Fail to plan, plan to fail

In 1854, English Physician, John Snow, was alarmed by a cholera outbreak in Soho, so he mapped the infections.

Snow later used a dot map to illustrate the cluster of cholera cases around the pump. He also used statistics to illustrate the connection between the quality of the water source and cholera cases. He showed that homes supplied by the Southwark and Vauxhall Waterworks Company, which was taking water from sewage-polluted sections of the Thames, had a cholera rate fourteen times that of those supplied by Lambeth Waterworks Company, which obtained water from the upriver, cleaner Seething Wells. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Snow)

In doing so Snow showed where the infections were, and that employees of a brewery who drunk pre-boiled water or low alcohol by volume beer, were also unaffected.

So having good, accurate data can help control and eliminate an outbreak.

The UK is now 6 months into COVID and has no accurate data on local outbreaks. Without a trace and trace on a local and national level, there will never control. The alternative is shielding.

High risk groups will have to shielded, be under virtual house arrest until the disease either peters out of there is a vaccine. Several newspapers were briefed that shielding might be extended to all over 50s. You read that right. Because the Government can't arrange a working track and trace.

Again, this will cripple the economy and force many more to be furloughed, or if the money runs out, lose their homes.

And remember this is because the Government didn't want to use off the shelf open source programming, because they wanted the data collected to be stored and used by central Government. And just as a coincidence, COVID data is now reported directly to The Cabinet Office, where Cummings and his friends from Vote Leave can misuse it to their heart's content.

I know I should like a conspiracy theorist, and it gives me no pleasure from knowing this, but this happened the same week Trump made sure State infections were reported to the White House rather than the CDC. Hmmmm.

Should we trust The Cabinet Office to log and publish infection rates, even if those rates were to show how ineffective the Government was doing? And what will they do with the data collected, which is personal and can identify the user? I wouldn't trust Cummings to tell the time let alone have him access my personal data, even through a partially working track and trace system or to log infection rates locally, regionally or nationally. There has to be independence, otherwise they will just make shit up.

Meanwhile to legislation or SI to enforce the lockdown in Manchester and areas of Cheshire and West Yorkshire are still to be published. This is government by diktat, the (temporary) removal of fundamental rights to travel and assembly, just taken away with a Tweet with less than three hours notice.

This is not a democratic action.

This is not an emergency, where Parliament is not sitting. We are five months into this emergency, Parliament is sitting, and the removal of rights and passing of legislation should now be through Parliament. I have said it before and will say it again, that once a Government finds it can rule rather than govern, it will be hard to stop. Emergency situations can be cited as reason to pass yet more SIs, and with Brexit coming up at the start of the year, its not hard to see that happening.

Meanwhile, the Financial Times has an article today which explains how expensive and pretty much unworkable mirroring EU regulations standards with UK ones will be in the field of cosmetics.. If the UK drops out of ECHA, then the UK will have to set up their own, but the data which makes it work will have to be obtained, from manufacturers, for thousands of chemicals. One company that makes lipsticks, uses 2000 chemicals, and obtaining "letters of access" for each will cost tens of thousands of pounds, in some cases up to £300,000, with no actual benefit. Multinationals might be able to absorb the costs, smaller ones won't.

Two years ago, Dover MP Charlie Elphicke, was accused of serious assault. He was suspended from the party under the then PM, Theresa May. He was only reinstated last autumn when Johnson became PM and Elphicke was allowed back in to vote for the Government to try to win Commons votes in the run up to the October proposed Brexit. Last week he was found guilty and now faces prison.

Over the weekend it emerged that a 54 MP and former Minister faces three accusations of rape. The whip was not withdrawn for hi and i, as yet, un-named, though social media is alive to his possible identity. The point here being that Johnson and his Government have no shame, no scruples, no Minister is now expected to resign, yet the Mnister's Code of Conduct should still apply. Johnson himself gave the Monarch unlawful advice and his Chief Advsor, Cummings, is still in Contempt of Parliament, and there is no consequences. They carry on regardless. A liar as PM, an evil genius as advisor and now an accused rapist as an MP. Carry on, regardless.