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

rick and morty is a documentary

Fishy?

Regarding those 128 fake #NHS Staff accounts posting for 'Herd Mentality' and support of the Govt that were set up by @DHSCgovuk or their marketing agency ...

Posts were sent using Hootsuite, a mass-posting tool. Account registered to 1 person with 4 assigned contributors. pic.twitter.com/r7fRFQaFwG

— John O'Connell (@jdpoc) April 20, 2020

bantheclap? what?

the only good hashtag!

"43 accounts use actual photos of actual NHS staff."

jesus wept

So, there should be no politicisation of the coronavirus, unless Conservative.

Red Ed is back.

(THREAD) It is worth explaining why I think government has made the wrong call on CBILs. It is falling into the trap of thinking the danger at the end of all this will be that we have done too much, too quickly when the danger is the opposite: we do too little, too slowly (1/)

— Ed Miliband (@Ed_Miliband) April 20, 2020

Glad to see Boris is on the mend

is anyone else just absolutely REPULSED by this giant baby pic.twitter.com/0Un7QQ4kZF

— Yard Sard: A Memoir (@DuckAlertsNOW) April 20, 2020

need a quite a hard-nosed authoritarian one giant policy relentlessly upheld rn imo

one giant baby I meant!

Credit where credit's due that's some good Twitter wonkery for Miliband.

I hated myself for voting for his worthless and vile 2015 aberration of what passes for opposition, but never doubted he's not a decent person.

*nods along*

wait

ah i read the thread now!

XXX forensic

BREAKING: Leaks show NHS using ‘knowingly flawed’ tests, missing 25% of positive coronavirus cases – Hancock under pressure to resign.https://t.co/K4yt9PtlP5

— openDemocracy (@openDemocracy) April 20, 2020

Hancock allowing the NHS to use tests with a 25% failure rate. "no test is better than a bad test" indeed

That's actually better than I thought; back at the start of April they were saying up to 30% false negatives. Fucking hell, all the same. https://www.channel4.com/news/factcheck/factcheck-how-reliable-are-the-uks-coronavirus-tests

I think 30% false negative is apparently pretty standard for that type of test?

False positive rate seems more relevant (and needs to be much higher than that) for the intended use case of letting people out

If 5% of people are immune and the FPR is 20% then 4/5 of people you’re assuming are immune are not.

The only accurate tests are blood tests but they are slow. I assume there is no real incentive to test NHS workers for immunity as you would have to send those without home.

https://amp.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/17/nhs-staff-to-be-asked-to-treat-coronavirus-patients-without-gowns?

Hancock needs to go.

He won't and if he's under pressure to go I haven't heard much about it outside of this thread.

I'm afraid that accountability is completely gone from public life in UK since 2010. There are obvious antecedents such as ignoring public feeling and demonstrations re Iraq, but the FTPA has allowed politicians to act without any fear of accountability. Its hard to imagine that the expenses scandal could happen now, can you imagine the justifications that peston and kuenssberg would make. Probably May did more than anyone to push the envelope on this by pressing on in the face of repeated unprecedented commons defeats, but even then patel resigned. The johnson gov has is fully enjoying the fruits of this dismantling of accountability in an extraordinary way, but it does feel like malice, corruption and incompetence are an absolute baseline norm in public office now. I can't imagine that hancock will have to go, that any of them will have to go.

I can’t see how replacing him would make things any better, tbh.

Probably wouldn't make anything better now, no. More about paying for mistakes, of which this is clearly one.

I see what plax is saying but at what point do we get some accountability back. Sunak is playing with fire, as is the call to end the lockdown which could result in a 2nd spike.

its not about single instances of 'people going,' but it does seem that the complacency about hiring a cabinet full of dimwit loons is only possible when you know there are repercussions for loose cannon fire. The situation we are in is the result of a political culture that does not fear repercussions.

Sunak is definitely going nowhere, he's the anointed one, that cunt will probably be around for the rest of our lives.

i honestly think its in part a constitutional question and there won't be any accountability as long as the ftpa is still in place or at least some other lever comes into being to counter-act it. Even then a lot of damage is already done.

Xpost Yeah, you don’t get a safe seat like Richmond in North Yorkshire if they don’t think you’re going places.

https://amp.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/17/nhs-staff-to-be-asked-to-treat-coronavirus-patients-without-gowns🕸?

Hancock needs to go.

Posted without really looking any further into it, I'm afraid:

Firstly, the OP repeatedly claims there are 128 accounts involved. However, not a single screenshot or handle from any account other than the original account is actually given in the thread. Why is there not a single other account public? https://t.co/i0E4JNqJ6M

— Luke Bailey (@imbadatlife) April 21, 2020

Well I did look into it and I agree with that take.

"Hootsuit, a mass-posting tool"

I'll tell my kids Hootsuit was Fred

Genuinely loled at that, necessary on a day when I’m enraged over that PPE story.

Regardless of how badly Hancock has been doing, parachuting a completely green minister into the Dept of Health in the middle of a pandemic will probably do more harm than good I'd imagine?

Coronavirus deaths 41% higher than official figures - ONS https://t.co/uPg0X2BwTP

— SkyNews (@SkyNews) April 21, 2020

thought the numbers were a bit low compared to France.

I presume when the ONS catches up with this week it will be roughly the same.

The same is happening in other countries too though, isn't it? In terms of misreporting or miscounting of deaths?

I know they are probably doing the same in other countries to different degrees but I feel like this lot might just have a bit more enthusiasm to flatten that curve by any means nec seeing as they've fucked this up worse than the rest of Europe.

They'd have to bring back Jeremy Hunt what a prospect xp

Do we actually have any idea where we are in the curve? You'd think the daily death rate would be an essential statistic but apparently not.

449 deaths announced yesterday and even with a bump for care home deaths that still seems to be going down? But it's meaningless if no one believes it and a steady drip-drip of these stories is just obliterating trust.

My garbage homespun theory is they are still in mitigating their own fuck-ups with spin mode, they've fucked up so big they've gone into a state of denial because copping for this is too big and they know all the polling is very fragile and could quickly turn into murderous anger against them. It will make a hell of a good read one day, but it sure sucks shit to be living (and dying) through it.

Spinning it now is digging further into the hole but you might be right.

The office of national statistics are lying. Those people would have died anyway. It is good that thousands of people have died, we all have herd immunity now

Think the numbers probably are going down
because of the lag between cases due to distancing.

Discrepancy between ONS figures (available 11 days after the fact) and daily in-hospital count are inevitable. It's actually not quite as bad as I feared for w/e Apr 10, given the huge discrepancy in the figure for w/e Apr 3. Total number of deaths for w/e Apr 10 in Eng+Wal now around 8k above seasonal mean (18.5k vs 10.5k), and "only" 6.2k mention Covid-19 on cert. (And that 6.2k is higher than the cumulative count that would have been available *at the time*).

So, yeah, it's worse than the daily headline figures, and that's likely the same everywhere.

FT graphs are still the best indication I've seen of where nations are on the curve.

https://www.ft.com/coronavirus-latest

UK is *just* over the top (London is coming down the other side), US has yet to plateau (NY state is over the hill too). Daily figures (in rolling 7-day aggregates) and not ONS-style after-the-fact "true" totals, but still a decent indicator of trends, I guess.

We need a few days' worth of data...does anyone know whether other countries have gone from 700+ to 400+ in two days like we have? xp