bojo is king, brexit is on, stuff is fvcked, tomorrow starts here -- new govt new thread new battle

Government update re pre-exsiting medical conditions and social distancing

We are advising those who are at increased risk of severe illness from coronavirus (COVID-19) to be particularly stringent in following social distancing measures.

This group includes those who are:

aged 70 or older (regardless of medical conditions)
under 70 with an underlying health condition listed below (ie anyone instructed to get a flu jab as an adult each year on medical grounds):
chronic (long-term) respiratory diseases, such as asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), emphysema or bronchitis
chronic heart disease, such as heart failure
chronic kidney disease
chronic liver disease, such as hepatitis
chronic neurological conditions, such as Parkinson’s disease, motor neurone disease, multiple sclerosis (MS), a learning disability or cerebral palsy
diabetes
problems with your spleen – for example, sickle cell disease or if you have had your spleen removed
a weakened immune system as the result of conditions such as HIV and AIDS, or medicines such as steroid tablets or chemotherapy
being seriously overweight (a BMI of 40 or above)
those who are pregnant

Note: there are some clinical conditions which put people at even higher risk of severe illness from COVID-19. If you are in this category, next week the NHS in England will directly contact you with advice the more stringent measures you should take in order to keep yourself and others safe. For now, you should rigorously follow the social distancing advice in full, outlined below.

People falling into this group are those who may be at particular risk due to complex health problems such as:

People who have received an organ transplant and remain on ongoing immunosuppression medication
People with cancer who are undergoing active chemotherapy or radiotherapy
People with cancers of the blood or bone marrow such as leukaemia who are at any stage of treatment
People with severe chest conditions such as cystic fibrosis or severe asthma (requiring hospital admissions or courses of steroid tablets)
People with severe diseases of body systems, such as severe kidney disease (dialysis)

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/covid-19-guidance-on-social-distancing-and-for-vulnerable-people/guidance-on-social-distancing-for-everyone-in-the-uk-and-protecting-older-people-and-vulnerable-adults

The student case in St. Andrews brought it back from skiing in Switzerland.

You had a budget last week.

From @bbclaurak: It’s expected that the government will announce significant additional financial measures tomorrow to help support the economy during the corona virus crisis.

The Chancellor, Rishi Sunak, is likely to appear at the daily Downing Street press briefing.

— Chris Mason (@ChrisMasonBBC) March 16, 2020

to help support the economy, which is different to supporting people

Thanks for that cafe Oto thing it just sparked an thought. I’m sitting in my local cafe chatting to Tina who makes the weekday coffees. She’s a drummer wondering how she’s going to make rent now all her gigs have dried up. We now cooking up an idea about how we can use the cafe space to livestream gigs and pass the (virtual) hat around.

NV - yup. Putting it down as the kind of thing Tories can't communicate, but given what I am seeing elsewhere they better do a substantial amount for actual ppl.

https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/cbe10532a983c95c91672190e573076292b7a3bc/0_0_1170_780/master/1170.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/Th6Efvx.jpg

they seem to have missed off the 'send your kids to school column'?

'advised'... is not that strong. even 'strongly advised' is going to have people still travelling into work and not wfh. also what does 'vary commute' mean

Ed - good luck with your plans, hope you pull it off!

Yup. Seen a couple of livestreaming ideas around

'vary commute' just sounds like advice for bank managers who don't want to be taken hostage

source is stan collymore but

Confirmed French Republic policy.

☑️Total #lockdown/ #SocialDistancing
☑️Rents/Utility bills suspended
☑️No business at risk of bankruptcy
☑️No French Citizen will be without resources
☑️Tax/Social contribution postponed
☑️Solidarity fund by State for Unemployed

— Stan Collymore (@StanCollymore) March 16, 2020

Those are all things Macron said in his speech tonight.

that's great news then, hope that package is as good as it sounds

Stan Collymore tweets and Macron is good, might as well go out on a fucking suicidal banister licking run Nick ffs!

yes, thanks for the Cafe Oto link. hope they're doing this for future gigs too, there was something I was interested in and lamented my inability to get to even before all this plague business...

that's a pretty sweet list from Macron there if any of it actually comes to pass, in contrast to Johnson's "everyone should stop going to pubs, but we're not going to tell pubs to close, because then they could claim on their insurance, and my donors wouldn't like that"

they're going to need to do the same in the UK soon. some seriously choppy economic weather and immiseration coming if not

let's remember to heartily fucking congratulate Johnson when he does compromise as well, and forget everything else he represents.

so against every single impulse in johnson's body, it would be fucking hilarious if he was forced to approve that (if we weren't currently powerboating up shit creek)

God I wish we were in the world where labour got in and had by now instituted emergency measures to house the homeless and stop evictions, freeze mortgages &c and the emma kennedy piss diamonds were screaming at them about it

https://www.imperial.ac.uk/media/imperial-college/medicine/sph/ide/gida-fellowships/Imperial-College-COVID19-NPI-modelling-16-03-2020.pdf

This is the modelling paper. It's a good and pretty clear read, but it's bloody sobering. You can absolutely see why they started with trying to mitigate the epidemic (have a small manageable spike) because the alternative we're looking at is, at best, up to 2 years of this sort of suppression. But, the paper says, with the latest data the death count is just too high under the mitigation strategy (250k+)

I'm not sure I can imagine what the next year or two look like with this level of suppression, though. And if it doesn't hold, the paper suggests we risk a larger epidemic than we would have had in the first place.

We really need either to actually build those 40 hospitals we were promised and/or a good treatment to be found.

Macron is simultaneously better and worse than he seems. Keep in mind that the French centre-right would scan as socialist to most ‘Muricans (and many Britons).

when you start playing that silly bugger relativism game Theresa May is more of a socialist than Trump etc..

just because we are going through a global crisis right now I'm not going to start forgetting who the fucking scum of the earth are.

https://t.co/iCqOK1NgA9 pic.twitter.com/eTXUi0ghQg

— ryan 🚩 (@ryxnf) March 16, 2020

Now *that* is some mighty big spin. https://t.co/vm7GTxfnMG

— James Meadway (@meadwaj) March 17, 2020

When this is all over, remember how landlords behaved - and let's build a society without them. pic.twitter.com/SOhb2RSfy0

— Gordon Maloney (@gordonmaloney) March 17, 2020

If we are doing tweets have we done this?

Tweeted my MP @Pauline_Latham about abysmal level of the statutory sick pay that families are going to be forced to live on if they get ill (if they’re lucky). Her reply?

“Get a life.”

This is my MP who will NOT have to live on £94 a week if she gets ill. pic.twitter.com/RpdVBdfLu5

— MHughes #Environment #Wildlife #RSPB (@ML1Hughes) March 15, 2020

Calmly doing tweets.

It would be remiss of me to imply, however, that Labour MPs were conducting themselves with grace, humanity & dignity. https://t.co/7eOe13pUMf pic.twitter.com/S2f6Tn0dag

— Tom Gann (@Tom_Gann) March 17, 2020

buried in that thread somewhere:

the people who keep trying to invoke blitz spirit seem to think the lesson of the blitz was to “carry on as normal” and not “coordinate a rapid and serious response on every level to prevent unnecessary deaths”

— jonathan nunn (@demarionunn) March 16, 2020

Credit where credit's due, those Macron measures are excellent - one of the things about making no ideology your defining personal brand is that enables you to get away with things like this. Johnson may have to do them in time as well because he has few firmly held convictions in any case. The fed cutting interest rates to zero is basically asking for intervention like this. If there's a big rally on the French stock market then the right will be on board anyway - it's better to help businesses and individuals now then let everyone fail and have to spend big to deal with the fallout later.

Everyone concerned - governments, economists, creditors - will have to change their attitude to money over the next few months.

More to the point if he didn't then there would almost certainly be widespread rioting across French cities.

how much credit do we give the rioters

Can’t wait for a grudging Johnson to nationalise everything and get tonguebathed by the same bootlickers screaming about communism and sneering “are you going to nationalise sausages” at Labour.

I know we're very day-to-day right now, but I'm wondering what/when restrictions easing will look like. This is going to turn into the Boxing Day that never ended soon.

not to be that guy, but maybe a new thread makes sense? bojo is still king sorta kinda but is brexit still on? and obviously stuff is fucked except we found new levels

new level new thread :|

The Politics of D(ist)ancing

altho tbf the world is on hold so it's not like there's gonna be much in the way of non-Covid politics or apparently non-Covid discussion of anything else for a while

Reminds me of a thread I need to make though, the important thing wrt this thread is that we’re still all gonna die

Macron measures are good yes but also just common sense in avoiding total societal collapse. The idea of somehow keeping the economy going via keeping pubs, shops, etc. open will seem like a sick joke pretty quickly as the deaths start piling up.

I mean I know right-wing ideologues have been getting away with encouraging total societal collapse for ages, but not at this speed.

Just common sense yes but it's not as if other leaders have done it.

how much credit do we give the rioters

100% but crowds on that scale probably not the best idea right now.

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