UKC

So what’s happening about that then? Seems to be old news. 

Cummings had eradicated it......the news about it that is. 

Wait 2 weeks from today and it will be back in the news as a second spike comes in to play. 

Checking out the Yorkshire dales carparks website it seems all but Hawse is either full or very busy. 

We're still waiting for the apparent second spike from VE Day.

My guess is there’ll be murmur of an upward trend for a day or two at some point which will be leapt upon with relish by the media and the social media doom-mongers - similar to when Germany’s R value hovered around 1 for a couple of days because of an outbreak at a meat processing plant. 

I'm not a fisher but I understand the basics of playing a fish. You don't try to pull the big ones in outright. Play them till they're tired - then they come in easily.

After the 11th wave of virus fear has swept the land and the public are depressed economically and emotionally - all will beg the government to hand out the big Vax - and so what - we all approve of vaccinations right?

There's the catch - the virus and the vaccine are mere tools used to impose even greater contentious issues of control and surveillance. It's essential to look both deeply and circumspectly to understand where we are headed and react before we're played out - because even the biggest fish come in easily when they're tired.  

There has been one in Weston Super Mare, and today they've got no more room in their hospital.

That's not what's reported, which is that there is space but because of the risk of spreading coronavirus no more patients are being accepted. 

I'm not sure we're going to see a second spike soon unless we all go back to the environments in which we spread it - indoors at social gatherings, restaurants, offices, workspaces, public transport etc. You can look at Iran for an example of this. 

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/daily-covid-cases-3-day-average?country=...

The Weston incident is, I believe, due to a combination of outbreaks in care homes, and in the hospital itself.

VE day was mainly groups of friends getting together within their own community 

Nurse! He's off his meds again!

https://www.bbc.com/news/health-52715571

All under surveillance - 7 billion suspects

Released in 2019 - this is a french documentary on cutting-edge Artifial IntelligenceI facial-rcognition surveillance developed in Israel and China, and with a special focus on the city of Nice in France after terrorist action in 2016. Subtitled english, 1h30. ARTE is a mainstream media producer in France.

No worries huh ? Yes ! esp for persons 'of a colour' accuracy drops by 10%. And if one day a programmed drone is hunting down a suspect - I would rather not be in the vicinity - there is a defined rate of accuracy for persons colored or white.

https://www.arte.tv/fr/videos/083310-000-A/tous-surveilles-7-milliards-de-s...

Are you one of those conspiracy nutters?

Facial recognition systems?

Hahaha, see through my face mask and tinted eye wear.

Bit of a bummer for the cops who want to roll out nationwide without telling us 😀😀😀

Have the Bosch started shelling again?

And that is related to COVID-19 how...?

Yes, we might be encouraged to install a track and trace app. But we have a choice, and we can uninstall it. Unless, of course, you think we can't. Or that your phone's GNSS receiver is working, even if you disable it. Or turn your phone off.

For the sake of your mental health, stop reading this stuff.

OK, it's not that there's no more room, but they can't cope with the recent increase in number of Covid patients. And many in the NHS are blaming this spike in Weston on the VE day parties down there:

https://www.somersetlive.co.uk/news/somerset-news/weston-hospital-closed-co...

You need to ask, Lemming?

It's so easy to destroy attention and urgency to important issues with humour and ridicule !

But here is the string of evidence which follows surveillance issues during the pandemic for the UK:

And given the enormity of the surveillance powers that we have in the Investigatory Powers Act already, we are talking about the potential for population-level surveillance of devices, tracking, interception, all kinds of powers. The bill will lower the safeguards to using those powers.

https://www.spiked-online.com/2020/03/25/coronavirus-bill-the-greatest-loss...

As we come together to face this unprecedented crisis, it is important to have a long-term view of the measures we are undertaking to combat the virus. These may outlast the crisis and could define what surveillance in a post COVID-19 world looks like. It is important that human rights for all remains at the centre of that vision for the future.

https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2020/04/covid-19-surveillance-threat... 

Responding to reports that facial recognition technology could play a role in Government plans for “immunity passports”

https://www.libertyhumanrights.org.uk/issue/liberty-pandemic-must-not-be-us...

After Brexit the UK has allied itself with the USA so it 's worth looking at the trends which begin there also. Naomi Klein in Screen New Deal:

"So, basically, the idea is China is leaping ahead of the United States, and the only way to fight back is to have a China-style surveillance state (facial recognition using AI) here in the United States."

We are currently in the middle of a global pandemic. This would be the easiest time to introduce all-pervasive surveillance, draconian restrictions on freedom, all enforced rigourously by legislation and police.  This literally is the ideal scenario for everything you appear to fear. 

Looking at China they appear to have pivoted their surveillance armoury on to the crisis, hauling people out of houses to compulsory stays in hospital, locking down cities and districts with martial law, and "disappearing" critics.

What have we had in the UK?

Some guidance that changes on a daily/weekly basis, underpinned by some legislation that has more holes than a Swiss cheese, enforced by a police service with an "engage, encourage, explain" approach, backed up with the iron fist of an...err.. thirty quid fixed penalty.

'backed up with the iron fist of an...err.. thirty quid fixed penalty.'

Refundable.

OK comrade, I'm sold.  I'll rush to the shops for the tin foil, and meet you on the barricades.  Wot we doing next?

"Opinion".

In China the trend towards 'digital totalitarianism' has progressed alarmingly since 2012, so whats happened recently will not shock any chinese citizen.

https://www.journalofdemocracy.org/articles/the-road-to-digital-unfreedom-p...

The point is - about where we are now - UK, France, is to raise conscience of the trends in order that they can be defeated before they are too strong to stop.

A basic index of trends in USA and many western countries is wealth polarisation. The fewer rich accumulate more wealth than the poor masses. The rich become fearful of the masses increasing the need for control. They instate new laws (easy at a moment of crisis) to implement such powers - and so democracy is eroded.

It's not difficult to see how police - the forces of law and order - are trapped in the middle. Government pressured from above by the power of wealth and lobbies fighting back to repress reaction of the masses, as they see the weakening of democracy. It quickly becomes 'reasonable' to adopt new means available to keep law and order - further backed by the votes of industry which is ready to supply.

Listen to just the 1st 10mins of this vid and you'll quickly get the picture - Noam Chomsky - Requiem for the American Dream

youtube.com/watch?v=wp6Rbgv1MLg&

"The point is" - this is literally an authoritarian state's wet dream scenario, it's what all the "thin end of the wedge" libertarian's have been screaming gleefully about for decades: the perfect excuse for draconian limitations on citizens etc etc.

What have we actually seen?

The UK struggling to even implement and enforce a £30 fixed penalty, and mass protests from largely right wing crowds in the US at the "vast" infringement of their civil liberties by asking them NOT to go to work, and to wear a mask...

The complaints about the "West"- as usual, for some strange reason, focussed on only the US and UK - seems to ignore the fact that for example Spain and France have had much harder lockdowns, and much more stringent enforcement.

If you look at Italy's downcurve which is very similar to ours (bar the wobble at the top when we had a partial sort of request to lock down ish) I think their approach was unnecessary and indeed in Spain's case my view is that it was institutionalised child abuse (as they banned any under 18 from going out at all for a good 2 months).  Allowing local exercise alone or with family made barely any difference to the downcurve so allowing it was the correct approach.

It might not have been the correct approach had the disease been much more infectious like say measles where you can catch it just by going into a room where someone who had it was 5 minutes ago.  But this is not measles and R0 has always been understood to be about 3, similar to flu and the cold.

But speaking with regard to enforcement, we've always had a different relationship with Government and Police in the UK than many other European countries, and to be honest long may that last.  It's very much represented by the relative lack of weaponry, but it's a lot more than just that.  (Do you feel the same way, out of interest, or would you rather the European relationship where the Police are more a thing to fear?)