Westministenders: The Virus

[RedToothBrush]

Its like living in a Bad Disaster B Movie.

If you thought Brexit on your TV every day was Bad, The Virus is a whole new level.

The 5pm broadcast with Johnson and friends, and the public infomation video with the unblicking Chris Witty (who has such unfortunate mannerism he makes me think he's me a Dr Who alien akin to the Slitheen).

Who knows what will happen. Just that everything has changed and our entire economy is now on life support whilst we figure out how to deal with the crisis and what on earth our exit strategy is.

Johnson has however refused to join a joint EU purchase scheme designed to assist countries through the crisis.

Meanwhile the US is about to go nuts... so what does that do to a trade deal?

More money for the NHS? More hospitals?

Well its possible that might just happen...

I think the idea of 'if the public put up with them long enough' is an interesting one.

The government so far have been reactive rather than proactive which makes me wonder what science they are following. It can't be just coincidence that just after calls for schools closing reached fever pitch it was suddenly 'the right time' to do it. See also social distancing, lock down.

So far it's been a week and a bit. Totally unscientific, but using social media including mumsnet as a guage, there is already a change in tone...

Don’t get me wrong, I don't think restrictions will be lifted any time soon and will go beyond the three week review - I don't see how they can do otherwise, but I do think they will be lifted at the earliest point there is any sane justification to do so rather than when it is the best point from an epidemical perspective .

New cases in Italy are falling very rapidly! Down from 8k new cases per day at the peak to about 4k,

Mistigri: I think PP over there were hoping that the number of cases per se would plummet after two or three weeks of lockdown. I didn't hang around long, though.

We've seen on MN too that older people say they'd rather die than have this economic disaster

However, they say they'd rather die than lose their money, that they've built up over years
and younger posters say they don't want to suffer lockdown or job loss for what they consider low risk to them

Talk of coronavirus parties ffs 🤦🏻‍♀️

This disaster is causing divisions between generations & between different groups,
also worryingly being exploited by populists to cause divisions between countries

e.g. This is probably the most dangerous time ever for the EU
It's not doooomed as some perpetually hopeful Brexiters are claiming (and have been for several years)
but it is receiving demands for help that a USE would provide, but not the far lower stage of integration there is now

It is very odd that Trump is demanding now that states allow in passengers from stricken cruise ships:

"It's the right thing to do - people are dying"

I wonder if some of his donors are on those ships, or if his business interests are involved ?
Or just that better off white people generally have a lot of political impact, even if not all Americans ?

British Army reservists called up for six months 'in the first instance.'

Rumours that Putin has caught it.

Vlad the Inhaler?

"Vlad the Inhaler?"

😂😂

The LSHTM report is here:

www.lshtm.ac.uk/newsevents/news/2020/reproduction-number-covid-19-could-be-below-one-uk-lockdown

It’s a online survey of 1300 people asked to list their contacts for the previous day, which was compared to a previous similar study which was used as a measure of the number of contacts people would have had prior to the lockdown.

Using the change in contact patterns, the study found that the mean number of contacts per person measured was more than 70% lower now than before the lockdown.

This suggests that the reproduction now would be between 0.37 and 0.89 with the most likely value being 0.62.

"British Army reservists called up for six months 'in the first instance.'"

They may be the only ones fit enough to pick veg & fruit - and be prepared to live in tents nearby

If I were a sincere single issue pro life voter I might have second thoughts about voting for the GOP in November

^This requires the original pro control women's bodies life stance to be somehow rational. Never underestimate their ability to engage in twisted flights of logic to suit ideology.

There's no denying that this pandemic is economically devastating. But it's easy enough to offer to throw yourself over the trenches until the first bullet hits. Those older Republicans offering to 'take one for the economy' would be the first to demand the best of the best health care including a much desired ventilator once they struggled to breathe.

Pro-life voters don't consider life after birth important
Or even necessary

They are pro-foetus , not pro-life

One elderly former GOP voter of my acquaintance is pro abortion, anti Trump and is trying their best not to catch Covid.
Pray that Trump does not get it because then Pence would be in charge.
Roll on November .....

Trump's got no Seoul

news.sky.com/story/trump-gets-seoul-population-wrong-by-28-million-after-boasting-he-knows-south-korea-better-than-anybody-11966163

Pence is no worse - I'm not sure there is worse than Trump

Trump is always right:
Seoul's just off the coast of Scotland, near his golf resort

A lot of the posturing with China is to do with the fact that we need an excuse for leverage in trade negotiations, and is ill-advised. At some point - if we haven't reached it already. Chinas dormancy is going to cost the west more than it costs China. It seems a rather strange game to be playing.

We need to restore some essential capabilities that have been lost to China

The current dependency is dangerous and also gives them too much leverage

That's totally different to wanting Trump's trade war, which preceded this and was all about US domestic politics

We've heard it before, but still chilling:

If there are too many cases, then doctors would face the decision of taking some patients off ventilators, to put others on.
Dreadful decisions that would forever haunt them - and relatives of patients affected

A reminder of why we must keep trying to flatten the curve, to avoid reaching this overload and those dilemmas:

https://news.sky.com/story/coronavirus-patients-more-likely-to-die-may-have-ventilators-taken-away-11967204

According to the new BMA guidance, doctors will face decisions

"which mean some patients may be denied intensive forms of treatment that they would have received outside a pandemic".

"Health professionals may be obliged to withdraw treatment from some patients
to enable treatment of other patients with a higher survival probability,"
the document states.

"This may involve withdrawing treatment from an individual who is stable or even improving but

whose objective assessment indicates a worse prognosis than another patient who requires the same resource."

The BMA's guidance says that during the peak of the pandemic doctors may have to assess
a person's eligibility for treatment based on a "capacity to benefit quickly" basis.

We need to restore some essential capabilities that have been lost to China

Which will be lost 0.000000000000000001ms the moment "efficiency savings" are bought in (to up the shareholders dividends, naturally). And then when the next crisis happens, it'll be back to the taxpayers tit again.

Long term planning has never been capitalisms strong point. Neither has holistic thinking. Remember those earnest investors who started a company to remove Nitrogen from the air on the basis it was unproductive and the space it took up was much better (more profitable) for Oxygen ?

This is all so predictable... now PE firms demanding access to US stimulus package.

From FT article:

Under the $2tn relief package signed into law by Donald Trump on Friday, the Small Business Administration will offer $350bn worth of loans to cash-strapped businesses employing fewer than 500 people. But SBA’s so-called affiliation rule says that a small business can be barred from accessing the rescue funds if they are backed by a private equity group whose portfolio companies collectively have a workforce that exceeds the 500-person limit. Private equity folks think this is outrageous. So lobbyists representing the likes of Blackstone, KKR, Apollo and Silver Lake (full list of names here) are banging on the doors of Washington’s most powerful to change the rules.

If we keep putting efficiency savings over maintaining essential supplies, then Darwin wins again.

The big task once this crisis is over, is not just rebuilding, but avoiding the same mistakes

(.... OK, I don't believe the grasping fuckers and greedy people voting for them will change either)

It's hard to imagine how it will go - after the horrors of WW1 it was depression, dictatorship and fascism. After WW2 for most of us, it was prosperity and a desire not to repeat the mistakes of the interwar years.

I hope that the piecemeal selling off of the NHS stops. Ideally though, we need a proper debate about what we want from it and what we are prepared to pay for.

If we keep putting efficiency savings over maintaining essential supplies, then Darwin wins again.

Well, the rich survive and the poor don't. Hello Toby !

Remembering the post yesterday about plagues and locusts:
in Réunion, the Piton de la Fournaise has put the island on phase 1 "volcanic eruption probable" alert.
Doesn't usually cause much damage if you don't go and try to take photos close up, but the timing must seem a bit much...