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?

BBC News - Coronavirus: English local elections postponed for a year
www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-51876269

PMK with kitten attempting a rapprochement.

Reader, it failed.

It's not just the local elections, but the Mayoral ones too. And I for one am sick of seeing "Andy" Streets grinning face on his puff piece paper that isn't available in large print, or online for the visually impaired.

It's so depressing when Tories can't disguise their contempt for the disabled. It makes it very hard to have a go at them.

Dear God Gavin W on the radio sounded just like whatshisname from The Young Ones.

Rick, Neil, Mike, or Vivian?

I just read an article based on a HK doctors research. He is saying he is finding that those that have recovered have ended up with 20-30% less lung capacity.
I got interrupted but it seemed to suggest this is caused by scarring - which will be permanent 😳
Now I can't refund the article - but if I do I will post it here

This one, MrsL ?

Some people who recover from the coronavirus might be left with ’20 to 30%‘ less lung function, and gasping for breath when they walk quickly, Hong Kong doctors said

https://www.businessinsider.de/international/coronavirus-recovery-damage-lung-function-gasping-air-hong-kong-doctors-2020-3/?r=US&IR=T

Also
Wuhan study found some testicular damage, but more info needed

www.mirror.co.uk/science/coronavirus-may-cause-damage-mens-21681342

re the earlier pp saying that the ACE inhibitor was only a Fail story,

Those with high BP have a much higher than normal death rate from CV
and this article in the Lancet raised concern about CV patients with ACE inhibitors:

https://www.thelancet.com/pdfs/journals/lanres/PIIS2213-2600(20)30116-8.pdf

Thanks BCF - that's it! Very small sample - but it would not be surprising given the way it effects the lungs.

I wish people who (not on this thread) who opine about the vast manioc people will recover - would actually educate themselves about what "recovery " looks like.

My father died from lung disease - so have seen first hand how debilitating this sort of loss of lung function can be.

No Brexit extension apparently.
Local elections might be postponed for a year but Johnson, however, is adamant an extension will not be requested and the UK will leave the bloc at the end of the year regardless of the outbreak.

He looks knackered in this photo.

www.theneweuropean.co.uk/top-stories/boris-johnson-postpones-local-elections-1-6560891

*

Mum is on ace inhibitors :(

My scientist husband has calculated that the risk to Average Joe is the same as a nuclear worker under accident conditions. So that's what we're all facing with the Johnson plan, the same risk as if we were helping deal with the Fukishima mess.

Puts it into terrifying perspective.

Potato Jeez ...

Will RTFT thoroughly tomorrow
BUT
Excellent news about the deferral of local elections
because
it gives time for Lindsay Hoyle's review of election and councillor conduct to start to take effect
which will make our elections better
am very, very pleased about that

Gina Miller publicises the comparative numbers of ICU beds in European countries.
How will the UK cope?

UK has just 6.6 ICU beds per 100,000, compared with Germany 29.2, Italy 12.5 and France 9.7.

twitter.com/thatginamiller/status/1238535828730785793

ICU beds are frankly only as useful as they are well used.
Putting huge effort into treating pneumonia in people with COPD is futile.
In the long run, the patients and their families would have been better off with caring palliative treatment
as when a family member dies with a tube down their throat its traumatic whatever the reason
(hence why I have do not recus in my medical notes)

Did anyone watch Trumps statement? It was interesting in that he struggled - I would say cognitively- in part of it.
Everyone standing behind him has obviously been versed in not reacting- but pence looked like he was holding his breath..... in a "is this the moment we're caught out" way....

Rick (of course).

The coronavirus outbreak has revealed the full stupidity, incompetence and selfishness of the president to deadly effect

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/mar/13/coronavirus-donald-trump-presidency-sick-joke

Multiple reports have detailedd^ how Trump did not just ignore the growing pandemic;

he actively sought to block his own officials’ attempts to track and stop it.

Why has there been such a disastrous lack of testing?
Because the president didn’t want to know the answer,
and because his staff were too busy fighting each other to do the right thing.

“The boss has made it clear he likes to see his people fight, and he wants the news to be good,”
Politico reported one Trump health adviser saying. “This is the world he’s made.”

Never mind a world turned upside down by fear and death.
Trump’s world is upended by his gobsmackingly childish comments about how the whole thing will blow over.
“It’s going to disappear,” he told one reception inside the White House just two weeks ago.

“One day, it’s like a miracle, it will disappear.”

Russia and India also seem to magically have no cases ....
If you do not test you will not find
If you test you will find
DAta are impacted by the source

I suspect if COVID has more than a few cases in Russia it will take off like wildfire
A chaotic kleptocracy is made for it

I wonder how many previously secure leaders will be taken down by a public furious at the cost in lives of their incompetence

USA, Russia, Iran .......

what about N Korea ?
It could run rampant in a population that has been nearly starving for years,
Apart from the savage punishment for those 2 party officials breaking quarantine, we've heard almost nothing

I wonder how many previously secure leaders will be taken down by a public furious at the cost in lives of their incompetence
Only if awareness on incompetence spreads

remember
Italy could have passed of 80% of its COVID deaths as COPD and diabetes ...
why would other counties not do that to stay off the radar