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

i don’t think there’s any promise of return to “normal” life, only a long period of tracing and varying levels of lockdown depending on the rate of transmission. again, that seems to fit with what we know about the best expectation of an immediate post lockdown world.

Not to make this a pop at you, just at him, but I think that's exactly what he's saying. His opening summary is "Strong coronavirus measures today should only last a few weeks". To get there, he, like a lot of other amateurs (which ofc I am also one) are basically ignoring the second spike; he did this in his first, even worse, essay too.

He handwaves it away by saying "it won't matter because uh the hammer gives us time which we will use to ... prepare! So that the second spike doesn't matter when it hits". There are a few problems with that. The general one is the preparation required includes getting a shit-ton of ventilators, building a butt-load of hospitals, establishing mass testing, establishing contact tracing, masking everyone up, etc etc. All of those things take a lot of time, not a few weeks. Look how proud HMG were to obtain 30 ventilators.

It will take months to put in place, and yes, that's especially true now because we are now badly behind the preparedness ball: everybody wants PPE and vents and reagents now. Naturally the countries that survived SARS are better prepped. So when he simultaneously says "the hammer needs to only last for a few weeks" and 'the second spike doesn't matter because we use the time of the hammer to prepare for it" there is a pretty fundamental contradiction there.

(That's also putting aside the UK specific issue of the NHS Winter Health Crisis. Our second spike is likely to hit just as flu et al are ramping up. Brr)

This is why I'm for Labour going on about the exit strategy btw. Because if it is a version of the "dance" where we unlock but are better prepped for a second spike, they should be doing gargantuan amounts of prep now. Which they manifestly are not. Millions of xps

I'd like someone to start going on about the second spike too. as it is, feels like there's the impression that this lockdown will go on for another 4-6 weeks and then that will be that. we will be through the worst of it, the V-shaped economic recovery will start kicking in etc. that seems kinda short-sighted. how are things playing out in the countries which are reopening from lockdown (only china so far right?)

how are things going in sweden too, incidentally?

just feels like this whole year is going to be unlike any other. don't see a return to 'normal' anytime soon. it certainly doesn't feel like this will be done by the summer

Friend of mine just had to do this after her husband died, and it went through really quickly. So yeah they've probably fucked up and will need chasing.

Yep! They fucked up. They got all the documentation, and... did nothing! Our wonderful DWP. The person on the phone seemed quite confused about it. Said they had no idea why there was no case set up for the documents.

I suppose it's quite fitting that after the endless stream of bullshit the NHS shat on us that the DWP would add to it with their own, just to finish it off

If they bungle the transition out of lockdown then thousands more people are going to die unnecessarily. Absolutely he should be asking much more questions about the lack of PPE, what's being done about food poverty or just lack of access (even if the Tories don't give a shit about this stuff), but the government's strategy for ending lockdown needs to be published and properly scrutinised before they've had the chance to fuck it up. Otherwise it's No Deal handwaving all over again except with worse consequences.

how are things playing out in the countries which are reopening from lockdown (only china so far right?)

What i'm hearing is that things are re-opening slowly but there's potential for things to be tightened again very rapidly. Schools are starting to re-open but a lot of office workers are being given the option to continue to work from home. Beijing loosened some of the local measures but has started to tighten them again - anyone entering the city from another part of China needs to be quarantined for fourteen days, etc.

The biggest issue afaict is that there's no way to stop further spikes without stopping all international travel. They've got strict measures in place for foreign travelers (possibly a complete bar, idk) but they're really concerned about overseas Chinese returning from places like Russia and everything kicking off again.

seeing as he's got the dynamism of a sloth on diazies and is such a quivering feeb, do you any of you people believe he is actually going to effectively press the govt on how to plan and progress forwards?

all kicking off again kinda seems inevitable. hope we don't just get rolling lockdowns for the next 9-12 months : /

xp

when Top Scientists in the UK were like 'we don't WANT to suppress it now, because it will just pop up again in the autumn' i never really understood it. for all the SEO bullshit speculation in that guy's medium article, he does get at this basic point: if it pops up again in the autumn that at least buys us time to get ventilators manufactured, establish new facilities, and even recruit/retrain NHS staff.

I can see us in a situation where, if the rate of infections and deaths slows, we are moving round our towns cities again relatively normally by the end of the summer, although maybe not between them. Even parts of Italy are easing lockdown a little now (although obviously not Lombardy etc) and how that plays out will be instructive here.

One problem is that a regional approach will likely turn out to be necessary but the UK doesn't have a strong or effective enough system of local or regional government for that to happen. In fact these have been systematically undermined and drained of resources since Thatcher. The exception is perhaps in larger metropolitan areas and people like Khan, Burnham etc appear to have been kept at arm's length by the government and kept away from key decisions and information that directly affects them.

International travel isn't coming back any time soon, that's one thing. With proper lockdown measures you can envisage a situation where the rate of infection has slowed hugely and most people with it have either recovered or died. But as soon as you start reopening borders then the infection will be right back in. And this is a government that needs no encouragement to close borders.

There will surely be rolling lockdowns for the next year or more.

Things will be very slow in coming back, no normal here. The + 20% for Q3/4 really looks really fanciful if parts of the economy are shut and even then people won't be going out all the time lol.

That's the problem with the u-turn that never was. In the original plan you didn't worry about a second spike because we coped with the first one and had herd immunity etc. In the new plan you have to worry an awful lot about the second spike, and start preparing for it.

They seem to have mashed the two together in the worst way – no prep for a second spike, no management of the first one. They're firefighting as they go. Terrifying. xp

the UK doesn't have a strong or effective enough system of local or regional government for that to happen

Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland all have separate parliaments. Not that the Welsh one amounts to much.

it's almost as if it's a government of incompetent chancers whose only real interest is enriching their friends

Borders will be shut both ways. No holidays to India or Spain for Brits, for a good year.

Whether they can afford one after a vaccine is found is another question as well.

There's a void in decision-making at the top of government right now as well, with Johnson and Cummings incapacitated and reputedly nearly everyone who worked in Downing Street has got it. Hancock is useless and Raab clearly isn't trusted to make any decisions of substance. I'm not surprised that nothing is being done, decision-making is clearly so centralised that it's a recipe for disaster.

And that's assuming they don't make the wrong decisions in the end anyway, and lol at that assumption.

There's likely also an ideological split between the Cabinet members more inclined to caution and the ones who were briefing to the press that schools should have re-opened already.

Lol @ Tories even trying to re-start local government after those cuts.

It's interesting comparing Scotland – where most of this is devolved. They've been mostly in line with UK actions, and you'd expect them to go for political advantage where it was possible and safe to do so. The first real rattling has been over PPE, which the UK has seized control of.

and allegedly has been using that control to funnel ppe to england instead of sharing it with the rest of the uk

Lol Piers is just throwing New Zealand and Ireland at this.

How is this professional stalker doing a better job than the current leader of the opposition pic.twitter.com/t5oOtKrDZ4

— Your Mum (@judeinlondon2) April 15, 2020

The weird thing is the Tories had the political capital -- after a landslide -- to manage it in an 'authoritarian' way. Shut things down, tell people etc. If we end up worse than Italy that's an open goal that Starmer is missing.

piers... o-o-otm? feels bad

"that's an open goal that Starmer is missing"

he makes Shane Long's finishing look forensic.

A report on the re-openings across Europe.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/14/world/europe/coronavirus-reopenings-europe.html

What can and can't re-open. A factory that relies as much or more on exports to areas where there is no demand will need further assistance or go under. Re-opening is one very small step.

Presumably Morgan has no issue with how the US had handled things or is so it's not Trump's fault.

Borders will be shut both ways. No holidays to India or Spain for Brits, for a good year.

Been thinking about how neither myself nor my wife might see our families at all for a year or more, fun times.

Piers Morgan does this (the opposite of a heel turn, I guess?) all the time, it allows him to present himself as Far And Balanced. Not that I'm against it, I'll take any scrutiny now whatever the source.

new zealand have only had 4 deaths?!

/Borders will be shut both ways. No holidays to India or Spain for Brits, for a good year./

Been thinking about how neither myself nor my wife might see our families at all for a year or more, fun times.

The rewards for moving to the UK just keep on coming!

come on immunity passports already

New Zealand has had 9 deaths and 1386 cases.

9 deaths!!

really feel like that's pertinent information that more people should be aware of

extremely worrying stuff in this guardian article about the current situation in uk psychiatric wards. no ppe for a start but also no visits or leave and a complete halt on therapy and therapeutic activities. https://t.co/F1kO5RlOQo

— Emily (@emily_0r) April 15, 2020

As far as I can remember all but one of the deaths in NZ are from an elderly care home in Christchurch.

it's amazing what can be achieved when you learn from other countries mistakes rather than imprudently repeating them.

But...we had an empire!

even the biggest mental health hospitals/facilities are not set up in a way which can cope with this, not sure what you can do really beyond use it as another argument against institutionalising people

Just checking the statistics on the NRScotland website now (as ONS only covers England and Wales).

For w/c Mar 30:
Typical number of deaths for corresponding week, 2013-19: 1000-1100
For 2020: 1741
Where Covid-19 mentioned on cert: 282

So, in line with England and Wales, direct/indirect effect of C-19 on death statistics is 2-2.5x greater than the daily headline number we're seeing coming out of the hospital figures.

jesus I can't imagine the stress and fear you'd have to cope with if one of your kids or family were in one of these institutions right now.

New Zealand's line is that their strategy is elimination rather than mitigation

good strategy imo

It's not often that I am happy when numbers escape.

And active cases are now less than half of total cases!#Covid_19nz #COVID19nz pic.twitter.com/GV1IfZfEsI

— Chris Knox (@vizowl) April 15, 2020

NZ started testing people way before it registered its first case and was quarantining new arrivals very early on as well, whereas the UK was still not conducting proper health or temperature checks on new arrivals even when planes stopped flying. Yeah it's a small and remote country and isn't exactly renowned for its population density but it still appears to have been highly successful.

UK MPs: IPSA awards them a potential extra £10k work-from-home allowance

New Zealand: They all take a 20% paycut.