Awol

Government: You can meet your mother in the park, if she’s on her own and wearing a hat. Also Government: You can have a child minder and/or a cleaner inside your home, if you open a window. I thought transparency was supposed to apply to government actions, not motives? Not even trying to disguise the fact the rules are being written to suit middle class metropolitan types. No wonder Kier Starmer is staying onside.

How to solve a problem like Corona Government strategy on getting us out of ... everything. I’ve not read it yet (60 pages) so can’t quote from it, but linking for general info.

Some think they can do no right, others think they can do no wrong. The vast majority (imo) aren’t interested in partisan bickering but want reassurance there’s a clear plan being competently executed. That’s not the case right now.

The Nightingale hospitals are complete so the infrastructure is now ready to follow the policy they wanted to take from the beginning, but lacked the NHS capacity to pursue. It is true that we can’t suspend the economy indefinitely in the hope a vaccine comes through in 12-18 months, but the people who make that decision should be exposed to the same level of risk as everyone else. Only then will employers be forced to rigidly apply the kind of mitigation (PPE all round) necessary to minimize the chance of infection. If the whole country (including kids) wore masks it would be a different situation, as the Taiwanese have demonstrated. If that means longer in quarantine until it can be supplied, so be it. The German experience is showing how difficult coming out of lockdown will be unless everyone is masked up.

I didn’t expect all the details, I did expect it to be coherent. By next weekend expect polling to show they’ve just lost the benefit of the doubt with millions of people... ...then Hancock will go under the bus.

Too many of the great and the good need access to their summer homes in France, I can’t think of any other logical explanation. That briefing last night was absolute cake and arse. Given the time they’ve had to prepare for this the lack of clarity is unforgivable. UK is still running 16,000 new infections per day and the R rate in some places is still 0.9. Scientists are saying we now that down to 4,000 per day to give us any chance of controlling community spread by track and trace. Germany started easing off restrictions what, 7-10 days ago? The R there is already up to 1.1. From a lower base than us. We don’t have the head room yet to ease up on the current measures at all without tipping back into exponential growth in very short order. I think we’re now reaching the crunch point in that the Treasury can’t afford to keep bank-rolling the workforce and businesses will start to fail on mass if they can’t begin trading soon. On the flip-side, as soon as people start going back to work the virus will take off again. The lockdown has bought some time but hasn’t solved the central problem: either the country will grow broke (with all the implications for services across the board) or we accept a much higher number of deaths. Looks to me like we’re leaning towards the latter.

I wasn’t personally involved in the resurrection but still crack a chocolate egg at Easter. “You weren’t there, man” seems a pretty weak reason for chastising a historical commemoration. Agree it’s stupid to break social distancing, but as someone else has noted, all week the media (that Cruella De Vil looking tramp off Sky in particular) have been pushing the line that it’s all gonna be relaxed this weekend anyway. Subliminal sh*t stirring to manufacture a story. That’s a fair reason to get cross, but once you start throwing Brexit in it’s hard to believe that’s what your real beef is. It’s “them”, those people, those “words removed” again, f****** things up.

Racist little Englanders, innit? That’s why the well known British nationalist Emmanuel Macron was out celebrating it in Paris. It’s why the Russians will be celebrating (hard) tomorrow.... because it’s really all about white, middle class Brexit voters. The correlation between Anglophobia and EUphilia is uncanny - and Brexit Derangement Syndrome is a thing.

Celebrating the end of the war and the defeat of fascism is literally what it is. Any other interpretation is projection of people’s own views, usually more grounded in contemporary politics - hence “VE Day Brexit throbbers.” Sad to see.

Are they words removed because they’re not social distancing, or for celebrating the defeat of fascism and the ending of the largest conflict in human history?

Said this from the beginning. Taiwan have attributed their massive successive in containing Covid to everyone wearing masks. It’s been normalized in East Asia since SARS for the same reason. Our ‘scientific advice’ was obviously based on a PPE shortage and the government not wanting to be in competition with the public to acquire it for the NHS, which needed it more. Now it’s very difficult to row back from that advice (despite the obvious benefits) because otherwise why should people trust the scientists if they were pulling the wool? Lack of candor and trusting the public has been the major failing of the government’s reaction to this - distinct from the systemic failure to prepare properly.

I don’t think so, that’s why they’re unlikely to end this one precipitously. Whitty et al have said from the beginning that lockdown is a one shot deal. If we had a second major spike I think we’d end up ploughing through it. Unless Sweden ends up with catastrophic increase in deaths over the next few weeks then people will point at them and say that’s the model we have to follow.

This is amazing

Broadly in line with what our CMO has suggested, a CFR of or around 1%. Still a whopping number when applied to an entire population.

I’m not making a claim, just throwing in some fresh meat for speculation!

Remember the discussion here about the filthy winter flu bug that went on for weeks, but couldn’t be Covid because people weren’t dying from it then?

Sure, but ultimately someone will have to take responsibility. As the architects of austerity it lands on one or both of those two. Can’t see Cameron and May offering themselves up, and Osborne really was the driver of relegating security issues to the bottom of the in tray - see your babies circa 2010...

Reminds of the apocryphal story of a young man in WW2 on his way to an interview. Walking down Whitehall he stopped a passerby: ‘excuse me sir, which side is the Treasury on?’ ‘Ours. I hope.’ The inadequate stocks of PPE rest squarely on the shoulders of Osborne and Hammond. If the inquiry concludes otherwise I’ll be amazed.

I don’t think that follows at all and there’s no evidence as to why we should. Our problem with China isn’t an inability to resist them, it’s the Chinese capture of our elites, intent on personally profiting from selling out everything they possibly can - including our national security. That’s a systemic problem involving politicians, civil servants (particularly those linked to the Cameron government), industrialists and lobbyists. For example, Peter Mandelson and Roland Rudd, two prime movers in the Remain campaign, are likely to be investigated for assisting the Chinese in attempts to target UK companies financially distressed by the pandemic. There is nothing systemic in leaving the EU which dictates UK must ‘submit’ to Chinese Communist Party, or it’s ethics, this is a category error in defining the problem. Besides, you may have noticed the EU changing its report on Chinese disinformation over Covid last week, under diplomatic pressure from Beijing. It’s not an in or out of the EU issue, it’s a dealing with domestic elite corruption and growing a political pair issue. Imo, of course.

I think the gist is that if you deviate from a certain line (the government are crap) by pointing out and discussing the Chinese cover-up, for example, it’s interpreted by more partisan posters as somehow seeking to distract from things the UK has got wrong. Like saying “voting to leave the EU was voting to be ruled by China”. The two things are artificially joined together to try and make a political point. It’s pretty inane stuff.

Eh? The point was about being allowed to post something that wasn’t the same as 60% of all posts on this thread. I don’t disagree with the attacks on government incompetence at all, but they’re not the only thing related to Covid worth discussing.

Fine. The UK government isn’t doing very well. Lots of people have died. If they’d acted sooner it’s likely fewer people would have died. Boris is a bad man. No one has posted this information before so it shouldn’t resemble 60% of other posts in this thread, with slight alterations in grammar. Permission to post about something now, Sir?

“Generic”.

Some post-pandemic progress in China: the Communist Party has got its enslaved Muslim population back to work!