Westminstenders: Events...

[RedToothBrush]

Events have taken over. EU / UK negotiation have been put on ice due to covid-19.

The US has banned all travel from Europe - apart from to the uk and Ireland - in a manner which is highly political to drive wedges.

The effects of leaving the European Medicines Agency may be much more serious than anyone could have anticipated.

There's a oil price war going on between Saudi Arabia and Russia which has further driven market fears led by covid-19.

There the crisis in Turkey with Syrian refugees which is also distracting the EU.

We are facing lockdown and economic turmoil over the next weeks and months.

Johnson is having his leadership moment with deaths projected to possibly exceed UK WW2 deaths.

We are desperately trying to recruit negotiators as it's suddenly become apparent we don't have enough to carry out all the trade deals we want.

The civil service will be stretched to its limited by covid-19. Yet we also have Brexit to consider.

Where next? How bad are things going to get?

Laura Ashley masks, made of leftover stock?

but German military is set up for v quick builds, because of its relief work in developing countries

Oh, the German army is famed for it's speed

This new hospital, not being built in Poland is it ?

However, the rest of us can go to food shops, walk, jog, cycle, just not in clubs or groups of more than a few people

Apparently not. My running club has obviously suspended training but when I suggested small groups meet for "parallel runs" eg running in a very loose group more to keep an eye on each other than running together eg on opposite sides of the road or a couple of meters behind each other, I was told no because we'll bring on a French-style lockdown. And that appears to be that. I would have thought you were more at risk running alone as a woman than you were running "with" a friend on the other side of the road!

Not sure if it has been mentioned on this thread, but the Telegraph has an article about transition being extended.

COlogne The issue is that you were organising something which was obviously like a sub-club
Too organised, too large-scale

I see singles, couples & threesomes jogging or cycling here, along the Rhine banks
Casual and no more in a group than that

UK no longer makes running on world stage, says ex-No 10 adviser

It's from December, but it is still relevant
No plans, ignoring foreign leaders, going our own way .... not working out well, is it

This really is a modern Tory problem, since he talks of 2013 onwards
Say what you will about Thatcher, Major, Blair & Brown, but they all had plans, "punched above Britain's weight" and formed useful relationships with other leaders around the world

SInce 2010, the UK has blustered and tried to bully,
but that only works against the UK's vulnerable groups, not other countries working together, e.g. like the EU

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/dec/12/uk-no-longer-makes-running-on-world-stage-says-ex-no-10-adviser

Britain has not made the running on any foreign policy issue since at least 2013 and suffers from a fundamental absence of strategic thinking about its role in the world,
the most senior foreign policy adviser to David Cameron has said.

John Casson – who worked in No 10 from 2010 to 2014 before becoming UK ambassador to Cairo until last year – warned of a lack of confidence across Whitehall about Britain’s role in the world.

“We see lots of actors smaller than us by most metrics making more of a difference because they have a clearer-eyed sense of their strategic intent and the power they hold,”
< e.g. Ireland >
he said.

Speaking at a debate on future British foreign policy at Chatham House, he also lamented that
no British prime minister since either Tony Blair or Gordon Brown had thought it worthwhile to invest in personal relations with foreign leaders,

adding this judgment had cost Britain dear.

Think expertise is back in vogue...high level knowledgeable experts from the Oxford hospital just given a long time slot on Channel 4 news.

Bedtime reading on what the Koreans did. Fascinating stuff.

www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/03/coronavirus-cases-have-dropped-sharply-south-korea-whats-secret-its-success

Thanks mistri, that is fascinating. But @ this

"Legislation enacted since then gave the government authority to collect mobile phone, credit card, and other data from those who test positive to reconstruct their recent whereabouts. That information, stripped of personal identifiers, is shared on social media apps that allow others to determine whether they may have crossed paths with an infected person."

I still don't know what I think of teh Chinese figures and the "they've got it under control" stories. Their deaths aren't that lower Italy.

www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

Misti!

The South Koreans were / are impressive. I read similar from Taiwan.

A lot of the preparedness comes from being in line with a previous threat. Very good response from it though.

I’m so tired. And so worried about the lack of real change here and all the posts from people doing whatever and the situation with schools.

The South Koreans were / are impressive. I read similar from Taiwan.

A lot of the preparedness comes from being in line with a previous threat. Very good response from it though.

The threat from North Korea and memories of the Korean War still cast a shadow. I watch a lot of Korean drama and the ones set in the 80s show them still having full civic defence drills with air raid sirens and blackouts etc. All men are required to do 2 years’ national service. I also noticed it is a much more surveilled society - lots of CCTV cameras everywhere in the street, buildings etc, which is very useful for thriller & crime series plot development. There just seems to be a much higher level of preparedness full stop.

I still don't know what I think of teh Chinese figures and the "they've got it under control" stories. Their deaths aren't that lower Italy.

Deaths in Italy are piling up at several hundred a day. It is going to be worse than Wuhan.

I talk almost every day with my Chinese colleagues and things are getting back to "normal" in most of China although the authorities are still very cautious and social distancing is still very much being practised.

There are some very big human rights issues around coronavirus control (Adam Wagner had a good Twitter thread on this yesterday). I would simply observe that everyone who said that western democracies couldn't enact Wuhan style measures has been to a wrong, because coercive measures are the only way to stop community transmission in the absence of (a) a compliant population and (b) ruthlessly organised disease control. Measures in Italy, France and Spain are less draconian than in Wuhan, but they may also be in place for longer.

Don't know if it's been answered, but just in case: food banks are on the list of authorised outlets that can stay open here in France.

In addition, Oh says, “The MERS experience certainly helped us to improve hospital infection prevention and control.” So far, there are no reports of infections of COVID-19 among South Korean health care workers, he says.

This is impressive. I personally know NHS staff here who already isolating with suspected Covid. It’s appalling that frontline staff have so little protective kit.

The issue I have with Italy vs Wuhan is the ratio
Italy: 35000 infected 2500 death
Wuhan: 81000 infected and 3000 deaths
Why is the ratio infection vs death so different?
Is it because they don’t test people in Italy and actually there has been so much more People infected?(and then of course, why has the disease spread so much...)
Is it that healthcare system doesn’t cope as well?
Even like this, it’s a very a very ratio of nearly 10% of deaths....

Working from home
Housebuilding
Road repairs
Rail repairs
Recladding high rise blocks
general infrastructure capex as announced in the budget
all require people to work well away from home in large teams ....
and
working from home
supermarket checkout staff
and delivery pickers
and drivers
and amazon stock pickers
the whole ethos of working from home
shows why the UK needs a functioning leader of the opposition PDQ

It's also the "only" 80,881 cases in China that stands out. Seems very low for a population of 1.3 billion. Hence wondering if just easier to isolate anyway as cities are big but far apart?

I keep checking China to see progrees of their recovered cases

• they still have about 8,000 still sick and we don't yet know final outcome - or final death rate

Aynone know how many are at home / hospital / critical ?

Idle thoughts:

If countries decide not to test, then they might also decide not to test the dead, or for some known CV cases, might record cause of death as something else, to keep numbers down,

However, that would only work for a few thousand CV deaths at most,
because an extra 100,000 -500,000 would show up soon in the annual death figures

Slight tangent, but Barbara Demick's book about North Korea, Nothing to Envy, is brilliant and might be a kind of 'count your blessings' read for current times. The North Koreans have been in dire straits for a very long time.

Katya adler
@BBCkatyaadler

French PM warns France may feel obliged to bar UK citizens from entering France if UK doesn’t introduce more stringent measures to contain #coronavirus Quote”We wl find it hard to accept on our territory British citizens who move freely in their own country +then come to France".

Italy: 35000 infected 2500 death
Wuhan: 81000 infected and 3000 deaths

There are a number of moving parts here but two key factors:

• once testing got going in Wuhan they did a lot of it. Obligatory fever checks were done and patients with fever were sent to fever clinics for diagnosis. In contrast the Italians (like all european countries with the possible exception of Germany) will be missing many mild cases

• demographics: the Italian population is older, and elderly people seem to have got infected at much higher rates than in Wuhan, perhaps because older Italians often live with younger economically and socially active people.

It's also the "only" 80,881 cases in China that stands out. Seems very low for a population of 1.3 billion. Hence wondering if just easier to isolate anyway as cities are big but far apart?

I don't think so - community transmission was halted in very dense urban populations. I think it comes down to the ability to organise collectively, a much more compliant population, ruthless use of technology to monitor the population, and some recent experience of dealing with SARS/MERS.

My Chinese colleagues accepted limitations on their personal freedoms much more readily than we are doing in Europe. That said, compliance in Italy, Spain and France has been surprisingly high - but in Europe you have to scare people rigid before they will agree to comply with serious measures. In China, my impression is that most people complied for the good of society and not out of personal fear.

I've been looking at some of the stuff from Jeremy Hunt and thinking this could be the making of him, then giving my head a wobble and remembering this is the result of him too.