Westminstenders: All bets are off

[RedToothBrush]

We are seeking an extension. Apparently. No prizes for guessing why.

There is no news but COVID news. And that's all there will be for a long time.

Enjoy your stockpile and your sunny uplands it brought.

Keep safe.

Mistigri I did an order this morning. First collection slot Saturday pm, lots of out of stock - especially dairy. Which is ironic in Normandy.

imo, even if they know things could get very bad ,
people mostly stay calm if they think the leader has a sensible strategy and is doing their best in the circumstances

Despite the bluster and UK voters apparently still backing BJ,
underneath the surface, I suspect much of the UK population is in utter panic, in utter horror and despair at what the govt is doing

The remainder of the UK are still in la-la land, but their numbers are shrinking rapidly

I wonder if the international dimension to a lot of the posters in this (and other) threads has led to a slight division in the view of how the UK is coping. With a lot of less connected (or interested) people only picking up Radio Boris, compared to listing to Radio France, Italy, Germany, Spain etc etc ?

If all you're getting is the Boris Broadcasting Corporation, of course you are going to think everything is being handled well - especially as they chose to curate anything from "the continent" very carefully.

Despite the bluster and UK voters apparently still backing BJ, underneath the surface, I suspect much of the UK population is in utter panic,

Yes, I'm looking at what people are doing rather than what they're saying.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/commentisfree/2020/mar/19/peacetime-constraints-ditched-in-the-war-for-economic-survival

On some estimates the UK economy is on course to shrink by 15% in the second quarter of 2020.

That is not a recession, it is a collapse surpassing anything in modern times, including the Great Depression.

That is not a recession, it is a collapse surpassing anything in modern times, including the Great Depression.

Imagine all the economists and policy makers being forced to burn the midnight oil (from home too) in order to work out how to get the disabled and most vulnerable in society to stump up for it. Will no one think of them ?

We've had our daily does of Trumpy and his verbal incontinence, and now it's BJ with his linguistic scatology.

We're doomed.

"Never let a good crisis go to waste"

This crisis may turn the UK Tories into temporary socialists, but across the pond....

Trump may by insane, but he knows how to work his base to escape blame for his blundering:
first the "Democrat hoax", effortlessly switched to "foreign virus"

Don't assume he won't be re-elected;
he's turned presidential elections into the Biggest Liar Contest and Democrats can't compete

Conspiracy theories abound in the rightwing US nutosphere about Bill Gates & Soros conspiring with China to produce the virus

Disinformation and blame: how America's far right is capitalizing on coronavirus

I had to turn the radio off this evening, I listened for about 10 min by the end of which time the buffoon had said precisely nothing in 10 different ways, including I think some totally made up stuff about self-administered tests being made available (“just like a pregnancy test” ha ha). LK in useful idiot role again got the first question.

We are watching from across the pond with increasing incredulity at the UK government's response.
But currently it seems the majority in the UK are enjoying the mixture of war rhetoric combined with complete inaction.
I can only imagine this will change when people start dying in large enough numbers.
If by some miracle this doesn't happen then Boris should do well out of it all.

Oops, link fail

Disinformation and blame: how America's far right is capitalizing on coronavirus

www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/19/america-far-right-coronavirus-outbreak-trump-alex-jones

Incredulity in Germany too, about BJ

• Trump long ago written off as insane

Trump was slow on the uptake but his team are making ok decisions. ( you have to ignore a lot of what he says)

But here the States are strong enough to do a lot of the sorting out themselves which helps.

Yep, the individual states can ignore a nutty president and religious nut of a VP
The strength of federalism

The UK - especially England - is one of the most centralised democracies in the world

wtf was BJ intending to tell the British public ?
Maybe I'm having a senior moment, but I'm confused & baffled by him

and can't he count to 3 (months) on his fingers ?

lisa o'carrolll@lisaocarroll*

Johnson start of conference:

"We can turn the tide in the next 12 weeks ...and we can side the coronavirus packing”
"I am confident we can get this thing done"

End of conference:
"cannot stand here and tell you by the end of June that we will be on the downward trend".

Panic shopping is getting utterly ridiculous.
The amount of food that will be binned in the next two weeks will be shocking.

At work today while social distancing and keeping my hands sparkly
I managed to explain to a naysayer that the peak / flat thing is

Tall peak = 12 people admitted to hospital, one gets treatment, 11 do not
Flat peak = 2 people admitted to hospital, one gets treatment, 1 does not

He went and washed his hands

If all you're getting is the Boris Broadcasting Corporation, of course you are going to think everything is being handled well

Its a good point. Ive met people who still think we need to get herd immunity (so dont see why its s important to self isolate, bar if you really are in the at risk category) . Others, like my PIL, who dont get they will not (and should not) go out, do their shopping in 10 different stores etc... (they are both high risk, over 70yo, FIL doing chemo for erminal cancer, MIL has severe heart issues etc...).
If you only listen to the BBC and BJ, youll have a very skewed view of what s going on.

So everyone apparently loves Leo Varadkar on this but can’t abide Boris Johnson?

Some of Varadkar’s presentation was very impressive, though of course a statement which is issued unchallenged is entirely different from a press conference where anything said can immediately be challenged by journalists. Another thing I noticed and I don’t like is that several of his more erm Churchill style “lines” were from, well Churchill basically.

I actually like the slightly more folksy style that Boris has, and in substance I really don’t see the messages as that different. So why the Boris bashing? Trust me, I’m not a fan of his, but bashing him for the sake of it just seems weird to me.

1 month ago today:

Germany had only 14 cases

Now it has 15,309 and 44 dead

interaktiv.morgenpost.de/corona-virus-karte-infektionen-deutschland-weltweit/

The speed of exponential growth
Estimated to be another 10-12 days to the peak

Multiply 15,309 by some factor to get the real number,
then add in nearly 2 weeks of exponential growth
Some huge number I don't want to estimate

Military medics are standing by if the hospitals need more manpower - and they will at peak

Also, Ireland has just increased its number of cases by 50% in 1 day
So looks like they are taking off too

Oh and BigChoc, I could be missing something you’ve heard but the 2 parts of the Boris Johnson statement don’t contradict one another, when I heard it. There is an ocean of difference potentially between “can” first part and “will” second part.

BJ's style isn't "folksy"

It's muddled
because he keeps changing tack to try to do a U turn - without most of the public noticing his herd immunity idea would have cost hundreds of thousands of lives

Varadkar is reassuring because he is clear about his strategy

• and that strategy is in line with WHO and other experts around the world

People want clarity from their leader in a crisis, not piffle, dodginess and black humour

Mixing together "can" and "will" is another attempt to con,
reminding me of all the extra hospitals, nurses and police officers that he invented

Doubling every 5 days, that's ~120k cases in two weeks. If under diagnosing by 5 fold, it's 600k actual cases. Exponential growth is not to be fucked with.

He needs to say clearly what he means, cut out the piffle
(and the sick jokes)

He needs to have some backbone and stop ducking & delaying important decisions:

• as we see from MN, it's no good "advising" people against social distancing, when the pubs, clubs, pools, cinemas etc are open

People naturally think that if it was important, then the govt would close everything, like other countries have done

Even his own dad ignores the advice

Italy has shown us all what happens when a govt delays the tough decisions too long

GB being an island / set of islands has extra time to observe what happens on the continent, but should not be wasting that time