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?

Re the group jetting off on holiday - how did they get out of UK? Have we really allowed people to drive to the airport, presumably from various places within UK and allowed them to charter a jet for a holiday? Where is Priti Patel? Typical of UK boarder patrol and attitude in general to not care if we become someone else's (COVID) problem.

Well by all accounts we're letting people in with no checks, so at least there is a symmetrical consistency about it.

Also, remember these are rich folk. And therefore not subject to UK law anyway.( See also Jenrick, Prince of Wales etc etc)

DGR yes, precisely. I had someone on FB today attempt to convince me that all inbound flights were merely Brits being bought home, who were then definitely put into quarantine for 14 days . I have asked for a source as this was news to me. She hasn't replied since 8am... I think many people are just filling in the obvious blanks with blind optimism. Toxic positivity I hear they call it. Can be fatal.

DGR yes, precisely. I had someone on FB today attempt to convince me that all inbound flights were merely Brits being bought home, who were then definitely put into quarantine for 14 days

but how would they be able to move amongst us and carry on building up our herd immunity without anyone realising ?

(Typing "move among us" reminded me of this:

Thought this report of people who evacuated Wuhan who now wish they were back there says a lot about how our govt has reacted compared to the Chinese www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/10/britons-evacuated-from-wuhan-regret-coming-home-coronavirus. Interesting that they don't feel as safe here, although not at all surprising.

We most definitely were not put into quarantine two weeks ago. It could have changed since then.

DGR - sounds a lot like this bylinetimes.com/2020/04/09/leaked-home-office-call-reveals-uk-government-wants-economy-to-continue-running-as-we-will-all-get-covid-19-anyway/?fbclid=IwAR0c0e54Wr987rfTbDrz2gEYJqI7H-8rcK85iIlPd61_WospGiYW79KISNg which shows that our speculations were pretty much spot on as to the "actual" government eugenics plans.

To be fair, since no govt in the world had prepped for a once in 100 years pandemic,
I can't actually blame Brexiters - politicians or voters - for not having thought of it either.

This crisis totally changes everything for all countries
In a really bad way.

I can blame them for not taking the measures we know to work - trace testing, testing, quarantining, stopping air travel, locking down asap, school closures and immediately sourcing PPE and ventilators.

If I knew that to slow community spread I had take my child out of school 2 weeks before they closed, so should they.

You can blame the Tories with running the NHS into the ground and being so obsessed with Brexit that they didn't bother to make the preparations they could. What if that time in January had been spent on obtaining ventilators or ramping up production of masks, instead of wittering on about bongs for Brexit? What if Johnson had appointed people who were competent to his Government instead of arse-lickers?

and for turning down EU PPE... I hate this government with a passion

Yes, I blame the govt for mishandling the crisis once it arrived

Tory / Brexit voters either assumed - and maybe still assume - they would be more competent than even Starmer's Labour
or just wanted Tory policies, however bungled the delivery

I completely agree JeSuis and colouringinpro.

I’ll repeat my list, at the risk of boring you. But Peregrina is right. The Tories have also starved the NHS for years, so it’s not as well-equipped as it needs to be to cope.

And, the government didn’t recognise the supreme importance of health. I think we’re all realising, without good public health, where are we?

-Did not stop flights arriving from e.g. China/ Italy.
-Did not quarantine passengers arriving from such places with possible CV.
-Did not order adequate PPE for all NHS staff and carers in good time.
-Did not put in place a mass programme of testing, tracking and tracing.
-Did not have a programme of testing NHS staff until very late on.
-Failed to take up EU offer on joint procurement of ventilators.
-Ordering closure of big events, pubs etc too late and with confused messaging.
-Wasted weeks with late lockdown/closure of schools.
-Wasting time with discredited herd immunity plan.

Boris Johnson already knew that the public valued the NHS - hence the £350 million a week for the NHS, pretending that being in the EU stopped us spending this. Hence too the 40 new hospitals and 50,000 new nurses.

Well chum, if you come out of this OK, let's see you make good on those promises.

Yep. And I suppose he’s now had the experience of seeing, in person, the value of the NHS.

Many of us who don’t have private health insurance already value it highly.

And I don’t mean to be cynical or unkind.

Hester
Back at the start of lockdowns,
a friend flew in from Rome and was told on the flight to self isolate
after taking public transport right the way across London

Ironic if chronically underfunding the NHS literally kills the tory party.
Of course there's too many other people including HCPs who will also die.

Mafia distributes food to Italy's struggling residents

That's to those in the black / grey economy, who are not receiving compensation for losing work they are officially not doing

www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/10/mafia-distributes-food-to-italys-struggling-residents

“Millions of people work in the grey economy, which means that they haven’t received any income in more than a month and have no idea when they might return to work.

The government is issuing so-called shopping vouchers to support people.
If the state doesn’t step in soon to help these families, the mafia will provide its services, imposing their control over people’s lives.”

Mafia distributes food to Italy's struggling residents

Which is a return to their Robin Hood roots ...

The Mafia and the Comorra are just looking after business

• keeping people in hock to them

It must sting you like hell that Boris continues to triumph over all obstacles, despite the epic quantity (though not quality) of the whining deployed against him!
CendrillonSings

Or is he stumbling blindly through the obstacles, lurching from one self-inflicted crisis to the next?

He gave his pregnant partner covid-19. All hail the great man.

A grateful medical profession is in awe of Handcock for telling them to look after the PPE because it was a precious resource they should not be wasting.

Previously unaware of this revelation from the oriface oracle, they have stopped using masks for catapaults and visors for ping pong in their downtime.

A grateful profession will unite when this is all over and bedeck, festoon and smother Handcock in all the used PPE they can find until the bastard chokes.

Have we really allowed people to drive to the airport, presumably from various places within UK and allowed them to charter a jet for a holiday?

From what I gather from the French press, they were not Britons (the men at least).

Unless borders are completely closed - which they're not and shouldn't be, assuming you want to eat and import essential goods - there is no way the U.K. can prevent the nationals of other countries leaving its territory.

I have no idea what the load is on the remaining passenger flights but I would expect most traffic to be repatriations and trade-linked trips. There are still thousands, possibly hundreds of thousands of Britons stuck abroad.

I went and had a look at Flightradar24, and a big proportion of the aircraft over southern England now are freight. There are what look like passenger flights from the US and Middle East but those will also be transporting significant amounts of freight.

It's really hard right now to get freight on planes, airfreight prices are rising and people are having to scramble to find a slot.

It must hurt Cendrillon to see Sunak impose what looks remarkably like a Keynesian regime, if not a Socialist one. Where is the Free Market in a crisis?

If the NHS had not been deliberately run down we would not have demoralised staff, perpetually short handed. We would not have deliberately broken the procurement chains; there would have been some shortages, I don't doubt, but we would have been able to cope better.

My parents generation could have told her that in a crisis, the one they knew being War, industries get nationalised - we didn't ask private firms "Would you be so good as to make a few Spitfires for us? Well maybe the pre-War government did just go to ask their cronies, rather than the firms who actually made them, but that Government got kicked out in short order. BTW where are the Dyson ventilators?