Friday 17 July 2009

Backside Number-Plucking


My definition of 'ballpark' must be somewhat different from that of Chief Medical Scaremonger, Liam Donaldson.

On Thursday Prof Sir Liam Donaldson, the Chief Medical Officer, told the NHS to plan for the possibility of up to 65,000 deaths from the disease this winter – although he said as few as 19,000 could occur.

That appears to be ballparkish to me.

He said: “We haven’t had enough cases to even give ballpark figures of estimates.”

Why give 'ballpark' figures to the press then, gobshite? Could it be that you're still in search of that self-aggrandising global catastrophe which your ego has been craving for years?

If we violently 'park' a size 12 steel toecap in his 'balls', dya reckon he might fuck off?




6 comments:

Unknown said...

I can only manage a size 10 for Sir Lardarse, will that do do you think?

Mark Wadsworth said...

While I share your loathing of Liam D, they genuinely do not know, and cannot be expected to know what will happen, it's all about geometric and arithmetic progression, the likelihood of mutation, how effective Tamiflu is, whether a vaccine can be developed "in time" and if so how many people will want it etc.

Some other newspaper said "between 3,000 and 65,000 deaths". The honest answer would be "10,000 plus or minus a margin of error of 90 per cent".

Y'see, Labour have spent too many years whipping up a climate of fear and creating false scare stories to make themselves look decisive and effective (and as an excuse for ever more authoritarianism and bansturbation).

Now they realise that we are entering the unknown (I don't mean as in 'apocalyptic', I mean as in 'unknown'), they're just standing there wailing and have no easy answers whatsoever, because as usual, there are no easy answers.

banned said...

Everything wot Mark said. The figures being punted out are no more and no less than any other flu variant.
Sad old Liam would be out of a job if he admitted " nothing happening ,nothing to worry about " but I would still like to know
A. what does " serious underlying medical conditions " mean ( AIDS ? )
B. Who thought up the phrase and how come it was so suddenly adopted nationwide ?

Large Melot Please said...

Have you guys noticed that Sir Liam on his grand tour of the studios is sitting in front of the camera as possible, rather than a profile shot. Perhaps all those comments about his double chin have got to him.

Pat Nurse MA said...

For sure!

Anonymous said...

A medic on radio the other day gave a list of underlying conditions which included respiratory and heart problems and conditions that weaken the immune system.

The swine flu virus has, apparently, been around for years and if you're 65+ your system will be immune (so why didn't anyone 'catch it' before developing immuunity?). Young children, who have no immunity, are most vulnerable.

Sir Liar is reported to have asked the media not to use the 65,000 figure so as not to frighten the population which these days seems to live on the brink of hysteria. How improbably naive.

Jay