bojo is king, brexit is on, stuff is fvcked, tomorrow starts here -- new govt new thread new battle

If there is no acquired immunity then there’s no vaccine either. That’s about the point of thinking about this that I need to start going lalalala for my sanity.

I’ve managed to convince my parents to lock down for a while. My mother, who has a medical background, was being immensely stubborn. She understands the logic behind the government position, herd immunity, etc but the reality of that position meaning pretty much every healthy-ish person in the country is going to need to get it for it to be effective - and almost everyone she meets if she insists on going to Sainsbury’s either will have it, will get it or will already have had it, hadn’t sunk in. It’s a difficult balancing act for the government. If you say ‘people will die’ you’re hailed as brave for telling the truth, but if you tell the whole truth - that we all need to get it and be horribly ill for the plan to work, people are going to go bonkers.

just been chatting to my 70 odd year old mum, she can't really lock down. She's the only one of her clan with a car and is constantly doing errands for her twin sister who has multiple cancers. What a grim conversation it was. I found out my younger brother who is in zero-hour contract hell hasn't had a fridge-freezer for 6 months now and can't even afford a 2nd hand one at the moment. I feel bad because I slung out a perfectly working fridge last year after getting a free one from the family trust fund!

I'm due to talk to my mom tonight. I can't see any way she'll self-isolate tbh, tho in theory she probably could. We'll see. She's very much of the "no fuss" school.

i was going to give my mum a ring but apparently she's very bored by it all already, no doubt she wants to move on to the next global crisis like choosing a new hoover or whatever

Keep calm
And
Drop dead

ha, only just noticed your dn

If you're not ill how long might you have to shut yourself in for tho? It's untenable. Frankly I've been going mad for company just for lack of money, as soon as there's anything in my bank I'm off to the pub assuming they haven't been shut down.

Yeah I think that’s it with my granny, she can feel isolated at the best of times as her mobility isn’t what it was even a few years ago, and now with some of the fam steering clear it’s not a nice prospect to be told she shouldn’t even get out the house for her regular trip to Sainsbury’s

it's hard to know when to stop. we can do the vast majority of our work online, to the extent where leaving the house is not actually a necessity any longer. is this a good strategy though? is a walk in the park now and then okay? argh

the good thing about us all self-isolating is that it will lead to a bold new golden age of ilx posting

A walk in the park is def ok, seen nothing to the contrary even from more alarmist sources

yeah i've had a couple of decent walks this week because i had counselling and advice appointments and the sun was out. i think the social distancing thing is supposed to be just that but tbh if my mom didn't go to the supermarket with my sister that's the only time she'd leave the house most weeks.

If the "delay" phase was going to be so minimal in terms of shutdown, what might have made people feel better if they had outlined any sort of plan about looking after people easily socially isolated and vulnerable during this panic but instead it was just keep calm and carry on.

What has been making me feel really strange is the irony of a generation of older people yearning for the blitz and some real suffering only for the blitz to come straight for them.

i've been trying to work out if there's any local initiatives to volunteer to do shopping and errands for local older people cos i feel like that'd be mutually beneficial tbh but no, everything's piecemeal.

so much for the big society smdh

off topic q: gyac might know. Are there any Irish MPs in the UK parliament?

we can do the vast majority of our work online

Excuse me?

The Royal We I'm assuming.

Updated odds of catching COVID-19:

Mar 1-in-4600
Apr 1-in-140
May 1-in-5
Jun 1-in-2
Jul 1-in-12
Aug 1-in-150

Assumes continue current trajectory, without radical interventions.

Hopefully this gives context to Govt comments about timing interventions right.

— stuart mcdonald (@ActuaryByDay) March 13, 2020

I've been wondering what's happening with the clients in my job that I'm not going back to

If there's no acquired immunity then the world has just changed forever but I'm not seeing much that suggests that? There's that one woman who tested positive for the second time but that seems to be an anomaly or something that arised from an error at some point.

Why Britain’s Coronavirus Strategy is Literally One of the Most Insane Things in Modern History

https://eand.co/why-britains-coronavirus-strategy-is-literally-one-of-the-most-insane-things-in-modern-history-45c755f1db2d

The human species never developed “herd immunity” to polio or smallpox or any virus, really — ever, despite millennia of death and illness and misery. Why not? Because herd immunity depends on vaccines.

/we can do the vast majority of our work online/

Excuse me?

No idea who this guy is but this herd immunity thing is a fucking pipe dream that will succeed in culling the elderly and the sick.

If corona doesn’t kill me armchair experts on fucking Medium will.

lol

Seriously though, how do we get herd immunity without vaccination without it effectively being "everyone gets it and we see who's left"?

How does that strategy protect the most vulnerable in the meantime?

alarm bells ringing when he described Pesto as "one of the UK’s top journalists"

sitting on top of the shit heap is still technically top

I suppose the argument is that the more people get it the less transmittable it becomes, protecting vulnerable people in the long run. Doesn't make it any less of a gigantic gamble though.

Lisa Nandy just called for the equivalent of a Marshall Plan to protect those most at risk, smart choice of approach.

pesto IS one of the uk’s top journalists tho, which is why him blithely parroting utter nonsense from the government is so dangerous

next you'll be telling me Richard and Judy are towering figures in UK academia!

What might "herd immunity" in the UK actually mean in numbers. An explainer. pic.twitter.com/qVesmBZK1a

— Paul Colgan (@paulcolgan) March 13, 2020

With an optimistic mortality rate of 0.7% we're sacrificing quarter of a million people on this gamble.

Seriously though, how do we get herd immunity without vaccination without it effectively being "everyone gets it and we see who's left"?

How does that strategy protect the most vulnerable in the meantime?

it's come to something when i look at 250,000+ deaths and think "oh not as bad as i thought"

With an optimistic mortality rate of 0.7% we're sacrificing quarter of a million people on this gamble.

in practice it is a “thin the herd” strategy though, unless the govt is putting together a wartime-like effort to provide supplies, food and care to those vulnerable populations. have i missed an announcement to this effect?

i've been trying to work out if there's any local initiatives to volunteer to do shopping and errands for local older people cos i feel like that'd be mutually beneficial tbh but no, everything's piecemeal.

― Psychedics with Rosie Swash (Noodle Vague), Saturday, 14 March 2020 11:16 (fifty-one minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

i just posted a couple of (london-based anarchist-run) facebook groups on the "bring me soup" thread: "bring me soup mfers" (thread of urgent coronavirus quarantine requests shd need arise: london local)

there may well be local equivalents, at least in larger urban areas (i am sceptical of anarchist politics in many ways but at least they're disinclined to wait around for the state to get into gear)

i saw those mark

i'm going to keep an eye out via the internet etc and see what comes up, i think i'm already FB friends with most of what passes for the anarcho scene in Hull

Could stop-start shutdowns flatten the curve more than "stay home if you already have it" and could that buy vaccine time?

in practice it is a “thin the herd” strategy though, unless the govt is putting together a wartime-like effort to provide supplies, food and care to those vulnerable populations. have i missed an announcement to this effect?

It's not so much a strategy as a "if we do nothing then this will happen" policy, which probably suits the likes of Johnson as he doesn't have to piss off his donors by diverting their wealth into social care. Although probably 90+ of those 277,000 predicted deaths are Tory voters, so what a bind he's in.

When you write a business case or options paper in the civil service you must always include a Do Nothing analysis. I think BJ read it that far and stopped.

I can't see a situation where the schools don't shut at some point. We're already on our knees and presumably, next week will see a whole bunch of people - teachers and kids - self-isolating. End of next week?

They’re not doing nothing though. Telling people with mild symptoms to isolate has a big effect they say. There is more to come

Stop-start shutdowns are the local railway solution to protecting the public, it takes forever and fucks everyone off. Boris is building the hs2 to herd immunity central, get everyone there as quick as possible just as long as you can make the journey, sorry no senior railcards accepted

Lol!