Westminstenders: No pubs till Christmas?

[RedToothBrush]

Today the news has moved towards acknowledging covid-19 reality: Nicola Sturgeon has explicitly stated that some social distancing will carry on until the new year in all likelihood.

When Matt Hancock asked if this was true for England too, he refused to say yes but he said that Scotland was working from the same framework as England.

In case anyone does still need this spelling out, this means the outlook for the hospitality and leisure industries is bleak.

There are extremely unlikely to be many enjoying a holiday in the sun any time soon, whether it be in Devon or Spain.

We won't be celebrating birthdays in restaurants nor having a pint in the pub.

Conversations on the doorstep from a couple of metres away is as good as it gets.

That means if you can't adapt you may not survive.

To add into the mix changes to customs to those companies who are operating seems insanity. But that's a political not a scientific decision to be made.

Whether reality in this will kick in, in the next six weeks or so before EU budgetary decisions relating to an extension have to be made remains to be seen.

Until then, there is no news but covid-19.

I won't miss disaster capitalism, the greed is good mentality.
Agree, it's one of the reasons we're in the shit, isn't it? We should have had a much stronger health system with better capacity in place but short termism ruled.

I'll be buying more locally and less from big multinationals.
Agree- as much as I can afford to

travel, meeting up with friends...
I refuse to settle for a world in which those can't be taken for granted- all because successive incompent governments haven't built enough hospitals and trained enough HCP!

Every time I leave the house I risk myself and bringing it back to my family.

And that is sooo appreciated! Thank you for doing that. I would want you to work in better, less risky conditions and to tell the government this is not good enough. I'd be willing to pay a lot more tax if it meant being better prepared for the next pandemic/ disaster.

I guess right now I'm not only really tired, I'm also angry because we were fucking warned and no one prepared. Politicians of the last decade have this shit show on their conscience.

Totally get the anger.
I'm constantly gnashing my teeth atm

songs I’m sorry you have been so ill, I hope you recover as fully as you can as quickly as possible.

which part of the old normal you don't want to see make a return?

Thanks for the question, I am tempted to say at this point, “well, you did ask?” Some first thoughts...

I think the key personal message I have taken from this period, so far, is a better understanding of what I spend on things that are “nice to have” vs what I “Need” . If I had to sum up in 3 words, those would be “stop buying shit!” I am seriously, seriously, not a frivolous big spender, but I do think that more careful discretionary spending is a lesson I have had reinforced.

I am deeply uhapppy about some aspects of our society and unhappy too about some of the elements of the Government’s coronavirus response, though generally I accept that those parts of it I am unhappy about are necessary, even if I think that (in my ideal world) they are undesirable. My attitude towards borrowing money, for example, would I expect find little favour in Britain in 2020.

One thing I would like to see is that people better protect themselves (if they are able) against the unforeseen, and (if they are not able, and I mean not able, not that they choose not to) that such protection be provided for them. Living artificially beyond one’s means is a habit I would love Britain to break for good.

I would like our nation to be far less dependent than it currently is on international supplies of food, energy, labour, etc. I still want such international supplies to be available, I just want us to use less of them.

I think that our patterns of work life and leisure could be changed. How much work travel really needs to happen? Do people really “need” to use highly environmentally damaging air travel for a summer holiday? I would hope that we could all tread more lightly on our planet’s finite resources. I would, for example like to see an end to artificially cheap air travel.

Then we arrive at the massive expense of this response, and who pays? That’s another post.

A pandemic was top of the list of likely civil emergencies, but they were distracted by the related worry about antibiotic resistance. The worry was smallpox from Pakistan possibly mutating or some other bug that refused to lay down and die when you hit it with the penicillin.

So then they moved onto brownouts and clapped out reactors and the rest of it and then it was EndEx.

I would like to see the end of the throwaway society, and us beginning to make things that last.
I also want to see the end of the over - reliance on China.
There is also the realisation that we must make the effort to meet up with people - there might not be another day, or later.

All good thoughts Peregrina. Agree with all 3.

My biggest wish is the concentration on genome based medicine as DGR expressed. I think medicine being a 'one size fits all' enterprise needs to be a thing of the past and a new approach to gender based medicine to accept that trials on women are not only necessary but beneficial to men too!

I think that if we are doing less air travel companies should add a few days on to annual leave for other modes of travel, such as cars on a ferry, to allow people to keep culture and adventure (important so we don't isolate as Little England) but without as many pollutants.

I suspect cruises will be a thing of the past for some time...(although there may be no telling the Brexit mob who love a cruise - remember that flag waving clip?).

I would like to see the end of the throwaway society, and us beginning to make things that last.

So no more economic growth then ....

My biggest wish is the concentration on genome based medicine as DGR expressed. I think medicine being a 'one size fits all' enterprise needs to be a thing of the past [and a new approach to gender based medicine to accept that trials on women are not only necessary but beneficial to men too!]

Of course 300 years ago, medicine was predicated on the view that each patient was unique ...

I would like to see the end of growth at all costs and artificially cheap flights. I'd like walking and cycling to be the norm for short journeys and people appreciating their local area.
I'd like the pyramid of who is important in this world to be turned upside down.

We need more sex-specific medicine, to be exact, not gender-based
COVID has illustrated the importance that chromosones can have in some diseases

Although I'm guessing we won't be part of this any more ec.europa.eu/programmes/horizon2020/en/news/advancing-case-gender-based-medicine

When I started my degree (health related) I asked about this, as this TED Talk had just landed www.ted.com/talks/alyson_mcgregor_why_medicine_often_has_dangerous_side_effects_for_women/transcript?language=en and I was told that it wasn't relevant to our learning. I really hope that has changed in the last 4 years...

Private Eye article on Prof Ferguson not impressed with his approach to statistics - going back to the days of F&M

Re growth
Its not possible for growth as we have been used to it to carry on
because we have run out of countries to move on to after wrecking the last one.
THerefore growth will reduce either by choice or because of Climate change.
IMHO choice will be less painful
and the long term demographic changes will make it easier

sadly the coordination needed to do it right will not exist for the UK after Brexit

This looks like an interesting thread!

I’m PMKing 😁

For squid
My garden is nothing like as well-tended as prettybird's, and our tulips are long wilted, but the irises are just starting to flower.

Returning to Louise's question about publishing SAGE names,
it was not unexpected to read this :

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/04/14/calls-names-sage-scientists-made-public-amid-fears-transparency/

Well-placed sources insisted security concerns surrounding the Scientific Advisory Group on Emergencies (Sage) prevented those invited to attend its meetings from being named.

The identities of academics who sit on Sage sub-groups have also been removed from the internet in recent days for their own safety.

It is understood that a number of scientists have received death threats,
either because those threatening them feel the lockdown is too draconian or that it was implemented too slowly

Global coronavirus death toll could be 60% higher than reported

Mortality statistics show 122,000 deaths in excess of normal levels across 14 countries analysed by the FT

https://www.ft.com/content/6bd88b7d-3386-4543-b2e9-0d5c6fac846c?shareType=nongift

An interesting short piece from Germany here:

www.dw.com/en/wolfgang-schäuble-coronavirus-to-cause-structural-economic-change/a-53252869

Furloughed workers to be encouraged to take fruit picking jobs to help UK harvest

All those pre-Brexit grumbles about EE pickers stopping British workers from taking those jobs....

Somehow doesn't seem to be the eagerness to pay high enough food prices to make these gruelling jobs attractive for British workers

So is the plan to import even more food then,
or to make benefits for say able-bodied under-25s dependent on picking = "encourage",
or ..... maybe there isn't a plan

news.sky.com/story/coronavirus-furloughed-workers-to-be-encouraged-to-take-fruit-picking-jobs-to-help-uk-harvest-11979143

"We're also acutely aware that we're about to start the British season in fresh produce, in soft fruits and salads.

"We estimate that probably only about a third of the migrant labour that would normally come to the UK is here, and was probably here before lockdown."

Fairly obviously if you want labour because you need a job doing, the people doing it should be paid properly.

Some of those will be indirect surely? Cancer treatments being cancelled etc.

That was a reply to BigChoc