Day of Chaos 2: a.Covid-19 thread.

[von Boom]

A message from our very own Eamonn Clarke:



Thanks Eamonn!

Can I have permission to print this so I can nail it to the forehead of wankers who think the warm weather means no chance of infection?

[JayzusB.Christ]

Just the nail would be enough.

[Eamonn Clarke]

Please print, share, tweet, TikTok, rigellian hotshot, whatever it takes to get the message out there.

Stay safe, chums.

[von Boom]

Cheers, Eamonn. Thanks for all your work and keep well.

[shaolin_monkey]

So, how's the U.K. currently looking re the virus?

- the Financial Times analysis reckons we've had 64,500 deaths due to COVID19. This is the second highest no. of deaths in the world.

- We now have the highest per capita deaths in the world at approx. one death per 1000 citizens.

- Yesterday we had more deaths in a 24 hour period than all 27 EU countries COMBINED - 359 versus 314 (see pic).

- Italy had zero deaths reported, yet they are keeping schools closed until September.

- The U.K., despite still having well over 1,500 new cases per day, is opening schools.

In PMQs yesterday, Johnson said:

"I take full responsibility for everything this government has been doing in tackling coronavirus, and I'm very proud of our record. If you look at what we have achieved so far, it is very considerable."





This is utter madness.

[IndigoPrime]

I wrote to our school yesterday, confirming mini-IP will not be returning at this time. Other parents are wavering. Really, it's not fair to make this a judgement call for schools and then for parents. It's also not fair to not recognise that it is literally impossible to have a system where you implement social distancing in schools to any degree, and even at drop-off/pick-up. (Our school is ambitiously hoping 30 kids will be dropped off in each of four five-minute slots. Just variance in people's time-keeping devices showcases that to be essentially unviable. But beyond that, the school is also down a road that has a single path barely wide enough for two people. That means even if you can socially distance within the school grounds — vanishingly unlikely — it's going to be literally impossible to do that to and from the school. And that's just one school in one town.

Frankly, I'm more impressed with the north east than the south east, given that according to The Guardian yesterday, the former has basically said "fuck this" and kept schools closed. (Natch, our council is blue, hence pushing for schools to be opened as soon as possible.)

As for Johnson taking responsibility, that comment will come back to haunt him, and he'll spin his way out. His palpable anger at Starmer yesterday was something to behold. Asked a couple of basic questions, he responded with abject fury. Some have argued he's playing to the crowd, and his base will eat up that aggression. To me, he just looked like an arsehole who wanted to punch Starmer in the face for asking a simple question. That's not leadership.

But most damning is that graph. For weeks, the UK was slamming Italy and Spain. Now we're, what, doing well? Really? More deaths than the ENTIRE EU27 combined? What will the excuse be now? Two-week lag? That we're apparently the most densely populated country on the entire planet, according to some nay-sayers? Probably it's the EU's fault somehow. Or migrants. (Sadly, the latter is being used to apportion blame by some. If only all those migrants weren't here, see, we'd have fewer people and therefore wouldn't have had as many cases.)

[TordelBack]

That we're apparently the most densely populated country on the entire planet, according to some nay-sayers?

And so easy to disprove: UK is roughly the 50th most densely populated globally, as a blunt instrument of land area to population. Looking solely at urbanisation, it's behind Netherlands and Belgium, and perennial bugbear London weighs in at about 40-45th most dense city depending on your criteria, way behind Paris and Athens, somewhere between greater Barcelona and Madrid.  In fact, even going by most dense single square kilometre, London is only 15th in Europe. No matter what permutations you run, they're never going to support this conclusion.

[IndigoPrime]

Turns out Spain was fiddling its numbers in a big way. I suspect this will be spun as: SEE? We are doing AMAZING after all. What it really means is that, no, the graph that shows we have more daily deaths than the EU is not correct — but we are still doing very badly, and are setting things up for worse to come.

[shaolin_monkey]

Yes - their PR based data manipulation actions have made it much harder for us to use them as a benchmark for how appalling murderous our own PR-spinning bullshit government is.

[The Enigmatic Dr X]

If not now, when?

If we don't re-open schools and shops and travel and all that jazz now, when do we?

Because the virus hasn't changed and neither has our immune system. Lockdown was to flatten the curve of cases, not reduce the number. It is about preparation, not prevention. Somewhere along the line that message has been lost.

This is a Bad and Terrible Thing. But we either all stay at home or we do not. We either allow our economy to collapse or we take steps to prevent collateral damage - health and financial - by implementing a return of school and work and other services with distancing and other measures to reduce risk.

That risk is here and will not go away by staying at home. We can't do that forever.

For those who are worried, how long in lockdown is long enough? And when will you be satisifed it is safe? Do you think we will have jobs at that point? Genuine questions.

And while the answer may be "until we have a vaccine"... well, there are not a lot of RNA vaccines out there and a vaccine is most likley going to be like the flu jab. It will not reduce severity but is not a pancea.

This is here. It is not going away. We need to accept that.

[The Enigmatic Dr X]

ADDENDUM:

Yes, we need to follow the rules. Let's enforce them.

Yes, we need to protect the vulnerable. Let's protect them.

No, the healthy cannot stay at home because they are worried. We need the tax.

[IndigoPrime]

Personally, I'd like to open things back up against when the scientists aren't wholeheartedly advising against doing so. They said mid-June as a starting point for schools. So the government ignored them, to distract from Cummings. With other bullshit rattling around, we now have Johnson arguing to ditch the 2m rule to allow pubs to re-open.

Other countries look on in horror. Many have tracking and tracing in place. They will be able to lockdown regions when cases explode. They will start from a much smaller number anyway. Us? We have yet to reach that point. Moreover, we had a two-week lag that appears to have been forgotten.

I'm not naïve. I know everyone cannot stay home forever. By the same token, the UK numbers are still really bad, and if we pull the trigger too soon, we will see an exponential explosion in cases that'll put us right back where we started.

[Jim_Campbell]

For those who are worried, how long in lockdown is long enough? And when will you be satisifed it is safe? Do you think we will have jobs at that point? Genuine questions.

When? When we have an adequate, functioning track and trace system. When the government is mass-testing the general population continuously, and effectively at random. By focussing on testing symptomatic patients, the government is ignoring the 5-10 days when people are asymptomatic but contagious.

Detecting a new spike in infections at the point where people start pitching up in hospital is basically two weeks too late and all you can do is lock everything down again because you've lost control of it.

Other nations have managed to implement this sort of strategy, whilst all ours does is fudge the stats to make it look like it's not completely incompetent.

[Professor Bear]

I don't mean to sound petulant, but I don't believe herd immunity was ever seriously considered, I think it was just a phrase Johnson latched onto to justify doing nothing.  I think he just wanted to get the deaths out of the way and done with - "Get Covid Done!", so to speak - so he could go back to business as usual.

[Jim_Campbell]

I don't mean to sound petulant, but I don't believe herd immunity was ever seriously considered, I think it was just a phrase Johnson latched onto to justify doing nothing.  I think he just wanted to get the deaths out of the way and done with - "Get Covid Done!", so to speak - so he could go back to business as usual.

I think that's a fair guess as to why it appealed to Johnson. I think it appealed to the government's eugenicist-in-chief Dominic Cummings for altogether more despicable reasons.