Awol

I heard if you rub your belly with brown paper and then bury it under a tree in the garden, in 3 weeks, you’ll be pregnant with twins. Where do people get this hokey nonsense from?

Simply explainer vid of the UK strategy. Short and clear.

Would love to know how you pulled that off. Got my Mum (early 70’s with COPD) squared away easily enough several weeks ago. Problem is she lives with my sister, a pub landlady just coming out of a 5 yr battle with leukaemia and determined to push through the outbreak like it’s not happening. Pointed out the logical flaw in this plan which caused a massive row, now I’m the bad guy - because feelings. They’re driving me up the wall, my sister flat out refuses to see reason and she could kill them both through pure pig-headedness.

Mortality rate will spike once ICU beds are saturated. It’s going to get really f’ugly.

I don’t think Europhiles are evil, just wrong

Really worth reading this thread:

This on Italy from the Lancet a few days ago:

Kinda. I’ve booked my mother-in-law on a cruise.

True and fair enough. I just feel genuine pride when I see my fellow citizens doing everything I’d hope they would in this situation. If I was educated enough to read much foreign speak I’m sure I’d be saying the same about them too.

The fact China is now trying to blame the US military for the outbreak is chutzpah on another level. The people of the UK as a whole are pretty much amazing in a crisis, whatever generation it strikes. Local community groups are self-organising to mitigate the effects, & advertising that help all over social media. Our governments’ may be toilet, but don’t ever let any word removed tell you the people of this country aren’t fricking amazing. I love ‘em, even the scousers. Edit: Scousers?? Fairly well oiled last night!

Not sure. Is it more of case that while the official advice is to lick any infected surface in sight, civil society is going ‘errrrr... no. We’re going to be a wee bit more cautious, because you lot are f******* mental’? Reckon they can string schools out for a week at most. Even if the science is correct, the public is having none of it.

No, not a shame. A disgrace.

Very responsible approach.

First case in this tiny little Scottish town - a dirty student, inevitably. Panic buying here today, too. The poor fools have failed to prepare. My moment as Lord King of the Porridge Gobblers approaches.

The difficult part is conceptualising a different way of thinking that runs counter to our instinct as individuals socialised to worry about every life. We are emotional beings. The people designing the strategic response to the outbreak have to do so entirely without emotion, prioritising the whole. The ‘end’ is to get to a stable position on the other side of this with the least number of deaths, a population that’s resilient to this virus and a functioning economy that enables the state to continuing doing the things it should. In that context their actions make sense, but the state is operating in a different moral paradigm to us as individuals. That’s the hard thing to get your noodle around.

With some good lawyers, we might just stay up.

I don’t know mate, sounds like your office is a bit dodge though. With the rate of growth in infection I don’t think No.10 can hold the line of ‘keep calm and carry on’ for more than 2 weeks. They say we’re 4 weeks behind Italy but 2 seems more likely given the total lack of control measures in place. I’m guessing that we’ll be in a general lockdown by the 27th at which point it’s taken out of our hands and individuals won’t have to worry about justifying their decisions after that. In the grand scheme of things, getting a telling off by some no-mark Vs the potential consequences of doing as your told for a bit speaks for itself.

Good news - sneezing is a cold, not C—19. Tesco should be supplying masks, gloves, gel and wipes to all delivery workers with a quick demo on infection control. As Terry said earlier, the basics aren’t being done. It’s bonkers.

Justin Trudeau’s wife confirmed as infected so he’s in isolation for 14 days. Convenient that we halt testing after a confirmed case has been to a reception in No.10.

Don’t worry, with a Brit hating CV that strong there’s a job waiting for you as leader of the Labour Party.

That would be a silver lining, wouldn’t it?! Edit: also, Liverpool. Bwahahahaha! Edit 2: Leeds!

Oh yes, silly me. I forgot we are all dribbling morons. Thanks the reminder.

Putting the apocalypse to one side for a minute... If they do now void the 19/20 season, can we get a transfer window in the summer? Finances are gonna be completely stuffed with TV money already paid maybe being clawed back through the courts, but none of the clubs in the bottom three now would accept relegation on the basis of the table as it stands now.. How could it play out?

Right. Exactly. It’s not like no-one in the great ship of state knows this stuff either. It seems increasingly clear from the lack of preventative action that the idea is to really stoke up the levels of infection and get the outbreak cooking, then lockdown, probably for 2-4 weeks. Let those with the mild illness recover behind closed doors, try to extract and treat those with more severe symptoms, then hope when quarantine is lifted that the ‘herd immunity’ has been established. As brutal as that seems/is, I do wonder if other scenarios modelled resulted in even greater losses of life? Problem with the lack of transparency is people like us are left to fill in the blanks with seemingly plausible/probably wrong scenarios and motives. The Achilles heel of the British State has always been its insufferably patrician disdain for the public. I thought they’d learned their lesson with Brexit, but apparently not.

So from that briefing is it fair to surmise isolation now is good from a medical perspective, but advice from “behavioural scientists” is that we can’t be trusted to keep that up for long enough?! Balls to that. Talked with the long-haired General and decision made. Kids are out of school now until we decide it’s safe enough to send them back. We don’t have to do what every petty bureaucrat or quack scientist tells us to. Use your own judgement, no one is going to apologise later if they’ve massively screwed this up. You are not subjects to be experimented on.