As usual, the Celts took the up-front hit: Ireland v Wales was cancelled postponed, followed by Treviso v Ulster and Zebre v Ospreys. Then came the news that Mako Vunipola was self-isolating from the England camp, although apparently it’s okay to infect the Saracens camp. (They’re relegated anyway: who cares?) Today’s shocking news is that Italy v England is also sacrificed to Covid-19.
But fear not, rugby fans! There is one person on our side, one person who knows that it’s all a big hoax. A person whose intimate involvement with Scottish golf courses has led to a love of rugby, inspired by Gavin Hastings.
“I think the 3.4% [death rate] is really a false number.
“Now, this is just my hunch, based on a lot of conversations with a lot of people that do this, because a lot of people will have this, and it’s very mild – they’ll get better very rapidly, they don’t even see a doctor, they don’t even call a doctor.
“You never hear about those people, so you can’t put them down in the category of the overall population, in terms of this corona flu, and/or virus. So you just can’t do that. So there is no reason for Six Nations matches to be deep-sixed. DBWR are just a bunch of wimps.”
This is of course very comforting, as everyone knows that Donald Trump’s hunches are enormously more accurate than the wild speculations of the World Health Organisation. While it’s true that a vast number of Americans won’t even call a doctor because they can’t afford to, deathly ill or not, the POTUS’s clarion call to laugh and snap our fingers at what the so-called experts are openly referring to as a pandemic will save our Six Nations and Pro-Woo.
The President is being undermined by snivelling lefties who are rejoicing at the thought of millions of people dying, economic Armageddon being unleashed, and – more importantly – rugby matches being cancelled, just to criticise The Donald. As the Guardian (itself a very dubious source) reports:
Peter Hegseth, a co-host of Fox & Friends Weekends, admonished Democrats’ criticism, saying: “They’re rooting for the coronavirus to spread. They’re rooting for it to grow. They’re rooting for the problem to get worse.”
“They’re probably jumping for joy,” Fox & Friends co-host Ainsley Earhardt said about the Democrats’ reaction to Six Nations matches being cancelled.
OvallyBalls can also reveal that Donald Trump is behind Vunipola’s decision to train with the Saracens:
“If we have thousands or hundreds of thousands of people that get better, just by, you know, sitting around and even going to work, some of them go to work, but they get better, and then when you do have a death, like you’ve had in the state of Washington, like you had one in California, I believe you had one in New York.”
While it turns out that no-one has yet died from coronavirus in New York (it’s only Trump’s home state, so why should he know?), the President’s message is clear: Get to work, you slackers, and you will be healed. Front up to the scrummage. Un-cancel the rugby matches. Work makes you free of coronavirus. Unless you’re dead.
Televisual rugby feasts not cancelled as yet:
Friday 6th March
| Sunwolves 14 – 47 Brumbies | 03:45 | Sky Sports Mix |
| Crusaders 24 – 20 Reds | 06:05 | Sky Sports Action |
| Waratahs 14 – 51 Chiefs | 08:15 | Sky Sports Action |
| Dragons 25 – 37 Treviso (really?) | 19:35 | Premier Sports 1 |
| England 22 – 23 Wales U20s | 19:45 | BT Sport Action |
| Worcester 10 – 16 Saints | 19:45 | BT Sport 1 |
Saturday 7th March
| Hurricanes 15 – 24 Blues | 06:0t | Sky Sports Action |
| Rebels 37 – 17 Lions | 08:15 | Sky Sports Action |
| England 66 – 7 Wales (women) | 12:05 | S4C / Sky Sports Action |
| Sharks v Los Jaguares | 13:05 | Sky Sports Arena |
| Bulls v Highlanders | 15:15 | Sky Sports Arena |
| England v Wales | 16:45 | ITV / S4C |
| Scotland v France (women) | 19:45 | BBC Alba / website/ button |
Sunday 8th March
| Bristol v Harlequins | 13:00 | BT Sport 1 |
| Scotland v France | 15:00 | BBC One / website / button |
Ovally Balls 
Blog meets R gud. Scotland sounds like a good location; perhaps we’ll drag Ticht out of his seclusion for that? Even if he’s still not managed to move back there by then.
Now knackered after getting up at 5 am UK time, so NN.
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“perhaps we’ll drag Ticht out of his seclusion for that? ”
I would love to, Thaum, the change in our circumstances make it more likely, tbh.
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@Iks – “I was the best cricketer on our council estate between 1969 – 1973”
Now I realise that South Wales council estates are available that could make everyone feel as though it was 1973, but I think it’s a bit much to have to have the game on one just so you can be the star.
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In these troubled times, you can always rely on cats and YouTube….
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this made me laugh
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I spoke to my new boss today. Apparently I’ll be getting a new computer and then be working from home. Strangely that suits me down to the ground.
We’re up for a Scotland blog meet. Mrs Craig’s used to live in Cove and Kilcreggan when her dad was and MOD copper up there.
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Every time I watch this clip, I can’t help but wonder what Mick Taylor thought he was letting himself in for…
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You may
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Ahem, problems with my wordpress account there. Here goes again
You may be a bit confused as to why the government changed policy so dramatically from Thursday to Monday. It’s because a) they believed their models and b) the models were hopelessly wrong:
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a great quote on models (can’t remember where I heard it, could it have been here?):
“Remember that all models are wrong; the practical question is how wrong do they have to be to not be useful.”
guess their models were towards the non-useful end of the spectrum.
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@chimpie
The most infuritating thing in this case is that anybody believed any models at all about the coronavirus. As far as data goes we have a tiny part of the distribution – we have no idea what it will look like in one month, 6 months, 12 months, or 24 months. How Vallance and Whitty can stand up in a press conference on Thursday with absolute confidence they know what is going on, and then do the same on Monday while saying the complete opposite is beyond me.
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Yes, wasn’t the best strategy to confidently base a course of action on a series of massive unknowns.
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Garbage in – garbage out is another truism about modelling.
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Government media line now’ll be: “We’ve changed policy to save 250,000 lives”
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@tomp
That’s right. It’s pretty shocking. They could have been sorting out the ventilator problem weeks ago but decided not to do it because the models said they don’t need to. So now it’s a scramble to try and put together a solution more quickly than would have been necessary.
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I was at the same school as Kagiso Rabada and was also a bowler. That’s where the similarity ends, unfortunately. Played in the 4th and 3rd teams mainly, got on a hot spell of unplayable quick bowling and was promoted to the 2nd XI for the last game of the season, which was rained out without a ball being bowled. What could have been?
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A thought for Cyle Brink, the Lions flanker. He’s a former Junior Bok who was on the cusp of the full side in 2018, before getting injured. He’s spent much of the last two years on the sidelines, including all of the current season. Got poached to play in England just in time for Covid-19 to put the kibosh on that idea, as he recovers from injury. A silver lining perhaps, as it was Tiggers he was heading for.
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Mind boggling, Thauma, simply unbelievable.
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#top bantz
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got to stop reading these MBM updates. It’s not really helping
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Chimpie I’ve stopped following most of the media updates, which are becoming a bit of a rehash and looking for the next big headline now. I know what I have to do to try to avoid it and that’s pretty much all you can do and try to keep finances going.
We’ve lost about 20% of our projected income directly since the thing started and will probably lose another 15-20% as a result of the coming disruption. So we’re looking for other revenue streams so we can keep paying salaries. It’s shit. But everyone is pretty much in the same shit.
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I’ve just thought of another bright spot. If the likes of Sky Sports go out of business, then next year’s 6N (should it occur) will only have the BBC and ITV able to bid for it.
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More madness:
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@Thuam – not really surprising, from the man who didn’t realise a lot of our imports come via Dover.
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Refit – exactly.
Good thing we have a massive brain trust governing the nation in this time of crisis.
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What I don’t get, is if they don’t test for the virus now, how can they know how many vaccines are needed when one is developed?
The first question needing answered is “does infection lead to immunity?” – that is the starter for a whole load of coping strategies, from isolation to vaccination, but unless we test every suspected case, how are we going to know what sort of level of re-infection occurs?
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@ticht
The number of vaccines is the same as the size of the population. There’s ~67m people in the UK so you’d order that many (or 60% of that figure). Patrick Vallance reckons there may be 55k people infected which doesn’t really dent that 40m-67m range very much.
On the reinfection point (very important) you don’t need to test everyone to learn if it happens or not. You just need a statistically significant number of data points.
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OT, but if they know infection leads to immunity, you don’t need anything like 60% of population number of vaccines, even being generous and allowing for a 10m overestimate, surely it would be sensible to know a ball park figure, but as I say the first piece of information needed is whether immunity follows infection, if it doesn’t lead to immunity then we are going to need upwards of 60M vaccines, if it does, how can we possibly know even roughly how many vaccines we need?
I’m guessing the vaccine isn’t going to cost a quid per pop.
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If infection doesn’t lead to immunity, then surely vaccination is not possible?
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We are a million miles away from being able to answer how many vaccines we will need in reality. We know so little about the disease – we have so far seen only one part of the distribution and only time will give us the rest.
It may be that a vaccine doesn’t work, or only works temporarily. It might be a seasonal disease that returns every year. It might mutate into something else. It’s a tough problem with very little data to guide us in making decisions.
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One of the boffins was saying that one of the tests urgently needed – which we don’t yet have – is one that determines if someone *has had* the virus. With that data, you could then project how many vaccines you’d need … if a vaccine is possible.
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Further, I’d assume that such a test would be for antibodies against the virus. If you can get reinfected, then presumably either no antibodies are generated, or they are ineffective.
That’s pretty scary.
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I’m shooting in the dark here, Thaum, but Shirely the fact that some people have minimal symptoms or are indeed asymptomatic must mean that antibodies, or immune systems, are effective against the virus?
What I know about this can be written on the head of a pin, in big letters
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Ticht – from what I’ve read, the people that have mild symptoms have had only small exposure to the virus. Those that have had more exposure (like health-care workers), have had it worse. So presumably we have some resistance against mild exposure.
I am relying on my high-school biology here, and am obviously not an expert, but this is what I think happens:
Usually when you get a virus like this, your body generates antibodies to fight it off. These antibodies provide you with immunity to future infections of at least similar strains, and are also what you’d use to test if someone has previously had the virus. They are also the basis of how vaccines work: you get injected with a very mild, or even dead, version of the virus to promote your body’s natural antibody generation.
If people are getting reinfected, then either this process doesn’t work, or the virus is mutating fast enough for the process to be ineffective. In which case I don’t see how a vaccine can work.
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This worry is exacerbated by the boffin’s insistence that a test for those who have had the virus was paramount. If they are having trouble creating the test, then perhaps the antibodies don’t exist, or can’t be isolated.
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And all these uncertainties Thaum is identifying explains why the policy announced last Thursday by Vallance and Whitty to infect 60% of the population to get herd immunity was so idiotic.
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OT – they’re now saying that their ‘herd immunity’ was taken out of context, or summat.
It’s obviously something that applies only to a highly-vaccinated population, or indeed one in which the survivors have immunity to the disease, having practically all had it. If there isn’t immunity, then we are all DOOOMED.
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They changed tack suspiciously quickly. Which tells me someone had a word behind the scenes that their expert advice was a bag of shite.
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For herd immunity for work for measles, for example, I believe over 90% of the population have to be vaccinated.
These numbers have gone down significantly recently, thanks to the idiot anti-vaxxers, with the result of measles outbreaks becoming far more common.
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OT @21:30 – yes. Suspect the ‘experts’ have been told what to say, and now that the situation is raging out of control, have been told to say something else, but something not as alarming as what is actually known.
They seem to be facing up to the truth quite quickly, but there’s probably still quite a lag.
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scuse me, point of order, can we not use the phrase “anti-vaxxers”, plz?
It lessens their idiocy.
I prefer the term “anti-science”, or “quacks” or “charlatans” if they are proposing alternatives
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In rugby news, the Stormers are facing a crippling injury crisis at the moment, so I imagine will be relieved that the tournament has been put on hold for now. Key players on long-term injury absence include Herschel Jantjies (fractured fibula on Saturday – 3 months), Steven Kitshoff (torn pectoral muscle, surgery, 4 months), Siya Lolisi (ligament tear, still 4 weeks from return from a 12 week layoff), Bongi Mbonambi (hamstring, done until mid-July) and PS du Toit – a haematoma that developed into a career-threatening injury. According to the Stormers medical staff:
“Pieter-Steph had a medical emergency after the Blues game. He had a haematoma that developed into an acute compartment syndrome. It’s incredibly rare – there have been only 43 cases listed in the literature. It’s a medical emergency because if you don’t pick it up early they lose blood supply to the leg and they lose the leg.”
That’s a bit scary! Other than Jantjies and du Toit, these seem to be wear and tear injuries – maybe a hangover from the World Cup, especially given the physical style the Boks employed?
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This is incredible, and not in a good way.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/17/there-is-a-policy-of-surrender-doctor-on-uks-covid-19-failures
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Heading into cultural stereotyping land a bit here, but I find it alarming that schools are staying open still in the UK. A friend of MrsIks works in a Kita (nursery), and she said up until it was closed many of the babies were happily coughing, sneezing and dribbling over everyone and everything.
I would have thought that even if children are more resilient to the symptoms they might still be the perfect distributors of the virus. Pity Sag isn’t around to offer some thoughts on this…
The cultural stereotype I have in mind is that of Italians being very family-oriented and tactile towards children, and I’m wondering whether it was a factor regarding the speed with which the virus takes spread.
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Poor old PS du Toit. Lucky it was spotted early.
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Kidz. a more delightful bunch of disease vectors you’ll never meet.
Schools still open but a lot of people have started keeping theirs at home. Some people have gone a bit nutty over this though, happy to send their children to school but stopping play dates ‘because of the risk’.
All part of the vague and ‘voluntary’ advice floating around here. Everything will shut at some point I imagine it’s just a question of when.
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