Leakage.

Covid19 relies on leakage. In one person it either kills and/or is extinguished in less than two weeks, not counting convalescence. In the first four days you don’t know you’ve got it and your not contagious, after that you are but severely hampered by feeling like shit. But it sure as hell knows how to leak from one person to another. Somehow in the face of this one exploit our current government looks like a confused geriatric Dodo. Several million travellers entered the UK un-quarantined after we knew it was leaking world wide. Huge leak. After a further leaking delay we went into lock-down which was also leaky because we could go shopping etc. After three months we’ve got the leaking steady at about one for one which in itself is dangerously close to exponential leaking. And now in a reckless attempt to make this whole governmental mess appear successful we’re being offered more opportunities to leak. And this is probably a month before we have a workable test-trace-whatever thing. Another huge leak forward.

It’s not that politicians are stupid it’s that they have totally the wrong skill set for dealing with a pandemic. They are trained in self-confidence, privilege, rhetoric and parliamentary procedure. They have no understanding of the scientific method, real world problem solving, how the majority of us live and in this case the vital importance of timing. They are far closer to actors living off approval than other professions that live off results. They have converted any expert ‘advice’ unknowingly into a fragmented muddle primarily aimed at making their performance look good to the audience. So what have we learnt? It’s nice having a slower paced life rather than frenetic pressure. Zoom etc makes working from home more viable than we thought. Far less traffic is a godsend and the air feels cleaner. The garden’s looking amazing in the sunshine. We can get so many ‘home’ things done. Fashion’s not that important. We know how courageous and valuable our NHS is. Celebrities at home are no different to us. We’ll know what to do when the next pandemic comes. And possibly most important of all, we know if we sleep walk into a poor, corrupt Parliament people will die and our kids will pay for it for decades.

Yesterday I watched the final race in the 2016 British Superbikes series. It was a titanic struggle between two guys showing ultimate skill, commitment and bravery. The winner was drained and in tears and the loser was the first to congratulate him. They had brought out the best in each other. It’s like that in sport; it’s honest. Our Parliament is corrupt because it’s not like that in our politics. It has become, ‘who can dupe the populous best’, and honesty can’t win at that game.

Get Cummings Done.

One can only imagine the Dom/Boris conversation. ‘She’s coming down with it/ We can’t do without you/ Can I take her to her mothers?/ Of course dear boy.’ One could also imagin a news headline the following day, ‘Advisor’s family rushed to grandparents by official car to safeguard government.’ But true to DC’s way he opted to do it himself. I imagine he sees himself as a Bletchley Park back-room operative making history without being a visible part of it. He’d cracked the code of British political propaganda, the three word phrase, and it’s ‘All gone Pear-shaped.’ (ignore the hyphon) So is there a deeper truth here, that if you live by subterfuge you will die by subterfuge? And the same goes for being too clever by half. The distortions used to win the referendum and elections, the deceptive vacuous assertions that underpin our current government’s political rhetoric are coming face to face with their maker. Dominic Cummings actions on that car journey were best justifiable and at worst immaterial but the public outcry of genuine anger is palpable, if unfathomable by Conservative ministers. It’s a reaction to the rank puss of their own disingenuousness; the oily smell of a dead body. But it’s their time in the sun, their culmination, each one clinging to the lead Lilo of the office they’d so long dreamt of. Yes they’re out of their depth but the British public could forgive that. Being deceived, duped, lied to and treated as stupid we won’t forgive, especially by those ‘who serve us’ in public office. So could the man who handed power to the Conservatives have driven it away in 220 miles? Can we be saved from the UK being the 53^rd US state with Boris as State governor rather than our own PM? Can Keir Starmer hold the dagger of calm truth to the throat of this gang of rogue boys? Series two will be out in the fall, sorry autumn. And now to the commercial break.

The Other Pandemic.

We all know the words; dishonesty, duplicity, deception, spin, misinformation etc, all the million names we have for lying. Honesty is speaking and acting on what you know to be true irrespective of repercussions.

Ever since the human brain expanded to cope with our complex socialisation we have had a dilemma, to act for the common good or for our own personal advantage by means of deception. Deception is our unique invention as a species, at least at the levels we employ it. As such it defines our social order from the rich and powerful to the turf wars of drug gangs and the millions in-between. it’s that part of our brain that asks, “How do I get the better of the rest?” In our many hundreds of years of history this question has been played out like a contagious virus many million times. It’s hardly a coincidence then that we’re experiencing two pandemics at the same time, one the Coronavirus and two a pandemic of untruths where the ‘healthy’ truth is almost dead and buried by an explosion of duplicity. This non-coincidence is because at every stage in its progression Coronavirus has been aided by our growing capacity for falsehood.

One can condemn lying on a moral level as we’ve done for many years, but when the escalating effects of it could well lead us to extinction by virus, global warming and environmental destruction the result becomes far more explicit than a debatable moral judgement. Basically we have thought and still think ‘we can get away with it’, but this humanity changing circumstance is proving we can’t, not any longer. But it’s hard for those who prosper by lieing to throw off that protective cloak: Profits may suffer, I might lose my job or be crucified on social media, my country might be weakened, I might lose popularity, I’m frightened; all things that appear to require multiple layers of dishonesty to continue. In my own lifetime I have seen this pandemic grow as dishonesty becomes the bedrock of success and the avoidance of failure, from the selling of chocolate to the acquisition of wealth and propagation of state power: all based on deception. The problem and the reason for our jeopardy is that that thing out there called reality only works on truth, it is it, it defines it. And when we shout, “No this is the truth” when it isn’t is like a little kid fighting a bear; the poor thing ain’t never going to win the argument, and likely as not will die. And reality has way less sympathy than a bear. So while we’re busy fighting the Coronavirus as if our life depends on it could we also formulate a vaccine to expunge dishonesty?

Quiz of the Week.

What do you call a bosom buddy of Donald Trump? OK what do you call a person who engineered Brexit to further his own career? No? Right, what do you call a guy who’s trying to make out he’s the second coming of Winston Churchill? What do you call a fallacious falanderer? Really still not got it? OK what do you call a man who calls a situation unprecedented when experts have been warning him about it for at least four years that it’s going to happen? What do you call a chap who’s been underfunding and quietly selling the NHS off to US health companies? No? I thought that might give it away. Right, OK what do you call a guy who comes across as a befuddled buffoon? So what do you call this person who is a befuddled buffoon? Oh come on I thought you might give it away! OK what do you call a befuddled buffoon who uses his position to lie to the British people? And downgrades Coronavirus from a dangerous pandemic to a general flue so the NHS front line can be given poorer PP equipment and get ill and sometimes die to mask his government’s failure to stockpile the proper PPE? Oh come on you should have got it by now. OK, he doesn’t possess a comb? He says he’s following expert advice when the WHO and numerous experts say he’s wrong? He promotes a friend to Health Minister who has no experience in that area? He’s going to pay out billions of our money and expecting us to thank him for his generosity? He’s been through a near death experience and not learnt a thing? Right that’s it, the quiz is off. If you can’t be bothered to try I’m wasting my time. But here’s a taster of next week’s quiz. Who told everybody you can inoculate yourself against Corvid19 by drinking bleach and sticking a torch up your arse?

Matt and the Nation’s Picasso.

Matt Hancock’s previous experience is in computer software, economics, and more recently culture and sport, and even more recently health. Dealing with the Coronavirus must be like being asked to fix the nation’s Citroen Picasso when all he’s ever done before is drive one. In panic he calls the AA, Kwik-fit and a local garage. He finds his AA membership has lapsed, Kwick-fit only do tyres and exhausts so he takes it to the garage. He relays the dealership information to the nation, “It’s probably the coil packs or possibly the mass air flow sensor.” Scrabbling for authority not knowing what any of that means, and to deflect any personal blame in case it all goes tits up, he calls in the expert mechanic to the stand. He says we’ve got the coil packs on order but there could be a delay because of the high demand. Matt retakes the helm and says we’re doing all the right thing at all the right times with the authority of a person who’s never heard of them before and says, "Could we have the next slide please." The expert again, “We fitted the coil packs but that didn’t fix it. We’re going to replace the clutch.” Meanwhile other garage mechanics, hearing of the nation’s predicament, suggest it could be an air leak in the throttle body causing the O2 sensor to go off scale. This is reported in the Guardian. Matt refers this suggestion to his mechanic who dismisses it as the work of an idiot as the O2 sensor is in the exhaust and wouldn’t cause the problem. He adds he’s replacing the camshaft and crankshaft sensors and sorting out a small oil leak in that area. A person in Chipping Sodbury says on This Morning that once his Picasso wouldn’t start because a mouse had made a nest in the exhaust pipe. Matt says it’s heartening to hear you’re all trying your best. At the 5pm grilling Evan Davis asks why we didn’t buy a German car and Sir Keir Starmer suggests Brexit was a big mistake and that car spares are readily available in Europe. Meanwhile Evan further suggests the EGR valve may be stuck from carbon build up and has the government cleaned it? Matt passes that one to the mechanic, the only one out of the three who knows what it is. “Did that while we were fitting a new alternator.” Evan, “And the cam belt?” “What about it?” asked the mechanic. “Well er is it still holding the cams up?” Mechanic, “Yes its fine and the cam braces are fine too.” Evans thanks him for the extra information. The mechanic finishes with, “This problem wouldn’t have occurred if you’d had it regularly serviced.” With thanks to Edmouse for the technical information.

A Virus Methodology.

The government are doing their best, poor things, which isn’t great because they think they have to govern, and governing means, “We must tell the imbecilic wretches what to do. Without us it would be chaos.” Well it is chaos and the imbecilic wretches are doing a fine job thank you very much.

Lets pretend the public are intelligent (which we are) and we’re prepared to do what’s needed to beat this virus. (which we have proved) OK we all know our local area and could exist in a defined area of streets containing say2,000 people, like a postcode. That’s 30,000 areas country wide. The government defines these areas and says from a certain date, say 1^st May, you must be prepared to not go outside your area for 14 days whilst maintaining your current lockdown conditions. Each area includes a shop or depot, chemist and doctor. This defines two levels of quarantine, households (1 to~4) and areas (2,000). In the 14 day period individuals must notify symptoms. Areas with no symptoms are assumed clean and in areas showing symptoms all individuals are tested and carriers extracted. The household quarantine will identify those possibly contaminated, and any possible cross contamination outside it explored. These two levels of quarantine provide an overall manageable number of areas each containing locally manageable household units. Under the current lockdown conditions the roughly twenty million household units each able to cross contaminate in undefined ways is chaotic, and with limited testing it will remain chaotic. The second level of isolation identifies carriers within boundaries and focuses action where it’s needed. If in the first round 50% of areas are clean and carriers identified in the other 50% extracted, in the next 14 days there would probably be another 30% clean. We are relatively quickly focusing on 20% of the population, or 6,000 areas. After 6 weeks the virus is definable and limited to say 5% of the population or 1,500 areas. With the government and the public in these areas focused on eradication the virus has nowhere to go. All the while experts are gaining data, the government is dealing in manageable numbers and the public are included and active in the process. Our limited capacity to test individuals is focused where it can do most good.

If this was actioned 1^st week in March we’d be 7 weeks in and dealing with less than 5% of the population and maybe two weeks away from eradication. As it is we have 3 more weeks and will still only have the curves of tested cases and deaths to go on.
These numbers are plucked out of the air but it defines a possible methodology far better than what we’re currently doing.

Lockdown- That’s it!

News at, well basically the C word any time on Radio 4. Interview; woman kneeling outside care home talking to her 90+ grandma, her bed rolled appropriately, on the phone through a window. Lovely grandma and they ended singing ‘We’ll meet again...’ That was it. Basically the poor old dear will be in lockdown while there’s contagious people people still running around. When is that going to be? Yes there are vulnerable people, the gov is supposed to have sent us all a letter so they know who we are, though I haven’t received mine yet. Meanwhile our collective future is crumbling before our eyes, which I have to admit has some positives to it: the stocks of summer fashions will all be going straight into landfill. But, Bolero Hot Pants aside, this current situation is bad for everyone. Enter the Stiffmouse solution. End the lockdown today but give the over seventy fives and other vulnerables cart-blanch to have a field day. Give us each a few grand, nah a hundred grand, free tickets to Saturday Night Takeaway, an evening with a star of our choice, exemption from speeding tickets, and a new vehicle. Honestly it wouldn’t cost that much. Most of us would be pushed to spend ten before I had a coronary from meeting Sandra Bullock or wrapping my new Ducati round a tree. And the rest would go to my kids and straight into a new house building boom. We’d all go out happy as Larry on a new batch of memories.
And the guy I saw today ‘kinda’ running down the road in shorts looking every inch he’d never exercised a day in his life before could go back to his lethargic ways.