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

frequently shit seems to be rolling uphill at an alarming speed these days

http://agendapublica.elpais.com/decay-in-government-quality-and-its-cost-in-covid-19-lives/

Hence, the reaction by these four countries has been slower than that of many others in Europe. They have struggled to adopt decisions to prepare and respond to the pandemic, as well as when trying to garner the necessary political consensus leading to taking tough decisions. At least in the cases of Spain, Belgium, and the UK, which had additional time than Italy to prepare for the hit of the pandemic, it also limited the capacity to learn from and react to what was happening in Italy. Additional consequences of weaker governments and bureaucracies have been frequent changes of direction and criteria in the policies adopted, the chronic lack of personal protective equipment for health and social workers, and a manifest incapacity to coordinate effectively the public procurement of medical and protective equipment. This has resulted in an every man/woman for himself/herself type of strategy that has not only undermined an effective and co-ordinated response when the virus struck, but has also failed to instil the necessary trust to bring the population on board. The results are well known: higher infection rates, higher level of infections among front-line health workers, and, sadly, a far higher share of excess deaths.

Quite.

This “phased reopening” is so fucked up. It is so busy out there now! I went to an independent bookshop in Ely, expecting something like: only x customers in at a time, limited stock on display but more could be fetched out on request, staff have protective gear &c. Nope, it’s exactly the same as pre-pandemic except they have a hand sanitiser station. This is what happens when the guidance is nil and the ppl issuing it have no credibility. Anecdotally social distancing has gone out the window where ppl seemed mainly onside until as recently as a couple of weeks ago. Almost nobody masking up (even on the bus). If we go from 2m to 1m it will be over because most already think 1m is 2m. Phase 3 and pubageddon are looming. Sleepwalking into catastrophe

The first weekend the pubs reopen but it’s narrated by Werner Herzog

— Challenge Man (@tom_usher_) June 21, 2020

i keep seeing groups of tourists in london and i'm very confused about what their holiday is and where they're staying.

like obvious tourist groups with the shorts and backpacks and cameras in areas like near buckingham palace etc.

maybe cosplaying as tourists has become a thing in the post-lockdown era

About a month ago I was chilling with a beer on kings parade (it was still nice and quiet then) and this American woman asked some ppl to take her photo in front of kings college & she was saying “I just arrived yesterday, I’ve always wanted to visit Cambridge” and I was sitting there thinking wtf where did you come from, how did you get here

i don't think i'm being paranoid, there's definitely different 'types' that you can spot: south american early retirement couples that holiday together (lost, dehydrated, fighting), german family with matching backpacks (visiting something weird in the square mile, like an elizabethan execution site), etc.

i guess its airbnb or something

it was a lot busier at the beach today than last time I went, a couple of weeks ago. the car parks were busy and did seem like there were probably tourists as well as locals.

I went to the more secluded bit where you aren't supposed to go because the cliffs are prone to collapse, but there was about 15-20 people on that bit when I got there

reopening pubs on the first Saturday in July would be a masterstroke

Are you Dominic Cummings in disguise?

if they bring in a draconian license to drink system, on top of the widespread lack of trust for anything the uk govt says rn, I predict a complete flop.

i'd take that bet, what i find hardest to imagine is this shower setting out any system more detailed than Johnson mumbling about Britain for 10 minutes and telling people to stay alert when they're pissed

Stay Upright.

Having to give your name and address when you pop into the pub for a swift one, yeah, like that's going to happen.

at least when you have a license to get drunk they can only charge you for being disorderly when you get caught stood on a top of a skip shouting death threats at your neighbours!

Not seeing a pub full of pissed-up geezers in Bromley adhering to social distancing rules after the 4th pint, tbh

I doubt I would be either tbf.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Ea8er07XQAAOk51?format=jpg&name=900x900

so not happening

Well that sounds like fun

Brexit vote was 4 years ago today.

I like how they've illustrated that with a picture of a legendarily cramped and tiny pub.

it's also possibly the only pub in Britain that doesn't actually serve pints

Imagine beer garden patrol will be a really fun job

Bar Staff will clean bar tops, door handles and fruit machines at least every twenty minutes and there will be regular patrols of pub gardens to make sure inebriated guests continue to observe social-distancing rules. Children’s play areas are likely to remain out of action.

*Restaurants*

Owners will be required to place strict limits on the number of people they allow in to ensure social distancing is observed, with queues forming outside. They will be encouraged to use reservations to stagger bookings.

Upon arrival, tables, spaced widely apart, will appear surprisingly bare, as napkins and cutlery will only be brought out with food. Laminated menus will be replaced with single-use, disposable menus and condiments will be served in sachets on request.

Waiters may also make use of menu boards but there will be fewer options than usual as chefs will try to minimise cross-contamination of ingredients. Plates will be cleared by staff wearing gloves, or at the very least, waiters will be asked to wash their hands each time they serve a different table.

Payment with contactless card will be encouraged.

Does this come with any guidance about how many family members we're allowed to see at once yet? Or whether people in relationships can see their partners outside of a support bubble?

My guess is we'll know whether or not this has fucked up by the second half of July. If the weather stays like this for a while I'm happy to wait.

Family shmamily, the important thing is opening up Wetherspoon and getting cancer patients back to work

You can presumably see family members down the pub or at the National Gallery.

It's a free-for-all now. Even if there are technically rules in place, they're now completely impossible to enforce.

Will the restaurants and pubs who can't serve enough ever make enough to stay afloat?

I suspect there are going to be more taxpayer backed loans at the very least.

The margins on restaurants are often so tight, i can't see how they're going to survive even a 20% capacity reduction.

Thinking about cinemas, even with distancing reduced to one metre, that presumably means they have to operate with, what, one seat in nine filled?

Depends how long they'll have to keep the distancing in effect, if we're talking for another year then there's no way my local is going to be able to survive.

They've [my local] talked about utilising the bowling green area for more tables but I know for a fact they rely on the really busy nights to stay in business. The amount of people they can serve on a whole bowling green + people inside spead about isn't even close to how many people cram in the pub at the weekend.

https://www.businessinsider.com/brexit-will-cost-uk-more-than-total-payments-to-eu-2020-1?IR=T

Releasing confusing rules + little detail on the financials = the entire approach of this government in a nutshell. It will just wreck people's confidence

I think the only breeding ground for covid than the pub is possibly the covid ward in a crowded hospital.
- everyone shouts
- you can't wear masks
- men are disgusting savages
- everyone touches everything
- key feature of boozing is reducing inhibitions and clouding judgement

Only breeding ground *worse*

it's gonna be lit

ah sat at the bar reading the goal Rona proximity alerts as they come in!

I think that packed public transport and offices are probably worse tbh but yeah if this fucks up it's going to be bad.

At the same time we have been predicting an imminent rise in infection rates since VE Day now and it doesn't seem to have happened, even in cities with thousands of people out in the street protesting and being kettled. But indoor socialising is an entirely different thing.

Feels like a gamble that community transmission is low enough to be vaguely sort-of safe enough (ie with most cases happening in hospitals or care homes). Even socially distanced pubs aren't going to be a fraction of what we had back in March with thousands of people going to sporting events, piling onto trains and into bars etc.

Also given what's been said about booze clouding judgement, there's almost inevitably going to be a lot of people hugging strangers, not to mention the fact that there are a lot of people out there who haven't had even the chance to get laid in three months. Chuck the hot weather in there as well and, yeah.

it's gonna be super lit

Never mind strangers, I'd not trust myself not to hug friends - particularly the ones that have been suffering most from the lack of physical contant.

That's slightly less of an issue from and test and trace point of view though.

NHS has brought forward their planning to deal with the second wave in August/Sept rather than Oct/Nov as originally planned. That, combined with possible immunity being much lower than expected, raises the prospect of a 3rd, 4th or even 5th wave before we get a vaccine

— Pukkah Punjabi (@PukkahPunjabi) June 23, 2020

we should start a pool on what the final uk death toll on this is gonna be

i'm saying 600,000

"final"

well, yeah

i thought about starting a thread for playlist suggestions for music to play on the day when lockdown lifts and we can finally go back to normal, drive wherever, hug anyone, go to pubs - and then i realised it won't work like that, it will just be this slow, staggered, grinding, forward and back and low-level dread. there won't be a 'victory over coronavirus' day.

I mean there might yet be a vaccine or the discovery of reliable drugs, the latter of which could happen soon. TBH I think it's more likely to be a long played-out version of the slow drift back to feeling normal you get after a terrorist attack or series of them. But that normality is often illusory, terrorist attacks also result to permanent changes to physical and social infrastructure and there are probably things we should just get used to here as well, in Italy you already have to have your temperature taken before stepping into a bar or restaurant and we'll have those equivalents.

If the second peak is anywhere near as large as the first then it will have been as a result of a calamitous policy bungle but, at risk of hammering this point home too much, we were all doing a lot of things in the run-up to the first peak that we won't be doing any time soon.