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

my best tweet got me blocked by a Pulitzer Prize winning writer and it got one like from a scouser friend of mine called Dave!

This is genuinely winning at Twitter!

xyzzz__ - I'm being snarky, the comment you quoted was replying to the comment above yours, feel free to deruffle yr feathers.

Ah ok. Multiple conversations and threads, it happens

Lol the state of this fucking scab union

NEW: GMB Labour staff branch will debate a motion today demanding that Jennie Formby "apologise personally' to staff named in the leaked report pic.twitter.com/sDZETio7Oj

— Gabriel Pogrund (@Gabriel_Pogrund) April 16, 2020

This sounds horrific.

"don't call them heroes if they don't have a choice". today's @vittleslondon an account of what it's like to work on a production line producing ready meals for our supermarkets and the disempowerment of those who work at bakkavor, by @WorkersAngry https://t.co/BQy2p6hqAb

— jonathan nunn (@demarionunn) April 16, 2020

Keir's got their backs, he is just waiting until they are dead to award them posthumous medals.

Willie Thornberry pic.twitter.com/pwD8TU9H9Z

— Football Manager Hair on Politicians (@visualsatire) April 16, 2020

lool nearly choked on my beer at this one

Children of Men vibes increasing in intensity

Christopher Nolan would charge £20m for this pic.twitter.com/9mn0AbMbrk

— Will Davies (@davies_will) April 16, 2020

pure city 17

shot

It’s the Queens birthday next Tuesday. Let’s throw her a surprise. At 9am 21st April, we are calling on the whole country to sing Happy Birthday from our windows and doorsteps. Let our song bring good cheer not just to Her Majesty but to the whole nation #singforthequeen pic.twitter.com/867EbD9PVg

— Ben Fogle (@Benfogle) April 16, 2020

Hi Ben, I’m a student at Norwich University, and I’d love to reference your tweet in my dissertation about guys who were breast fed into their mid 20s. Do I have your permission to reference the tweet?

— Herdam Unity (@DuncanBadhew) April 16, 2020

special bonus ‘using a child as a human shield’ content

Some of the responses seem pretty mean spirited to a well intentioned idea from a 9 year old. I have always taught my children to be kind and thoughtful. We watched the speech with 24 million other people and Iona thought it would be a nice way to say thank you. Kindness matters pic.twitter.com/1WCmjo3iAC

— Ben Fogle (@Benfogle) April 16, 2020

fuck off iona

"little pigs should be seen and not heard" is a harsh old proverb and it is with a heavy heart I invoke it here!

oh no i'm getting that condition when I keep repeating myself when I'm lying

oh no i'm getting that condition when I keep repeating myself when I'm lying

it's Karl Marx's birthday on the 5th May. just sayin'

A very nice guy I used to know insisted Ben Fogle was the most horrible person he had ever had to work with

His mum's been on the telly a lot recently.

is he related to jared

let's collectively try and will the Rona to enter the palace and infect the queen by all shouting Die Parasite!

Q: Sky analysis shows 70% of health and care staff who have died from coronavirus were from a BAME background. What can you do about that?

Raab says the government wants to investigate this.

Whitty says it is critical to find out who is most at risk.

Three risk factors are very clear: age, having a disease such as cardiovascular disease, and being male.

He says being a member of an ethnic minority group is less clear as a risk factor.

He says he has been looking at this carefully. Public Health England is looking at it too.

But at this point in time, “this is not yet clear, in terms of ethnic minorities”.

there’s a name for people who see inequality of outcomes as a genetic question, can’t remember what it is. hmm it’ll come to me

Toby Youngs?

Some diseases disproportionately affect minorities, aside from environmental/ behavioural factors. It seems unlikely that COVID is one of them. Whether one could intersect with COVID risk factors (Type 2 diabetes in South Asians being 2x national norm, etc) might be more important.

wrt the NHS, two factors are potentially the crisis predominantly hitting metropolitan areas (not much point in looking at % of BAME staff across the whole NHS if people are most at risk in London, Birmingham, Manchester, etc and whether white doctors / nurses tend to retire earlier or move into the low-risk private sector in larger numbers after a certain age.

However, it’s difficult to look at cases like the pregnant nurse who was kept on high-risk duty after the cut-off point where she should have been deployed elsewhere, or where more than one NHS worker complained about being ill and was ignored to die at home, and not wonder whether there is a racialised component to how people are being treated.

Probably the only genetic component to this is how hard men are being hit by it.

even that more likely to be hormonal i think

I saw some speculation that vitamin D levels might be significant and that is affected by skin colour and climate, but idk

I’m hoovering up vitamin C and D supplements, magnesium and zinc. I was warned to get my vitamin D up a few years ago so I already was, but the others are extra.

i was trying to find vit c last week but no one had it

i have a huge jar of a+d

yes I can't find vitamins or dried pasta so I am having to make do with fruit and fresh pasta

Oranges!

Those of you looking for Vitamin C - you will find soluble C tablets in Sainsbury’s (even the ‘local’ branches) for £1.35 per tube of 20. It’s £1.75 in Tesco and even more in Superdrug for an almost identical product (£2.75 for C and zinc IF you find it). Superdrug also doing 3 for 2 on vitamins which mitigates some of the high prices.

There's some debate over whether vitamin supplements work and I'm certainly not sure that vitamin C will do much more than eating oranges or drinking juice - even though I've been taking them as well. Don't worry about going without them basically.

Vitamin D supplements and zinc will probably make more of a difference.

There's some debate over whether vitamin supplements work and I'm certainly not sure that vitamin C will do much more than eating oranges or drinking juice - even though I've been taking them as well. Don't worry about going without them basically.

Vitamin D supplements and zinc will probably make more of a difference.

And magnesium will help with regulating sleep.

If only the rozzers would allow you to sit in the sun in the park for a few minutes you could make your own

Vit D, not magnesium, I do not recommend making magnesium in the park

I always heeded the Damo Suzuki advice by not losing it.

Am I the only person who thinks that the young @lukeakehurst bears a resemblance to Leon Trotsky? pic.twitter.com/MP0vmuzuAl

— Diane Abbott MP (@HackneyAbbott) April 16, 2020

She haaaaaaates him, LOL.

The scene from Westminster bridge #ClapForCarers pic.twitter.com/JpzM0YBjgH

— Damir Rafi (@d_rafi1) April 16, 2020

get social distancing ya xunts

Wot no spikes?(heads on)
Yet?

let's help the NHS Rona by crowding together on a bridge *slow claps*

Large groups of police / ambulance / fire brigade ppl gathering at landmarks to listen to the clapping definitely seems to be a thing across the country, which doesn't appear enormously sensible.

how long until clapping for carers is infected by the same sort of bullshit that surrounds poppy nazism.

"why were you not clapping citizen?!"

Shocked and slightly terrified that Bobby Pesto seems to be doing some actual journalism.

I’ve been sent the criteria issued to doctors for those #covid19 patients who are allowed to be transferred from hospitals to the emergency Nightingale ones that have been set up all over the UK to increase intensive care capacity. And what they show is that...

— Robert Peston (@Peston) April 16, 2020

Short version - the makeshift mega-hospitals, like the one at the Excel centre, aren't taking patients most seriously at risk and the NHS trusts thinking about sending COVID patients there also have to provide equipment and medical staff to look after them. The Excel centre apparently has 19 patients.

the complaint from doctors right from the start is that the nightingales weren’t going to have adequate staffing because, well, the nhs isn’t adequately staffed but nice to see pesto pretending to do some journalism because A Secret Source sent him a memo and he gets to feel all woodward and bernstein

Piers and now Pesto - this government must be in real trouble..

I’m not sure the Nightingale story is what is being suggested - they don’t have the equipment for people likely to have serious complications/be most at risk, so those people should be prioritised in real hospitals?

👏👏👏

Ten nurses suspended for refusing to work without N95 masks https://t.co/WfOZevqldu

— The Guardian (@guardian) April 17, 2020