Awol

It’s pretty obvious what he’s saying, yes go outside and get exercise in the fresh air, but don’t socialise and keep at least 2 metres away from others. i.e. act like a responsible f***** grown up. I thought people would behave more responsibly too, but apparently we have to pass laws restricting our civil liberties to actually make some morons comply with instructions that protect society.

Wot, no Razzle?

Chinese state propaganda machine switched from story 1 (US special forces covertly spread the virus in Wuhan), to a new line pinning the blame on Chinese migrant workers becoming infected in N Italy and bringing it home. While we rightly focus on managing our public health emergency, it’s worth remembering all the normal chicanery and inter-state competition continues as normal. China is positioning hard for the post-COVID blame game.

This is an amazing graphic representation of the outbreak in the NYT.

My missus reckons they are doing exactly this - If people follow advice and self-isolate then there’s a very good chance they’ll be fine. For those that don’t it’s on them, they were warned. No second peak and achieving the herd immunity goal. I thought the same and the evidence points that way, but I’m struggling to rationalize it now with what’s going to happen. It’s horrifying.

Sorry no, it’s a copy paste from twitter, but I was recording the Italian figures in early March to try and work out their CFR and they matched - so I figured the rest were correct too. Those graphs from the FT above show how closely we are mirroring Italy’s rise in deaths, albeit with a time lag. My comment was wrong though, UK was at 236 on the 21st, not 233.

While we’re at it, a thread on why blaming the public for shopping more than normal in supermarkets is virtue signaling BS:

I was having a pop at everyone bone stupid enough not to be taking this seriously. Where I live that is overwhelmingly younger people. What I’ve seen on tv is overwhelmingly younger people. I’m 42 not 72, that's not ‘old’, I’m angry at people my age and older who’ve been so dismissive of this too, but the people congregating indoors where the chances of catching this are exponentially higher, are mainly younger people. If you’ve got 10 minutes just listen to this clip of an NHS doctor on a radio phone in. It’s frankly terrifying what we’re facing and the public has utterly failed to take personal responsibility for their actions. It’s insane.

Fair enough, but I’d wager there were far more under 40’s than over 40’s on the lash last night.

Several generations by definition cannot still all be young, but they were all socialised and educated the same way. They (and obviously this is generic) have never known a real genuine threat to life, experienced hardship at the societal level that involved personal sacrifice for a greater whole. So when a situation like this crops up the pubs are rammed with them, despite the evidence, warnings and direction of a government that is trying to maintain our liberties while trusting the common sense of the ‘people’ to do the right thing. Based on a desire to preserve our traditions of liberty I understand why they chose that approach, sadly it’s played out differently and we’re now going to learn the hard way.

Several generations of young people were raised not knowing what an existential threat really means. Living in a superficial bubble of consumerist, reality TV based bullshit is presented as the apex of western civilization, while the media spent three years telling them older people were their enemy. Now we expect them to behave like unselfish, community minded adults?

Universal Basic Income is unlikely to go away as serious political issue in western countries after the bailouts. Looking beyond the UK the political ramifications are obvious: revolutions and war, all over the shop. I sure as hell wouldn’t want to be a white South African in a few months, for example. Italy also might give serious consideration to punting EU membership, there’s fury at Germany’s decision to block medical exports as they’ve wrestled to control the outbreak in Lombardy. In every country this will be a defining event that shifts the paradigm of ‘normal’ politics. What comes next is anyone’s guess at this point.

More scaremongering, this time from an ex-Director of the WHO and current professor at UCL. He reckons London will be worse then Wuhan. We can’t be s*iting ourselves enough at this point, read the thread. I know they’ve been trying their best with the economic side, but realistically if things unfold the way this guy is suggesting I don’t know how Johnson survives it.

This is already out of date but similarity of the growth pattern is striking. UK hit 233 today - 21st Mar.

I was thinking about this earlier, but for the countryside. During foot and mouth the amount of plants and birds that returned was amazing, with minimal human movement and pollution during spring that’s likely to happen again. Time-lapse video with a drone would be great to see.

Don’t worry, Darwin’s gonna take care of them. FWIW it’s the same by me, parks were rammed with teenagers last night treating it like an early summer holiday. I don’t blame the kids, but the parents need some shoe pie.

Same story on the beach by us earlier, locals are being unusually sociable.

Don’t think they are an outlier, just further ahead than the rest of us. Fully expect this to be replicated across Europe.

Yeah my bad, didn’t read the whole thread properly and thought it was a discussion about vaccines.

Just braved Facebook and a mate has posted that his 12 yr old daughter is down with the virus, ridiculously high temp and struggling to breathe. This wasn’t supposed to be happening...

Logically, yes. Trouble is human trials take so long because they need to be sure there’s no unintended consequences further down the line, like 8 months after receiving a vaccine your feet fall off - or something. I don’t think they can sensibly rush new drugs through human trials, even though the economic consequences are dire.

Good news:

Think so, but with an unlimited borrowing facility available to businesses, interest free for 12 months, you’d *hope* the numbers of companies that do fail would be minimal. Nature has given us all a sharp reminder that human pretensions to control our environment without limit are a little overblown. Under the circumstances (the pilots trying to build an aircraft while in flight) I think they’re doing their best. On Sunak, I’d always found him a slippery even smarmy fella before he became Chancellor. Since then I’ve realised how wrong that was. Very impressive bloke and if Boris dropped dead tomorrow I’d have no worries about him holding the fort.

UK mortality rate is actually on a higher trajectory than Italy. Said this a few days ago/last week (it’s all a bit blurred now) but absolutely meant it: in six months our ICU nurses will be spoken about by the population in the same tones as the Spitfire pilots of 1940. I wouldn’t swap jobs with them for all the tea in China, but they have my unconditional respect.