Awol

Disagree, people need the space to breathe and exercising once a day is fine, so long as people respect social distancing. I take my kids down the (quiet) beach every day, they need to burn off some energy. People need to get out and buy food, especially if they’ve been shamed into not stocking their cupboards up before now. Interestingly they don’t yet have the legislation on the books to enforce this in Scotland, should be done later this week. For now the police can only give you ‘strong advice’. The local divs will still push it for as long as they legally can.

When some folks act like children we all get treated like children. Anyone still taking the piss after this deserves to be fined.

I thought this had started to get a political tone to it over the last day or so. Becoming clear why now. Reminds me of the 9/11 ‘good day to bury bad news’ horror show. Ian Lavery claims coronavirus gives labour a great opportunity

Exactly this. Minister: Are the distribution systems, working? Is everything up to date? Minion: Yes, boss. All checked X weeks/months ago. Minister: Great, now where the **** do we find more ventilators? If Minister’s can’t delegate then nothing will ever get done. It’s a failure and Hancock is responsible, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s his fault.

I’m not sure this is directly on Johnson or Hancock. We have stockpiles of pandemic kit in warehouses across the UK, and infrequent exercises (either table-top only or with a physical component) to test preparedness. The distribution systems to get the kit out have clearly failed, hence the need to bring in the army - surpassed only by the navy as masters of logistics. The real question is why the existing system for distribution has failed, why and who was responsible For that failure? It’s not the job of Cabinet Ministers to distribute face-masks, they’re strategic level bods, not ops.

That’s grounds for a drone strike.

Wow. Thanks mate.

Indeed. I’m already working on Tom & Harry. Won’t go for Dick unless things get really desperate.

‘Rapist gets horrible disease, might die’ is the only positive COVID headline I’ve seen so far.

Any Spanish speakers here who can confirm what the chap in the video is saying matches the tweet description of it?

...It was never just TV....

Just poured a scotch, listened to this and for the first time in years I could murder a cigarette. Probably not the right time to get back into that though.

From what I’ve read it might be closer to 14 days behind, but either way their ICU capacity is double ours and once patients go in they tend to stay there for weeks. It appears we are royally screwed.

This is an interesting study. TL:DR UK could be “challenging” the capacity of ICUs by end of March, even assuming every bed is available for use by COVID patients - they’re not.

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?