Westministenders: Lockdown continues

[BigChocFrenzy]

The UK has been on lockdown since 23 March,
with no end in sight.

The deaths peak is predicted to be around 17 April,
with the controversial IHME prediction that the UK will have considerably more total deaths - 66,000 - by summer than other European countries.

Supermarkets are struggling to satisfy demand for online slots for the vulnerable
and to keep shelves supplied for other customers

Like all countries, the UK economy is being hammered and heading for a deep recession.
Estimates are for UK GDP to fall 15% this year.

A million people have applied for Universal Credit
The self-employed and small - and some large - businesses are struggling to stay solvent.

They don't know how long to plan for.

The PM is in ICU and Raab has taken over as stand-in, but needs Cabinet approval for decisions.
Probably BJ will be unfit to resume his duties as PM for several weeks, if ever.

WIll he stand down soon and let the Cabinet choose a new PM,
or will the UK continue for weeks with a stand-in leader during the worst crisis since WW2

What's the plan, anybody?

I was waiting for Patel's sentence to end like this. ' I'm sorry you feel.....but tough get over it!' ( which she more or less meant anyway!

Dropping g's must have somefink to do wiv going to Watford Gramma schooool.

It strikes me that Hancock doesn't understand that latex gloves are single use only.

Yep, the day lockdown was announced in Germany, I thought of UK food supply - including actual supply, not just transport

Recently, German TV showed Rumanian pickers waving as they left their planes - not normal to show this, sounds of relief that we've got pickers

I haven't heard how the UK is getting on, attracting EE pickers after telling them last year how unwelcome they are.
Or whether unemployed UK workers are leaving home and springing into action

The UK govt may need to temporarily requisition ferries to maintain food imports,
especially as being Brexit Sec jas taught Raab where much of our food comes from

Or they could just give an emergency subsidy, allowed under both WTO and EU law

Fart away. It’s still 3.7 million more votes than Labour got.
CendrillonSings

...which is about as relevant as saying that Hillary Clinton won the popular vote in the last US election....

The number of votes that yielded the Parliamentary majority (which is the only number that matters when it comes to election outcomes in the UK) was smaller.

I don't want to think about latex gloves and any Cabinet minister
< shudders >
but they'd be needed to drag out an apology for PPE

Universities brace for huge losses as foreign students drop out

Yet another sector to be bailed out
The previous business model won't work for at least the next couple of years

www.theguardian.com/education/2020/apr/11/universities-brace-for-huge-losses-as-foreign-students-drop-out

Call for a government bailout worth billions to help sector survive the crisis

The govt needs to tackle food availability and provide basic income to those who have none
Otherwise, expect trouble soon

Lewis Goodall@lewisgoodall (BBC Newsnight)

Disturbing poll from @YouGov (paid for by The Food Foundation).

In a poll of 4343 people 3% of those asked (equivalent to 1.5 million people if replicated across the population)
said they had gone a whole day without food since lockdown began.

6% said they’d experienced food insecurity of some kind as a result of the pandemic:

-25% of those said they were going hungry because they couldn’t leave their homes to shop.
-21% were hungry because they didn’t have enough money
-2% overall said they’d lost all their income.

YouGov/Imperial College study examines how well public in 13 countries are responding to COVID-19

Questions about compliance, self-isolation, washing hands, avoiding crowds, going out, touching objects
Massive changes in behaviour in such a short time; the new normal (what about longterm paychological effects ?)

https://yougov.co.uk/topics/international/articles-reports/2020/04/11/yougovimperial-college-study-examines-how-well-pub?utmsource=twitter&utmmmedium=websitearticle&utmmcampaign=imperialwavee_1

So how does this conspiracy theory work? A dastardly plan by the Tories to, er, kill off their own core vote? A plan they then completely undermine by keeping most people safe at home at the cost of umpteen billions of government cash? That sounds plausible.
CendrillonSings

An initial herd immunity approach to a pandemic doesn't need to make sense on any level for it to appeal to a psychopath with a demonstrated taste for clearing the decks and re-starting everything from zero.

Never mind that herd immunity is typically accomplished by vaccination which carries little or no risk of mass adverse health outcomes or resulting strain on the health service.

A policy of herd immunity comes about when people are either too under-educated in science to understand what the term means, and at the same time too arrogant to consider checking their understanding of key terms or facts about a particular virus before throwing their weight behind policies, or too callous to consider the effect on hospital resources and hospital staff of hundreds of thousands of very sick people rocking up to hospitals, all needing specific treatment at the same time.

It's almost as if those running the government's response were unable to consider more than two elements of the situation in their heads at any given time.

So your choice is stupid/ arrogant on the one hand, or callous/ psychopathic on the other, with 'all four possibilities' also an option of course. There is nothing to stop people being a stupid, arrogant psychopaths after all.

Please show me the reports other than the one already proven flawed report that shows we are destined to have the most deaths As nobody knows this for sure ,

It's more a model than a report. A report is an after the fact description of events.

Modeling takes into account shifting factors and is updated as new information comes in. A model is only as good as the information it uses.

But the UK policy of mitigation will have the result of tens of thousands of deaths and that is certain. The lowest number of covid deaths modeled for the UK is 14,000. This number will certainly be surpassed. A low number of tens of thousands is the best that can be hoped for at this point, the window for suppression having been squandered.

Priti innumerate needs to attend one of my Functional Maths classes, we do big numbers in the first hour or so.

mathanxiety

which is about as relevant as saying that Hillary Clinton won the popular vote in the last US election

The number of votes that yielded the Parliamentary majority (which is the only number that matters when it comes to election outcomes in the UK) was smaller.

Do I really have to quote the statistics on what Boris achieved in the 2019 General Election again? Very well, here you go:

1. The highest number of Conservative seats since 1987.
2. The lowest number of Labour seats since 1935.
3. A Conservative vote share of 43.6%, the highest for any party since Thatcher’s 43.9% in 1979, beating even Blair’s 43.2% in 1997.
4. The lowest number of new seats gained by Labour ever.
5. The first incumbent government to gain seats after losing them in the preceding election since 1865.

Those are the immutable facts, which no lefty contortions can diminish, no matter how much math anxiety they cause you

mathanxiety

An initial herd immunity approach to a pandemic doesn't need to make sense on any level for it to appeal to a psychopath with a demonstrated taste for clearing the decks and re-starting everything from zero.

And if that is your assumption, then your explanation “doesn’t need to make sense” either! How convenient for you But even then your theory doesn’t work - why would a psychopath directly harm their own electoral interests? Answer: they wouldn’t.

So your choice is stupid/ arrogant on the one hand, or callous/ psychopathic on the other, with 'all four possibilities' also an option of course. There is nothing to stop people being a stupid, arrogant psychopaths after all.

You then realize that “psychopath” doesn’t work, so you throw in “stupid / arrogant” to cover your argument’s rear.

Ok then - on the basis of that logic, I suppose the governments of Italy, Spain, France, Belgium, and the Netherlands must all be run by stupid, arrogant, psychopaths too, given that their death rates are higher than ours and all our countries have followed the same trend line?

Or does that “logic” sound like insulting rubbish, with the truth being that most European countries were equally unprepared for a once-in-a-century pandemic, and are dealing with it as best they can?

I guess we’ll never know!

And Lo, it came to pass that on the fifth day, Saint Pfeffle was raised from the almost nearly dead, and never again would he speak of shaking hands with people in hospital or make "last gasp" jones about the ventilators he was never put on.

Hawks want an end to lockdown around the first bank holiday weekend in May. That's Rishi, Williamson, Patel, Coffey and Johnson himself. On the other side of the fence is Hancock and Gove who want it to be the later May Bank Holiday week.

Suddenly I want Gove back at education....

MockersxxxxxxxSocialDistancing

And Lo, it came to pass that on the fifth day, Saint Pfeffle was raised from the almost nearly dead

By all means, keep making stupid jokes about a fellow human being just released from ICU, and still in hospital. It really reveals your lack of class and morality. I wouldn’t do something like that to Corbyn, and you all know how much I despise him.

Mother sorry to hear how hard things are at the moment. Re he charge. It's for premium membership, with current membership staying the same.

Sorry to hear about your MIL, mother
I had years of that with my late mum - dementia is so sad, pathetic and horrible for both parties
A much more cruel disease than COVID tbh

No, MN is not charging us - just begging for donations, really
MN remains free, but those of us who shelled out get fewer ads - which as an Aspie my brain automatically switches out anyway
MN is v useful to me, so it was worth £50 for a year

Advertising budget for everyone has disapppeared down a black hole, so MN are skint.

They've cut staff hours, but they can't really let the place run unmoderated or it would turn into a rest home for Russian bots and other fascist slime
Once infestation sets in, they'd eat the foundations

If I were a cynic, I would be wondering why Saint Pfeffel went AWOL just in time for the predicted peak, leaving others to deal with an increasingly questioning press and public, only to rise again to show the great unwashed that We’re All In It Together and We Can Get Covid Done.

Latex gloves - I have a box of them that I use for beekeeping , am delivering them to a local care home today who have no PPE (even the basics of gloves) have had two suspected deaths to COVID, and have 13 suspected cases.
It was the daughter of a lady who lives there who put the okra out. Her mum is well, but is worried how long that would last?
We also have local seamstresses making scrubs for stoke Mandeville. It should be a source of national shame that these places are not properly resourced generally, but especially in this crisis. What the fuck have they all been doing...

I think we are going to see more and more companies realising this is a long term lockdown and that people will be more reliant on certain things - business plans will be changing, as mentioned upthread. Sad MN is so quick to be one of them. I won't be subscribing if this is the case (and as a single mum who doesn't go out more than twice a year, the communication on here has steadied me in hard times - Brexit and CV).

It's fascinating to see the Tories squirm when they are reminded of the herd immunity policy, isn't it. They simply cannot believe it was THEIR guy who wanted so many elderly to die... It's also why I never understood why they kept voting for scrapping social care - now they are all worried COVID patients are being wheeled into care homes. What did they expect would happen?

I was considering how BozoCum are going to spin this one. If they are both not"immune" they might decide lifting lockdown sooner isn't such a bad idea after all. The best part about it for those of us with a braincell less trusting of this policy is that they get to be the guinea pigs for once. We can see if viral load and immunity really do last. I am sure he will be back to boasting about hand shaking, thinking he has been given yet more super powers.

if they are both now immune - sorry.