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

Also Hancock:

Fucking hell. ‘Car crash’ really doesn’t do this justice. This is a multiple vehicle pileup resulting in the closure of a four-junction stretch of the M25 in both directions. But with added weird, creepy laughter.

My toes may never uncurl.pic.twitter.com/PwQcxlzp6h

— 🏳️‍🌈 Max 🏳️‍🌈 (@SpillerOfTea) September 9, 2020

the 25% thing is about people getting tests when they don't have symptoms — eg before they go on holiday, or go to a wedding or something. Which seemed like prudent behaviour to me given how they've been banging on about how many tests we've got, such beautiful tests, world-beating tests.

Turns out they barely have enough capacity to test the symptomatic and now they've maxed out

Lol ok thanks

They wasted lockdown, and they wasted the post-lockdown pissing about with civil service shakeups (including fucking about with PHE ffs) and now seems like that time's has just about run out. Good idea to start a massive Brexit fight as well, then.

Is it truly always a good idea to listen to someone's sister?

i'mma go with "no"

https://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/images/9780252074677_lg.jpg

https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/1104/4308/products/The_Bad_Sister_1024x1024.jpg?v=1571830824

Oh yes it's here:

It’s all YOUR fault https://t.co/Gqa1A5nRIj

— Pippa Crerar (@PippaCrerar) September 9, 2020

👀👀👀

St Leger Festival gets underway today @DoncasterRaces The government has given the go ahead for thousands of people to attend the four day event. It's one of the first sport pilot events to introduce spectators back to fixtures pic.twitter.com/0KqlPSYn6H

— ITV News Calendar (@itvcalendar) September 9, 2020

Now I'm not an epidemiologist but

i’m no mathematician, but

i'm no horse, but

looking forward to hearing the ronas and riders

The cowardice of not just doing this at Cheltenham.

At this stage you have to just assume that the government is entirely in the pocket of the gambling industry.

Johnson says he regrets that Starmer did not take back his claim about the system being on the verge of collapse. He repeats the point about it doing a “heroic” job. The medium journey is under 10 miles, he says.

Having to travel 10+ miles for your test - pure heroism.

Tories: BREAKING THE LAW!

Guardian libs: be polite before killing me.

Losing it at these Guardian comments describing what "Starmerism" means to them. "Politeness", the end of "mad-ism", "a reminder that the age of enlightenment did actually happen"? We are so screwed. pic.twitter.com/z9NTHqVJGo

— Stephen Buranyi (@stephenburanyi) September 9, 2020

looking forward to hearing the ronas and riders

― this is my clean tone (NickB),

Clapping.gif

big lack of the famed forensics on brexit here

Note the Trumpism

44m ago
12:32
Kim Johnson (Lab) asks about housing in Liverpool. She says the government’s plans for planning reform will allow slums to return. Will he abandon them?

Boris Johnson says his government will deliver beautiful new homes.

the "mad-ism" letter is signed "rawlsian"

Great stuff.

so you can see one grandparent at a time in england now?

if you've got the rona and give it to granddad when you see him, what's preventing him from going home and giving it to granny?

the pub. it's on the way.

St Leger meeting decision reversed. This government listens

Just lucky that all of today's attendees are immune

Is it just my imagination or has Michael Gove completely disappeared over the past few months? Hancock, Sunak, Raab, Patel, Williamson and Sharma have all been fairly prominent over the summer and even Johnson has pulled his finger out a little bit. Suggests that Gove knows this is a disaster that is going to end multiple political careers and wants to keep as low a profile as possible.

Mark Francois also disappeared for some reason

Give reportedly came up with this “break the law” wheeze and pushed for it

the master strategist at work

televised update at 4 on bbc1.

i was looking forward to The Repair Shop, but i guess that won't happen now

If we have built capacity for 200k tests and Hancock is complaining that people without symptoms are getting tests... does that mean he thinks he's built capacity for 200k active daily symptomatic tests?

Also if only 25% are ineligible why aren't we reporting 150k new daily cases? What the fuck do these 148k symptomatic people per day have that isn't covid?

he doesn't know what he's doing.

https://i.imgur.com/lVoLCWe.png

not great really is it

are we going climbing again?

Not great but also a bit misleading because there were so few tests done in March/April — you only got tested if you were already in hospital, so that actual number of cases then would have been massively higher xp

Lovely that the messaging to young people is literally now ‘you will kill your grandparents if you don’t follow this arbitrary rule’

But like do go to work yeah and maybe nandos on your way home

BoJo now using over testing of non symptomatic as a positive.

I can't work out how 500k negative tests a day enables normal life. It would take 2 months to test the country in which time all the normal life people have covid.

Yet another variety of herd immunity but not really

This Salford moonshot doesn't make sense to me either. At all.

You can't live your life as normal if you get a negative test, because you could still catch it the minute you walk out the testing centre.

An antibody test is perhaps one thing that could let you do that, but it looks like antibodies aren't staying around for long enough for that

(as I understand it, and that's not much)

antibodies not lasting isn't really seen as a problem as your body is programmed by your first infection to reproduce them

2 or 3 reinfection stories recently maybe suggests otherwise

That's true stet but deaths look to be creeping up slightly as well - most since July.

.@Peston asks if Christmas is cancelled?

Boris Johnson says he is 'hopeful' that 'in many ways' we could be able to get some aspects of our lives back to normal by Christmas

He refers to 'moonshot' of daily testing, but says govt 'cannot be 100% sure' if can deliver that

— Steven Swinford (@Steven_Swinford) September 9, 2020

is there a reliable daily link for keeping up with rona new cases/deaths?

antibodies not lasting isn't really seen as a problem as your body is programmed by your first infection to reproduce them

That's true stet but deaths look to be creeping up slightly as well - most since July.

is there a reliable daily link for keeping up with rona new cases/deaths?

Talk of goose and figs is a bit insensitive now that Christmas is cancelled

"A dose of Coronavirus you got from licking lampposts"

rejected B&S lyric

is there a reliable daily link for keeping up with rona new cases/deaths?

Daily is difficult but I'm using this for cases. It's not 100% up to date (I don't think anywhere public is) but it at least gives you an idea of where the hotspots are:

https://russss.github.io/covidtracker/map.html

There was one on, I think, the Time Out website that had case data down to a ridiculous level of local granularity but also seemed to be lagging behind by a week or so.

highlight (of the 5 minutes i didn't ffwd through) was bj telling pesto to unmute