I have written extensively about this callous approach. After Boris Johnson made the U-turn on the new report, it was Mark Rutte to follow suite and DENYING he ever thought of that approach. A€€holes, do the math!

The Conservative timeline of the pandemic was fully screwed up. So was it by Cheater-In-Chief Donald Trump. Three of a kind.

'Sapere aude'

Something has gone badly wrong in the way the UK has handled Covid-19. I know Chris Whitty, the chief medical officer, and Patrick Vallance. I have the utmost respect for both. They have had the services of some of the most talented researchers in the world to draw on. But somehow there was a collective failure among politicians and perhaps even government experts to recognise the signals that Chinese and Italian scientists were sending. We had the opportunity and the time to learn from the experience of other countries. For reasons that are not entirely clear, the UK missed those signals. We missed those opportunities.

In due time, there must be a reckoning. I sat with the director general of the World Health Organization, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, in Geneva in February. He was in despair. Tedros had been criticised for not calling a public health emergency of international concern sooner. But when he did and when he asked for the modest sum of $675m to help the WHO combat the growing global pandemic his pleas were ignored.

If I might offer the good doctor an explanation: British Exceptionalism: We have the BEST DOCTORS AND SCIENTISTS. We have nothing to learn from foreigners - Europeans or darkies. Sound familiar? It is the same mindset that underlies Brexit.

Index of Frank's Diaries

I have sorted the table by deaths rather than cases because the number of cases found depends on the level of testing being carried out. The USA has only recently commenced widespread testing and the UK only tests where hospital admissions are required.

Wiki has an excellent table (snap shot above) where you can click on each country to get a more detailed analysis of cases by country.

Case and mortality numbers are generally increasing by about 30% per day (implying a doubling every 3 days) but the overall global rate of increase is being reduced by the success of China and some Asian states in curtailing the pandemic.

The effects of school, pub and restaurant closures, social distancing, and remote working are not expected to become apparent until a week or so after their widespread introduction. Ireland had a 50% increase today - probably a consequence of a major ramping up of the number of tests being completed.

Index of Frank's Diaries

That said, I have a dread in the bottom of my gut that these measures are going to turn into an electoral disaster in the USA where the issue was politicized from the start - regardless of the effect on the actual progress of the disease. If ANYONE gets sick and dies, then it's far too easy to say that everything was a waste of time, and that line of argument is going to be pretty damn convincing to overwhelming masses of voters who are sick of all this disease stuff and just want things to go back to normal.

In a way, the more effective they are at preventing absolute disaster, the worse the backlash is going to be. If people see dead bodies on the streets and have their entire family die, well, they will realize just how serious the situation actually was ... but a disaster minimized through draconian measures will just leave everyone convinced that it wasn't such a big deal in the first place.

It's a lose-lose that can only be survived, politically, by avoiding it in the first place, by having a political culture in which these sort of things are just not politicized, in which the warning of epidemic prevention experts are not dismissed and/or attacked as partisan sabotage, and in which people are routinely advised by everyone in any position of power and by the media to trust expert advice. That ship sailed thirty years ago, and now doom is inevitable.

President Trump said he is considering "repercussions" for the Chinese government's handling of coronavirus, after days of placing the blame for the virus on the country. https://t.co/CsKmXiRee8

— CNN (@CNN) March 20, 2020

MD National Guard in Bal'more City waiting for assignment from the mayor who ostensibly is waiting for COVID19 test kits which would be administered off-premises by the two "anchor" hospital personnel, UMMS and Hopkins Medicine (awarded private police license by MD General Assembly last year); or would assume food distribution managed by schools and community group volunteers. Currently, 11 confirmed cases in Bal'more. In this respect, Mayor Young is ahead of the Obama US mil tri-state Ebola Marketing Campaign 2014.

As we all know, Bal'more is poised to emulate Italian patriotic spirit and solidarity in the face of adversity, minus spirit and solidarity of unions, a NHS, and balconies.

The Irish @DefenceForces are building a #coronavirus test centre on the banks of Dublin's river Liffey. pic.twitter.com/YjgFaECFqm

— Darran Marshall (@DarranMarshall) March 21, 2020

Ireland has put up a firewall between access to healthcare and the equivalent of the Home Office. This means that if you come forward for healthcare or welfare you will not be arrested, detained or deported if you are undocumented. The UK needs to do this urgently. #COVID19 https://t.co/2pB8YeN8pg

— Minnie Rahman (@minnierahman) March 20, 2020

Obviously Apple would have to agree to drop their appeal, something he suggests they might not be too averse to doing in the current emergency situation - especially given they may not see that money again for several years even if they win their Appeal against the Commission ruling that they had under paid taxes due.

Certainly there is no harm in the government asking. Apple hardly need the money, and the PR benefit of conceding such a large amount of cash for humanitarian purposes would be considerable. On the other hand, it is probably not a precedent they would like to set.

However attitudes to corporate tax avoidance have hardened very considerably in recent years and Apple could take the view that that cash is all but lost anyway. Time for an enlightened pragmatic view?

Trump will not be pleased as he has his own eyes on profits earned by US corporates abroad. But who cares what Trump thinks any more? Clare County Council have just refused him permission to build a sea wall at his golf resort in Doonbeg.

Index of Frank's Diaries

Downing Street has rejected as "a highly defamatory fabrication" a claim that Boris Johnson's chief adviser, Dominic Cummings, initially argued against strict measures to contain coronavirus in a view summarised as "if that means some pensioners die, too bad".

In an unusual on-the-record denunciation, a Downing Street spokesman said the claims about Cummings' viewpoint, made in a Sunday Times article, had not been put to No 10 in advance and contained "invented" quotes.

The report claimed that at one private event at the end of February, Cummings outlined then government's strategy at the time in a way that was summarised by some present as "herd immunity, protect the economy, and if that means some pensioners die, too bad."

The allegations, which have been widely shared online, connect with wider criticisms that the government response to the virus was initially too weak, based on a notion that rather than limiting its spread, enough people could be allowed to contract it to give population-wide "herd immunity".

While the phrase "herd immunity" was used by government figures such as Sir Patrick Vallance, the chief scientific adviser, No 10 has denied it was ever a tactic. However, the use of the phrase illustrated initial tensions within government over how to balance the economic impact of a full national lockdown against the potential number of deaths from the virus.

According to the Sunday Times report, the key moment came on 12 March when a group of government experts gathered to examine modelling of the spread of the virus carried out by academics at Imperial College London and elsewhere.

This predicted that if no action was taken more than half a million people would die, and that even some limited mitigation efforts would only halve this. The Sunday Times report said this changed the mind of Cummings, who before had been an adherent of the herd immunity idea.

After the 12 March meeting, Cummings changed his view and became one of the strongest advocates in government for tough restrictions to curb the spread of the virus, the Sunday Times said. It quoted one anonymous senior Conservative as saying: "He's gone from `herd immunity and let the old people die' to `let's shut down the country and the economy'."

I have no idea whether there is any substance to the No. 10 claim that some quotes were fabricated, but wouldn't it be ironic if the Johnson regime were to become victim to such journalistic tactics, given that BoJo virtually invented the genre.

Index of Frank's Diaries

A sort of wildlife market, if you will. https://t.co/ahD2zoL1rn

— Jacob Bacharach (@jakebackpack) March 23, 2020