Westministenders: Peak something

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Westministenders: Peak something

The story so far

COVID has changed the world for the next few years, like a slowly exploding nuke:

• killed well over 100,000 people
• made many people afraid to leave their home
• caused a Global Depression

Countries locked down because they needed the extra time to

Raise the Line while Flattening the Curve:

1. Flatten the curve of the numbers needing healthcare to a level the system can manage

2. Raise the capacity of their health services and public health systems - their testing and tracking process

Also, scientists desperately needed time to find out more about COVID:
how to avoid it, how to treat it

What happens next ?

Research teams around the world are working to produce a vaccine,
will become hopefully available within the next couple of years

In the meantime, treatment procedures are being developed to better treat COVID sufferers.

Also in the meantime, countries will need to gradually exit lockdown to rescue their economies from complete catastrophe.

Timing & measures for each country will be dependent on:

Death rate after peak,
health service capacity,
testing & tracing capacity etc

....and also what their govt and public deem an "acceptable" level of extra deaths & serious illness.

Possibly some countries will need to cycle in and out of lockdown,
whereas others will be able to accept the death toll with lesser social distancing measures.

The first few countries are already relaxing lockdown,
so the UK will watch, wait and hopefully learn what works and what doesn't

..... then copy these the correct way round

Quelle suprise. The UK's government is adopting similar tactics as Trump. Their blog response to The Times article and that survey conveniently commissioned have got to be the frantic machinations of Cummings and his bff Levido trying to shift blame from government to anywhere else and to reclaim control over the media. Look for more FB ads coming soon. Plus, there'll be a massive hunt underway for the 'senior adviser'. Good thing we don't live in medieval England.

.

Report on R4 this morning about care workers in Oxfor who can't go to the empty testing centre in Oxford and are expected to drive to Twickenham.

Is the worm turning? We have Jenrick's PPE turning up this evening (maybe?) for tomorrow when hospitals needed it on Sunday. Rumours that BJ has undergone a Damascine experience and gone from Cavalier to Roundhead. The Boy Gavin confirming he has no idea when schools will open again. (The last five words of that last sentence being redundant.) People understand the death figures are phony. The "guided by the science" line is being challenged by a lot of scientists who say the govt is cherrypicking the science it chooses to hear. Local factories, shut, up and down the land, begging to be allowed to make kit for the NHS whilst Rolls-Royce and Burberry sit on their arses with their sweetheart deals.

A good day to get parliament back and remember the Paxman Question: Why is this bastard lying to me?

The Henry Jackson Society published its own report on suing China on 1st April.

henryjacksonsociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Coronavirus-Compensation.pdf

The Express was reporting a similar poll a week or so ago too - I think 69% of those blaming China were Tory voters?

www.express.co.uk/news/uk/1268127/coronavirus-china-news-uk-blames-china-covid-19-poll/amp

Not just 'out of the box' thinking by freaks and weirdos and eugenicists, but an obsession with being anti EU so refusing help, and anti anything which sniffs of public sector, like university labs which could process tests. Only what their moneyed chums provide is OK.

So if Britain did call for an enquiry into the Chinese behaviour about the corona virus, can I be the only one who think that the Chinese response would be "Go F*ck yourself."? Except I think they would be more polite.

Expect the Chinese to put in a counter-claim for compensation for the Opium Wars. (Or as Thatcher called them, "Mutually beneficial trading arrangements.")

COVID19 sweeping through the care homes must be a Eugeniscist's wet dream. Surprised Cummings can stand up never mind write memos.

Jenny Harries' comments have not got down well:

www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/jenny-harries-ppe-personal-protective-equipment-nhs-health-staff-a4418171.html

So we needed ventilators and PPE and they focussed on... legislation?

Given the atrocious quality of the legislation, in hindsight we can only be grateful. It doesn't bear thinking about if they'd been managing ventilators and PPE with the same skill. We'd have had Dyson gowns and Burberry blowers probably.

Disabled people left off coronavirus vulnerable list go without food

I could have told you that 5 weeks ago. DW still not on any list.

Luckily DS is self sufficient, we have no other children, so have made our peace. But others might not be so sanguine.

Am I the only one who thinks they probably knew the PPE from Turkey wouldn’t arrive yesterday?

I can see that making promises you can’t keep gets people off your back temporarily.

But in the end, the chickens come home to roost, you have a bigger shitstorm to deal with and people stop trusting anything you say.

Meanwhile, the "awesome foursome" [a wankerish term that presumably only works in a very rarefied English accent...] that BJ referred to in his 1st PM speech isn't looking quite so awesome:

The Scottish government is urging Boris Johnson to extend the Brexit transition period by the maximum possible period of two years.
Michael Russell, Scotland’s cabinet secretary for Europe, said prolonging the transition until the end of 2022 would allow time to rethink the future relationship with the EU. [...]
He also accused the UK government of pushing ahead in talks with the EU without involving the devolved government at Edinburgh.
The joint ministerial committee on EU negotiations, which is composed of representatives from the four nations of the UK, has not met since January, Russell said.
"The voices of all four UK nations must be heard and I am therefore calling for an urgent meeting of the joint ministerial committee (European negotiations) which has the task of overseeing negotiations. Clearly if it does not meet, it cannot oversee."

Today's Guardian Live feed.

British bailouts for British taxpayers ...

"It's an ill-wind," pt 95:

"Since being sworn in on January 1, 2019, Bolsonaro has asked the defence ministry to organise commemorations of the two-decade-long military dictatorship, paid tribute to General Alfredo Stroessner, the military strongman in neighbouring Paraguay, and backed changes in school history curricula that would revise the way children view the 1964 military coup."

"During his address, which was interspersed with fits of coughing, Bolsonaro made no response to the crowd's call for military intervention or the demand to close Congress."

www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/04/brazil-bolsonaro-joins-protest-coronavirus-curbs-200420042616860.html

.....No. You must not think that . You must not...

which was interspersed with fits of coughing

"I think I'll go for a little walk ... I feel happy !!!"

Read this thread.
mobile.twitter.com/HzBrandenburg/status/1251911950260482052

Then ponder on the politics of the last few years and regional inequality.

Then realise your boroughs identified at being most at risk of covid-19 due to underlying health inequality and lack of provision of services are the likes of Stoke, Hartlepool, Knowsley, Hull, North Lincs, Blackpool etc (I'm sure you can probably make a list off the top of your head by now of these places without actually referring to the list that's been produced on the subject)

Now look at the map of where the Nightingale Hospitals are, think of the logistics of getting large numbers of patients to these hospitals and what thought of planning for longer ambulance journeys has so far been given.

Centrally located nightingale hospitals are cheap. They are great pr at present.

And if they are actually needed in a second wave? I think we might be hearing some more questions about planning going on.

So I guess we better hope that Boris has had a Road to Damascus moment, that Matt has got his testing sorted, Robert has got his PPE, Rishi has got his maths right, Gavin has got BBC School up and running, Dominic has got his planes home with Brits on board so they don't bring anything else back with them and George has got his land army cos otherwise we probably are going to 'hit a few more problems'. And that's without mentioning Brexit which they are all still paying far too much attention too rather than the actual on going crisis that matters.

Where is Cendrillon to continue to exult about the 80 seat majority?
I cannot but help think that if Brexit had been dealt with in a more co-operative spirit, instead of crowing and crowing "you lost" and "remoaners" then there might be more co-operation now. With an 80 seat majority, you can't blame the Opposition for thwarting you.

Stoke, Hartlepool, Knowsley, Hull, North Lincs, Blackpool.
A significant number of places, which were once the Red Wall, now have Tory MPs. I trust that their new MPs will step up for them. (Some of them still are Labour, not Stoke though, and some like Lincs have always been Tory.)

One of the local hospitals has been semi-shut for about 4 years. There have been calls to re-open it fully, but the trust says, No Dice. How many potential hospital beds up and down the country are going to waste like this?

To be fair, Brexit needs attention - sensible attention:

we need quick agreement of all 27 members to allow a longer transition than envisaged in the WA

Otherwise the damaged remnants of our exporters will have a ball & chain around their necks when competing with everyone else

Certainly the EU has neither time nor patience, for the duration of this crisis, to negotiate with Brexiter fantasists
So it's either an extension or No Deal on 1 January

Unfortunately, Brexit is deliberately being used as a diversion, to whip up the morale of the Tory troops
and also of course the true ideological Brexshitters regard COVID as an opportunity, not a disaster

Waving an 80-seat majority at the virus will of course make it surrender

DGR The lone disabled and the lone elderly are my most serious concern
They may be a high % of those dying at home

I fear that some of these will only be discovered weeks later after the neighbours complain about the terrible smell coming from somewhere

To be fair, Brexit needs attention - sensible attention:

But it's not going to get it. As far as they are concerned, they just want to get on with crashing out. They were hoping that appeasing the US, i.e. we would open up our markets to them with nothing in return, that Big Daddy Trump would look favourably on them. But with Trump hell bent on crashing the US economy, it doesn't look as good now.

Then ponder on the politics of the last few years and regional inequality.

If we get widespread outbreaks rather than hotspots, regional inequality is the least of our problems.

In the first wave, some of the best equipped hospital systems in the world were overwhelmed: Paris, northern Italy, New York, London.

Hi
waves from bed after night shifts
It is still not very busy in my big northern hospital - I don't think it is going to get very busy - I think people are dying in the community actually
The paramedics and care home workers are having a very bad time
The ones that are coming are very sick indeed
I am extremely uneasy about how policy is to discharge anyone with covid who's not hypoxic with zero follow up and have been stretching this a bit, I'm admitting people I want to keep an eye on. I don't feel we know enough about it and the 1) the precipitous 9-10 day drop off into pneumonia nad 2) the relatively unbreathless extremely hypoxic people ... they concern me
Seen some truly bizarre presentations of covid, it coms in all forms...
PPE is grim to work in, but I'm very glad we still have it. However, I don't understand why it's been downgraded from international recommendations and indeed our own country's recommendations back in February when seeing suspected cases - has the virus become less dangerous?
We are rewashing visors and gowns now
The fury at the government in the A&E staff room is pretty hardcore. But who cares what young healthcare workers who live in cities think right. Are we snowflakes or millennials or multicultural metropolitan or something like that, whatever the sneer is now. Funny how tories are so quick to slag us off, but we're who you need at 3am if you're very sick
We have a consultant in ITU
Lots of doctors and nurses off sick, new ones every shift
Several nurses in tears saying their parents/grandparents had died this week (mainly in care homes)

I did some good work though,

I need some sleep!

Thank you for all your work, squid. Have a good rest.

Respect squid.

Public sentiment is very much with the NHS not the government.

This isn't rocket science, but the government haven't really thought about this. It leaves Matt Hancock looking like a dick because his testing numbers are going down and not towards the 100,000 daily target he announced by the end of the month, which people think he will already miss and this will undermine public confidence.

It just highlights the complete lack of joined up thinking going on in Government atm

Exactly. It’s sheer logistical fuckwittage. Sending nurses on a 2 hour drives after their shifts.