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

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.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/21/nurse-shortage-causes-nightingale-hospital-to-turn-away-patients

Manchester is getting absolutely battered by this. https://t.co/Du60YSok4W

— jamie k (@jkbloodtreasure) April 21, 2020

This is good and is somewhat akin to what Sanders was doing for a while.

let's not even go down the road of imagining this crisis under a left wing government. but let's, for a moment, imagine we have an active, fighting, competent left opposition. what would they be doing?

— Sita Balani (@sitainshort) April 21, 2020

https://www.ft.com/content/67e6a4ee-3d05-43bc-ba03-e239799fa6ab

FT estimating up to 41k Coronavirus deaths so far in the UK.

As 24 per cent of deaths normally occur in care homes in the UK, the analysis suggests that just under 11,000 more people than normal have died in residential care since the start of the outbreak.

I was just listening to Chris Hayes talking about people in the US coming in for other medical complaints and only then being diagnosed as having serious cases of Covid. Like somebody just having been stabbed , medical team going to treat him for collapsed lung and only then finding out that they had a raging bout of covid.
Asymptomatic seems to be pretty much an understatement.
Hayes also had somebody saying that the patient would seem to have the attributes of somebody on the top of Everst in term sof how much oxygen is getting to them. THey're not getting the carbon monoxide symptoms that normally go hand in hand with lack of oxygen or something to that effect. but once boduily functions are monitored tehre is a serious problem very visble.
This person was saying people with these kind of readings would normally be in a state of collapse but as far as they can see things they are perfectly healthy. So it spreads.

I saw some of the Minneapolis protest against having the state closed yesterday, not sure who the news channel was, Unicorn Riot., Sounds like a p-take and what they gained by being in the midst of a crowd at this time.
NOt sure if anybody in th eUK is actually wilfully doing something like that. THough would be far from surprised if it was being echoed.
& further spreading the problem that they're denying. I'm reminded of the small groups o fpeople who were prtesting pro Brexit last year.

& opening up the economy just means that people who now have the option of rstaying home where thy're not spreading disease are forced into returning to work.

I know both of those are US but would think the effect was universal.

No one is doing US-style protests over here, and if they are they're the fringest of fringe cranks and barely visible. These people are disproportionately represented in right wing media like The Spectator but appear to have very little popular support. Something like 90% of the UK population is in favour of the lockdown.

I think the same is true of most of the US, and that the protests are getting coverage isn't in line with the numbers, and exaggerates the support?

Twitter thread on the 41k figure.

NEW: The excess UK deaths linked to coronavirus are likely to be around

41,000

as of yesterday, not the 17,337 of the hospital deaths announcements

Here is the explanation for that estimate, which I will update daily

1/

— Chris Giles (@ChrisGiles_) April 22, 2020

In terms of ministers going or not it seems they are hanging out that care minister to dry.

This crisis has broken the political firewall. It’s not just left-wing pundits pointing out the failure. Minister after minister is now being exposed and cornered by formerly sympathetic pundits. pic.twitter.com/R2MPq7UgpY

— Jonathan Lis (@jonlis1) April 20, 2020

(you may have also seen Piers Morgan giving her hell a few days ago)

And this is a counter to the FT statistical exercise:

A thread on the measurement of excess mortality and uncounted COVID19 deaths. Key point: be careful inferring number of uncounted COVID19 deaths from a look at all-cause mortality data 1/n

— Stéphane Helleringer (@helleringer143) April 21, 2020

The NY Times has a stunning look at excess mortality from vital statistics in various countries and cities out today with quotes from outstanding demographers (I provided some tips) 6/n
https://t.co/xUFhC4EB44

— Stéphane Helleringer (@helleringer143) April 21, 2020

why the two triangular notches in the uk figures here? is it something as simple as bank-holidays?

Watching pmqs with Sir Forensic. Making some good points, but they were ones he shouldn’t have waited weeks to make. Plus his hair is too long.

Barry Gardiner zooming into pmqs from the bedroom, gwaaaaaaaan

nice "I don't need to be corrected, I was talking about the tests" bit

James Sunderland, a Conservative, asks Raab what are the ingredients that will take the country through this.

Raab says the critical ingredient is for the country to come together. He says people understand how important key workers are. We can and will rise to the challenge as one United Kingdom, he says.

inspiring stuff from the boy raab there

The response about the govt letting half the testing capacity go unused was good. Raab is so bad at this.

Can't really blame Starmer for the hair given the alternatives are a home buzz cut or a non socially distanced barber.

if starmer got a buzz cut his support among melts would be destroyed

For anyone watching, Jez in the house and on the order paper to ask Hatt Mancock a question imminently.

just put a match to Sir Kier's head, la flambe brylcreem would be a daring new look for the melts!

lots of ppl are cutting their own/their family's hair with scissors, starmer lacks conviction

it looks worse than a DIY scissor cut

i can't imagine him cutting butter so obv hair will be a big problem

Great feedback from the architect of austerity and a fan of Victor Orban, here https://t.co/lVSP5J9gVZ pic.twitter.com/m6tVBnVPfz

— Dawn Foster (@DawnHFoster) April 22, 2020

i would like to hear theresa may's take

Just glanced up at the telly in time to see calz's favourite Barry Sheerman ranting away from inside a glorified broom cupboard.

I reckon a cleaner found him lying about in the House of Commons and thought, "What'll I do with this thing, oh, I'll just stick it in here for now".

poor Barry will be having to live off his MP's salary during this lockdown, some very challenging times for a director of a lobbying company!

fuckin' get his ass barry

In the Commons Labour’s Barry Sheerman, appearing via Zoom, tells Hancock that the “management and leadership of this present crisis has been shambolic”. He says the UK has lagged behind Germany and that a death toll of around 800 people (the daily figure at certain points) is equivalent to two jumbo jets crashing.

I believe it is a shambles of leadership and management. I believe we are letting down NHS staff, and they have been let down.
He also claims that NHS whistleblowers have been leant on not to tell the truth about conditions in the NHS. He goes on:

Many of us do not believe [Hancock] is telling the truth to the people of this country.
Hancock says Sheerman had misjudged his tone, and missed what the government was doing. The prime goals were to flatten the curve, and to ensure the NHS was not overwhelmed. Both of those challenges had so far been met, he says.

And he says Sheerman is wrong to say whistleblowers have been silenced.

Scary number of the day

The updating mechanism that worked best was to use the daily reports of hospital deaths of those who tested positive for Covid-19 and scale them to the community with knowlege of the proportion of people who typically die in hospital (this has ranged between 46% and 48%)

— Chris Giles (@ChrisGiles_) April 22, 2020

So if you're sick enough to be admitted you're close to 50/50 dead.
Presumably if you've any underlying conditions it's a lot worse.

(that should have been on one of the covid threads I suppose)

Depends who they're admitting in the first place, I would imagine the majority have underlying conditions? There doesn't appear to be much data on the number of people who are dying at home.

Back to politics... the first adjectives used in BBC news to describe Keir Starmer's first PMQ: courteous and polite

Her Majesty's Opposition are indeed back.

"Depends who they're admitting in the first place, I would imagine the majority have underlying conditions?"

Yes, so I'm assuming those who are admitted but don't have those conditions are the people bringing the number under 50.

melt twitter is delighted with PMQs

Ridiculous really given they'd all made their minds up days in advance, and that he was only facing Dominic Raab.

Probably going to be harder to get away with the polite and courteous thing when there are hundreds of pricks in the chamber bellowing away.

The thing is, wasn't Jezza mostly courteous and polite? Even in the face of the braying gammon collective?

melt twitter is delighted with PMQs