Awol

I’d say there’s an even more sinister undertone. He’s stoking his base into conflict with their state governors if they disagree with him. The more chaos he sows, the more ‘need’ there is for a strong leader. Trump is a wannabe autocrat all day and if he thought there was a chance to achieve it, no amount of dead Americans would put him off.

I don’t feel sorry for them, I feel sorry for the nurses and doctors who might get sick treating them.

Heard a few days ago that the virus doesn’t start to die off due to climate until the temp’ hits 56 degrees C. That’s a bad mid-East summers day, but nowhere else where humans live in significant numbers.

Less international connectivity, less internal mobility and less reporting/monitoring infrastructure. It will eventually hit those countries the hardest (imagine a population in Africa with significant levels of HIV infection, like Kenya and South Africa), but will likely take far longer to spread. Those countries will also present significant vectors for reinfection unless international travel is more strictly controlled.

Interesting article in Nature last month about contact tracing in South Korea and the various pros and cons. I can imagine all kinds of people in UK objecting to a system like this. South Korea is reporting intimate details of COVID-19 cases: has it helped?

Needs must, unfortunately. When you follow an economic/political model that outsources nationally critical manufacturing (let’s say PPE and pharma for example, but it’s a long list) to potential adversaries*, we shouldn’t be surprised if they screw us over in a crisis. National level resilience, the ability to look after yourself as far as possible if necessary, was basically binned as a serious consideration by politicians. One side believed in some fantasy of international solidarity, the other cared only for the globalisation of supply chains - code for increased margins. Both are thoroughly irresponsible. If anything good comes out of this, it will hopefully be a wake-up call for all those who put political ideology or shareholder dividends above doing the basics right. *In a crisis when every state needs the same stuff they are all potential adversaries.

Trump: “Open up America again.” World: Edit: They’re actually using graphics annotated with “Influenza-Like Illness (ILI)”.

U.K. Paid $20 Million for New Coronavirus Tests. They Didn’t Work.

That’s what they said at the briefing, but also confirmed there would still be regions and settings (like care homes) where that’s not yet the case. Social distancing is working, trouble is keeping the R0 below 1 when the lockdown is lifted. I wouldn’t put money on this ending in 3 weeks unless new confirmed case are extremely low by then, and crucially there’s a mass community testing regime in place.

Brutal..

Exactly.

I hope that’s right, but with the amount of businesses still waiting for bridging finance I’m not sure it will be quite that simple.

For context, a guy on the wireless earlier said this is the worst economic hit to the UK since 1709 - apparently a great frost at the end of the little ice age spannered agriculture, which was roughly 1/3 of the economy at the time. Don’t think we’ve even begun to digest what this means yet. Meanwhile, the Washington Post has done some digging on the lab in Wuhan and this thread is worth reading (falun gong free):

It is gripping to watch though. When we’re (mostly) all sat here hoping he gets replaced by the senile guy who forgets where/who he is, the future doesn’t look that great. On the upside, at least Biden will be surrounded by people who are competent and do the whole ‘government’ part of the job.

The WHO only confirmed human to human transmission once the Chinese basically allowed them to. I’d say their greater responsibility was to speak up publicly sooner if that’s what they believed, regardless of whether that offended China or not. Ditto with declaring a global pandemic when every man and his dog could see it was. That matters because as was explained by various people at the time, that released various pots of funding that could be used for preparation in countries with weak public health infrastructure. The WHO’s attempt to pretend Taiwan basically didn’t exist (see the video) was and is disgraceful. There’s no other word for it. All of these issues come back to one causal root - not offending the Chinese Communist Party (obviously the Chinese people have no responsibility for this). Given the likelihood of secondary waves of this virus, which potentially includes in China, getting them to confront and break this pattern of behaviour now is important. As before, none of that is responsible for the abject failure of Trump - and to a lesser extent our government - to act decisively and early, but as this virus will be with us for a long time, it still matters to have the global body responsible for giving advice acting honestly and without fear or favour.

I agree with that, but it wasn’t just the human to human transmission issue. The WHO was fighting against international travel bans from China and related to that, a refusal to call it a global pandemic. Then add in their flat refusal to recognise or discuss the success of Taiwan which was an even better model than South Korea (everyone wear masks!) to avoid offending Beijing. There’s video evidence of that in this thread. I remember Dr John Campbell (YouTube guy) getting increasingly cross about these issues, eventually saying the WHO had lost all credibility. With reporting that CIA was warning Trump (and MI6 warning HMG) in mid-Jan that China was lying about the situation and that it was much worse, the WHO’s failings don’t absolve our national governments. That doesn’t change the fact WHO behaved disgracefully. I don’t agree with defunding the body, but it will force it to make a choice: come clean or go broke.

Let them come.

Just listened to the presser. He’s a big orange d*ck and as you say is trying to deflect blame, nevertheless every fact he laid out about the WHO and China was true. It’ll be very interesting to hear the Chinese response tomorrow!

One big potential problem here is maintaining inter-generational solidarity. Telling young people, who have a much reduced risk of suffering serious illness, that they have to maintain some form of social distancing for several years to protect older folks.. well that might prove a bit tricky. Equally telling vulnerable people to do a two year stretch on lockdown is quite implausible. No easy answers here, but given the extent of the economic damage and the knock on effects of that, we might end up back at the ‘take it on the chin’ scenario long before 2022.

Interesting development in state authorities banding together in regions to coordinate any release of lockdown procedures. Looks like they are preparing to defy any federal instructions from Trump. That could get quite spicy!

Two minute explainer:

Strange. Traditionally they’ve been such big supporters of the Conservative Party.

Well, that’s pretty disturbing. I was getting used to the idea of catching it this summer and hopefully being good by autumn. Not sure about that anymore!

Possibly interesting maps:

The furlough scheme is for 3 months. My guess is the government chose that as the absolute latest time it would take to massively increase ICU and other care capacity, stock pile certain meds, PPE and whatever other gubbins they need. The aim (IMO) is to manage a much higher rate of infection while shielding the vulnerable, to achieve a measure of herd immunity before the winter flu season starts up and the economy withers to nothing. Soon as they think the NHS is ready we’ll all be out and about again. Best case, reckon that’s 4-6 weeks from now.