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

Has there been a collective penny-dropping moment from vocal anti-lockdown types when they realise what another four months of furlough is likely to mean for the transition out of lockdown? That coupled with Hancock's "sorry, you aren't getting on a plane this summer" announcement? Feels like the entire year has been basically written off now but the govt don't want to openly admit that yet.

"Nobody who is on the furlough scheme wants to be on this scheme,"

workings shite mate

A negative Boris is even more pointless than a serious Boris, so leave the tough stuff to Sunak and Hancock

The thing I am having trouble accepting myself is that there's nothing special about the end of year – next year is just as much written off as this. Absent an incredibly solid TTI infra (which we don't appear to be even getting close to), a really robust treatement or vaccine turning up, what would change that?

and so at this point, I could give a shit about perceptions of competence – I want actual competence-at-implementing-TTI to take the reins, sooner rather than later please.

Plenty of appetite to pull the plug on furlough. Any reduction will mean many job losses.

Stage 1 of the government deciding who "deserves" furlough pay and who doesn't. Expect mass redundancies in the creative industries and smaller businesses, and total protection of big business and financial sector jobs. https://t.co/qfgldwCoCm

— Uncle P (@PasqualeLDN) May 12, 2020

it’s hard to see any way that next winter/spring are any better than this one given we’ve already got global reach for the virus, plenty of countries will have lifted their social restrictions, and a bunch of us will have been softened up by bouts of cold and flu. nice time to be leaving the EU hey? oh by the way has the remainder of the EU settlement scheme been sorted out yet? no? all the document verification centres have been closed you say? and no postal applications either? and EU citizens without settled status are already being denied UC? hmmm!!

It'll be interesting to see what's coming down the line on home-based learning if you have another four months of people staying in and getting paid for jobs that likely won't exist by the time business are theoretically able to re-open.

it’s good money after bad. why pay people not to work when you could be paying them to train up - as contact tracers, first and foremost!

Difficult to see how they could discontinue furlough given it's effectively turning off life support for hundreds of thousands of small businesses, the owners of which make up a hefty chunk of the Tory vote. It's also going to make economic restructuring much harder whenever the other side of this turns out to be.

The only way I can see out of this in even the short-ish term is the discovery and widespread distribution of effective antivirals and lord knows how far away we are from that.

not everyone wants to be a tracer

first i’ve heard of it

Someone I vaguely know runs a business (with their partner) related to the live events sector, which of course has died on its arse. Their turnover is in the six-figure bracket with a bunch of expenses, so I don't think they're earning vast amounts. Furlough or no, they're getting precisely FUCK ALL government help, and will probably go bust/lose their house etc. Sunak et al are well aware that most small business owners are set up as limited companies and taking a minimal wage with the rest as dividends - which of course aren't covered. So a lot of small-to-medium size businesses are set to go under, Tory voters or no.
Since there probably won't be an election until 2024 they figure it doesn't matter I guess, and the void in semi-essential services to get things up and running again can be *waves hands* sorted out. Dunno, maybe business owners can all be retrained as grave diggers or something?

This is it, quite a few people falling through the cracks already. Also Tories will have little idea on how to do anything like re-structure the economy, hence why I can see the plug being pulled to some extent, earlier than it should be.

But also I can't see Sunak fucking it up at some point.

*not

Also Tories will have little idea on how to do anything like re-structure the economy,

Also ties in with the questions about re-training. aiui there's a huge online learning programme ready to roll but what kinds of jobs are the Tories envisaging are going to be required if tourism, hospitality, catering, etc are all going to be wrecked for the foreseeable?

posting

We'll be getting this situation here in a few weeks I guess

Abattoirs and food-processing plants in Lower Saxony, Schleswig Holstein, North-Rhine Westphalia and Baden-Württemberg have been identified as the centres of the outbreaks and could be responsible for the recent increase in Germany’s R-number to above 1, the country’s disease control agency, the Robert Koch Institute, said.

Health authorities believe that while the virus may not have spread in the processing plants themselves, it may have found fertile ground in the overcrowded housing units shared by mainly eastern European contract workers. Germany announced on Tuesday its weekly test capacity was now at 838,000.

what kinds of jobs are the Tories envisaging

I do think there's something in the idea of adding back in all the redundancy that has been stripped out in the name of efficiency. Trivial example: milk processing. There used to be 35+ milk processors in Scotland, spread across the entire country. There are now just 5, using 3 processing locations. If we switch to a TTI world, what happens to milk processing if they're in regional lockdown for a time?

A logistics chain that is less efficient on paper, but more resilient to local interruption and lockdown is one that is both better for surviving CV and for employing more people. And theoretically brings lots of ancillary local jobs back along with it.

But enduring inefficiency is hard to stabilise, so they'd need stomach for more market intervention than they're ever willing to do for any industry (except finance, obv). And you'd need to accept that this isn't over in 6 months.

good xp - it also reduces the contagian risk posed by massive centralised processing like that

Horrific stories about meat-packing plants in the US. A few heroes:

Mike Cockrell, the company’s chief financial officer, says Sanderson expects its chicken production will be 4% less this fiscal year than it estimated before the pandemic. But “no one even asks how much it costs to protect workers,” he says. “We’ll add it up when this is all over.”

And a lot of villains:

Each time he arrived at work, Benjamin saw a different reality emerging. A quiet, powerfully built man, he wasn’t the sort to open up about his fears, but during daily calls with his three adult children, he confided that he was afraid of getting sick. On March 25 one of his daughters gave him a face mask to wear at the plant, where he operated boxing and loading equipment near the entrance and was often the first person to greet arriving co-workers. “He was always so respectful,” a shiftmate says. Two days later, Benjamin told his kids a supervisor had ordered him to remove the mask because it was creating unnecessary fears among plant employees.

On Saturday, April 4, Benjamin called in sick. So few workers had shown up the day before that he’d had to do the work of three people, he told his family. By Monday his cough and fever were much worse. The next morning he could barely move. An ambulance took him to the hospital.

While he was in the emergency room, Cargill shut down the Hazleton plant to disinfect everything, install barriers between workstations, and give employees time to heal. Later that week, the union said 164 workers had been infected. The local testing center, running low on supplies, was refusing to test most Cargill employees. If you work at the meatpacking plant, they were told, assume you’re positive.

Benjamin was admitted to the intensive care unit and spent his work anniversary on a ventilator. He died on April 19. The next day the plant reopened after a two-week cleaning.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2020-05-07/coronavirus-closes-meat-plants-threatens-food-supply

We have responded to the publication by the Conservative Party of the terms of reference for an independent investigation into discrimination and prejudice. Read our statement here ➡️ https://t.co/MV9OyHjFwC pic.twitter.com/mQEqXVdZDN

— EHRC (@EHRC) May 12, 2020

lol

incredible

I do think there's something in the idea of adding back in all the redundancy that has been stripped out in the name of efficiency.

this is where I think there can be curious overlap between your modern Taleb-reading disruptive semi-libertarian right logic and a leftist move towards local control and common ownership. this whole point about risks being greater for large unresponsive bodies and the disasters possible when those in power have no skin in the game are essentially arguments against millionaires and centralisation

you see the tension on the right with the way small businesses are treated vs big business. the likes of deborah meaden complaining that the tory govt isn't pro business at all. you could easily make labour appeal to these ppl by focusing on small business, clamping down on tax evasion and other big business bail outs and hammer the tories for all that corrupt nonsense, split the 'business lobby'

627 today. can't wait for the 900+ VE day street party spike in a few weeks.

Is that up on the end of last week?

Update, following today's official @ONS data of total deaths, a cautious estimate of the number of UK excess deaths up to 12 May is

59,700

Of these 51,000 have happened and 8,700 are estimates bringing the official data up to date using evidence from hospitals

1/ pic.twitter.com/64tqcIAPlY

— Chris Giles (@ChrisGiles_) May 12, 2020

https://scontent.flhr6-1.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/96815972_10159236073690752_5129909427968671744_o.jpg?_nc_cat=103&_nc_sid=110474&_nc_ohc=7wbs8i1KXbwAX_OXp_R&_nc_ht=scontent.flhr6-1.fna&oh=88408f7cb8a59a7d58f2a804db13d1f1&oe=5EDECF79

Honestly heart breaking 💔 sick to death of seeing the same people slag him off and moan about how he should of put us in lockdown sooner, moaned right the way through having to stay indoors and then moan about how he hasn't lifted it yet and how much of a shit job he's doing while he's probably paying 80% of their wages to sit at home on their arse and stay safe. Anybody any idea about the colossal amount of ins and outs of putting an entire country in lockdown? Thought not.
Everyone cried when caroline flack killed herself because of how society reacted to something they knew feck all about...and here we are again.
And you all wonder why I live in the middle of the countryside away from people...I hate the lot of ya 😂 society is ugly.

Keep going Boris 👏

Stop posting muck off your mumsnet alt here ffs

^ missing the mood of the nation

"Is that up on the end of last week?"

I'm on my phone rn but think it is almost the figures approaching the weekend.

Double

Proposal to revoke suffrage from those who use ‘should of’.

Why is the Dept of Health on 32k but the ONS are saying its 40k?

ONS figures for England and Wales are 33.3k *where C-19 is mentioned on death cert*, up to 1/5/20.

So, if you extrapolate from that to 11/5/20, *or* if you add in Scotland and NI, *or* both, you're surely approaching or beyond 40k. There's no reading of the ONS stats that could possibly mean it's only 32k.

And then you tally the excess deaths, as above, and it's likely far worse than 40k.

Thanks.

But the Conclusion section of this explains differences between DHSC and ONS numbers pretty well. Basically: former is based on date of registration (not occurrence), so there's a lag in numbers, and there has to have been a positive test (not just mentioned as cause of death on cert). So lag + tests-only = several thousand behind ONS numbers at any given point.

https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/causesofdeath/articles/comparisonofweeklydeathoccurrencesinenglandandwales/uptoweekending24april2020

I’ve changed my mind, end lockdown now

Like a coiled spring.. ready to go for Defence Questions.. pic.twitter.com/1vUsdVf0J1

— Johnny Mercer (@JohnnyMercerUK) May 12, 2020

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-52606982

It occurs to me I haven't said 'fuck this guy' for ages because he appeared to disappear entirely for months, but really, fuck this guy.

it is vital that when we are asking other people to work and go to their places of work if they cannot do so from home we should not be the ones who are exempt from that.

Exclusive: Treasury blueprint to raise taxes and freeze wages to pay for £300bn coronavirus billhttps://t.co/KesbeEbEQ5

— Gordon Rayner (@gordonrayner) May 12, 2020

Is hiking taxes, freezing wages and slashing state spending a good way to get out of the biggest recession in 250 years? No.

Is telling people you’re going to make their life hell for the next decade a good way to get them to turn against the idea of lockdown / furlough? idk

that "you will have to pay for this global crisis by eating the bark off trees for the next 3 decades" line needs to be strongly challenged by Labour, not tag teamed. Not saying Starmer is doing that but he is very fucking weak from what I've observed.

Half the price of the bank bailout to save hundreds of thousands of lives seems cheap tbh

It is totally irresponsible for teacher unions to advise their members not to engage in planning for a safe reopening of schools on 1 June

— Andrew Adonis (@Andrew_Adonis) May 12, 2020

christ I hate tories so much.

Re: Piers Morgan

There's no points for giving reactionaries props when they stumble into the right position

if you boost them as someone now then when after this they go right back to attacking black people or trans people or any other group with the same ferocity, you've promoted them as someone worth listening to

Thoughts on this? I can see the argument behind it but ultimately I think its the wrong take, actions should be supported

I don't see him pulling off a Trojan horse move here. People are still massively distrusting of him and anything I've seen praising his criticism of the Government has been prefaced with "usually I hate him, BUT..."

Broadly, Chris Rock on ‘good dads’ WRT above.

Schapps has suggested that public transport can carry no more than 10% of the usual capacity without distancing rules being breached, which sounds about right. Absolutely clear that, unless social distancing is abandoned completely, it's not going to be possible for anyone other than key workers to commute. I can't see that changing this year.

I’ve really had enough of this coverage

Buses in London are packed with passengers this morning, despite the govt asking people to avoid public transport if possible when the #coronavirus lockdown eased.

Follow live as England gets back to work: https://t.co/HxzgZFnXnJ pic.twitter.com/pjTNBlg8ib

— SkyNews (@SkyNews) May 13, 2020