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It has always been the case since the the scale of the crisis became clear that making saving lives the priority was going to come at a huge economic cost.
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Get out of bed, you dirty stopins.
Thanks for the header, Mike.
'My firm is viable – but I can’t get a loan'
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-52288258
https://www.thecourier.co.uk/fp/news/politics/scottish-politics/1266046/public-health-england-got-their-finger-out-company-at-heart-of-a-cross-border-storm-defends-sending-ppe-kit-to-english-care-homes/
You know, actual journalism.
However I think governments will be quite hawkish about travel restrictions and quarantine this time around.
...yet nobody else really seems to be saying this. Somebody's wrong, no idea who...
I get the sense an increasing number of people are starting to think the hitherto unthinkable: that this is a virus we have to learn to live with. Or, rather, death is something we have to learn to live with. I was chatting yesterday to a young friend in London, mid-twenties, and she said just this. That her friends are taking precautions but that they're also starting to roll the dice. Another friend of mine said that sooner or later we're just going to have to suck it up.
https://twitter.com/UKinIndonesia/status/1250288149978214406?s=20
We know it spreads through close contact, clustering, crowds.
But time for it to sink in was imo a factor in the government "hint then announce" communication strategy.
I think - borrowing your analogy - there is also a need to learn an appropriate "dice rolling strategy", once we are over the hump of wave one, and perhaps until wave 2 occurs.
I would say it is unwise to be starting quite now, however.
The government always says that it is following expert scientific advice. However, the government was elected to run the country in an election, not the scientists. Have people been disenfranchised by scientists, and does the government have the mandate to impose a long lockdown, lasting over a year? The government needs to level with the people directly and honestly, certainly when Johnson returns to work.
The surest way to stop the virus from spreading is to throttle the economy until it dies and most of the country perishes of starvation along with it, but needless to say the Government would consider this to be a sub-optimal outcome.
The virus appears to be so infectious, it's so widespread in the country, and the means to effectively treat or vaccinate against it are still so far away, that the aims of squashing it down to nothing and preventing socio-economic disintegration are mutually exclusive. We're simply going to have to accept significant numbers of deaths of individuals from this disease occurring every day for a very long time - releasing the choke-hold round the throat of the economy by as much as possible without completely swamping the hospitals - if society as a whole is going to survive this thing.
That bloody terrifies me. Most of the people I love are either old, medically vulnerable to the disease, or both. This whole episode is an unending nightmare, and at times I feel like if we all make it out the other side alive it'll be nothing short of a miracle.
Life presently consists of traipsing back and forth to work and spending the remainder of the time mostly holed up in the flat and trying not to let the situation get the better of one - and I'm very aware of the fact that I'm better off than many. At least I still have a job and I don't have to worry about keeping several kids fed and paying the rent or the mortgage. The cumulative effects of poverty, anxiety, bereavement, isolation and confinement are going to send half the population around the twist before this is all done - whatever year that finally turns out to be.
I guess that in the early stages some of the language and memes were especially stark. With hindsight I think 'herd immunity' was an incredibly inept and ill-conceived phrase. Even if the point behind it was reasonable, it conjured up everything wrong, and then some. Being told by Whitehall mandarins that the rest of us are basically herds of wildebeest out on the lower class plains, with the stragglers picked off by lions wasn't too felicitous.
Then there were some rather callous posts and articles in the right wing press more-or-less suggesting we needed to throw old people onto the sacrificial bonfire in order to appease the economic gods.
My sense increasingly is that a lot of people under 60 are prepared to take their chances for a better quality of life. Get it once and hopefully survive, then get on and live.
https://nypost.com/2020/04/13/virginia-pastor-who-held-packed-church-service-dies-of-coronavirus/
EiT then constantly ruins this message by taking a bizarre position that the U.K. govt is uniquely bad/incompetent, and is under the misguided belief that we are prisoners in our own homes (we aren’t), when they are taking policy measures that are barely distinguishable than the vast majority of other countries (and are thus far avoiding the collapse of our health system or a catastrophic collapse in public support). If anything, the UK’s lockdown measures are on the less harsh side of the norm, but this doesn’t fit with his narrative either so he ignores this.
By extension, they are probably (c) the group most likely to tire of the lockdown and begin to violate it en masse if the Government doesn't compromise with their needs and wishes and start to throttle back a bit.
The "tightrope walking" exercise that the Danes and Austrians are embarking upon is one that the UK will have to copy, not straight away but certainly in the not-too-distant future, if public acquiescence to more limited but longer-term restrictions is to be maintained.
Reading the story, how long might it be before either of those firms might see continuing business ?
Refurbishing “pubs, hotels and restaurants”, and “corporate team building” could conceivably be in the deep freeze for the rest of the year, maybe longer.
I’m not arguing that the loan scheme ought not to be far more accessible, or that they should not get loans (I could be in a similar situation myself in a couple of months’ time), so much as asking what is the endgame for this. As I’m not seeing the way out for a very large number of businesses.
One January, it’s my turn to fly out there for the weekend to check it’s ok. I arrive and there’s a foot of snow but the house is all fine. Good. I put on the fire and settle in for the night.
There’s nothing much on the satellite TV and I’m not in the mood to listen to music, so I riffle through the DVDs to see what I might watch. I find 28 Days Later.
It turns out that watching a zombie film in front of a flickering fire in a dark village on your own with nothing stirring outside in the depths of winter is not that brilliant an idea.
I lasted 30 minutes.
The only message getting through, virtue of its repetition ad nauseam, is ‘stay at home; save lives”. However nuanced policy might be intended to be.
That is EIT’s point.
I believe it under-estimates the impact, and doesn't address any of the policy implications (that is not there job). The economy will not be back to pre-virus normal in 6 months. not going to happen. To use the OBR phrase, economic 'scarring' will be grave.
Large rises in tax, and cuts to previous untouchable areas of spending are coming. Get prepared for that, it is unavoidable.
Just relistening to the press conference from 12 March, and there is plenty of discussion of the points in the Japanese poster.
A lot of people were putting their own measures in place early on - personally I did it in early March in prep for eg sanitising anything coming into the house with surgical spirit (had some trouble finding some - mine came from a farm supplier in Cornwall :-) ), trying to get used to not touching my face, adjusting quarterly food orders etc. Again for the individual it is about risk management and practicality vs vulnerability of the individual / household, and what measures are thought to be appropriate.
I'm now in the - arguably overkill - habit of washing my hands even after doing something in the back garden or touching gloves that I wore outside and swabbed when I came back in, but for me it helps maintain the habit.
The point is that without some kind of idea of how we exit this, any investment for the future will remain in the deep freeze for the vast majority of businesses (there will be exceptions, of course).
The initial response from Sunak was excellent, but thinking seems to have stalled.
https://twitter.com/antonioregalado/status/1250184875392581635
https://twitter.com/AndyBiotech/status/1250090725582295040
And there are probably a huge range of activities that you engage in in “normal” times which you would not do if you applied the same risk averse approach as you do to this.
His interventions need to be (and, to be fair, appear to be intended to be) aimed at allowing the fastest and completist possible bounceback afterwards.
A one off hit of 20%, 30%, 40% of GDP in borrowing can be taken in stride if the economy, employment, and so forth come back online rapidly afterwards.
A false economy would be to aim to save 5 or 10% in borrowing here at the cost of a prolonged depression and slow recovery afterwards. Or if haste causes extra waves in future.
Not easy to walk the line. But very necessary. Get it right, and economically, this becomes a blip in our rear view mirror (a big economic blip, to be fair, but still a blip). Get it wrong and we’re rebuilding from it for a generation or two.
I wonder if I may have had this thing mildly already. I was rough for a week out in Asia back in early February. Guess I won't really know without the kind of test Nigelb mentions below.
I see now about EiT and as mentioned the UK Gov't isn't really now doing anything different from the rest. Fewer tests, otherwise similar.
Hopefully soon the country will reach a sensible balance between lockdown and Peter - let's all gather in the pub - Hitchens.
The unspoken question is what happens to the economic support package if the lockdown turns into a longer, or repeated, event.
https://twitter.com/NatureNews/status/1250129207189032962
The potential of a good antibody test has been discussed at length. What is new now is that several nations are prototyping exit strategies. As ever real-world testing beats theory.
While it's generally true that the Brits prefer leaders that they can imagine going for a pint with, the problem is that we have one of the weakest cabinets in 200 years. They are basically a bunch of fairly useless nonentities chosen by the PM for many reasons, but none of them to do with competence. Patel and Hancock wouldn't last the month in any effective government.
The interlocking crises that are now underway would challenge even the steeliest leadership but we have a weak, and occasionally cowardly, PM. I think we will quickly find that government by baby pictures in Hello magazine will pretty soon simply annoy the voters.
The increasingly likely removal of the disgrace in the White House- anything, even a senile sex pest, is better than the current horror in the West Wing- will begin to make BoJo look ever more lonely.
The UK government has stuffed this up, and only Trumplestiltskin has handled things worse. The voters are already beginning to ask questions and they do not like the answers that they are being given.
So Tories (and GOP) enjoy the moment: it may be the last time for a very, very long time indeed.
https://twitter.com/J_Hancock/status/1250173437173288967?s=19
Given deaths have peaked in England - we need a target date for our schools to return - and for the range of shops permitted to open to increase.
I don't *think* (although I may be wrong) that the most successful countries - SK and Taiwan - are going as hard on the "three c's" type stuff - and in particular in the *combination* of those. (I've been watching a little bit of Chinese telly and it's not really what I'm seeing, but my Chinese is still very sucky...) It might be that the Japanese emphasis on it is the equivalent of putting armour on the bits of the plane with the bullet holes in them, and the contagion happening elsewhere but when it does their contract tracing isn't catching it.
I didn't bring this up as a criticism of the UK government - the UK government has made horrendous mistakes which will be incredibly costly, but they were towards the beginning of the crisis, and having got into the position they have, I don't think they're doing too much obviously wrong. Meanwhile Japan has had all kinds of very serious failures, probably with more bureaucratic incompetence than the UK, but they managed to get one thing right, which was early, voluntary, low-to-medium-disruption action ("please work from home where practical and avoid crowded places" etc), which bought them a lot of time, and may well work as a long-term model for everybody, with a few more tweaks.
As I said yesterday, he's the new Tony Blair. He didn't win Labour London for the tories by being a rabid right-winger. Following his near-death experience the true Boris is emerging again, unfettered by the loons on the right.
As far as I'm concerned he can currently do no wrong.
But I'm really struggling mentally. Every day is Exactly the Same. I am not worrying much for friends or relatives or about the virus at all - my worry is more for our society and what of it will be left at the end. I am not worried about how to pay my bills or having enough to eat. I am not entombed in a bedsit like I once lived in being eaten alive by bed bugs - other are.
How we balance off their problems of daily existence with fighting the virus is equal. No point saving people from Covid 19 only instead to kill them from poverty or malnutrition or suicide or violent partner. Once this is over there will be a fortune to be made by divorce lawyers and maternity nurses and psychiatrists.
From the article "A Nature investigation of several university labs certified to test for the virus finds that they have been held up by regulatory, logistic and administrative obstacles, and stymied by the fragmented US health-care system. Even as testing backlogs mounted for hospitals in California, for example, clinics were turning away offers of testing from certified academic labs because they didn’t use compatible health-record software, or didn’t have existing contracts with the hospital."
I find this interesting, because many have been saying that Germany's ability to do lost of tests is a result of the German decentralised health system, whereas the centralised NHS was not able to expand to the sudden increase in demand. In reality we need to remember David Mitchell's phrase "I think you'll find it's a bit more complicated than that".
The only way to stay sane is to flout the lockdown and I think everyone should do so. It's more important to cover up and keep your distance, but above all get out.
Mind you, there's more to it than just that as you so penetratingly describe.
I hope you're okay. I know many are not.
Edit: Osborne's Standard headline yesterday implying most of Europe was opening up again was typical of this approach at its very worst.
Failing to test suspect cases, and failing to isolate them pretty much guarantees continuing transmission.
On March 11 our government flipped from one extreme to the other, abandoning contact tracing and community testing, to the point where effectively none is done.
We have to get back to test, trace and isolate for the lock down to end. The Nightingale hospitals should be used for isolation of cases. Leaving them at home just doesn't work.
Edit to say the Edit facility for me in Firefox is no problem.
Somehow the language has to shift from measures being imposed being by govt edict, towards measures imposed by collective personal responsibility. So that the lockdown can come off but public behaviour doesn’t change significantly. And I can’t see how we get there.
Trouble is that more nuanced messaging a la Japanese poster undermines the lockdown. So we just get “stay home save lives”.
have you seen Keir Starmer ?
In particular, the London underground seems almost designed to spread disease.
At the same time I think a *lack* of nuance also risks undermining the policy. We saw this with masks where the reality was a little bit complex "they help stop spread a little bit, they might help protect you but not much and it could be the opposite, but we need to prioritize supply for medical staff" and officials turned that into with "masks don't help", which ended up with everyone just thinking they were full of shit, and most governments ultimately reversing themselves.
I think the same thing will happen with restrictions on going out, where police have ended up harassing people for sunbathing or sitting on a bench. It may have been historically necessary to start with simple, crude, wide-spectrum restrictions, but if they're dumb and everyone can see that they're dumb then they won't be sustainable.
One thing that might help here is to start experimenting and be very open about the fact that you're experimenting. Remove particular restrictions in particular places, get people talking about "the Wales experiment" or "the Norfolk model". This goes against the grain for governments, because they feel like they need to look like they know what they're doing, but ultimately in this situation nobody really knows what they're going, and people are probably paying enough attention to be able to grasp the trade-offs.
I'm sure this is just a coincidence though.
Given the mood music in Monday’s briefing, the government doesn’t seem to think the peak has been reached.
How we produce that in the next two weeks is a problem though.
What is the Japanese media like? Are they having a good war?
If you need to restrict commuting then yes, you need to keep the number of travellers down. This may be doable with just continued work-from-home-where-practical advice, potentially with sticks and carrots (tax breaks, burdensome office virus prevention requirements etc). You might also literally ration usage and require booking in advance to travel at congested times. This also has knock-on effects because if you can get people on weird off-peak shifts then you also spread the load for shops and restaurants etc.
I *do not* want to have to wear a mask. Its confining. But if thats the only way to restore some kind of restoration of a new normal?
Perhaps one of the design gurus can come up with a design that feels more comfortable and bring them out in stylish versions.
Now coming up to £4.5m......
Who is managing the media campaign for Bet Victor? Who manages ad scheduling for LBC? Have neither of these stopped to think that they make their companies sound like utter tools playing out this stuff? They're telling everyone what we can't do any more. Whilst debating the impacts of the lockdown on people...
I've gone through our social media plan with a fine toothcomb and weeded out stuff that just isn't appropriate any more. And we're only "broadcasting" on Facebook Twitter and Instagram. I'd be horrendously embarrassed to be responsible for playing out stuff on the radio to millions. Repeatedly. Every Day.
As followers of American structures will attest, this sort or worst-possible-combination-of-public-and-private is not uncommon in many areas in America.
As I understand it, the lab/testing structure in Germany is de-centralised - with reporting to the centre,
https://twitter.com/patio11/status/1250304959867785217?s=21
Other must include shopping, takeaways, neighbours, deliveries etc, the usual social contacts of like outside family and work.
Quarantined test positive people covers these too.
Of course your typical SNP support hears the word independency and ignores the complete incompetency of those who are shouting it to distract from their mistakes.
What's worse is that by falsely blaming others, those people will no longer be interested in helping you out - I know that were it my company any Scottish Government order would be automatically rejected - I have enough customers that I refuse to deal with troublesome ones. Life is too short even before a virus could kill me in a week times.
Maybe Bet Victor are just working on the premise that keeping themselves in the public mind is more important than current relevancy? When the first football match resumes perhaps Bet Victor might just float into the mind of someone who doesn't bet very much?
Without a vaccine or a readily-available effective treatment, compulsory wearing of masks is the only way the general populace will be able to get out of their fucking houses and resume some approximation of normality.
Another month of lockdown and people will be begging for this solution.
We have been told for years that it is the best in the world, on the basis of the Commonwealth Institute surveys which are really opinion polls.
We are in a position where the Minister does not run it any more, yet is getting it in the neck from the Medical Unions demanding action when PPE is short in a small hospital noone has ever heard of - I would have thought that the logistics people should be the target.
We are told that the Health Services in Italy and Germany were much better, and world leading, and unfavourable comparisons have been made.
At the same time we worship at the altar of the national religion every week.
How on earth will reform that all agree is necessary happen? The "successful systems" in Germany and Italy are very different, yet overall the country is wedded to the precise structural form we currently have.
Interesting times.