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

good luck UK

Yeah “city” was the wrong word: no one wearing one is a uniquely UK thing

Like I call home to talk to my hypereducated parents and mask wearing comes up and they act like I’m insane.

I don't know who had 'symbolic Babybel' on their 2020 Corona Bingo Card, but it's time to get your marker. pic.twitter.com/6N89KKGmWg

— Law Turley (TreacleA) (@LawTurley) May 31, 2020

Westminster voting intention:

CON: 45% (+1)
LAB: 35% (-3)

via @YouGov, 29 - 30 May
Chgs w/ 26 May

— Britain Elects (@britainelects) May 31, 2020

"I heard this one guy lied to attack Dominic Cummings so now I think everything's great"

Guys this happened despite the government rather than because of it and I don't want to jinx anything but for the moment at least it really seems like we dodged a bullet.

Remember when pretty much every graph showed there was no way we would avoid overwhelming hospital capacity? When we were looking at video of hospital corridors in Italy with hundreds of seniors wheezing and dying and doctors making decisions about who lived and who died? When pretty much every estimate of the number of ventilators necessary seemed to dwarf what we had on hand?

This isn't to minimise the suffering and deaths so far - I'm talking specifically about the ability of the health service as a whole to deal with the numbers. Like... what the fuck happened? How did we get away with it? Is there a long read??

Has a bullet really been dodged? For care homes this has been a disaster and I saw reports of people avoiding A & E and maybe dying at home?

In terms of hospital capacity yes, the predictions did not come true.

Letting people die at home and in care homes saved hospital capacity that could have kept them alive.
It's just a shame the bullet we dodged killed tens of thousands of people and counting.

Is that really what happened though? I would believe it; is there an analysis somewhere?

I mean - if the story is as simple as: hospital capacity was not overwhelmed because people were left to die at home.. it's too horrendous to contemplate either as deliberate policy or accidental byproduct of the strategy. Maybe I've just been blocking it out.

Lots of cancer treatment and surgical work was placed on hold so the NHS could pivot to dealing with COVID.

xxp Tracer, what in god's name are you talking about? The UK has the fifth highest deaths per capita IN THE WORLD - worse than Italy's. And it avoided filling hospital capacity by offloading cases with the virus to care homes, where it tore through the very population that all of this was supposed to for the protection of. It's been, you know, kind of a big story recently?

"Rees-Mogg’s draft plan — due to be finalized this morning — is apparently for MPs to form a kilometer-long socially distanced queue snaking out through Central Lobby and down through Westminster Hall."

What are the age profiles for the parties? I'd have thought the Tories have more to lose than gain from 'rona roulette.

The work that needs to be carried out to determine the extent and cause of excess deaths is more academic than journalistic, I think. It will take time and when it does come out it will be shut away by much of the press, too. And also it's my assumption that it will be a lot for people to take so they'd rather not see it. In the end, the press will be actually giving the public and its owners what they want, for a change.

XP - the full extent of it hasn't really been fully covered. Partly because services were overwhelmed.

What we've seen so far is a mix of reporting and work by statisticians and 'sexy' data churning from the likes of John Burn-Murdoch at the FT but clicks and needs for headlines in the news cycle drive a lot of it...to gather the data, look at the gaps and to clean up what is obscure will take time and work.

Ah, JBM, do love how he posts his dinner in the same thread as a big pile of death statistics.

The data doesn't really support "people were left to die at home" unless you're counting care homes - the home death numbers have been pretty small throughout and not enough to overwhelm hospital capacity in and of itself. We've avoided having people die in hospital corridors as in Italy, but remember that "prevent the NHS from being overwhelmed" was THE UK govt success metric at the start and probably the main reason why it disgorged patients back into care homes where it thought fewer people would notice.

We haven't dodged a bullet, it's been a disaster but there is still the sense that it could have been a lot worse. That's in large part down to lockdown measures and it could still be a lot worse - ie if this thing comes back with a vengeance in the winter.

Almost a month old but in terms of excess "at home" deaths it's a fair chunk of the total

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/may/08/more-people-dying-at-home-during-covid-19-pandemic-uk-analysis

Ah right I was only talking about Covid deaths specifically, the number of people who died at home for other reasons, out of fear of going to hospital, was much higher than usual.

Yeah. Here's the long-ish read I was looking for:

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/may/28/why-did-so-many-people-die-of-covid-19-in-the-uks-care-homes

Read in a certain way, it is a simple story and AF and julio are right:

- Central government mandated 15,000 beds to be cleared from hospitals by 27 March

- The number who have died in care homes of COVID-19? 16,000

- The number who have died of it in Honk Kong? 0

brb, changing username to 'Honk Kong'

Honk if you love Kong

zero C-19 deaths in Vietnam as well.

bad news and good news

As I read this, unless you live together, it’s now unlawful to have sex with your lover indoors, but fine outdoors (subject to public decency offences); but you can have sex with an escort indoors, as that is reasonably necessary for their work purposes (see 7(d)(i)). https://t.co/QXbT1EYikt

— George Peretz QC (@GeorgePeretzQC) May 31, 2020

Don't social distancing rules still have to be followed both outdoors and in the workplace? The 2m rule would make that pretty difficult.

lawyers could have a field day with this, specifically no more than six lawyers from different practices

Wonder how long RLB will last.

1.Tonight parents of children expected to attend school tomorrow across will be agonising about the choice they are about to make. Will they be safe? Am I doing the right thing? Will their teaching staff be at risk? Will our family be at risk? Will there be a spike in the R rate? https://t.co/VChqEA2aAY

— Rebecca Long-Bailey (@RLong_Bailey) May 31, 2020

i wonder if she's deliberately pushing Starmzy on this to see how long the lol broad coalition will last

IDGI, in what way is that thread going off-message? The only thing I can see there that might give Team Starmer conniptions is the word 'abandonment'.

I think she'll last in the Shadow Cabinet unless she chooses to resign fwiw, above and beyond all else she's a team player and a pro.

Reopening schools is pretty unpopular within the country at large and will presumably become more so when parents have to negotiate the school gates and when kids start coming back with stories of what it's actually like.

I guess you need to be more forensic to see Starmer's support for teachers, my lad's teacher thinks he's weak as piss, and this is someone I always assumed was a quiet Tory or LibDem voter.

maybe the Leader of the Opposition could've said something about sending kids back to school for no reason being a bad thing, idk

he's lucky, he works at a well-funded private NAS school who won't endanger their staff and pupils at this moment and are restructuring their whole school before even thinking of fully opening it again.

"IDGI, in what way is that thread going off-message?"

No opposition from anybody else yesterday in Lab on schools (or general) re-opening/lack of cautious approach. RLB making that thread at 10.30pm last night (as noted on twitter) instead of going on the news.

I'm due back with Y10 on the 15th. I'm meeting my class on three successive Mondays, 10 kids in each session. I mostly get the impulse behind it (Y10 are probably the 'worst' affected right now, just in terms of what they've missed and a meeting with their teacher to discuss problems, misconceptions, strategies etc does have merit) but it does seem a little pointless - especially as I'm teaching all of my classes remotely anyway and they're arguably getting a better deal that way. There will be around 100 kids in school on each of those days. Even that is going to be a farce, I'm sure.

Anecdotally, I have a lot of friends for whom sending their KS2 kids back is a sanity saving measure right now. Personally, I don't think I'd be sending mine back (mine are Ys 7&9 so not even part of the equation).

I'm about to teach mine now, as it goes - one of the Language papers, with an extract from Brighton Rock. Busy beaches and gang murder you say?

Holy shit!!

https://amp.theguardian.com/books/2020/jun/01/no-pubs-no-kissing-no-flying-how-covid-19-is-forcing-authors-to-change-their-novels?

"Tom Watson, the former deputy leader of the Labour party, has been having a busy lockdown. Signed up to write a political thriller called The House, he and his co-author Imogen Robertson have been rapidly rejigging their novel to reflect a post-Covid world.

Their near-future setting now includes a national inquiry “about what’s going on in the background”, where characters – if they meet socially – “choose not to drink out of glasses and they wipe the bottle before they drink”, and undergo temperature checks when entering public buildings, “which everyone is used to by then”, says Watson, who is finding life away from politics as a newly minted thriller author “a relief”."

please god tell me there are no sex scenes

i bet the main character has an esoteric taste in music though

Ahhh can Lanchester review it for the LRB please please pleassseeeee

i know what my enemies are getting for Christmas now

wonder if watson is also finding being publicly denied a peerage because he's shit and a wanker 'a relief'

Reopening schools is pretty unpopular within the country at large and will presumably become more so when parents have to negotiate the school gates and when kids start coming back with stories of what it's actually like.

Dunt cry for me Argentina

Ian Dunt, eh? Dad's family is English, well, Irish, er British, no, Lebanese. His mum grew up in Chile, no I meant Guetalamala, no sorry, I was thinking of Belize. Dunt himself, grew up in Winchester, no sorry, Southampton, silly me, I meant Chile, Damnit, Hampshire @IanDunt pic.twitter.com/JU1Z2Otcnh

— Matthew Black (@NoirMJ) June 1, 2020

lol worra wanker!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ov4epAJRPMw

my son’s primary school isn’t reopening until the 16th. apparently a lot of parents showed today with their kids in uniform - d’oh!

Nothing to see here let's get those oldies out and about

The Government has included an additional 445 deaths which had previously not been included in the daily figures which means the total number of recorded deaths is 556 higher than as was reported yesterday

— Sky News Breaking (@SkyNewsBreak) June 1, 2020

I get breaking news alerts from Upday, an app which came pre-installed on my phone that I had never heard of before. Each day around tea-time I get the total figure in the format: "X people have died taking the total number of deaths to Y." Today for the first time since this began, they changed the format to "total number of cases of infection is now X." It's being masked and it's a fucking disgrace.