The Covid-19 Thread

[Mantis]

Two days after Jacob Rees-Mogg forces all MPs to come back to parliament and Alok Sharma has already come down with symptoms and being tested for Covid. I wonder how many other MPs he has had unnecessary interactions with in the last three days? From the photos of them all queuing all over Westminster it didn't really look like a lot of them were observing social distancing measures.

[Mantis]

I noticed that they didn't bring any scientists to today's government briefing. I wonder if that's because yesterday was a big day for their 14 day quarantine announcement and, when the journalists asked if the science backed it up, the representative said it was more useful when you have a small number of cases and other countries have high levels of infection; basically the opposite to our current scenario.

Masks have always been a good idea, but you only have to go as far back as April to see people from the government saying that there was no credible evidence suggesting that using them made a difference.

We are so late with everything.

[Achtung Englander]

quite frankly I am getting tired of all these conflicting views. Some pundits are ringing the bells warning of a plague, others are saying this whole lock down strategy has been a huge mistake. Everything (including murder) has become political, white or black, left or right. Holy shit this is depressing.

[The Jackal]

quite frankly I am getting tired of all these conflicting views. Some pundits are ringing the bells warning of a plague, others are saying this whole lock down strategy has been a huge mistake. Everything (including murder) has become political, white or black, left or right. Holy shit this is depressing.

No, you just became more aware of things' politicisation when given nowt else to do but monitor them.

[Mantis]

The lockdown strategy has been a mistake in the sense that the government have totally botched it every step of the way. Johnson said he was proud of his record. We hit 40,000 confirmed deaths today. Second highest in the world I believe.

Meanwhile with the R rate perilously close to 1 again and hospital admissions creeping back up, Matt Hancock the Death Secretary is utterly botching his fake enthusiasm for Chester zoo on the daily briefing while talking about getting zoos open again.

I don't see this as a party political issue. It's simply a case of a corrupt and utterly incompetent government trying to obfuscate and cover up everything they've fucked up. I would take competent Tories over the current cabinet. The politics enters into it when you consider why we were so woefully prepared for the pandemic in the first place. Must have been that last Labour government.

[Raid]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-52944037

There have been warnings coronavirus may be starting to spread again in the north-west and the south-west of England.
Some scientists say the R number is creeping up across the country and may have surpassed one - the point at which the epidemic takes off again - in these regions.

Shock horror. People haven't been taking this seriously for weeks. Will the government now make good on its promise to start locking down properly again?

[Hatredsheart]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-52944037

There have been warnings coronavirus may be starting to spread again in the north-west and the south-west of England.
Some scientists say the R number is creeping up across the country and may have surpassed one - the point at which the epidemic takes off again - in these regions.

Shock horror. People haven't been taking this seriously for weeks. Will the government now make good on its promise to start locking down properly again?

And people here in Wales seem to have a "They're getting these freedoms now, why can't we?" attitude instead of being glad the WA is erring on the side of caution. I understand they're sick and tired of lockdown but look before you leap eh? UKGov seems to be backtracking on a lot of what it said at the start of lockdown, especially on being "led by the science."
Done icu and ventilation thanks, no rush to try it again.

[Rossell]

I'm still treating things as lockdown like normal, only we're getting a bit more food in with every journey (being responsible don't worry) because a second spike is inevitable.

[Raid]

And there we go, the reason I will never sign up to any sort of tracking app.

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/06/08/palanti ... -data.html

I suspected this would come out years down the line, not practically immediately. They just don't care anymore, do they.

[Rossell]

Peter Thiel is supposed to be a bit of a twat isn't he?

[Animalmother]

£1 for all your private data, no they most certainly don't give a fuck anymore. Google involved as well.

[The Jackal]

Peter Thiel is supposed to be a bit of a twat isn't he?

Pretty much.

[Strudel]

Yeah, he's quite a big Trump supporter.

[Raid]

So I'm self isolating as of this morning; had a bit of a temperature last night and a sore throat this morning. The latter isn't actually considered a symptom any longer, but NHS 111 recommend isolating for 7 days regardless, and I have testing kits for myself and housemate on their way. I do work with the general public so I suppose this was probably going to happen at some point, and thankfully the company I work for has taken this stuff quite seriously from early on, and even if my test comes back negative I have to stay off for 14 days (at full pay). I'm not exactly a big fan of said company, but I find it difficult to really fault their handling of this.

I feel largely fine, although I've been feeling a bit run down for the last couple of days. Yesterday I just put it down to missing lunch.

[Wrathbone]

Sorry mate, hope you pick up soon!

Just heard from my brother-in-law who's a police constable and yesterday had to break up a 4 year old's birthday party that had been reported. Apparently there were dozens of kids and parents, none of them social distancing, and a massive bouncy castle in the garden. The police apologetically explained that they had no choice but to ask everyone to go home, at which point the birthday boy's grandmother stormed into the street and started shouting out at all the houses asking which Edwin had reported them. Not sure whether to laugh or despair!