Westministenders: Peak something

[BigChocFrenzy]

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

Well, at least BCF won't now catch greenfly...

Edith it's hard to know what's fake news land what isn't, these days.

DrBlackbird I must get around to reading the Wolf Hall trilogy - I work at a Tudor house with strong Henry VIII links so might get a whole new perspective.

The Mirror and The Light is even more apt! The jockeying for position, the backstabbing, the trouble with rebels in Northern towns...

I have also just read Hamnet which has whole sections about how plague spreads...

Sir Simon MacDonald story - the new twist, according to the BBC's James Landale, is that Sir Simon "misspoke" and a clarification of his statement will be forthcoming.

But lots of doubts about the "exposer" of the story.

I thought it interesting that the "exposer" linked the fake accounts he said he'd found back to the Dept of Health. If you've ever worked in a government dept, that makes NO sense whatsoever. Gov depts have no sense of humour at all when it comes to fake news.

Speaking of government departments, I see the employment tribunal against the Home Sec has begun. Which should be interesting.

Herald newspaper reporting that Scottish government is consulting Germany about relaxing lockdown. Wherever did they get the idea?

www.heraldscotland.com/news/18392761.coronavirus-scottish-government-calls-germany-exit-strategy-support/?ref=wa

Twitter says there's no evidence of the bot net:

www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/apr/21/no-evidence-of-nhs-government-covid-bot-networks-says-twitter

...I should add that if the government was running a bot net, they'd outsource it to a crony company a la Cambridge Analytica, not ask a civil servant to run it from the Dept of Health.

Which all brings us back to the heartfelt complaint about how bloody exhausting it is trying to navigate the ocean of info, intox, exposing, un-exposing, prevaricating, obfuscating and just general uncertainty sweeping over us right now while we try to carry on just carrying on and seek to protect as many people and livelihoods as possible.

A good squirt of greenfly spray and a plague upon 'em all is maybe what's needed.
Although not totally reassuring...

Barrique I was thinking how Tudor Court it all seemed with Johnson as Henry VIII but that was probably because of watching too much Wolf Hall for a 2nd time in lockdown. Happy to go with Shakespearean analogy .

Maybe we all have our historical filters ... personally the last days of the Roman Republic are more apt ...

the hellish triumvirate of Patel, Truss and Braverman.

triumvirate has an interesting origin

Yeah - the original suggestion was that the fake accounts were being run by a not-very arms length marketing agency.

Full Fact covers it in good detail here.

Finished "The mirror and the light" last night.
Love Mantels writing.
I couldn't help but see the similarities of Henry VIIIs tudor court and the stagnation and venality of the Govt over last 3/4 years

You could also go down the “but Corbyn” route and mutter about troikas.

I also felt The Mirror and the Light had a very post-referendum feel to it.
Rewatching Wolf Hall on iPlayer I was disappointed to not like it so much second time around. But will persist, interspersed with episodes of Dinnerladies thanks to another thread on here.

16 million missed face masks in 4 weeks.

www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/apr/21/government-misses-out-on-14m-facemasks-for-nhs-in-four-weeks

Sir Simon has recanted. On BBC site and news.

Someone’s given him Chinese burns.

If the circumstances weren’t so terrible one could enjoy the government not waving but drowning.

I'll bet.

Simon McDonald's latest statement:
Unfortunately, due to a misunderstanding, I inadvertently and wrongly told the committee that ministers were briefed by UKMIS on the EU’s joint procurement agreement scheme and took a political decision not to participate in it.

This is incorrect. Ministers were not briefed by our mission in Brussels about the scheme and a political decision was not taken on whether or not to participate.

Inadvertently and wrongly...an interesting combo.

I might just cultivate my garden for the next 18mths.

I am afraid I don't believe the recantation. I thought St Boris was boasting at first that we don't need the EU. He misjudged the public mood.

Why don't the publish the actual briefing and then people can see for themselves what was said?

David Allen Green

lawyer and ex-civil servant hat on

This third paragraph is curiously and painfully worded

And you do not get paragraphs this curiously and painfully worded by accident

Something is up here
Quote Tweet

Tom Tugendhat
@TomTugendhat
· 1h
We’ve just received this clarification from ⁦*@SMcDonaldFCO⁩ after today’s ⁦*@CommonsForeign⁩ hearing.
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And why in paragraph 2 does he go for scheme (singular) but switch to the four schemes (plural) for the comms excuse in paragraph 3

In casual writing, it would not matter

But here, it means para 2 and para 3 are about slightly different things

A Derren Brown-like misdirection

I could go on - but I should not be able to do so

The point of formal writing is that it considered and structured, with each paragraph, sentence and word doing its job

It is what lawyers and senior civil servants do

Oh well, let's see what happens

Good night all

Meanwhile, someone's not getting any attention in lockdown. Remember him? Does he still have that French girlfriend? Ha ha.

Nigel Farage
@Nigel_Farage

These civil servants still want to serve Brussels and not Britain. Get rid of the whole chinless bunch of them.

Thanks Swedish and Contender.

I suspect that inadvertently is more accurate than wrongly, while wrongly is deliberately ambiguous...
(And he had a gun to his head.)