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

Other proposals under consideration by ministers include extraordinary measures to help supermarkets remain stocked and able to deliver food to the elderly.

not what I was expecting to be reading when the most right wing tory govt in decades won a huge majority in December!

programme about the Chief Medical Officer on Radio 4 at the moment, plax otm, the guy is a full-blown son of the empire

could we maybe focus on avoiding the dangerous FIRST spike ffs??

A Tory MP said that Johnson faces a “political shitstorm” if the UK is affected worse than other countries and that he will not be able to use *Whitty and Vallance as “human shields”.

*just when they thought it couldn't get any worse Nick Broomfield is going to sue them for copyright infringement as well!

xp

yep, T H

Brexit means coronavirus vaccine will be slower to reach the UK
And it will cost more here because of the UK pulling out of the European Medicines Agency on 30 December
• Three experts explain why Brexit leaves the UK less able to respond to pandemic

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/14/coronavirus-vaccine-delays-brexit-ema-expensive

oh fucking hell just fuck off already

Lots and lots in here, including the Brexit delay. Buried but the bit about the real goal of the strategy being “avoid the dangerous second spike” with or without herd immunity, which is interesting.

― stet, Saturday, 14 March 2020 18:25 (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

I'm hopelessly out of my depth here but if it's without herd immunity aren't we exactly as exposed to a second spike as the 50 countries that are doing it wrong?

This clip from last week is a bit about that, G. I think it says you get growing immunity from all the people in the first spike (if not total everyone-relax-now herd immunity) and so avoid a second large epidemic. (Which would likely come at the same time as flu season returned)

Here’s the chart from @deb_cohen @BBCNewsnight report - explaining the theory behind cracking down but not too quickly - and some experts explaining different judgements... pic.twitter.com/MUBpqE1AMB

— Faisal Islam (@faisalislam) March 14, 2020

Cheers - so we may still get it but it too should be lower

I'm just inexpertly adding what I've read other people saying but 1. Herd Immunity has apparently never been achieved without a vaccine and 2. for it to be successful it would require 36-40 million people to become infected. That sounds like an absolute shower of shite of a concept of epidemic management to me.

I think part of the assumption is that *whatever the gov does* that number of people are likely to end up getting it?

Tories will always find the type of experts willing to give them an excuse to take the "do almost fuck all " option imo

Yeah That Medium post up there makes that point about needing a vaccine for herd immunity. It is, I think, wrong: that’s basically how the Spanish Flu epidemic ended, isn’t it? Everyone was either dead or had survived and become immune.

The thing they are trying to make different here from that outcome is to manage the size of the spike so it doesn’t overwhelm hospitals. I think given the way they have destroyed the NHS over the past ten years, we have to settle for “don’t utterly overwhelm and destroy hospitals” because they’re already so stretched it won’t take much.

But yeah, if that Buzzfeed thing is right they won’t be going for the full 36m after all. Just need it to be enough, whatever that might mean.

Xp to calz

Elderly people are apparently to be ‘cocooned’ / warehoused for four months.

https://www.itv.com/news/2020-03-14/elderly-to-be-quarantined-for-four-months-in-wartime-style-mobilisation-to-combat-coronavirus/

as i suspected my mum hasn't taken any precautions up to now and is mainly bored of it taking up all the news coverage :D

she lives with my sis so i'm less worried than i would be otherwise but what can you do? i told her to keep an eye on potential symptoms and that i think things will get a lot worse before this is over

as far as the boredom's concerned, i agreed with her

Elderly people are apparently to be ‘cocooned’ / warehoused for four months.

suggest we redeploy the empty supermarket shelving

- this is your shelf margaret
- but it says toilet paper?

earlier today i was sitting in the bath thinking about raymond briggs 'when the wind blows' and how it might be a prophesy about our own mums and dads

the helplessness, the invisible unreality of the threat, the lack of understanding, fuck it left me bleak

Elderly people are apparently to be ‘cocooned’ / warehoused for four months.

French in-laws report that France has already moved to 'stage 3' and they are being told to self-isolate even with no symptoms. Everything closed - cinemas, restaurants etc - apart from groceries.

Me too - I’ve thought of WTWB more than once and it leaves me bleak as hell (as it usually does tbf).

But: even in the 70s and 80s groups people are recovering. I am trying to stop focusing on the stats that scare me like the 8% mortality by flipping them, thinking of it as “92% of the people in their 70s who get this recover”. Xp

The prime minister Boris Johnson and health secretary Matt Hancock are counting on neighbours and friends to rally round to make sure no one is neglected. "We are looking for a huge community effort," said a source.

The prime minister's adviser, Dominic Cummings, has also initiated conversations with Uber and Deliveroo about taking food to the old and vulnerable when they are put into forced isolation.

good luck uk

the helplessness, the invisible unreality of the threat, the lack of understanding, fuck it left me bleak

All of this and more :-(

There was that 103 year old woman who recovered!

The prime minister Boris Johnson and health secretary Matt Hancock are counting on neighbours and friends to rally round to make sure no one is neglected. "We are looking for a huge community effort," said a source.
The prime minister's adviser, Dominic Cummings, has also initiated conversations with Uber and Deliveroo about taking food to the old and vulnerable when they are put into forced isolation.

For fuuuuuck's sake

For fuck's sake

Fucking, bloody

They'll completely get away with all of this. They'll say nobody could have expected it. Nobody could have known somebody would try to use an airplane as a bomb. Nobody could have guessed that goosing the housing market with 0% mortgages that could be sold as expensive high-risk CDOs would lead to a home-building and property bubble. Waaaaah it wasn't our fault. We weren't responsible. Who could have foreseen that a plan would be needed.

Call in the military imo. They're the only ones I feel like have a hope of being properly organized on the scale that's required. When I saw footage of the National Guard in New York State delivering food to kids whose only meal was the school lunch that they weren't getting I thought okay, can we at least start doing this please??

They need the military to take over from the police when they’re all off sick iirc.

of all uk governments i'd rather this one didn't get any ideas about sending in the troops

NEWS: My Telegraph article on the next stage of our #coronavirus plan:

We must all do everything in our power to protect liveshttps://t.co/GbBtVKGsCg

— Matt Hancock (@MattHancock) March 14, 2020

And yeah, if you think LSHTM is a hotbed of colonialism might I introduce you to the British Army?

psyched for phlegmy sunday

Sunday is rheumy
My hours are slumberless

how long must we fling this phlegm .. dum de dum de do

bloody irritable haemorrhoids sunday

In the near future we will take further steps. SAGE has advised the next planned effective interventions will need to be instituted soon, including measures to ‘shield’ older and medically vulnerable people from the virus.

my wife is medically vulnerable or at least she is while she continues taking her immunosuppresant MS drugs. so i guess she'd need to be shielded? can't even envisage what that means right now. wtf is shielding anyway? do we seal her in the bedroom or something? no, can't do that - she'll need to use the bathroom at some point. hmnm, we only have one bathroom / toilet. will the rest of us need to move out then? or do we just wash in the kitchen sink and shit in a bucket? or do we just drop her off at some sort of shielding facility and say our goodbyes? or maybe she quits her meds and potentially ends up in a wheelchair? what the hell is even going on anymore? fuck this is unreal

and i'm not trying to make this about me btw - must be many thousands of people having these thoughts right now. a bit more detail might be nice. matt hancock says "the UK’s plans for the rapid response to and mitigation of the spread of an epidemic are ranked number one above any other country by the Global Health Security Index" so there must be a bit more detail they can give us right?

sorry, everyone else with the same problems really doesn't need me freaking out

fuck it nick, freak out away. my partner has MS as well and can confirm it absolutely matches up to Richard Pryor's description of it standing for More (fucking) Shit!

Today, we take further action, with a call to arms for a drive to build the ventilators and other equipment the NHS will need. We are better equipped thanks to the NHS than most other countries, but we will need many more. We now need any manufacturers to transform their production lines to make ventilators. We cannot make too many.

keep reading this and maybe it's just me but i have no idea how the fuck you make a ventilator. is that something your average factory can just starting knocking together like it's nothing? there's going to be at least a months lag here right so they could tool up and make the machines that make the parts to make the ventilators? so why the hell were we not in full-scale lock-everything down mode until that point?

I should be qualified to comment on the covid-19 pandemic. I'm a computational/system biologist working on infectious diseases and have spent five years in a world class 'pandemic response modelling' unit. In this thread, I will summarise what I believe I (don't) know. (1/12)

— Francois Balloux (@BallouxFrancois) March 14, 2020

Short-lived immunisation would defeat both ‘flattening the curve’ and ‘herd immunity’ approaches. Devising an effective strategy would be even more challenging under low seasonal forcing. It would also considerably complicate effective vaccination campaigns.

he covid-19 pandemic is an extremely challenging problem and there are still many unknowns. There is no simple fix, and poorly thought-out interventions could make the situation even worse, massively so.

sorry I just crudely block quoted two bits from the thread that match how i feel rn

NickB, there's no need to apologise for posting about your own personal struggle. I really hope everything works out for your family and your wife. All the best mate.

jed otm and put it better than i did

otm

Feel like I'm going a bit nutty tbh, need to step away and calm down a bit or else I'll be no use at all to them that need me. Thanks though and sorry to vent

Vent all you like! It's a very good place to do it.

wtf?

Ridiculous scenes in Tesco Colney Hatch this morning. Shelves cleared like there's been a riot. The selfishness of some people filling their trolleys with multiple packs and leaving none for others is staggering. (Plus so much for getting here early to avoid crowded spaces.) pic.twitter.com/CIhJexaYul

— Michelle Davies (@M_Davieswrites) March 14, 2020

NickB, I'd say limit the number of contacts your wife has with others, and all people in the house be rigorous with following the recommended hygiene precautions. That's what we're doing here while my partner recovers from a recent operation, she has an underlying at risk health condition.

And as jed_ said, continue to vent here if necessary. All the best to you.

Nick, obv vent away - it’s frightening. wtev otm but I would seek medical advice on isolation for your wife, as the risk will aiui depend what her white blood cell count is. My brother had HSCT treatment for MS, which as you probably know involves wiping out the white blood cell count and then building it up from extracted bone marrow. He was at home after a critical threshold had been built up, but stayed in his room and just saw family members and used the same house facilities.