love* in the time of plague (and by love* i mean brexit* and other dreary matters of uk politics)

Trump doing more opposition than the Lab party:

Trump is now also talking about the UK and herd immunity: “If you remember they were looking at that in the UK and all of a sudden they went hard the other way because they started seeing things that weren’t good. They put themselves in a little bit of a problem.”

— Lewis Goodall (@lewis_goodall) March 31, 2020

I absolutely hate agreeing with Trump, not that the fucker has a leg up stand on.

even a fascist crank like Trump sees that Herd Immunity is just callous inaction dressed up as a strategy that won't work out well for anybody, not that he's done much better himself tbf!

i was gonna say "the cunt doesn't even know what day it is" but then i realised i don't know what day it is

at the time we were on the herd immunity track trump was allowing flights from the uk to the us but not the rest of the eu because he thought boris was doing a great job

Trump doing more opposition than the Lab party

I know this is tongue in cheek but otherwise its such a classic Dan Hodges move.

Estimates from @cmmid_lshtm suggest #UKlockdown could be driving #COVID19 reproduction number below one.

But John Edmunds says they're not to be read as ‘job done’. "They should be used as motivation to keep following UK government instructions."

More 👉 https://t.co/ntBNhte1ZS pic.twitter.com/QAETWzt0pg

— London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (@LSHTM) April 1, 2020

This seems good? I don't even know any more.

not entirely convinced by the self-reporting nature of that study tbh but yeah huge if true

Nothing is good any more just more Tories staying alive

BREAKING: Edinburgh's August festivals confirm they're postponed, for the first time in over 70 years #coronavirusuk

— Severin Carrell (@severincarrell) April 1, 2020

best news I heard since Corden's anxiety attacks!

Bingo

Didn't know Corden had panic attacks, thank you based psychology

he said he's suffering from da rona induced anxiety spikes yesterday. I take much succour from any pain or suffering he has inflicted on himself for once!

The Prince of Wales has made his first appearance since coming out of self-isolation, following his coronavirus diagnosis, to record a video message in support of Age UK in response to the health crisis.

Charles, who is patron of Age UK, said in the footage posted on royal social media accounts: “Having recently gone through the process of contracting this coronavirus - luckily with relatively mild symptoms - I now find myself on the other side of the illness, but still in no less a state of social distance and general isolation.”

In the message, recorded on Tuesday morning by staff at Birkhall, the prince’s home in Scotland

anything's better than posh isolation...

Somebody released the wallabies from East Park in Hull last night and they're running around a council estate apparently 😅

it would feel pretty good to bellow RELEASE THE WALLABIES! into the night you have to admit

I wish I'd thought of it. On the other hand, I don't really remember most of yesterday evening.

563 addtional uk deaths in the last 24 hrs if i'm reading the numbers correctly

Among hospitalised patients - that won't cover the care homes, presumably?

i was gonna say "the cunt doesn't even know what day it is" but then i realised i don't know what day it is

Slightly amazed earlier on to find out it's Wednesday tbf.

are we still on the italy trajectory?

Think the corona traffic controller's shifted us to France

No we are growing more slowly than both, only a bit slower than France though.

Idly wondering how that Smurf festival worked out for the participants now.

Never seen the Stereophonics called that before

reckless smurfs gather in defiance (regret at leisure)

:(

the stereophonics’ singer is smurf-sized iirc

And he works blue

lool!

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EUcUBu6XgAcHo93?format=jpg&name=4096x4096

Catch 'em all!

BoJO sure looking like he's suffering from something tbqh

There's no test for cuntishness

worst livejasmin lineup ever

Dom Raab

Truss with the fucking flag behind her

Matt Hancock still trying to work out how to get the camera on his laptop to work.

neither smurfs nor stereophonics have good names for bad puns

That pic's like a modern-day version of King Arthur's round table - come one, come all and no hierarchy (Cummings aka Merlin lurking offscreen)

Nice unredacted username for Gove there.

mute all

Fuck me there are 738 other Michael Goves?

worst livejasmin lineup ever

Don't know how I missed this, just made me lol painfully

Nice unredacted username for Gove there.

Oh my god why are you still using Zoom you have an array of secure videoconferencing tools and you use a commercial app banned by the Ministry of Defence AND YOU’VE LEFT THE MEETING ID VISIBLE. https://t.co/0cdUvlNR8Y

— Nick Stylianou (@nmsonline) March 31, 2020

https://twitter.com/Lokinash06/status/1245359163955273728?s=20

I proper cracked up laughing at this on my phone on the way home!

https://t.co/oWWImCflC4 pic.twitter.com/ullAd1eqZx

— Steffan Loki (@Lokinash06) April 1, 2020

They spelled miwk wrong

We were super excited to get an Amazon food delivery slot. Less delighted when someone stole it from the front of our flat. Most people have responded positively to this situation. Some people are just scum

— Tim Shipman (@ShippersUnbound) April 1, 2020

omg ha ha ha

Love to know who stole that, so I can buy them a food parcel too

I'd be making videos of me feeding his chateaubriand to my dog whilst laughing my fucking head off!

lol

Just went to sainsbury's in angel for the first time since 22nd of march (10 days, maybe my new record!) and it did feel extraordinarily dystopic.

And speaking of dystopic, this BBC article struck me as incredibly alarming, especially the convergence of paternalistic sentiment in how both the BBC and the ethics advisor frame the notion of consent and privacy.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-52095331

In short, the gov is clearly planning some kind of SK style tracking app, and elite universities are clamoring to be the ones to design it. the article features the rather chilling insights of Prof Michael Parker who handwaves over the problematic idea that the government would need to enforce participation by positing an opt-in approach, largely enforced by private industry.

""My favourite restaurant might ask me to show that I was low-risk before allowing me into a crowded place, and I think that would be a perfectly reasonable price to pay for this step towards returning to normal life," Prof Michael Parker told the BBC.

He added that employers might also be justified in requiring staff to use the app if they worked "in an old people's home, with vulnerable groups or [were based] in very crowded places"."

I know this question answers itself, but jesus christ where do these goons come from who cannot see the social and political ramifications of these ideas? The notion that these are not also essential to what is ethically at stake, but rather that ethics is a kind of simple semantic game to rationalise and enable whatever kind of ghastly intervention you have already decided to roll out. Oh, PRIVATE industry will regulate the movements and social eligibility along a whole new matrix governed by this new 'opt-in' app. well that's okay then, PRIVATE industry has shown itself as so adept at managing equitable outcomes for everyone in the past. I can't see how this would help support an already extant health apartheid that punishes the ill or the elderly, or exacerbate an emergent enmeshing of surveillance capitalism at work in the state.

To clarify some, of those statements are *very* sarcastic.

what's doubly galling about this article is the standard BBC 'analysis' bit, we've all got used to, that doesn't analyse or question any of this but just sortof, reiterates it? Maybe this should be in the BBC thread. I do think its a good insight into the government/media/expert-knowledge axis of paternalism that has underwritten the response to C19 here, for e.g. the opportunism of the Home office realising that they can now indict windrush generation people via skype for not having old payslips from 1975.