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Covid variant: Continent cut off

Predicted Mail or Telegraph headline tomorrow. Funny how things repeat themselves.

Alan Clark ● 2138d12 Comments

An early Christmas present for some Brexiteers

Andrew Jones ● 2138d

We've just spent five years at war with each other, devalued the £ by 20%, savaged our economy, quit the world's largest free trade zone, created a mountain of red tape & flushed £200bn down the drain to 'control our borders'. 6 EU states just did it in 24 hours with a press release. And if any are wondering why France, Italy, Belgium, Netherlands, Ireland and Germany have banned travel from the UK, but the EU as a whole hasn't -- it's because EU member states are sovereign and make decisions independently of each other, who would have ever thought?

Huw Burford-Taylor ● 2137d

Schengen Area, signifies a zone where 26 European countries, abolished their internal borders, for the free and unrestricted movement of people, in harmony with common rules for controlling external borders and fighting criminality by strengthening the common judicial system and police cooperation.That didn't last long

James Roy ● 2137d

For those wondering why France, Italy, Belgium, Netherlands, Ireland and Germany have banned travel from the UK, but the EU as a whole hasn’t – it’s because EU member states are sovereign and make decisions independently of each other.

Paul Scullion ● 2137d

Brexiteers got what they have been asking for. An early Christmas present indeed.

Anthony Tan ● 2137d

Sounds more like a school kids zoom session moaning about homework. Love to know the thoughts and headlines if boris had done the same the other way around. Yep,that blooming us and them scenario again.

Julian Pavey ● 2137d

I’m not moaning Julian, I’m afraid I just couldn’t resist the obvious quip.

Andrew Jones ● 2137d

Yes. Us and them. Like the Express headline about Macron ‘caving in’. The protagonists of us and them are right wing newspapers, this Tory party and the majority of Brexit supporters. Us and them is what won them the referendum. No?

Alan Clark ● 2137d

Alas, when we really all need to be in this together.

Vivienne Cox ● 2137d

Interesting views from one of Germany’s top virologists “Christian Drosten, Angela’s Merkel’s pandemic guru, says the mutation is almost certainly spreading in Germany already and he is sceptical about the data interpretation by Prof Neil Ferguson’s team at Imperial. “I am not particularly worried,” he told Deutschlandfunk, taking a gentle swipe at headline bio-hysteria.Prof Drosten is careful not to violate scientific etiquette but he came as close as you can to rebuking the British Government – and by implication the modellers on the NERVTAG committee – for pushing a conclusion beyond the known evidence. He questions the pseudo-quantification behind claims that the new strain is 70% more transmissible. “There are too many unknown strains to say something like that,” he told Covid reporter Kai Kupferschmidt. ”Also reports the strain was seen in Brazil 8 months ago...All in the ‘right wing’ press so can be easily ignored I suspect.https://lockdownsceptics.org/2020/12/22/latest-news-231/#border-chaos-continueshttps://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/12/21/supercharged-covid-mutation-spotted-brazil-last-spring/https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9075233/Top-German-virologist-plays-fears-Britains-mutant-strain.html

Russell Pearson ● 2136d

Fwiw, I was listening to a Swedish virologist on BBC World Service today and he pointed out that the new mutation has already been identified in other countries.However, since the UK has by far the best sequencing capacity in Europe (I think he hesitated from saying "best in the world"), we were exceptionally well-placed to identify it and its spread.I'm not quite sure what to make of that, but it's nice to know that we're best at something.

Richard Cathcart ● 2136d

Similar reporting in the Guardian toohttps://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/dec/21/european-experts-urge-caution-over-new-covid-mutation-uk

Russell Pearson ● 2136d