Category: #uk

Social media has named a fly as the winner of last night’s US vice-presidential debate. The winged insect settled for around two minutes in Mike Pence’s hair, as the vice president was battling with Democrat Kamala Harris. “Pence is so full of sh!t [sic], a fly literally landed on his head,” wrote one tweeter.

Duck wins Instagram world record

A duck called Ben Afquack has entered the Guinness World Records book for the most followers on Instagram for a duck. Ben, who lives in St. Paul, Minnesota with his owner Derek Johnson, had a total of 79,002 followers at the last count. Derek celebrated the record-breaking feat by eating pizza. Meanwhile, Ben had some mealworms.

Silence of the Lambs house up for sale

The house made famous as the home of serial killer Buffalo Bill in the movie Silence of the Lambs is on sale for just under $300,000 (£231,910). The Pennsylvania home, originally built in 1910, has already had some interest, the current owners said. Encouraging viewers to take a look around, they added: “It’s way nicer in person.”

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The Week’s daily round-up highlights the five best opinion pieces from across the British and international media, with excerpts from each.

1. John Crace in The Guardian

on a downtrodden Britain

Boris Johnson’s tone-deaf lies fall flat as UK grows up

“The country has grown up in the time of coronavirus. Tens of thousands have died; hundreds of thousands have become ill; millions are feeling frightened and insecure about their jobs. Yet even though the prime minister has had time to move on, he appears to have learned nothing. Boris may himself have wound up in intensive care, yet he still wants to be Mr Good Time Guy, with gags about losing weight and arm-wrestling. But it’s becoming more and more of a struggle. His eyes that used to sparkle from the acclaim are now mere dead hollows. It’s possible that not even Boris believes in Boris. The scepticism is contagious.”

2. David Byler in The Washington Post

on not being ‘afraid’ of Covid-19

This is Trump’s worst tweet ever. No, really.

“The president is playing with fire. Sure, this specific tweet may get swallowed up in the insanity of the news cycle. But the message that Trump fought off the coronavirus and his followers can, too, has already been amplified by voices ranging from Sen. Kelly Loeffler (R-Ga.), who tweeted an edited video of Trump at a professional wrestling match to make that argument, to Fox News. They’re speaking to a huge base of people who trust and support Trump. The drumbeat of this flawed argument, combined with the signals Trump and his supporters and family send by their failures to wear masks at official functions, adds up, sending mixed messages to both his devotees and the broader public and impeding nationwide efforts to fight the virus.”

3. Gavin Mortimer in The Spectator

on a French conundrum

Macron’s fight with the far-left over extremism

“The majority response in France to Macron’s promise to combat Islamic extremism is scepticism. Of the 121,000 people who responded to a poll in the centre-right Le Figaro, 74% believed his attempt will end in failure. Not so much because of an unwillingness on Macron’s part but because much of the apparatus for fighting Islamic extremism is still dominated by the left. For example, a Pakistani immigrant who last month attacked two journalists outside the former offices of Charlie Hebdo had arrived in France three years ago claiming to be an unaccompanied minor but social services suspected he was older. They sought permission from a child’s court to conduct a medical examination to determine his exact age but were refused.”

4. Pritish Nandy in The New York Times

on Modi tackling the elites

The campaign to silence Bollywood

“India today is like the Mad Hatter’s tea party – partly funny, partly weird – and hidden behind it is an incredibly tragic soliloquy of pain. More than six million confirmed coronavirus cases. About 100,000 deaths. The economy expected to contract by 12%. China trying to take over territory on a disputed border. Yet if you had switched on news television in India in the past two months, you would have found a country obsessed with a singular subject: the taming of Bollywood, supposedly a wild, drug-addled place where horrible things happen to outsiders; India’s Gomorrah, infested with vile liberals and Muslims.”

5. Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett in The Guardian

on male violence in art

The history of art is full of female masters. It’s time they were taken seriously

“The surge of emotion I felt standing in front of Susannah and the Elders – painted by a 17-year-old Artemisia Gentileschi in the same year she was raped by the artist who was hired by her father Orazio to teach her – was as powerful as any I have felt in my life. In it, a nude Susannah twists away from the two old letches with horror and disgust; unlike many of the nudes painted by male artists, her body is not an exercise in containment, static and mannered as though it could have been carved from marble: it is living, moving flesh.”

Any hope that Donald Trump’s hospitalisation with Covid-19 might alter his bullish attitude to the virus were dashed yesterday as the president celebrated his return to the White House by telling Americans to “get out there” without fear of infection.

The message, delivered by a maskless Trump, has alarmed doctors and health workers, who condemned the US leader’s dismissive attitude to a virus that has already killed more than 210,000 of his citizens.

But with the response to the pandemic now a key issue in the presidential election race, some political commentators say his “message of strength” could play well with many voters – and even help him beat Democratic rival Joe Biden in November’s vote.

Energising his base

According to Chicago Tribune columnist Dahleen Glanton, Trump knows exactly how to play to his base”, many of whom are equally dismissive about Covid. And what the president ”needs more than anything if he has any chance of winning re-election is for his people to be energised”.

“He doesn’t care what die-hard anti-Trumpers think of his antics,” says Glanton. “He knows he’ll never get our vote. So like any savvy politician, he’s not wasting time in this final stretch of the campaign trying to win us over.”

The mathematics of the electoral college work in the Republican incumbent’s favour, and mean that even with a substantial loss of the popular vote, Trump could still win if he can get enough support in key swing states.

“It’s a small window of opportunity, but if Trump can siphon a handful of voters away from Biden in the right states, he has a good shot at re-election,” Glanton says.

Stealing the spotlight

Former Republican adviser Hal Lambert points out that Trump is dominating the news agenda – just as he did four years ago against Hillary Clinton – making it “difficult” for Biden to get any coverage.

Speaking to talkRADIO, Lambert said: “I do feel pretty comfortable that President Trump is going to win this and may pick up some states he didn’t win last time.”

Asked about Trump’s personal battle with Covid, Lambert added: “One of the things it’s done is move the cycle back to President Trump 100% of the time. It’s really difficult for Biden to get a message out there when all the focus is on President Trump.”

Projecting strength

To assess how Trump’s reaction to his illness has played with voters, the BBC spoke to people across the US, revealing a range of differing attitudes.

Neil Melton, a construction-project manager from Prairie Village in Kansas, applauded the president for projecting strength. “People want to see that winning spirit,” he told the broadcaster. “They don’t want to live with this Covid lifestyle forever.”

But Paul Kearns-Stanley, a funeral director from Queens, New York, condemned the president’s minimisation of his illness as reckless. “People hear that message and they act on it, and it’s our behaviour that’s going to help us or hurt us now,” Kearns-Stanley said.

In Moorsville, North Carolina, which backed the president in 2016, The Times‘ Washington correspondent Henry Zeffman found Republican voters “in despair over Trump’s antics”.

“I wish Trump would just shut his mouth,” hairdresser Barb Pfefer told Zeffman.

“I’m a Republican, but I won’t vote for the wrong man if the Republican is the wrong man”, she continued, adding that she had considered Trump the “lesser of two evils” but is now not sure.

That verdict was echoed by Cristina Juhasz, who is also pro-Trump but criticised the president’s “stupid” decision to stage a drive-by to greet well-wishers outside Walter Reed military hospital during his three-day stay in the Maryland medical facility.

“Driving past to talk to his supporters. Why did he put our servicemen in danger like that? Sure, he’s wearing a mask but he’s on steroids. Hey, your supporters would rather see you get well than see you in a car,” she said.

Defying the polls

Trump continues to trail his Democratic rival in the polls, but the US president has a knack for defying the projections of pollsters.

Since his inauguration four years ago, “few people seem to have really changed their minds about America’s 45th president,” with his approval ratings moored stubbornly between around 45% and 55%, The Telegraph says. But “having defied political gravity four years ago, the jury’s out as to whether he can do the same again against his new Democrat opponent”.

Polling on the partisan response to the coronavirus offers another insight into what The New York Times calls his “regret-nothing approach” to his infection.

“By many measures, Democrats are still a bit more concerned about the virus outbreak than Republicans,” says FiveThirtyEight, which points to a Civiqs survey that found 65% of Democrats were “extremely concerned” infections in their area, compared with just 21% of Republicans.

But it is a risky gambit for the president to stake his campaign on, with “the partisan divide on these issues that seemed more apparent in early and mid-March… diminishing as Republicans view the virus outbreak more similarly to Democrats and independents”, the polling analysis site adds.

Thousands of health experts and researchers across the world are backing a campaign for coronavirus lockdown restrictions to be ditched in favour of a herd immunity strategy.

The so-called Great Barrington Declaration – an open letter named after the US town where it was written – has also been signed more than 65,000 citizens of countries all over the globe who want members of less vulnerable demographics to be allowed to return to normal life.

However, a new report published from the UK’s independent Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) warns that herd immunity is “irresponsible and unethical to try”.

What do the scientists say?

The Great Barrington Declaration has been signed by experts from a number of UK universities, and advocates for letting the virus spread in low-risk groups in the hope of achieving herd immunity.

Sunetra Gupta of Oxford University, Jay Bhattacharya of Stanford University and Martin Kulldorff of Harvard University authored the open letter, which says that lockdown restrictions are having “devastating effects” on physical and mental health.

The scientists write that lockdowns are resulting in“ lower childhood vaccination rates, worsening cardiovascular disease outcomes, fewer cancer screenings and deteriorating mental health – leading to greater excess mortality in years to come, with the working class and younger members of society carrying the heaviest burden”.

The letter calls for a strategy of “focused protection” for people in higher risk groups, but argues that “the most compassionate approach… is to allow those who are at minimal risk of death to live their lives normally to build up immunity to coronavirus through natural infection”.

What do we know about herd immunity?

Scientific consensus on the effectivness of herd immunity has yet to be reached, but almost all experts agree that the strategy is dangerous.

Critics have “warned that the declaration ignores the growing evidence on long Covid – whereby thousands of fit and young people who contract the virus have been left with debilitating symptoms months after a mild infection”, says the London Evening Standard.

And Dr Jeremy Rossman, a senior lecturer in virology at the University of Kent, notes that research suggests protective antibodies may “decay rapidly”, with multiple confirmed cases of reinfection.

Rossman also points out that countries such as Sweden, which decided against locking down during the first wave of coronavirus, “were not able to successfully protect the vulnerable population”.

Gregg Gonsalves, an epidemiologist at Yale University, goes a step further, arguing that herd immunity strategies mean “culling the herd of the sick and disabled”, and describing the defence of such an approach as “grotesque”.

Will it work in the UK?

In early March, World Health Organization (WHO) director-general Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus issued a statement warning against herd immunity as a strategy for beating the pandemic.

“Covid-19 is a new virus to which no one has immunity. That means more people are susceptible to infection, and some will suffer severe disease,” Tedros said. “There is currently no evidence that people who have recovered from Covid-19 and have antibodies are protected from a second infection.”

In August, WHO chief scientist Dr Soumya Swaminathan said that at least 70% of the world population would need to be immune “to really break the chain of transmission”.

“If you allow this to happen naturally, it will take a long time, of course, but more importantly, it’s going to do a lot of collateral damage,” Swaminathan explained, adding that “even if 1% of people who get infected are ultimately going to die, then this can add up to a huge number of people, if we look at the global population”.

In the UK, a 1% death rate would equate to around 450,000 lives lost – more than ten times the current tally – while worldwide it would equate to upwards of 54 million deaths.

Tests involving 20,000 people carried out by India’s National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) in July found that 23.4% of Delhi residents had antibodies to the virus after the pandemic hit the city hard.

And Manaus, a coronavirus outlier located deep in the Amazon rainforest, also saw “excess deaths” – deviations in mortality from the expected level – drop from about 120 per day in May to “practically zero” in August, as The Washington Post reported at the time.

But like Delhi, the Brazilian city also paid the price of achieving something resembling herd immunity, recording a huge number of deaths in the early months of the pandemic, when “burials were running at five times their normal rate”, according to The Times.

Boris Johnson is facing a growing schism within his cabinet over how to respond to a steady rise in coronavirus cases that has triggered calls for further lockdown measures.

The “deepening split between senior ministers” sees “doves”, who want to protect the UK economy, going up against “hawks”, who are calling for tougher restrictions, says the Daily Mail.

The division is yet another headache for the prime minister, who was criticised by the Institute for Government last month for failing to act immediately to curb the initial outbreak – a delay that the think tank said cost a “significant” number of lives.

What is the current state of play?

The UK recorded 14,542 new coronavirus infections and 76 related deaths yesterday, and the number of Covid-19 patients admitted to hospital has increased steadily over the past month to a current total of 2,833, according to government figures.

Coronavirus deaths have also been increasing, with a 50% rise in a single week last month. Office for National Statistics data shows that 215 people lost their lives to the virus in England and Wales in the week ending 25 September, up from 76 the week before.

The figures remain “well below those reported in the spring”, but marked the third weekly increase in a row, says The Times.

Who are the lockdown hawks?

The most notable hawks are Minister for the Cabinet Office Michael Gove and Health Secretary Matt Hancock.

Hancock confirmed today that he will announce changes to the lockdown rules in England, amid speculation that the current system is to be replaced with a three-tier ranking. The health boss said that the government would outline a “more simplified” approach and acknowledged the need for local action to be “more consistent”.

The announcement comes just weeks after he warned that restrictions will get tougher if rules are not followed, telling the BBC‘s The Andrew Marr Show that the country was facing a “tipping point” in its battle with the pandemic.

Gove, meanwhile, has repeatedly refused to rule out further lockdown measures. Offering a “major hint” of what may be to come, according to the Daily Express, he told a conference of the Blue Collar Conservatism pressure group last week that “we need to see the rate of infection fall”.

”At the moment, we know that the infection rate is rising particularly in the North of England but not exclusively,” Gove said. “I think we need to make sure we take all the measures necessary.”

And the doves?

Lockdown “doves” are those who believe that protecting the economy by eschewing lockdown measures is the best approach. Unsurprisingly, the most prominent member of this camp is Rishi Sunak.

Indeed, the chancellor has been busy “cementing his status” as the leading cabinet dove, and last night made an “11th-hour intervention” that may delay the expected announcement later this week of the new three-tier Covid alert system, the Daily Mail reports.

Sunak is is “said to have accepted the need for the new system but is concerned about the mechanism by which the most severe restrictions are imposed”, The Telegraph adds. In a bid to tackle that issue, he is leading a push for ministers to be “given the final say over when an area is required to enter the top tier of restrictions”.

The chancellor is proposing that decisions on lockdown measures be made by Johnson, Hancock and himself.

Sunak is also pushing his anti-lockdown approach to voters, telling The Sun: “I don’t think it’s wrong for people to want to strive for normality and I don’t think it’s wrong for the government to want that for people.”

“Lockdowns obviously have a very strong economic impact, but they have an impact on many other things,” he continued, and “we have to look at this all in the round and beating coronavirus is important and minimising the harm that it causes is important”.

The chancellor has won the backing of a group of council leaders in the North who have attacked the existing local lockdown system.

The leaders of Leeds, Manchester and Newcastle city councils – Judith Blake, Richard Leese and Nick Forbes – have teamed up with Liverpool Mayor Joe Anderson to send a letter to the health secretary saying that while they are “extremely concerned” about the rises in Covid cases, they will not back measures that harm their local economies.