Yes indeed.

Hoping he recovers along with everyone else. It sounds like when you have severe symptoms there isn't much a hospital can do and it largely comes down to how your immune system fights it.

Boris has been cut out from the herd then?

Quote: Teddy Paddalack @ 6th April 2020, 10:52 PM

Good luck to Bojo as I might not agree with a word he says but good luck to the lad in intensive care.

View original

Yes. I've never spoke of him in a positive light but have always known in the back of my mind that I don't dislike the man I dislike how he does his job but then we all have a job that is separate to our family life. Disliking Boris because of his job would be no different to disliking someone because they're a police officer.

Praying for everyone in intensive care.

Here's hoping Boris gets better. I'm not his biggest fan but I don't want anything happening to him.

I feel so upset and shaken by it all that I find myself looking at things rather than taking in what people say.

David Lidington on Newsnight via Skype was very odd. He was on to explain how Government would operate without Boris, having had to step in himself when Mrs May was ill (and, with hindsight, didn't she leave at the right time for her health : she would have been an absolute head case if she had walked from three years of Brexit straight into this).

However, all I picked up on in what is clearly a mansion that he lives in (on the basis that all those sorts of people live in mansions) was a bare light bulb without a shade and a load of sellotape or similar holding up a part of his ceiling. You would have thought that he might have had the sense to broadcast to the nation from a less slobby looking room.

And then "St Thomas' Hospital." That sign outside the building in front of which TV reporters were reporting.

People will argue about this but it should be "St Thomas's". But I'm sure they save lives better than they write.

Rebekah Vardy has had her share of bad press in recent times after being accused by Coleen Rooney of abusing their friendship by supplying private information about her to the press.

However, Rebekah is now having a bit of good press after making an anonymous donation of £10,000 to buy 2000 sets of scrubs for medics battling the coronavirus.

But how do I know this if the donation was anonymous?

I know it because this so-called "anonymous" donation has today been publicised in a large picture-packed article in the Daily Mail.

As Jim Royle might say, "Anonymous my arse!"

You see both versions all the time now but there should be one correct way and St. Thomas' got it right. Yes sorry, there is no requirement whatsoever for a second s to be added but pedants over the decades have needlessly added one to the point of thinking it's needed always. It's not.

Quote: Alfred J Kipper @ 7th April 2020, 1:17 PM

Yes sorry, officially there is no requirement whatsoever for a second s to be added but pedants over the decades have erroneously added one to the point of thinking this version is now right. It's not.

View original

I have always believed that a second s should be added.

The problem is that language changes with time. What was correct last week may be incorrect this week and what is correct this week may be incorrect next week.

I am most certainly not an expert on what today's grammarians consider correct. I gave up all hope for the English language when I read somewhere that "literally" may now be used to mean "not literally literally but for the purpose of emphasis, don't you know?"

Anyway, if a tragedy is the fault of the coronavirus, I believe it's correct to say the tragedy was the coronavirus's fault.

I believe it's incorrect (outside the world of poetry) to say "The tragedy was the coronavirus' fault."

As I say, language changes but I have absolutely no doubt that what I say was true when I was younger.

The UK has recorded its highest daily death toll yet with 758 deaths in the last 24 hours.

That brings the running total to 6227.

Victims ranged in age from 23 to 102, and the 23-year-old (along with 28 others) had no underlying health conditions.

Quote: Rood Eye @ 7th April 2020, 2:49 PM

The UK has recorded its highest daily death toll yet with 758 deaths in the last 24 hours..

View original

It's growing exponentially. Until it begins to die down every day will be the highest daily death toll. That's the tragedy of it.

Amended post to avoid controversy as there is no one correct way now, so they say. Both versions are acceptable. The petty pedants's (yes I know) version and the right ones' version.

Yes I know Thomas's is technically and formally correct but it's poor general usage stemming from fussy Victorian pedants who even used full stops in road names. Practical usage deemed it senseless for millions of signs to go up with unnecessary characters.

Do you really think they'd put the wrong wording on a new multimillion pound public building near the Houses of Parliament? The apostrophe has done its job in telling you it's possessive, what letter could possibly follow but an s? so there is no need to add it - Accepted good usage which some pedants find hard to accept.

Quote: Alfred J Kipper @ 7th April 2020, 3:26 PM

Amended post to avoid controversy as there is no one correct way now, so they say. Both versions are acceptable. The petty pedants's (yes I know) version and the right ones' version.

Yes I know Thomas's is technically and formally correct but it's poor general usage stemming from fussy Victorian pedants who even used full stops in road names. Practical usage deemed it unnecessary for millions of signs to go up with unnecessary characters.

Do you really think they'd put the wrong wording on a new multimillion pound public building near the Houses of Parliament? The apostrophe has done it's job in telling you it's possessive, what letter could possibly follow but an s? so there is no need to add it - Accepted good usage which some pedants find hard to accept.

View original

Ha ha,

Thanks Alfred. I read your first post before it was altered and after it was altered and your second one. Very grateful. The most important point is that we must consider these things whatever happens with the virus as they could easily be lost in all the shallow hubbub about how to obtain food and exercise etc. Whatever our opinions, we are both on the right path. And yes. I do think there is a link between sloppy language and vulnerability to the virus so we are promoting health.

In other news:

Google has banned Mr Icke's videos linking Covid-19 with 5G following attacks on the installation of 5G masts as so-called essential work. I am guessing he will say that this proves the 5G technology is truly different when he has been saying for years that television and personal computer waves have been frying our brains and was allowed to do so.

Chris Whitty - A Strange Absence of Media Scrutiny:

There has unquestionably been something odd here. A bit of a sleight of hand perhaps? The story goes as follows. Whitty declared that he started to experience symptoms which were characteristic of Covid-19 on 26 March. He went into self isolation. Yesterday he was back at the Press Briefing alongside Dominic Raab. A disappearance of 11 days. That in time terms exceeds the advice to the public to self isolate for 7 days when showing Covid-19 symptoms. So far, so good.

Except (also) yesterday I dug out an article from the New Scientist. It explained that while the alleged virus is at its most contagious before symptoms present and then for the first few days of symptoms, it can still be contagious up to 14 days after symptoms cease. Well, it is nowhere near 14 days since Whitty's symptoms ceased. In fact, 14 days is mathematically impossible seeing it is only 11 even from when he said they started. It's more like 4 days at a guess.

Given that Raab now has a more significant national role, I was concerned about the proximity of Whitty to Raab so soon and took this up directly in a phone call with a Press Agency contact. Being a wise old owl, my contact said "ah yes, good question, but did Whitty actually have Covid-19?" I said "well, I don't know". He said he would check. I said I would check. So then in everything in the media I read nothing was said about whether he did or he didn't. Furthermore, he wasn't asked.

From this, I worked out that it all fitted in very well with the position that the public are in. When isolating for 7 days of symptoms, they are not in the main tested. The heavy inference in the silence over Whitty's condition is that just like an ordinary member of the public he was never tested too. But given his role it would be extremely hard if not impossible for many people to believe that he wasn't tested himself. So that in turn leads on to a couple of additional questions.

Are we to assume that he didn't after all have Covid-19 which is why he is back in the same room as the First Minister? He just can't say that he knows he didn't have it because then the public would know that he was tested in circumstances where the public themselves don't have tests? Or that he simply wants to give the impression of having had it so that he receives accolades for having pulled through?

OR

Are we expected to believe that he did have Covid-19 or that he just doesn't know in which cases why are his actions not in sync with the New Scientist warnings about some ongoing contagiousness for 14 days after the symptoms even if they are in sync with advice to the public? And why for that matter is the advice to the public not in sync with what the New Scientist says? We will probably never know!

According to reports, medical researchers looking for ways to battle the coronavirus are having considerable success with a vaccine that's been around for a hundred years and has been very successful in treating tuberculosis.

It's known as the BCG vaccine!

BCG - do you get it?

PS. The above is not a joke: it's true.

Quote: Rood Eye @ 7th April 2020, 9:21 PM

According to reports, medical researchers looking for ways to battle the coronavirus are having considerable success with a vaccine that's been around for a hundred years and has been very successful in treating tuberculosis.

It's known as the BCG vaccine!

BCG - do you get it?

PS. The above is not a joke: it's true.

View original

And it's a great way to get off swimming.

Is this the same BCG that was compulsory in school in 1975 and which left many of us merely watching chlorine for three months while picking at the scab of our allergic rashes?

And if so, is it now safe for me/us to go out and play?

All this staying out of the public gene pool by staying in to watch paint dry has made me deeply ambitious.

I want to break the record for the person who has dived in to life save the greatest number of pyjamas.

FACT CHECK

In the UK, all schoolchildren between 10 and 14 were injected with the vaccine between 1953 and 2005. Boris Johnson was aged between 10 and 14 in the years 1974 to 1979. He currently lives at St Thomas'S Hospital - in intensive care.