Awol

But that’s the point of the 100% government guarantee on the loan. When that happens the banks face zero risk b/c default means the Treasury picks up the balance. At that point the justification for any interest rate above 0.1% for admin goes out of the window - imo. While we’re at it, Starmer said in PMQs that banks were raising interest rates on overdrafts to 40% in July. First I’d heard of it but if that’s right it’s bordering on criminal exploitation of the hardest hit at the worst possible time. If Johnson allows this kind of thing to happen his current approval ratings will rightly dissolve.

Noises that the Treasury may (finally) be extending business interruption loan guarantee from 80 to 100% next week. Think this is still going through the commercial banks, so no doubt they’ll gouge those businesses on the interest rate despite having 0% risk. Also suggests the lockdown will continue for a while.

Exactly this, except they don’t even have to resign (or at least wait until it’s over, a new and unsighted minister might make things worse) just bring in the expertise available to help. That’s both a party political (acknowledging that non-specialist politicians aren’t all knowing, all managing paragons of excellence) and a civil service (the instinct to centralise and control process) problem. In other words, for the love of god, let the army in to lead and organise the various organisations involved in all aspects of testing, while still remaining accountable to and directly under ministerial control in the CoC. There’s no shame in admitting the current structures have failed, we can all see it anyway. At least acting to correct it quickly would show grown-up, responsible leadership. Even the local resilience forums staffed by the military to support local authorities are not being employed to the degree they could usefully be.

Are you keeping a diary of symptoms during recovery? Might be useful later - if not to you then to someone else. Edit: obviously good you’re feeling better today!

Agree on both points. Logistics and planning. The irony is the government can command the most effective organisation in the country (in almost any country) at crisis management and doing difficult things at speed and scale. Instead ministers are reluctant to let the military take a more direct role in management and delivery, probably fearing the accusation that they couldn’t handle it themselves. They could do it with testing, they should have done it weeks ago with PPE. That hasn’t happened.

Odd that... I’ve got a mate on the ambulances in Cardiff who claims they’ve got no PPE shortages. Another one who’s wife is an ICU nurse in Dundee, same story. Shortages anywhere are a serious problem and the mistakes are very clear, but I think some folks are reluctant to acknowledge both the sheer scale of the challenge and the localised nature of some issues - if that means giving the government any credit for anything, ever. Anyone thinking they wouldn’t use the NHS contact tracing app, assuming it works?

When pitching for a £20 million research grant I reckon I’d be quite upbeat too! Edit: Oxford were the team working on a MERS vaccine and so have good experience of Coronavirus’ research under their belts. Hopefully that will give them a better chance of nailing this one.

Scenario 2: no lockdown, 250-500,000 dead across the UK. How does the ‘they were gonna die soon anyway’ argument stack up then? Seems you (not you) have to justify that counterfactual for it to have any credibility at all.

Looks like the great government twitter astroturfing conspiracy is fake news. Ironic really.

Yes, but indicates very little storage capacity left or desk trader man would tank the oil, sit on it and wait. It’s showing that the supply glut is seizing the system up. Next step is field shut downs, unless the economy opens ASAP.

Just to confirm we’re now totally off the map... When Trump said he was worried the cure might be worse than the disease, I think this is what his advisers meant when they told him what to say. Be interesting to see what Brent Crude does tomorrow.

Yes, that’s the figure to balance their budget, not the flat production cost - UAE is about $70. Saudi and Russia were getting killed by US shale in market share. Both operate state backed producers and gambled they could drive the (generally smaller) private US firms out of the market by flooding it. Thing is most oil is used as it’s produced, only a fraction goes into storage - which as you noted is near capacity. Demand is pretty much dead due to lockdown and now they’re in the hurt locker.

Not really, Saudi needs $83 per bbl to break even. US firms can furlough and wait but Saudi has been burning through its currency reserves fighting in Yemen. Their economy (and this regime) will fall over long before the US is massively troubled. It’s a powder keg and MbS lit the fuse himself - couldn’t happen to a nicer bloke.

Logarithmic, innit. You’re right, strategic storage is pretty much maxed everywhere. Petrol will be back below a quid a litre soon, shame we can’t go anywhere.

The whole thing is just mind blowing, god knows where it all ends up. Think it was Lenin who said ‘there are decades when nothing happens, and weeks when decades happen.’ If we’re not there yet then we’re bloody close to it.

Along with Mohammed bin Salman’s* chance of being alive by Friday. *I’ve got him in the Deadpool thread so possibly some wishful thinking.

Oil at $0.99 per barrel. We’re through the looking glass now!

More likely Occam’s razor and the ‘system’ is in crisis. The Civil Service tends to run on process, (often to the exclusion of much else - sure @trekka will correct if this is wrong but it’s my experience of Whitehall) and a rolling disaster on this scale has overwhelmed it. That’s not excuse making just the most likely explanation, rather than shady money making schemes -plenty of time for that when we’re not on a war footing.

All a bit sketchy at the moment (no surprise really) but seems there’s a second major Chinese outbreak in the city of Harbin, population 10 million. Videos on social media of people dropping dead in the streets and barricades going up again - like in Wuhan.

The Times article is damning. Gove said on Sky this morning that government would respond in detail to it later today, so that arrow clearly found its mark. I haven’t had time this morning, but it would be interesting to pick out the key dates where decisions were or weren’t taken and compare them to the postings that day in this thread. I suspect it will show that the country would be safer (and more fun) if run by a committee from VT.

Honestly, learn to drive a tractor and head west for a while. People gotta eat. No one alive has seen anything like the mess we’re headed into, forget the coo-ing reassurance of snake oil politicians. If they told the truth they’d be running for their lives in 2 minutes flat. We’re in the shit.

Like the Oxford study here, beware the words “not peer reviewed.”

Worryingly light on PPE, but Hancock would approve.

5,525 new cases recorded yesterday, and 888 new deaths in hospital. Media chat about reaching a peak in UK is premature, we’re not there yet.

It’s also got to be a worry that we’ll spend 12-18 months inventing the cure to last year’s virus. No guarantees we are dealing with a genetically static target.