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

British Bailouts for British Taxpayers [] Yup. Been saying that for a while.

But keep saying it. Whenever anyone pops up in the news hinting they want a wedge of our cash, just post that back at them. After all it's how "Take back control" was weaponised to simply stop any further discussion. Two can play at that game ...

DGR I am genuinely gobsmacked that your DW is not on the list of vulnerable. She's been ill for as long as I've been reading your posts and is not magicaly going to get her health back. What sort of shite records are they working from ????

Not sure why you're surprised. If I wanted competence I wouldn't start here, as the saying goes. They know she receives PIP, obviously (and that I claim carers allowance from that). But then you forget that the system wasn't intended to help claimants, but prevent them in the first place. Same way the system for ordering PPE wasn't intended to supply the NHS with PPE, but to supply PPE manufacturers with lots of money.

DGR
But that is the thing.

Young Mr Sunak is designing his support systems - particularly for the self employed around information he already holds so that processing claims will be based on validation against a data set rather than starting from scratch.

The department of health seems to have forgotten that the lists of the vulnerable already exist so are trying to invent the wheel ....
hatstand

Wee Ginger Dug doesn't miss and hit the wall

https://weegingerdug.wordpress.com/2020/04/19/johnsons-negligence-is-costing-lives/

Lots of potential quotes but I particularly agreed with these two:

At the start of February, when it ought to have been clear that a major catastrophe was about to befall us unless immediate action was taken, Boris Johnson gave a speech in London in which he likened the UK to a superhero defying the virus to keep free trade going. It was the crassest example imaginable of delusional British exceptionalism. Boris Johnson was determined to keep the economy running, while other nations went into lockdown – because they were lesser breeds. The cost in human lives never entered his head.

And....

Boris Johnson has given abundance evidence to those who said that Boris Johnson merely wanted to win the job of Prime Minister, he didn’t actually want to do it. It was always, and is now, an exercise in entitlement and egoism from a supremely privileged charlatan.

"Same way the system for ordering PPE wasn't intended to supply the NHS with PPE, but to supply PPE manufacturers with lots of money."

That just fills me with such deep sadness.

V briefly heard from a friend who is an anaesthesiologist at a hospital just outside of London. She said she's fine, that what it's like in hospital is horrific - but being part of a supportive team makes it bearable. I am quite worried for her - not only physical health, but the potential for PTSD after this for frontline doctors has to be huge.

Ten years of Tory austerity, assisted by their LibDem collaborators for the first half, yeilded £30bn in savings, plus all the trauma, the suicides and other casualties of the hostile environment that was as much about the DWP as the Home Office.

And now it's all gone. Spaffed up the wall in a couple of weeks. Cue the Boy Gid to suggest that it wouldn't have been there to spaff if we hadn't clawed it from the hands of those least able to afford it, with bedroom tax if you had no kids and a two-child limit if you did. (Subject to the rape rule and a welcome chance to talk about your experiences with a claimant adviser, so said McVey.)

So who's paying this time?

Young Mr Sunak is designing his support systems - particularly for the self employed around information he already holds so that processing claims will be based on validation against a data set rather than starting from scratch.

You may have believed that. I didn't.

The department of health seems to have forgotten that the lists of the vulnerable already exist so are trying to invent the wheel ....

I'll bet a pound to a penny that no such list ever existed. And even if it did (which it didn't) it would not be in any form that could be used by anyone, but some proprietary database format invented by a company 20 years ago that has long since vanished and no way to export it to a useful format.

"Yes Minister" was a documentary.

Meanwhile, in a total digression again (but this lockdown does weird things), I've started seeing US gun nut video on YouTube

If you were wondering what the pros advice on best guns for a pandemic, you've come to the right place (the acid point being there is more accurate information here than 4 weeks worth of daily briefings ...)

And while I was typing, this popped up ...

Ten years of Tory austerity, assisted by their LibDem collaborators for the first half, yeilded £30bn in savings

"austerity" wasn't about saving money. It was about teaching the poor their place in the world. It still is. It's why the bedroom tax continues to cost more than it ever saved.

Of course auterity was Tory political-social engineering, designed to cleave the political fault-lines of the two-party system and pull over the JAMs by stigmatising the benefit 'scroungers' who were dependent on hand-outs because it was a lifestyle choice.

Osborne in his Bob the Builder hat even wanted to re-name the Tories the Workers' Party, so that he could call Labour the Shirkers' Party.

Now watch the Tory Party, because if and when 'Good Old Boris' becomes 'Boris Fucking Johnson,' he will be disposed of in short order. All Hail Govey Our Lord Protector.

We haven't seen images of hospitals failing to cope like in Italy because we haven't tried to save so many people:-(.

I've just realised that as well.

"We haven't seen images of hospitals failing to cope like in Italy because we haven't tried to save so many people:-(."

Yes it's a shock when you have been so relieved that the NHS was never overwhelmed ....
and then you suddenly realise why

I had thought this bunch of ruthless but incompetent bastards couldn't shock me any more
Great ruthlessness can hide a vast chasm of incompetence

...BBC News still reporting daily UK published hospital deaths as "UK Deaths." Sky, who are having a good war, call it deaths in hospital.

An important distinction, if one wishes to be accurate

Not if one merely wishes to retain one's licence fee

Virus crisis reveals Boris Johnson's astonishing incompetence

(to those who had not realised this years ago)

https://www.irishpost.com/comment/virus-crisis-reveals-prime-ministers-absolute-incompetence-182331?

Looking across the Irish Sea I find myself thinking surely now,
surely the British can see how they’ve been hoodwinked.

Boris Johnson is incompetent in a way that is astonishing even to those of us who thought he was a mere showman charlatan

The Irish government, by contrast, have been measured, controlled and capable.
......
They have made it clear, as to be fair have all parties, that this is not about party politics, this is about life and death.

It is about following the science and sticking to the facts.

By contrast Johnson told you one week to carry on, everything would be fine, and the following week to not step outside the door.
.....
Of all the European leaders he has looked the most out of his depth, the most shallow, and vacuous.

These are dark times and rambling verbal buffoonery looks as essentially useless as it essentially is

"So who's paying this time?"

same as last time
same as always

Now be fair. An incompetent Johnson is better than a bonkers rightwing populist with ambitions of dictatorship like they almost have in Poland, now have in Hungary, and have had in Russia for some time.

Low bar, admittedly

So...the recorded deaths tomorrow will be huge won't they?

For no particular reason (I'd never heard of it before) I happened to be watching the Turkish news channel (TRT?) early yesterday morning. I'm almost certain they showed pictures of a plane being loaded (could have been library footage I suppose)

About 2 weeks ago a friend shared a post from the Air Force about a delivery from Turkey. I admit I was surprised we had had 2 from a country we didn't want to join EU but shunned the actual EU help... Could it be we already had it and used it and Hancock is pretending it is a new supply?

Here - 11th April www.facebook.com/royalairforce/posts/10158361318429885?xts[0]=68.ARBv1nJo5Pd5IuFDRQTAZGgY3pvFi0Fh9ks0ganiEy3Bw644oljilsdhzII2h2m5O33XdXECepdCO4NpCffMbd75Laog3KLHiG2kDuQrB_rOi8Dz5OpXjaDWerxI6ueoKwkhAihNmFMCvqLexrtPgsDZ8INc9CINwL8pEVOaYA5LWkXcnzB0l7eDl2a82tQCbGX7DMzl9dTGoLRTCoPD2sZkkheCpxQI2C7eeSbwh7jNIMXAGaMoU9k8n9_YU2I8KBCUMrgEaldw93nwWRHV1Am0hdcAoTDyjXAHKjl9kixOKoQG0n4ZRwJPeV-px8iArIDLptoJkyN11Qk&tn=H-R

So...the recorded deaths tomorrow will be huge won't they?

It goes down on Sundays and back up on Mondays, reported the next day.

Saint Boris lost the shine from his halo pretty quickly, didn't he? Only one week. I wonder if the Sunday Times had this article a week ago but wisely held it back.

Oh and according to Bozo's #1 fan on my fb, we all gave consent for him to do anything he wants to do that effects us by electing him. He said "Boris isn't killing people, the virus is!" I said if I shut you in a bear it would kill you and I would be up for manslaughter. He replied "It's a virus, not a bear! If I give you a cold and you die am I responsible for your death? You'd have a tough time in court applying manslaughter in court!" FGS...he teaches science too

And it's looking bad in Russia, where they started out making a joke of the whole thing, with a bloke in a Coronavirus head being interviewed on TV like Rowan Atkinson in a gorilla suit. When I caught Covid19, it was completely wild. -Wild? I was absolutely livid! (cue canned laughter.)

And an indication of what people really think of Putin but don't say because they know what's good for them, whenever he comes on TV to say everything's under control Gromitsky Tavarish, there's a humungous rush to the cash machines in case he's going to announce a bank closure to keep his own stash safe.

Where other nations hoarde toilet roll, Russians have an emergency supply like no other.

I expect we’ll all be paying for it, to be honest. Well, all taxpayers anyhow

About 2 weeks ago a friend shared a post from the Air Force about a delivery from Turkey. I admit I was surprised we had had 2 from a country we didn't want to join EU but shunned the actual EU help... Could it be we already had it and used it and Hancock is pretending it is a new supply?

I assumed it was something to do with the request for help through NATO which yielded the ventilators from Germany.

They seemed quite proud that they were sending it to us - although I suppose they would on a Turkish TV channel's English news service.

Sounds like Sunak is reading the same PPE script as Gavin yesterday - only a 'delay in Turkey but we got some from Myanmar' was different.

Working very hard to secure the PPE our NHS workers need.... repeat, repeat, repeat.