However, it’s not half as nuts as a PM sticking his head in the sand & simply not responding. This is epic incompetence unfolding.
Perhaps more importantly, the state of our hospitals shows we’re well beyond the March/April peak.
And that first wave peak happened 2+ weeks after full, overwhelmingly compliant lockdown began on March 16th.
We have nothing like that state now - and a more infectious strain.
The key aspect here is that once you exceed hospital capacity, the death rate jumps because otherwise “avoidable deaths” do not get avoided.
Gah. Full lockdown started on March 23rd. I tried to delete and repost that second tweet in the thread but Twitter/Wifi was a random bitch to me tonight - just seen original is still there.
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@afneil They told me that repeatedly... meeting after meeting.
I told them even if they won on that basis, that establishes no positive legacy for why we should stay in EU & build. It offered no future. They didn’t listen. They told me they were going to get it over the line & be done.
@afneil Also, they were utterly wrong with that conjecture.
They told all groups to echo their core message of Brexit = economic destruction- and not to bother with positive “complex” arguments. But from what I could see in all my interactions, people wanted to *understand*...
@afneil ... and we were not providing any explanation of why things were how they were- what was building well, how we’d build the EU science programme, single market, network of global trade deals— where this could all lead if only the UK stepped up and led our continent...
He also in 2017/2018, when challenged on what EU laws he’d scrap, produced a little list from his pocket... the top item being the Clinical Trials Directive.
However, the CTD had already been upgraded to the Clinical Trials Regulation in 2014. That was his top item. / thread
In fact, that revision was led by a British MEP (Dame Glenis Willmott), with huge input from British industry and it was roundly praised for all the positive changes it brought in, including by Cancer Research UK and AllTrials, which had been demanding increased transparency.
If you want to read more on this area, I recommend this article by my colleague Prof @martinmckee from 2016:
Good article. And so the “who won” spin battle begins.
UK victories are cosmetic, however: “The EU appears to have secured a deal which allows it to retain nearly all of the advantages it derives from its trading relationship with the U.K.”
The quote continues: “...while giving it the ability to use regulatory structures to cherry pick among the sectors where the U.K. had previously enjoyed advantages in the trading relationship,”
This is exactly right. EU know the services is the trickier part & retain the levers
So the UK have negotiated based on ECJ, fish and tariffs...
That suits the EU fine. With zero tariffs, that’s to EU advantage as they sell more goods to us.
With services, we sell much more to them- and that is where we have now utterly lost control of dynamics.
The EMA started a rolling review of preliminary data from Pfizer trials on Oct. 6. The MHRA (UK regulator) launched its own rolling review on Oct. 30 -- and analysed less data than made available to the EMA.
The most compelling line in here is: "two wrongs don't make a right".
To win the 20% who were No in '14, Remain in '16 & Yes now, there'd need to be a public admission that Brexit was bad, a path back to Europe's family, and Labour to champion Union.
I’m partly posting this to sample the reactions from Scottish colleagues.
I’d find it really hard to tell a Scot that they should go through with Brexit with England, when that goes against their vote and they’ve been allowed no moderation of it.
Also...
How can any Brexiteer have the gall to tell the Scots to stay in a Union - and make that argument utilising all the rationales that they themselves rejected?
It’s a level of sheer hypocrisy that’s asking to be punished.