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

Charles Bellm, managing director of Intersurgical, a global supplier of medical ventilation products based outside London, said he has been contacted by more than a dozen governments around the world, including France, New Zealand and Indonesia. But there had been no contact from the British government.

damning stuff here and Hancock's repeated bleating that the testing travesty is all down to the lack of a domestic diagnostics industry doesn't cut the mustard.

Imperial’s prediction of over half a million deaths was no different from the report by the government’s own pandemic modelling committee two weeks earlier. Yet it helped trigger a policy turn-around..

for two weeks they sat on their hands knowing a disaster was imminent and all their strategy and planning was pathetically inadequate, yes Kier's correct they've not quite done a good job here.

the thing that fucking boggles my mind is that it was obvious from available data before the start of the infection in the uk that the mortality rate was at least 3%

me, a dumbass: well, let’s say half of the uk population of 67 million is infected and 3% of them die, that’s... oh fuck, a million people dead
the uk government, very smart: i love the stereophonics and horse racing, get out there and have fun folks

think you're being quite unfair there

it was known that mortality rate was at least 3% for craven southern european types

it could never have been guessed what effect the virus was to have on strong anglo saxon stock, the data just wasnt there

EUgenics

all the hyperbolic blather that Boris used for the Brexit election/campaign: the best scientists, best engineers, GB ingenuity blah blah... what Edgerton termed "demented revivalism". That kind of mindless bullshit is the most dangerous thing during a pandemic it seems, because Boris was still in bullshit mode during the most critical period and now we'll pay the price while that cunt hides under a ventilator.

It's because the government thought they could deal with the virus while simultaneously protecting the economy and that turned to be impossible for obvious reasons.

I'd presume Diagnostics is a high investment low profit industry, hence this neolib hellhole not having much of one.

not much of a Diagnostics Industry in comparison to Germany I mean.

Apparently it's not really got as much to do with UK vs German industrial capacity as Hancock would like to pretend, it's the publically funded side that they've allowed to go to shit.

(xp) So they keep telling us - as if it's something to be proud of.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/apr/06/matt-hancock-biotech-germany-coronavirus-health-system

all the hyperbolic blather that Boris used for the Brexit election/campaign: the best scientists, best engineers, GB ingenuity blah blah... what Edgerton termed "demented revivalism". That kind of mindless bullshit is the most dangerous thing during a pandemic it seems, because Boris was still in bullshit mode during the most critical period and now we'll pay the price while that cunt hides under a ventilator.

I think this is probably right and is also reflected in how the government approached dealing with the public - the idea that British people are so committed to liberty and the Keep Calm and Carry On mentality, they wouldn't tolerate a lockdown. Johnson was engaging with a national myth he has been boosting throughout his career, not reality.

It's such a weird line to take: "The Germans are good at producing that stuff whereas we're good at, er...." But I suppose they don't have a leg to stand on.

Toryism is a virus with many receptors, distrust of clever work being one of them.

It's such a weird line to take: "The Germans are good at producing that stuff whereas we're good at, er...." But I suppose they don't have a leg to stand on.

The UK has maybe the seventh or eighth largest biotech industry in the world so while Germany's is bigger it's not as if we're slouches in that capacity. The US has the largest and they are fucking the pandemic response even worse than we are. It's a transparent tactic to disguise their own complacency and lack of preparation.

having the tools at hand is meaningless if you don't bother using them

other countries like Taiwan for example took command of their industries quite fast to get what they needed in time, without worrying about the disruption to the economy.

Edward Argar - junior health minister - tells Today programme there are 8,000 ventilators on order. Yet the Guardian suggested 61,000. When is an order not an order? Why is there such lack of clarity? Why is noone got a straight story?

— David Edgerton (@DEHEdgerton) April 8, 2020

they've been pulling figures out of their arseholes for weeks now, how is the public supposed to trust these slippery pieces of shit on anything?

But Boris is willing to die for us, DO YOU SEE?

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-britain-path-speci-idUSKBN21P1VF

Dunno if this has been shared, Reuters journalists doing the good work that serious political commentators like John Rentoul think is unnecessary.

speaking of which, hatt mancock is set to issue an emotional appeal for help, definitely not weeks after he should have gotten his fucking arse in gear

The health secretary, Matt Hancock, will ask industry leaders to help the UK find an antibody test that works.

Hancock will issue the plea on a conference call on Wednesday, echoing his call for help on ventilators, after the government conceded that none of the antibody tests it has are good enough for mass usage.

Biotech companies will be asked to help identify and mass-produce a fingerprick test that is accurate enough to offer to the general population to see if they have had coronavirus.

At the moment the UK is relying on laboratory tests to show whether a patient currently has coronavirus, and there is capacity to test 14,000 people a day – typically those in hospital, care homes or prisons, or NHS workers.

The government is targeting 100,000 tests a day by the end of the month, with both types – lab tests and fingerprick tests – making up the total. But it looks increasingly unlikely that an antibody test will be ready in time.

But Boris is willing to die for us, DO YOU SEE?

yes reuters piece is good. Tbf on Rentoul in his formative years you got impaled on a spike for the merest criticism of Vlad.

Yes, that's good reporting. Damning, too.

xp to Matt

Diagnostics is a major private medicine cash cow down here you can’t leave the doctors without having blood drawn or an x-ray done. Most doctors seem to have private pathology collection centres embedded in them. There is nothing medical that can’t be turned into a profit centre.

It does seem to help when there is a crisis, but it’s only this week that private labs have come online for corona testing because none of them had invested in the bio security to do testing this dangerous, until the government gave them a bung to do it.

As ever private medicine creams off the cheap profitable stuff.

yes reuters piece is good. Tbf on Rentoul in his formative years you got impaled on a spike for the merest criticism of Vlad.

LOL

Friends in Cornwall reporting the arrival of second home owners for the Easter break. Like angels of death riding Chelsea tractors.

— Linda Grant (@lindasgrant) April 8, 2020

Researchers believe the coronavirus lockdown is working as data from a tracker app suggests that the number of people aged 20-69 who are reporting Covid-19 symptoms has fallen from 1.9 million to 1.4 million across the UK.

The drop, by around 500,000 people since 1 April, is indicated in analysis of data from the Covid Symptom Tracker app, which is used by more than two million people.

nobody's shared this one yet? uplifting stuff

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/07/uk-will-be-europes-worst-hit-by-coronavirus-study-predicts

football's coming home!

hey look now, most of those people would've died of austerity anyway

good job everyone the tories definitely won’t dismantle the bbc now

The World at One have just played @BorisJohnson’s favourite song, Here Comes The Sun by The Beatles, “in the hope that it might reach him”. A simple yet very moving moment of radio. #wato

— Stop socialising = save lives (@janemerrick23) April 7, 2020

So how'd that clap for boris thing go? Obviously zero interest in Stoke Newington, but I'd be delighted to hear it failed in less politically obvious places, too.

this is a sick country pic.twitter.com/jX8YbP5obC

— boomsday prepper (@AliceAvizandum) April 8, 2020

Jane Merrick:

This line that’s being peddled here - and by Richard Burgon yesterday - that media portrayals of Corbyn lost Labour support is incredibly patronising to voters - particularly when you think about who switched from Labour to Tory in the north https://t.co/bTuUKa26bj

— Stop socialising = save lives (@janemerrick23) December 14, 2019

she should stop socialising her tweets

Can we not link to fringe channels

Yes!!!

A great Prime Minister died seven years ago today.

A handful sang.

Decent people didn't.

Today a handful wish death upon a very sick Boris Johnson, somebody with the potential to become another great Prime Minister.

But once again, decent people don't. #GetWellBoris

— Rob Roberts MP (@RobDelyn) April 8, 2020

What's his position in the Shadow Cabinet?

Keir's best friend without portfolio!

936 people who are not Boris Johnson dead in the last 24hrs.

and if one green bottle should accidentally fall...

Bastards.

If you visit our Parks, you'll notice we've taped off benches 🚧 to protect people & make sure they keep safe & know how to prevent catching & spreading #coronavirus (Covid-19).

Parks should only be used for daily exercise. #StayAtHomeSaveLives#LondonTogether #BrockwellPark pic.twitter.com/CajowdMMHN

— Lambeth Council (@lambeth_council) April 8, 2020

They taped up the benches in Lisbon last week

lol there was some hazard tape "blocking" the exit of a ginnel leading out on to the tops the other day. I just tore it down presuming it was probably just kids pissing about!

As I said no-one was sitting on the untaped benches when I saw there on Saturday. But it seems like they never explicitly say 'do not sit down' in their guidelines (the bastardish part is this abdication of responsibility in its persistent vagueness).

I think they are hedging on situations where somebody is in the park but might need to sit for health reasons as being edge cases for some sort of crowdsourced adjudication. Or just hoping that anyone who feels like they might need to sit between walking will just have to avoid the park.

hey guess what going outside for a sit down in the sun is also good for people's health

yeah i saw the taped up benches on brockwell park at lunch (not all of them, mind). i just think there is no reason why “your daily exercise” doesn’t need to be “going out for some fresh air”. i mean i’ll use the “weak argument” that older people may want to rest, but i really mean anyone.

speaking of which an older lady went past a yong man reading on one of the untaped benches and i thought she was going to finger wag but she just said she was pleased to see him taking it easy on one of the free benches <3

congrats to lambeth council on finding shelter for local homeless people before taping off their benches, they deserve full credit for their humanity

unless...

it's almost as if as a society we have a stupidly normative and ablist idea of what constitutes fitness, health and exercise.