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

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)