Coronavirus Pandemic

[merman]

Priti Patel can't even read a number off a piece of paper.

And "I'm sorry people think there have been failings" is what passes for an apology from a Tory.

Boris being discharged from hospital on Easter Sunday? Tory spin.

[Harlequin]

Boris being discharged from hospital on Easter Sunday? Tory spin.

Are you denying that the BJ has truly risen again?

[Dio]

I don't usually have any other sort of tech with me when I travel nor on a day to day basis, I seldom move around.

Fair enough then. You're entirely suited to a data-free life.

[Ollie]

Priti Patel can't even read a number off a piece of paper.

And "I'm sorry people think there have been failings" is what passes for an apology from a Tory.

Boris being discharged from hospital on Easter Sunday? Tory spin.

We've also now had "I’m incredibly sorry that people feel they are not able to get this equipment" from Matt Hancock. Seems like "sorry that people feel" is the official standard non-apology template.

[tufty]

No, it's just that the Conservatives are sorry that people feel, or think.

[Harlequin]

Priti Patel can't even read a number off a piece of paper.
And "I'm sorry people think there have been failings" is what passes for an apology from a Tory.
Boris being discharged from hospital on Easter Sunday? Tory spin.

We've also now had "I’m incredibly sorry that people feel they are not able to get this equipment" from Matt Hancock. Seems like "sorry that people feel" is the official standard non-apology template.

"I am extraordinarily sorry that people feel we are all a bunch of cunts. I do wish they felt the opposite."

No, it's just that the Conservatives are sorry that people feel, or think.

"We are terribly sorry that people feel. We will endeavour to correct this by upgrading all of them by the end of this Parliament."

[Ollie]

Priti Patel can't even read a number off a piece of paper.

And "I'm sorry people think there have been failings" is what passes for an apology from a Tory.

Boris being discharged from hospital on Easter Sunday? Tory spin.

We've also now had "I’m incredibly sorry that people feel they are not able to get this equipment" from Matt Hancock. Seems like "sorry that people feel" is the official standard non-apology template.

And Alok Sharma, the Business Secretary, as well. It's definitely the official line.

[KlaxonCow]

Okay, scientist YouTuber has done the maths and graphed it for us.



The red line is a spread rate of 1.055. Keep under that line and the virus dies out, because this means it spreads slower than people recover / die, so while we're under the line, the numbers must go down. If lockdowns are lifted too early - before reaching 1.055 or with everything re-opening, it goes back to the wild spread rate of about 1.3 - then the numbers start going back up again and we're forced into another lockdown.

He also, at the end, calculates the economic impact of taking a 10% hit to the GDP to keep folks under lockdown for a month (which is about the level that most countries around the world are using to bail everyone out right now) versus the "herd immunity" plan of just letting it ravage the entire population and those that will die will die. And, yeah, ten years later, the permanent damage of all those lives lost to the economy will be worse - in perpetuity, as these people and businesses will be dead forever - than taking the hit now to keep things in lockdown for a month or so, to reach the 1.055 line everywhere, and then, controlled, being able to return to "business as usual" levels and recoup the losses.

Or as I put it before, if we'd shut down all international travel shortly after the WHO issued its global public health emergency until China flattened its curve then, yes, that would have been costly to bail out the airlines.

But that economic cost is as absolutely nothing compared to the fact that you're still bailing out the airlines anyway - because all international travel is dead right regardless, so you didn't save them at all, not by a single cent, but merely delayed their pain - but now you're also paying 80% of everyone's wages, 80% of self-employed profits, giving out £330 billion in loans and grants, and so on and so forth. Which every nation on Earth is being compelled to do. Which is, without doubt, easily the largest "bail out" package in all of human history by a large margin.

"But what about the economy?!?", they cry.

But that's somewhat the point. If only they had thought of the economy long and hard - and actually run the numbers - then the amount of money we could have saved by taking this shit seriously sooner would have been astronomical profit to what we now face. And if Trump, in his impatience, lifts the lockdown before the red line of 1.055, then he's going to permanently ruin the US economy for decades to come. Because the loss of, say, an estimated 300,000 people does vastly more long-term economic harm than paying for another month of lockdown.

Run the numbers. It's an arithmetical fact that the "herd immunity" plan is just wrong. Wrong for health, but also wrong for the economy.

And if you make this shit endemic, by stoking the fires of mutation faster than any vaccine or drug treatments or even basic testing could ever be developed, then we'll keep paying this price over and over again. And there'll never be an "endgame" to all this.


(I'm also thinking it won't work anyway. Remember when Boris took his sweet time, for a week, not bothering to ban mass gatherings? All the football leagues suspended matches the next day anyway. You can order "back to business as usual" but if masses of employees start getting ill, people start dying, event organisers can't get the insurance and their consciences won't allow them to continue. Order it all you like. The people won't obey, when it becomes clear as crystal that you're sending them to die as cannon fodder to your precious "economy" that, actually, you're doing vastly more harm to, by your impatience, than just staying the course on the lockdown a few weeks more. Put it this way, if Boris's stand-ins decides to lift restrictions next week then I ain't fucking going anywhere. Not until those graphs look a damn sight better than they do now. Most events have already postponed to the end of the year, or next year, already - they're not going to move back, in the middle of a pandemic, when it's clearly not over, and suffer all those costs of shifting everything all over again. And who will insure them? And when half your highly paid football team gets sick, and the last match you played can be easily traced as being the cause of several thousands more cases and dozens more deaths, who's going to the next match after that? Basically, the bottom line is an economy can't function in such a climate anyway. When shit goes wrong and the spread rises again, then you'll be forced yet again into lockdown. And all those events that moved to the end of the year, then moved back, now have to move back to the end of the year... yeah, how the fuck is the economy supposed to reasonably function in that sort of climate? By whose hands, when most of your employees are all off sick or dead? You can't "free market" your way out of this one, you daft bastards.)

[snaff]

Priti Patel can't even read a number off a piece of paper.

And "I'm sorry people think there have been failings" is what passes for an apology from a Tory.

Boris being discharged from hospital on Easter Sunday? Tory spin.

We've also now had "I’m incredibly sorry that people feel they are not able to get this equipment" from Matt Hancock. Seems like "sorry that people feel" is the official standard non-apology template.

It's not the job of ministers to order in supplies. It's the fat cat NHS managers who didn't do their job.

[KlaxonCow]

We've already been told the proper way out of this, economically and morally.

"Testing, testing, testing."

With mass antibody testing, we can identify those who've had it and now, at least for the time being, have an immunity. They can be released from lockdown to keep things economically ticking over. You no longer have to pay 80% of their wage. The businesses they work for will likely not be capable of running full tilt, but they can keep economically active. So you might also save on how much you have to pay out to businesses and the self-employed.

On the health side, the key workers who've got the antibodies can be sent safely to the frontline and into care homes. So we keep our capacity high, to keep fighting this thing for those who still need protecting.

We keep it under 1.055, and we keep some economic activity going. The "survivors" of Covid-19 can go out of lockdown safely, and bring back the economy (slowly, granted, but better than the current "not happening at all") and, over time, more will join their numbers.

Wild "herd immunity" is a non-plan, as I've covered. But strategic "herd immunity" is entirely possible, for those who're already in that category already - which we can determine by mass testing - without compromising "flattening the curve" or risking the vulnerable who need protecting. Until, hopefully, a vaccine gives us controlled "herd immunity", harmlessly so. Or we develop drug treatments for this that can bring the death rates right down.

This is a plan.

"Testing, testing, testing."

When we know who's who, and what's what, then we can start being smart about this and control our way out of it. The "fuck it" approach, where we run headlong into disaster blindly is - surely this need not be said out loud? - a catastrophe waiting to happen. And if the spread rates rise way back up there again, we're right back into lockdown all over again.

(And, you know, who's done the most testing? Germany and South Korea. Who's come out of this the best so far? Germany and South Korea. It's not just theory, we have the empirical evidence right there staring us in the face. Whereas, who fucked up getting testing going? The US did - they're now the worst in the world. Also, the UK's being doing very badly on this too - and our own experts are predicting we'll likely be the worst affected country in Europe. Most testing = best results, crap testing = worst results. How can I bash the obvious over their heads any harder to get it into their thick skulls?)

[Harlequin]

It's not the job of ministers to order in supplies. It's the fat cat NHS managers who didn't do their job.

Ministers must get PPE to NHS frontline, says business secretary

Staff should not be having to choose whether to work without it, says Alok Sharma
…
Sharma declined to apologise for PPE shortages in hospitals and care homes across the UK but said he “completely accepts that it is up to the government to fix”.
…
“It is our job to make sure we get that healthcare equipment, that PPE, out to them,” he said.

(Emphasis mine).

Revealed: value of UK pandemic stockpile fell by 40% in six years

£325m wiped off value of health department’s emergency stockpile including PPE

UK government stockpiles containing protective equipment for healthcare workers in the event of a pandemic fell in value by almost 40% over the past six years, the Guardian has found.

Analysis of official financial data suggests £325m was wiped off the value of the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) emergency stockpile, reducing it from £831m in 2013 under the Conservative-led coalition government to £506m by March last year.
…
The widespread shortages of equipment, which Hancock has blamed on problems with the distribution system, has raised questions about the UK’s levels of preparedness for a pandemic of this kind.

Accounts suggest funding for “stockpiled goods” that are “held for use in national emergencies” was increased between 2008 and 2011, when pandemic preparedness was identified as a national priority for the NHS. But since 2013 the value of the stockpile has fallen.
…
Dr Lindsey Davies, a former national director of pandemic influenza preparedness, told the Guardian that PPE shortages were modelled as far back as 2007, during a large cross-government pandemic simulation codenamed Exercise Winter Willow. “It was a live issue at the time,” she said.
…
In the wake of the Winter Willow exercise, and with the emergence of the swine flu pandemic two years later, the Department of Health, as it was then known, embarked on a procurement programme aimed at boosting stockpiles of medicines and PPE, according to departmental accounts and performance reports. By the end of the 2010-11 financial year, the value of the department’s stockpile stood at £830m, an 80% increase from 2008-09.

… DHSC accounts show that in the three years after [a] 2016 drill, the value of the stockpile fell by more than £200m.

[(o)(o)]

Priti Patel can't even read a number off a piece of paper.

Who cares, she's a MILF and also she's British, unlike immigrunt Dianne Abboth!

And "I'm sorry people think there have been failings" is what passes for an apology from a Tory.

I'm so sorry you're the sort of person who thinks like that about our wonderful NHS, merman.

Boris being discharged from hospital on Easter Sunday? Tory spin.

This makes me want to puke. Yes. They are actually going there. Using Johnson's hospitalisation for political purposes to disguise a criminal lack of preparedness, failure to act in a timely fashion, and bad decisions on what strategy to take due to Tory pathology (<- great article there). Instead of preparedness for a pandemic, the Tory way is to prepare the publics perception ahead of the - about to be a reality - choices required by senior physicians of who gets to live, and who gets bunged into a mass graves full of "excess deaths" as a consequence of Tory actions.

Brave Sir Johnson bounds bouncefully out of ICU to deliver this brooding message of solemn allegience to the BRTISIH people and NHS, before he recovers with perhaps a light game of rugger. Like a man. A real man. Basically a soldier?



1. Starts with a frog in the throat but proceeds to talk with absolutely no difficulty.
2. "Saved my life." - yep. You needed breathing assistance but you didn't have the severe form. You didn't require a ventilator, and they told us you didn't have Pneumonia.
3. "Could of gone either way". Yes same here. I could live tonight or maybe I'll die. It's 50/50 !
4. It might be an idea to emphasis the personal element. Let's refer to staff by name, and first names.
5. Keen to point out nationalities of his personal carers, one of whom is from the EUrope so they haven't all be thrown home.
6. The NHS is powered by "love", not funding.

Now let's see someone who authentically survived life threatening Pneumonia. Note the humility, the gratitude, the clearly demonstrable physical weakness, the inability to contain deep emotions of the trauma he's just endured.

It's not the job of ministers to order in supplies. It's the fat cat NHS managers who didn't do their job.

[KlaxonCow]

bad decisions on what strategy to take due to Tory pathology (<- great article there).

Yes, excellent article.

Which is pretty much saying what I've been saying in this thread, but with more graphs and more concise language.

[zip accident]

bad decisions on what strategy to take due to Tory pathology (<- great article there).

Yes, excellent article.

Which is pretty much saying what I've been saying in this thread, but with more graphs and more concise language.

When is "talk like a cowboy" day?

[Little stoned kiwi]

5. Keen to point out nationalities of his personal carers, one of whom is from the EUrope so they haven't all be thrown home.

It was a nurse from New Zealand that saved his life and nursed him back to health. The local media says so.