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

More to the point we will never know less about covid-19 than we did back in January-March this year. The means to lower the death rate are already there, if not by enough yet.

I'm going for an optimistic 200k excess deaths by the end of winter 2021.

I think it's v much a case of using those masks and hand gels and hoping for the best.

But still a 2nd wave will surely make people think twice about booking a holiday anywhere, or even a day out shopping, or eating out etc.

People kept packing out the pubs until the last possible minute so I wouldn't be so sure of that.

People know about the risks a lot more, as you say. I think enough will not carry on as if nothing has happened over the last three months to mean a very long recession, at the least.

I can’t wait to get back to the pub...and I don’t even drink.

Good news for business today and glad we’ll all have a chance to enjoy the summer safely. #4thofJuly pic.twitter.com/6igrPpBu96

— Rishi Sunak (@RishiSunak) June 23, 2020

very cool guy, you can see how he has risen up the ladder so fast!

I can't wait for you to all catch the rona... and I didn't even know that beer and pubs contribute £23bn to UK GDP and generate £13bn in tax revenue!

Cunt's probably never even been in a pub.

Can't wait for his star to come crashing down.

The man never drunk a carling in his life

"I wasn't really up for the pubs, but after seeing teetotal Rishi giving the double thumbs up to some electrical appliances, coupled with his insincere tweet ... well I'm raring to sup now"

I like how 95% of the responses are "that's a shop, mate".

Sunak there curiously similar to Rory Stewart saying his favourite London boozer was any branch of Pret a Manger?

Social activity in general makes up something like a third of consumption in this country and the longer it takes to get it back properly the worse the recession is going to be.

The quickest way to do that is to get the virus under control properly and we're probably not at that stage yet.

i mean if everyone cut their consumer spending by £2000 a year and saved it for housing, there would be an immediate recession and house prices would increase as demand soared

— Jon Stone (@joncstone) June 22, 2020

https://clickhole.com/time-to-celebrate-the-doomsday-clock-has-been-set-to-wine-oclock/

The quickest way to do that is to get the virus under control properly and we're probably not at that stage yet.

basically the tory fucking idiots are going to make the same mistake they made the first time - starting lockdown too late, probably by 2 or 3 weeks at least - in reverse by opening up things too early. what a mess

Spoilsport. I was out today and apart from a few stragglers in masks it's like the whole thing never happened.

Fucking traffic back, ready to mow you down as you cross the road.

the no masks thing is just classic "Britain". septic isle

this is it isn’t it. total lockdown was a reasonable response to something we knew nothing about and which was spreading v quickly. if you can get the infection numbers down to v low figures and have a good track and trace system in place then it is reasonable to relax constraints and people will also have confidence in it.

Remember Tusk and 'Please do not waste this time' wrt brexit extension? Kinda feel our mostly fake lockdown just bought us some wasted time. We didn't get the numbers low enough and we haven't got adequate TTI in place.
Most recent strategy looks to me like "can't we just fucking talk about something else?" while we're still burying almost a thousand people a week.

Look at NZ having a shitfit over 2 infected travellers or China reinforcing lockdown in Beijing after 36 cases and compare with UK/US where the response to thousands of cases and hundreds of deaths every day is to stop counting.

Yeah, this is really fucking unsafe for women particularly. https://t.co/cBeKWomqLK

— pickwick (@pickwick) June 23, 2020

Too right. Fuck that.

And in other news:

Wow. MPs vote 243-238 IN FAVOUR of Chris Bryant's amendment to rule out Commons debates on serious complaints against MPs

— Esther Webber (@estwebber) June 23, 2020

_this is it isn’t it. total lockdown was a reasonable response to something we knew nothing about and which was spreading v quickly. if you can get the infection numbers down to v low figures and have a good track and trace system in place then it is reasonable to relax constraints and people will also have confidence in it._


Remember Tusk and 'Please do not waste this time' wrt brexit extension? Kinda feel our mostly fake lockdown just bought us some wasted time. We didn't get the numbers low enough and we haven't got adequate TTI in place.
Most recent strategy looks to me like "can't we just fucking talk about something else?" while we're still burying almost a thousand people a week.

Wonder how different things would've been if legend Bozza had carked it?

pub has already got my Facebook that should do right?

aye you're grand, especially since FB forced to you to gvot name yourself

govt

exackly

Wonder how different things would've been if legend Bozza had carked it?

Raab or Gove would have stepped up to the plate in true "cometh the hour" style, dithered around doing fuck all and the outcome would've been the same, other than that the Tories would've self-destructed over the new danger to the Brexit Project and become even more distracted by that.

The lockdown would have been ended even sooner had Raab and Sunak had anything to do with it.

Why tf is there a several episodes long documentary on the Witch this week, prime time at the beeb?

sad to see y'all navigating the "re-opening" as badly as we are

pretty sure there's some kind of death toll competition going on at this point

https://imgur.com/a/gP9NGxl

https://imgur.com/a/gP9NGxl

Just went to Newmarket and got "what the fuck is wrong with you?" vibes from almost everyone for (a) wearing a mask and (b) moving out of their way to maintain some (like a metre) distance, so Cambridge not that bad after all.

https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/datasets/weeklyprovisionalfiguresondeathsregisteredinenglandandwales

having a look at the figures you can find here which run up 12th June and it looks like England is coming out of lockdown with a death tally higher than it went into lockdown with?

I don't think that makes much of a difference if the number of new cases and levels of infection continue to decline (big if). Deaths trail infections by three or four weeks and I don't think anyone is seriously suggesting the virus itself is more prevalent or spreading as rapidly as it was in late March.

Also we're testing much more now so although new case levels are similar there were probably many more in late March that weren't picked up.

When the extremely online get elected

I too express my excitement at going to the pub by taking a photo giving a shop full of kettles a big old thumbs up like a very normal guy 🙃 https://t.co/3iWjxmNmq6

— Charlotte Nichols (@charlotte2153) June 23, 2020

The 'r' number is still estimated at iirc 0.7-0.9 and potentially as high as 1.0 in some regions. It doesn't take a whole lot of unlocking to push that above 1 and if we're starting at a base no lower than end-March lockdown numbers again the whole exercise seems like a short delay in order to fuck up the economy and idk save petrol or something

R number isn’t the tell-all because there are probably places with huge numbers of infections (factories and meat processing plants as well as care homes) where community spread is relatively low.

I just don't think it's true that we're starting from a base no lower than the end of March - the level of infection was really high back then largely due to people doing things like going to Cheltenham and spreading it all over the country. The R rate and the death rate between them don't tell the whole story.

Despite that the level of infection is too high to be relaxing everything - I guess we'll know by the end of July and I'm not going to be setting foot in a pub before then. (xpost)

Briefly, this means anyone accusing an MP of abuse doesn’t have to have the accusation dissected in a parliamentary debate. Can’t wait to see the names who voted against it.

Andrea Leadsom, Penny Mordaunt and some obscure backbencher called Theresa May.

Sir Michael "warm your hands on my balls" Fallon will be saying too late!

"Most recent strategy looks to me like "can't we just fucking talk about something else?" while we're still burying almost a thousand people a week."

Yeah, this.

Anyway, walked to Sainsbury's tonight and people had just taken over the path - a group of four adults hogged the whole (wide) path despite me doing a comedy swerve. Couples were holding hands and refusing to walk in single file.

I work in health and wonder if I'm just over-used to risk assessing. Like, I know meeting a friend carries risk (compared to staying in) but I can think "Yeah, that's worth it." But the idea of going to the pub and potentially being infected by someone random feels too ... pointless.

I can't imagine what would be fun about the pub right now. Sitting with your pals in a weird pentagram behind perspex screens, watching a harassed member of staff constantly wiping everything down, unable to pick up glasses from the top because you don't want your fingers on the surfaces people have just had in their mouths. If I'm allowed to sit close to my pals again then they're coming to my house where I can be certain the surfaces have been cleaned properly and I'm not going to risk a drunken randomer invade my personal space in the name of friendly banter.