love* in the time of plague (and by love* i mean brexit* and other dreary matters of uk politics)

S. Korea's doesn't use an app either aiui.

still uses GPS though, and south korea has the highest % of smart phone usage in the world

No 10 can live with private anger. The danger is in public calls for DC to resign. Some MPs waiting too to see how PM does at liaison cttee. But MPs I’ve spoken to today think it will take external event (development in police probe, new revelation) now to force PM’s hand 4/

— Beth Rigby (@BethRigby) May 27, 2020

I find I'm really hoping he brings it upon himself in questions later

https://twitter.com/marcusbarnett_/status/1265648942794133505 seems pretty public

Deleted, was this
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EZB83kYX0AA0hMd?format=jpg&name=large

was gonna say 'seems reasonable' until i spotted branson and cummings hanging in effigy

now i'm gonna say 'seems very reasonable'

reassuring

No 10 says it cannot explain why the daily announcement of the number of people being tested for coronavirus has been mysteriously dropped.

Boris Johnson's spokesman said it was "not something I have noticed" - despite the department of health and social care failing to provide the statistic for four days.

It comes after widespread criticism that the number of people tested is typically tens of thousands fewer than the "capacity" available and way below the 100,000 daily benchmark.

However, the spokesman insisted the government was on track to hit the prime minister's promise of a testing capacity of 200,000 by this weekend - despite the latest figure being only 154,120.

Johnson is having a horrible, horrible time, live on BBC One. (But not horrible enough to force him to sack Cummings)

Never mind tests, no one pays much mind to the death rate anymore. Ireland recorded zero deaths the other day, no desire or will to get to that.

Lol craven

BBC statement on last night's Newsnight pic.twitter.com/JFm4Nt5YMv

— BBC News Press Team (@BBCNewsPR) May 27, 2020

Boris Johnson says contact tracing should only force a very small number of people into quarantine

The best estimates suggest that if there are 10,000 fresh cases a day, then as many as 390,000 new people would be quarantined each day pic.twitter.com/12KlB0kMal

— Rowland Manthorpe (@rowlsmanthorpe) May 27, 2020

aw diddums, were they being beastly to cockroach cummings? xp

we are committed to getting the infection numbers down and beating this virus

unless it’s too hard

Only found the number of deaths today through this tweet.

yesterday we had 134 new covid deaths and today we have 412. good job you can go buy a car or an open air pastry in person next week eh

— worm from home (@SzMarsupial) May 27, 2020

johnson looks terrible!

Lol fucking head on him

but yes, i've noticed as well that the ubiquitous charts with UK cases and deaths plotted as a line graph, which used to lead EVERY news bulletin, are now awol, which is strange, because the trend is vaguely, slightly downward, which surely is news worth vaguely, lightly celebrating?

xposts

Having lectured opposition members of liaison committee asking questions about Cummings about playing politics, Johnson with the connivance of committee chairman, Bernard Jenkin, and a succession of Tory MPs has turned it into a party political broadcast.

412? jesus is that just some weekend catching up with the harvest of death or is this just one of greatest lockdowns in the West!

i've just heard the last 10 minutes or so and if this is a party political broadcast i hope the thick lazy cunt makes a lot more of them

Jenkin crammed some Labour MPs in it at the end.

... and at the start.

Obv. Johnson himself is hopeless.

he quite literally doesn't know what he's doing

State of him.

Does this disgusting bastard look ill and haggard as a result of the virus?

Genuine question, asked in hope.

They must, must know what everyone is thinking everytime this end says "isolate immediately"

durham’s gonna be packed

Laura K just described Johnson as “bouncing through” the liaison committee session lol

xps to pinefox his cough sounds terrible

“flopping over”

That 412 needs a bit of unpacking - is that hospital deaths alone? There did appear to be a precipitous drop in the daily death rate over the past couple of days so I guess this is the data catching up?

Tugendhat and Ellwood are making a lot of noise about not having an opportunity to grill Johnson over Huawei at the Commons Liaison Committee meeting. The former seems to see positioning himself as Hammer of the CCP as a path to leadership, or at least as the leading critic of the PM within the party.

It may require a corset to fit in the tubes but being back in a boat would be great. https://t.co/jZk9lB3ISN

— Tom Tugendhat (@TomTugendhat) May 27, 2020

I'd be interested to know what the Atlanticist wing of the Tories think the upside of joining in a trade war with China is, other than making Trump happy.

I think in the comments to that tweet there is a bit about data catching up, but surely it's over 250 so a bit of a jump?

It was a bank holiday weekend so we get a Wednesday spike instead of a Tuesday spike. Today's was still lower than last Tuesday (412 today vs 545 on May 19th)

Also last Tuesday's jump was also larger at 385

also

where is the VE day spike? I don't want to see anyone ill or die, but I also can't believe that letting people have street congas to mourn the wartime dead during a pandemic is going to have no consequences when people I know are unable to attend family funerals

it takes a few days to show symptoms, then 1-2 weeks before hospital admittance, then another 1-2 weeks before you cark it

^posting from beyond the grave

"I don't want to see anyone ill or die"

wishing death on English arseholes from the tory heartlands is the only thing that is keeping me going right now!

The parties weren't huge everywhere and everyone else was still obeying most of the guidance most of the time so VE day may have slowed the decline rather than created a spike.

Average time to death in severe cases is hugely variable - anywhere between 14 and 50 days, so there may still be many VE day related deaths to come.

xp

some of the VE day bbc footage was pretty shocking but I didn't see anything like that in my local tory zone.

I could imagine similar scenes in villages in Devon like South Brent - which is the only village in Devon i really know!

OK this is fucking terrible from Starmer

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/keir-starmer-dominic-cummings-broke-22097178

(Amounts to “we should move on”)

dismal

I was thinking it was fine until the word "constructively" came up and just pulled the rug out from under it. The rest of it was like some PR stump article from six weeks ago. It didn't even fit together coherently.

multiple xps I've really struggled with being so angry about it. In my neck of the woods I see a lot of people out and about, acting like there is no lockdown and there never was. But then a lot of the flats around here are tiny and neglected, and the gardens shared by multiple tenants, so I get why people need to go out. But those aren't the people who've been flocking to the beach and having street parties. More than anything, I don't want to see people die purely because while they're in hospital being treated for it they're still taking up beds that people who've been cautious and unmoronic could actually use

I don't think it's unreasonable for Starmer to say "let's not focus on Dominic Cummings when people are still dying and our plan is shite" - the pressure on Dominic Cummings is going to be coming from other angles anyway, no-one gives a fuck what his views are on that. The problem is that no-one gives a fuck what The Labour Promise is on Coronavirus either, and the plans he has are a half-step better than the ones that Johnson is already not reaching.