There are two types of test: antigen and antibody.

Antigen tests tell you that you currently have an infection.

Antibody tests tell you that you have been infected in the past, and now have antibodies conferring (hopefully) a degree of immunity.

The former should have been used early this year to identify and contain the infection and stop it spreading. This was not done.

The latter are not currently available in validated and large quantities but will eventually help identify everybody who is 'safe' to go back to work.

Currently there is escalating confusion about widespread antigen testing which is probably no longer a good policy choice for controlling the spread of the disease.

 

[BBD]

Too late, if you think I'm going to take this seriously and get into it again after your recent nonsense, you've got another thing coming.

There was no nonsense.

If you are unable to engage in serious discussion, please do not in future comment on anything I say.

 

[Phil47uk]

I

There are two types of test: antigen and antibody.

Antigen tests tell you that you currently have an infection.

Antibody tests tell you that you have been infected in the past, and now have antibodies conferring (hopefully) a degree of immunity.

The former should have been used early this year to identify and contain the infection and stop it spreading. This was not done.

The latter are not currently available in validated and large quantities but will eventually help identify everybody who is 'safe' to go back to work.

Currently there is escalating confusion about widespread antigen testing which is probably no longer a good policy choice for controlling the spread of the disease.

Sounds as though the antibody test will be the real game changer.

 

[Gooner]

There was no nonsense.

If you are unable to engage in serious discussion, please do not in future comment on anything I say.

I comment on what I like, especially if it is nonsense, now who was telling people to "shut up"?
You really do need to stop this anagonisation, it's not necessary, as I said " I bow t your superiority

 

[Gooner]

I

Sounds as though the antibody test will be the real game changer.

Listening to Radio 4, they had a guy on there from the Crick Foundation or Institute, I can't quite remember. He was their top man. He said that there were a large number of smaller laboratories in the public sector that had offered to do testing, however Public Health England had basically ingnored them because they were not part of the same organisation, whereas this guy felt that testing could really be ramped up if they were all on board. So the bottle neck does seems to be with PHE at the moment.

 

[BBD]

I comment on what I like, especially if it is nonsense,

You keep saying that but have never shown it. That is the problem here.

 

[BBD]

PHE and the NHS (rightly) have strict guidelines on the chemicals and equipment to be used for testing to ensure consistently reliable results. If these are relaxed, the diagnostic skill of the test may be compromised, which nobody wants. So PHE's hands are somewhat tied by the government failure to secure stocks and supplies of the necessary chemicals weeks ago. Once again, blaming PHE is to miss the real culprit.

 

[Phil47uk]

View attachment 451457

My winter outfit sweetie..

 

[Phil47uk]

Talking about hazard suits..
The lengths some people will go to track one down defies belief..

 

[edro]

Talking about hazard suits..
The lengths some people will go to track one down defies belief..

View attachment 451583

Hahahahaha

 

[Gooner]

PHE and the NHS (rightly) have strict guidelines on the chemicals and equipment to be used for testing to ensure consistently reliable results. If these are relaxed, the diagnostic skill of the test may be compromised, which nobody wants. So PHE's hands are somewhat tied by the government failure to secure stocks and supplies of the necessary chemicals weeks ago. Once again, blaming PHE is to miss the real culprit.

So what you're saying is that the "Government" procures supplies on behalf of PHE? I don't think so, but then I'm not an expert, I just glean information from where I can. The guy on the radio, Sir Paul Crick, who is the CEO of The Francis Crick Institute which is a biomedical research centre partnership between Cancer Research UK, Imperial College London, King's College London, the Medical Research Council, University College London and the Wellcome Trust, basically said that PHE was a large body that moves very slowly and that the smaller centres could help with all aspects but PHE don't want their help. Yet. So based on the fact that Sir Paul might have some idea about what he is talking about, I think that I'm going to go with what he said rather than your speculation, ok?

 

[BBD]

So what you're saying is that the "Government" procures supplies on behalf of PHE?

The government's failure, weeks ago, to plan for a significant expansion in testing means that stocks and supplies are inadequate to meet the escalating requirement.

This is because the government's policy response to CV has been botched, something I have said from the outset. You have described this as 'literally hysterical' and 'nonsense'. It is neither.

Of course the PHE isn't as nimble a small lab, but that doesn't change the fact that there is a shortage of reagents and equipment (right down to the long swab necessary to take the sample) that could have been avoided by not minimising the threat from CV and doing nothing - as the government did. Nor does it change the fact that the standardisation of testing materials and equipment must be rigorously maintained or the accuracy of the test will be compromised. A part of PHE's role is to make sure that this does not happen and it should not be scapegoated for doing its job.

 

[Gooner]

The government's failure, weeks ago, to plan for a significant expansion in testing means that stocks and supplies are inadequate to meet the escalating requirement.

This is because the government's policy response to CV has been botched, something I have said from the outset. You have described this as 'literally hysterical' and 'nonsense'. It is neither.

Of course the PHE isn't as nimble a small lab, but that doesn't change the fact that there is a shortage of reagents and equipment (right down to the long swab necessary to take the sample) that could have been avoided by not minimising the threat from CV and doing nothing - as the government did. Nor does it change the fact that the standardisation of testing materials and equipment must be rigorously maintained or the accuracy of the test will be compromised. A part of PHE's role is to make sure that this does not happen and it should not be scapegoated for doing its job.

The Crick Institute are in fact going to be testing, I think next week, but my point is that they offered 2 weeks ago and PHE weren't interested. His view was that the smaller labs can organise much quicker and add to the process rather than sitting idle. They have already switched the Cancer Reseach resource to CV. I get your point that the standards need to be consistent and it seems that for the institute, they are. I suspect that there are many other laboratories that are equally well placed.

 

[BBD]

We just have to hope that everything will slowly sort out as the weeks go by. There's nothing much else we can do at this point, apart, of course, from follow the directives on staying in etc. which I know all here are doing.

And try not to drink until the weekends...

 

[BBD]

Meant to post this earlier as you might find it interesting. Agree or not, there are valid points here and a useful perspective on the increasingly media-led clamour for testing, testing...

Coronavirus: as a health economist, I’m not convinced the case for mass testing stacks up

The hard truth is that this ship has probably sailed.

theconversation.com

 

[Gooner]

We just have to hope that everything will slowly sort out as the weeks go by. There's nothing much else we can do at this point, apart, of course, from follow the directives on staying in etc. which I know all here are doing.

And try not to drink until the weekends...

In Spain they are now only giving respirators to the under 60's Let's hope we are not in the same position when the time comes.