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

I can’t see how replacing him would make things any better, tbh.

Probably wouldn't make anything better now, no. More about paying for mistakes, of which this is clearly one.

I see what plax is saying but at what point do we get some accountability back. Sunak is playing with fire, as is the call to end the lockdown which could result in a 2nd spike.

its not about single instances of 'people going,' but it does seem that the complacency about hiring a cabinet full of dimwit loons is only possible when you know there are repercussions for loose cannon fire. The situation we are in is the result of a political culture that does not fear repercussions.

Sunak is definitely going nowhere, he's the anointed one, that cunt will probably be around for the rest of our lives.

i honestly think its in part a constitutional question and there won't be any accountability as long as the ftpa is still in place or at least some other lever comes into being to counter-act it. Even then a lot of damage is already done.

Xpost Yeah, you don’t get a safe seat like Richmond in North Yorkshire if they don’t think you’re going places.

https://amp.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/17/nhs-staff-to-be-asked-to-treat-coronavirus-patients-without-gowns🕸?

Hancock needs to go.

Posted without really looking any further into it, I'm afraid:

Firstly, the OP repeatedly claims there are 128 accounts involved. However, not a single screenshot or handle from any account other than the original account is actually given in the thread. Why is there not a single other account public? https://t.co/i0E4JNqJ6M

— Luke Bailey (@imbadatlife) April 21, 2020

Well I did look into it and I agree with that take.

"Hootsuit, a mass-posting tool"

I'll tell my kids Hootsuit was Fred

Genuinely loled at that, necessary on a day when I’m enraged over that PPE story.

Regardless of how badly Hancock has been doing, parachuting a completely green minister into the Dept of Health in the middle of a pandemic will probably do more harm than good I'd imagine?

Coronavirus deaths 41% higher than official figures - ONS https://t.co/uPg0X2BwTP

— SkyNews (@SkyNews) April 21, 2020

thought the numbers were a bit low compared to France.

I presume when the ONS catches up with this week it will be roughly the same.

The same is happening in other countries too though, isn't it? In terms of misreporting or miscounting of deaths?

I know they are probably doing the same in other countries to different degrees but I feel like this lot might just have a bit more enthusiasm to flatten that curve by any means nec seeing as they've fucked this up worse than the rest of Europe.

They'd have to bring back Jeremy Hunt what a prospect xp

Do we actually have any idea where we are in the curve? You'd think the daily death rate would be an essential statistic but apparently not.

449 deaths announced yesterday and even with a bump for care home deaths that still seems to be going down? But it's meaningless if no one believes it and a steady drip-drip of these stories is just obliterating trust.

My garbage homespun theory is they are still in mitigating their own fuck-ups with spin mode, they've fucked up so big they've gone into a state of denial because copping for this is too big and they know all the polling is very fragile and could quickly turn into murderous anger against them. It will make a hell of a good read one day, but it sure sucks shit to be living (and dying) through it.

Spinning it now is digging further into the hole but you might be right.

The office of national statistics are lying. Those people would have died anyway. It is good that thousands of people have died, we all have herd immunity now

Think the numbers probably are going down
because of the lag between cases due to distancing.

Discrepancy between ONS figures (available 11 days after the fact) and daily in-hospital count are inevitable. It's actually not quite as bad as I feared for w/e Apr 10, given the huge discrepancy in the figure for w/e Apr 3. Total number of deaths for w/e Apr 10 in Eng+Wal now around 8k above seasonal mean (18.5k vs 10.5k), and "only" 6.2k mention Covid-19 on cert. (And that 6.2k is higher than the cumulative count that would have been available *at the time*).

So, yeah, it's worse than the daily headline figures, and that's likely the same everywhere.

FT graphs are still the best indication I've seen of where nations are on the curve.

https://www.ft.com/coronavirus-latest

UK is *just* over the top (London is coming down the other side), US has yet to plateau (NY state is over the hill too). Daily figures (in rolling 7-day aggregates) and not ONS-style after-the-fact "true" totals, but still a decent indicator of trends, I guess.

We need a few days' worth of data...does anyone know whether other countries have gone from 700+ to 400+ in two days like we have? xp

France had days where 1400+ died, is it worse there are they just counting differently?

France has been including non-hospital deaths throughout but their outbreak occurred earlier than ours and they appear to been caught unawares. We had more time to prepare and learn from other European countries so the death rate should be lower than France. Really it should be way way lower than it is but we all know what happened there.

One of the advantages of being behind the curve is that you can take note of what happens when other countries relax restrictions and the UK shouldn't even think of doing that until we have a few weeks' worth of proper data from France, Spain and Italy.

From the ft graph page: April 9: All maps and charts now exclude nursing home deaths from France’s totals to maintain cross-national comparability

It shows us worse than them, which is probably accurate

The UK government only made a formal request to Turkey over a consignment of PPE on Sunday - the day after a cabinet minister announced the "very significant additional shipment" was already heading to the UK.https://t.co/PXCf9YtbTm

— James Melville (@JamesMelville) April 21, 2020

doesn't matter for the reasons outlined above about the lack of accountability in our political system. having four years of our esteemed press and sensible centrist commentariat training their ire on the opposition didn't help with that

Over the past week or two Trump and Boris (in absentia) have had half of the world's CV deaths between them.

This brings tears to my eyes, King. Finally we have a leader of the opposition that has a forensic love of Her Majesty.

— Simon Hedges (@Orwell_Fan) April 21, 2020

as a point of comparison, more than 50% of total deaths in Ireland have been in nursing or care homes

I notice in Scotland there's been a lot of deaths in care homes - but, you know, at least they're reporting them.

Lots of people sharing this article by Philip Pullman today

https://www.penguin.co.uk/articles/2020/april/philip-pullman-coronavirus-essay-change.html

he's certainly not afraid to show his anger, however there is a lot about Brexit and nothing really about austerity, which surely is worth a mention?

not if you’re deranged by #fbpe brainworms

There's no accountability because they have an 80-seat majority with five years to run. It's right there in that Dominic Cummings job at, the government has no reason to worry about short-term unpopularity. This is different world now, and this shit could easily turn into long-term unpopularity of the kind you can't row back from, the press could decide to Major them, but the worse that gets for them the more incentive there is to prolong that parliamentary term to the bitter end.

There's very little scrutiny from an opposition that appears to be terrified of putting a foot wrong, but even then Parliament has been closed for most of Johnson's tenure as PM.

The only thing that might provide some genuine accountability is a proper independent inquiry with teeth, and presumably that can't happen unless the government orders one?

ah, big Phil Pullman, the Dick Dawkins of entitled FBPEeeps

lol wus gonna sayisn't he a bit of an FBPE type? some of them lot have a muted kind of indifference to austerity, where they'll do the odd bit of performative lip service, but be damned if they'll ever support an anti-austerity party.

Pullman has criticised austerity before but has also trotted out weird combinations of post-war austerity nostalgia and eco-accelerationism. From what I can see he just likes sounding off, Dawkins comparison OTM.

If the government was worried about emboldening FBPErs it would probably have thought twice about excluding itself from EU ventilator and PPE procurement schemes, not to mention the wisdom of threatening a No Deal exit at the end of the year.

Of course the reason why the ONS w/e Apr 10 figures are bad, but not as bad as you might think re: "excess deaths vs those explained by Covid-19" or excess deaths generally, is cos 10/4 was Good Friday. Only a third of registration offices were open. So this time next week you're gonna get a lot of "we're past the peak" vs "OMG, look at how many you didn't count". Both of which may be true.

turkish PPE thing is ironic. the last time the government mentioned Turkey it was as a threat that they'd join the eu and we'd be overrun with turkish, was very much part of the leave campaign's talking points (along with eu subscription money for hospitals).

Misread that as Turkish Follow Back Pro Erdoğan on my phone!

Osborne demanding cuts:

https://www.bloomberg.com/amp/news/articles/2020-04-20/architect-of-u-k-austerity-says-retrenchment-needed-post-crisis?

ok, which bit of him should we cut off first?

BREAKING: UK decision not to participate in EU procurement of medical kit & ventilators was a "political decision", @SMcDonaldFCO says. "It was a political decision. The mission... in Brussels briefed ministers about what was available, what was on offer & the decision is known"

— Deborah Haynes (@haynesdeborah) April 21, 2020

just confirming what we already knew.

can’t believe the government’s original excuse of ‘oh we lost the eu’s email down the back of the filing cabinet’ is failing to stand up to scrutiny

Back to 800+ deaths.