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

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.

Also unless some changes are made to social security policy very quickly then there will be deaths from the economic disaster as well, possibly a lot of them.

slow, staggered, grinding, forward and back

oh i'll be doing this alright

The whole country's gonna look like an R Kelly video.

Specifically the one where that girl gets pissed on

it's the remix to viral transmission

guys

many xps fuck, the last time I hugged someone was an involuntary one at a gig in March when some coked up bloke started talking to me outside, asked me where my missus was, I went "er...", he said "come on mate, what's she done", I said "well, she died". so he hugged me. was too polite to refuse, despite even then thinking it was a bad idea, this was pre-lockdown but it was in the air already

Specifically the one where that girl gets pissed on

*frantically googles*

please don’t google that

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

i'm saying 600,000

― scampo, foggy and clegg (bizarro gazzara), Tuesday, 23 June 2020 bookmarkflaglink

More ppl will wfh, avoid public transport, take less holidays and generally become more economically inactive so each wave will kill less.

They may not have any work though.

More to the point we will never know less about covid-19 than we did back in January-March this year. The means to lower the death rate are already there, if not by enough yet.

I'm going for an optimistic 200k excess deaths by the end of winter 2021.

I think it's v much a case of using those masks and hand gels and hoping for the best.

But still a 2nd wave will surely make people think twice about booking a holiday anywhere, or even a day out shopping, or eating out etc.

People kept packing out the pubs until the last possible minute so I wouldn't be so sure of that.

People know about the risks a lot more, as you say. I think enough will not carry on as if nothing has happened over the last three months to mean a very long recession, at the least.

I can’t wait to get back to the pub...and I don’t even drink.

Good news for business today and glad we’ll all have a chance to enjoy the summer safely. #4thofJuly pic.twitter.com/6igrPpBu96

— Rishi Sunak (@RishiSunak) June 23, 2020

very cool guy, you can see how he has risen up the ladder so fast!

I can't wait for you to all catch the rona... and I didn't even know that beer and pubs contribute £23bn to UK GDP and generate £13bn in tax revenue!

Cunt's probably never even been in a pub.

Can't wait for his star to come crashing down.

The man never drunk a carling in his life

"I wasn't really up for the pubs, but after seeing teetotal Rishi giving the double thumbs up to some electrical appliances, coupled with his insincere tweet ... well I'm raring to sup now"

I like how 95% of the responses are "that's a shop, mate".

Sunak there curiously similar to Rory Stewart saying his favourite London boozer was any branch of Pret a Manger?

Social activity in general makes up something like a third of consumption in this country and the longer it takes to get it back properly the worse the recession is going to be.

The quickest way to do that is to get the virus under control properly and we're probably not at that stage yet.

i mean if everyone cut their consumer spending by £2000 a year and saved it for housing, there would be an immediate recession and house prices would increase as demand soared

— Jon Stone (@joncstone) June 22, 2020

https://clickhole.com/time-to-celebrate-the-doomsday-clock-has-been-set-to-wine-oclock/

The quickest way to do that is to get the virus under control properly and we're probably not at that stage yet.

basically the tory fucking idiots are going to make the same mistake they made the first time - starting lockdown too late, probably by 2 or 3 weeks at least - in reverse by opening up things too early. what a mess

Spoilsport. I was out today and apart from a few stragglers in masks it's like the whole thing never happened.

Fucking traffic back, ready to mow you down as you cross the road.

the no masks thing is just classic "Britain". septic isle

this is it isn’t it. total lockdown was a reasonable response to something we knew nothing about and which was spreading v quickly. if you can get the infection numbers down to v low figures and have a good track and trace system in place then it is reasonable to relax constraints and people will also have confidence in it.

Remember Tusk and 'Please do not waste this time' wrt brexit extension? Kinda feel our mostly fake lockdown just bought us some wasted time. We didn't get the numbers low enough and we haven't got adequate TTI in place.
Most recent strategy looks to me like "can't we just fucking talk about something else?" while we're still burying almost a thousand people a week.

Look at NZ having a shitfit over 2 infected travellers or China reinforcing lockdown in Beijing after 36 cases and compare with UK/US where the response to thousands of cases and hundreds of deaths every day is to stop counting.

Yeah, this is really fucking unsafe for women particularly. https://t.co/cBeKWomqLK

— pickwick (@pickwick) June 23, 2020

Too right. Fuck that.

And in other news:

Wow. MPs vote 243-238 IN FAVOUR of Chris Bryant's amendment to rule out Commons debates on serious complaints against MPs

— Esther Webber (@estwebber) June 23, 2020

_this is it isn’t it. total lockdown was a reasonable response to something we knew nothing about and which was spreading v quickly. if you can get the infection numbers down to v low figures and have a good track and trace system in place then it is reasonable to relax constraints and people will also have confidence in it._


Remember Tusk and 'Please do not waste this time' wrt brexit extension? Kinda feel our mostly fake lockdown just bought us some wasted time. We didn't get the numbers low enough and we haven't got adequate TTI in place.
Most recent strategy looks to me like "can't we just fucking talk about something else?" while we're still burying almost a thousand people a week.

Wonder how different things would've been if legend Bozza had carked it?

pub has already got my Facebook that should do right?