Awol

You joking? Every morning I wake up and say to the wife, ‘what we really need now is Diane Abbott and Richard Burgon.’

I’m guessing you didn’t bother reading any of the preceding posts for whatever reason. In summary.. Snowy and I were discussing realism, in the theoretical IR context. Jareth chimed in with the following: “realists by definition believe in herd immunity”, implying there was some other solution - and totally irrelevant to that conversation about politics. I replied: “herd immunity is the only exit strategy, either through mass infection or vaccination”. Jareth then carried on with some irrelevant nonsense about being a fan of Cummings because I agreed herd immunity was the only exit strategy. It continued downhill from there. Yes, I do understand the concept of flattening the curve, why it matters and why not having enough PPE, ICU capacity and critical care nurses is a problem. I’ve criticised the government repeatedly for it, including them suppressing the results of the pandemic exercise in 2016. I’ve also noticed some of the folks now incessantly criticising the people trying to manage the situation as it is, were the same ones dismissing how serious this could get before it actually did - and in much the same tones. If you can tell me what I’ve written above that’s wrong then fair enough. If not, you can take your disappointment elsewhere.

Right, but carriers aren’t always symptomatic and you’d have to test and quarantine everyone coming across the border. You might manage that in a fairly remote country with low foot fall in airports, like NZ. Logistically in UK it would be a nightmare. We struggle to design and run simple processes at scale very well!

If you know different, please share. If not, please bother someone else.

Turning a shell with utilities into the country’s largest ever critical care facility, in only 9 days, is an amazing achievement. If it’s not, I’d like to know what amazing looks like?!

Cheers. Our CMO discussed this at the beginning of the outbreak and dismissed it on the basis of reinfection occurring again from elsewhere in the world - assuming we weren’t to pursue a policy of hermetically sealed borders, which no one wants. That’s why the scientists in UK settled on herd immunity as the only long-term way out of the problem.

Yeah!* *Also the 4000 people who’ll be on life support in there by the end of next week... but Brexit!

Meeting questions with deflection and answers with insults. You’re pretty good at this trolling business.

@Jareth in your own time mate, a Nobel Prize awaits.

That’s what I thought, all fart and no sh*t. Cheers

A thread on China, the numbers and the implications for the models everyone else has based their responses on.

That’s definitely going to help if it comes through (and hopefully some of these anti-malarial drugs will work), but if we could catch HIV by breathing it in we’d still need a vaccine!

Happy to disagree but instead of snide pot shots, why not explain what the alternative to herd immunity is? You clearly think there is one so why not share?

Global pandemics don’t care how you voted at the last election, or which flavour of idiot is in government. The science stays the same, every government in every country will make mistakes and a lot less than you seem to think is under their control. You’re viewing this thing as tribal politics and I’m not, that’s probably the main difference in outlook.

No, that’s wrong. Realism in the academic international relations sense is different to its meaning in daily conversation. It’s about how states interact with each other. On your other point herd immunity is the only exit strategy, either through mass infection or vaccination. If you think there’s another way then global science needs you to call them ASAP.

Excuses, lol. Do you really think it’s as simple as Hancock picking up the phone and ordering an acme pandemic cure kit? The highly accurate, Oxford designed test is now being used by Porton Down (3,500 tests per week) to study the level of infection across the whole population, creating a reliable model to eventually plan an exit strategy from quarantine on good data. It’s not a mass test for the wider population, which they clearly thought could be purchased from China. Seems not so it’s back to the drawing board. If crises were easy to fix they wouldn’t be crises, would they?

It was caricatured slogan to represent the political response to a complex problem this pandemic has highlighted; pursuing competitive advantage in the economy to its logical conclusion leaves states exposed in times of crisis. As realists (in the academic sense) have always argued, when the chips are down the political unit of greatest importance is the state, what it can do internally and how it can leverage its power externally. The blunt truth of that is visible everywhere as governments of all types pursue the self-interest of their populations. That doesn’t rule out cooperation between states where it serves the interests of both, but in moments of crisis that national unit is the castle into which all governments (the ones responsible for protecting us) retreat. Not saying it’s good or bad, it’s just what’s happening - and realists argue, will always happen.

“Globalisation: it’s a bit sh*t really.” Coming to election literature near you.

Being invented. Or at least a version that can be mass produced AND work reliably.

Everybody buying from China has had the same problem, they’re flogging garbage at top dollar prices - which is pretty necky of them all things considered. I doubt we knew weeks ago when ordering them that they wouldn’t work, and every state is desperately competing for stuff needed to try and protect their own people. Paris cancelled an NHS order from a face mask manufacturer to keep them in France, then the US gazumped a French order for PPE from the Far East. Germany blocked exports of med kit to Italy, and on it goes.

Nurse working in South Wales was on the radio this morning. She said that NHS data from across the UK (presumably internal) showed that 50% of patients going on to ventilators weren’t recovering. Also that many of those cases in her area were in 30s-50s bracket, youngest was in their 20s. I’m not buying this underlying conditions narrative at all. For reasons we don’t yet understand it’s Russian roulette once you get infected, but the older you are the more chambers are loaded.

I’ve no doubt your industry is bridging many firms through this, but anecdotally it does appear many others are not getting access to the finance they need - hence my question. The banking industry more broadly may be less keen to take risks than it used to be (and given the local and global outlook that’s perhaps not surprising) but @Davkaus is clearly right that society took a decade long hit to pay off the debts of bad corporate behaviour. That’s not to blame any individual, but it’s still true. Given the urgency I think there’s a strong case to go around the commercial banks, even if it means a new long-term financial sector model that includes the state as a lender.

The banks seem very reluctant to lend to SMEs despite the government’s scheme, insisting business owners personally guarantee the remaining 20%. Faced with your business potentially failing through no fault of your own, I think asking folks to put their home on the line as collateral is a bit much. Question for anyone in banking/high finance: Could the government stand up a new national bank, capitalised directly by the BoE to cut out the commercial sharks and lend at cost (say 0.5% interest) to keep these companies afloat until we return to normal trading conditions?

Every little helps.

Not just rudderless, clueless. They need to try and reconnect with their ‘red wall’ heartlands that the Tories took last time. Instead they fill twitter with nonsense about justice for women with penises, Palestine and veganism, endlessly agreeing with each other before getting killed at election time. Labour has frankly disappeared up its own arse, completely divorced from the things most people care about but fanatically devoted to causes they don’t. Most people are important, if you ever want to win an election, get power and do stuff. Instead, Labour is the only thing keeping the Tories in power.