Coronavirus in the UK - news, lockdown and discussion

[Raheem]

Check your temperature before you go to work? And the suggested reducing social distancing measures smells of another episode of ignoring WHO and global responses in favour of British exceptionalism for economic reasons.....

UK commuters may be asked to check temperature before travelling

Other ideas to ease lockdown reportedly include wearing face masks and a reduction from 2 to 1 metres distancing

www.theguardian.com

Think one metre is what the WHO recommends. Not sure where 2 metres came from. Flu planning, possibly.

 

[two sheds]

One metre is the measure of being able to take a swing at someone and not be able to reach them. So a good measure.

 

[teqniq]

JC under new management and smearing proffessor John Ashton:

Jewish Chronicle Back - And Smearing

After the Jewish Chronicle apparently went bust, there was a brief and rather undignified battle for the title’s assets, this being won by ...

zelo-street.blogspot.com

 

[Raheem]

One metre is the measure of being able to take a swing at someone and not be able to reach them. So a good measure.

Could make the boxing more interesting.

 

[weltweit]

Plenty of bad news on the jobs front. BA saying 12,000 jobs are threatened and they may not restart operations at Gatwick at all. Ryanair says redundancies are inevitable. Not sure what Virgin Atlantic are saying or Easyjet but Rolls Royce are threatening large redundancies also.

 

[not-bono-ever]

We've got a full house. Anti vaxx and 5G nutjobs!

Coronavirus lockdown protesters defy rules with group hug outside Scotland Yard

A group of around 20 people have gathered outside Scotland Yard - the Metropolitan Police's headquarters in central London - to protest against the lockdown, which is designed to stop the spread of the infectious disease

www.mirror.co.uk

 

[Aladdin]

Maybe in future with the benefit of hindsight we could call it capitalisms last gasp.

Hindsight's 2020
The Great Realisation

 

[Mation]

Hindsight's 2020
The Great Realisation

I am entirely hung up on the bits that don't scan, but could have

 

[bimble]

The incompetence of it is sort of worse than the fact that they’re even trying:

 

[SpookyFrank]

The incompetence of it is sort of worse than the fact that they’re even trying:

You'd think they'd get someone to write a decent bit of spam at least. Why is "mood" in quote marks, not even inverted commas? Maybe it's deliberately bad, a bit of verisimilitude to help camouflage it within the sea of effluent that is twitter.

Still though, a 'very difficult emergency' is a pretty annoying redundancy. If it was easy, it wouldn't be an emergency would it?

 

[Tankus]

We should wait at least 3 to 4 weeks before lifting restrictions and see what happens in the making America Great sacrifice states...

Otherwise this last month or so will just have been a few extra weeks of life for far too many

 

[Marty1]

Interesting article showing areas in U.K with no C-19 cases.

UK coronavirus map shows hundreds of towns and villages which have no deaths

Analysis from the Office of National Statistics shows large areas of England and Wales have been spared the worst of the coronavirus pandemic, with most deaths occurring in cities

www.mirror.co.uk

Also mentions the Northeast is an area of high infection, including the area I work - Middlesbrough.

New research shows that Middlesbrough and Walsall have the highest rates of infection in the country - with Wolverhampton, Gateshead and St Helens also among the places where the disease has spread widely.

 

[zahir]

“Half of all new infections reported last week were among healthcare workers,” she told the Observer. “This has now become the leading edge of the spread of the disease.”

UK lockdown must not be lifted until Covid-19 transmission is understood, say scientists

Studies into spread of the disease will centre on those working in the health and social care sectors as cases continue to rise

www.theguardian.com

 

[Tankus]

There's an interactive version of that map in the fail

Map reveals location of hundreds of places to avoid a fatality

An interactive map using data from the Office of National Statistics (ONS) has revealed hundreds of towns and villages which have avoided a single Covid-19 fatality during the pandemic.

www.dailymail.co.uk

 

[zahir]

Apologies for the Mail link.

 

[Part 2]

Plenty of bad news on the jobs front. BA saying 12,000 jobs are threatened and they may not restart operations at Gatwick at all. Ryanair says redundancies are inevitable. Not sure what Virgin Atlantic are saying or Easyjet but Rolls Royce are threatening large redundancies also.

Had a mate call yesterday who's a fireman at Manchester. When lockdown started he said they had 3 months before he might be out of a job but was saved by furlough and a 10% pay cut. He said there's speculation Gatwick could go completely. They've been told Manchester and Heathrow will remain open but others will shut down. Specifically mentioned Liverpool.

e2a: On reflection he's possibly picked out the worst of what they've been told. I think he said the information came via a meeting Manchester chief exec had with govt and reported back to them that they had nothing to worry about in terms of govt support, whereas the smaller airports might.

 

[zahir]

Do you mean some airports could be closed altogether?

 

[Part 2]

Do you mean some airports could be closed altogether?

Thats what he was saying yea. I guess it's a worst case scenario.

 

[Marty1]

On a local level - a new beauty salon near to me, spent months renovating the building it moved into (previously a newsagents) which must have cost a small fortune, opened for maybe less than a month before the lockdown came. I drive by it every day to and from work, closed up with new fancy signage, windows, front door feeling sorry for the owners who couldn’t have possibly imagined that their venture would be interrupted so badly from the very offset.

 

[Louis MacNeice]

Apologies for the Mail link.

My whole life has had the BBC as its everyday soundtrack, in particular Radio 4 (that's what you get for being nearly 58 and growing up in a working class home with ideas above their station...just joking...a bit). Currently I can barely listen to the news. It is so small c conservative, timid, pro the status quo, uncritical and at times downright fawning (this morning's breathless dose of 'near death, new dad Boris is a changed man' was too sickly to stomach). And still the Tories aren't satisfied; it's as if they want complete control even over this...

Louis MacNeice

 

[teqniq]

Nail on the head here:

NHS doctor: Forget medals and flypasts – what we want is proper pay and PPE

All the government’s praise for health ‘heroes’ is a distraction from its abject failure to protect those at the Covid frontline

www.theguardian.com

 

[littlebabyjesus]

We should wait at least 3 to 4 weeks before lifting restrictions and see what happens in the making America Great sacrifice states...

Otherwise this last month or so will just have been a few extra weeks of life for far too many

Ignore America, or most of it. The examples to look at are all around Europe. We need to be studying Denmark, Austria, Switzerland, Germany, Norway, Czechia, etc, and seeing what happens there as they go through their staged lifting. For a comparison with a country that fucked things up in a comparably bad way to the UK, how France manages its easing will be very relevant.

Most immediate issue at the moment is the ongoing infection rate, due chiefly to infection taking place in the health care system. Yet another ongoing failure here as compared to many other European countries, even those that initially handled things badly. Hopefully the increased testing levels will help there. But 'wait and hope for the best' doesn't work. The UK's history in this pandemic thus far illustrates that well enough. You have to proactively plan and act.

 

[teqniq]

Good interview with a doctor working at the Royal Gwent, Newport:

Leading Welsh critical care consultant on his fears over lifting lockdown

Dr David Hepburn is an intensive care consultant at the Royal Gwent Hospital in Newport and says a surge in people going out will see us back where we were a month ago

www.walesonline.co.uk

 

[kabbes]

Thats what he was saying yea. I guess it's a worst case scenario.

Gatwick closing is the exact opposite of a worst case scenario

 

[kabbes]

I have no sympathy at all for big mega-corporations who are crying poverty over a month or two’s lost income. If they can’t carry enough liquidity to bear a totally foreseeable extreme case scenario, they’ve been imprudently managed to the point of negligence. Private individuals with few resources are repeatedly lectured on the need to have savings enough to survive a few months with no income. Mega-corps are better placed than private individuals to manage this.

 

[treelover]

There's an interactive version of that map in the fail

Map reveals location of hundreds of places to avoid a fatality

An interactive map using data from the Office of National Statistics (ONS) has revealed hundreds of towns and villages which have avoided a single Covid-19 fatality during the pandemic.

www.dailymail.co.uk

five deaths near me, think it may be because of the nursing home, hundred metres away.

 

[2hats]

There's an interactive version of that map in the fail

Map reveals location of hundreds of places to avoid a fatality

An interactive map using data from the Office of National Statistics (ONS) has revealed hundreds of towns and villages which have avoided a single Covid-19 fatality during the pandemic.

www.dailymail.co.uk

You can avoid soiling yourself with the Fail by going direct to the map here.

 

[teuchter]

A direct link to that ONS map for those who don't want to go to Daily Mail links

Deaths involving COVID-19 by local area and socioeconomic deprivation - Office for National Statistics

Provisional counts of the number of deaths and age-standardised mortality rates involving the coronavirus (COVID-19) between 1 March and 17 April 2020 in England and Wales. Figures are provided by age, sex, geographies down to local authority level and deprivation indices.

www.ons.gov.uk

Would be really interesting to see a map like this for the whole of Europe.

edit - 2hats beat me to it with a better link

 

[planetgeli]

You can avoid soiling yourself with the Fail by going direct to the map here.

A direct link to that ONS map for those who don't want to go to Daily Mail links

Deaths involving COVID-19 by local area and socioeconomic deprivation - Office for National Statistics

Provisional counts of the number of deaths and age-standardised mortality rates involving the coronavirus (COVID-19) between 1 March and 17 April 2020 in England and Wales. Figures are provided by age, sex, geographies down to local authority level and deprivation indices.

www.ons.gov.uk

Would be really interesting to see a map like this for the whole of Europe.

edit - 2hats beat me to it with a better link

I think it's worth pointing out to people who may search their own locality with these maps that,

Points on the map are placed at the centre of the local area they represent and do not show the actual location of deaths. The size of the circle is proportional to the number of deaths

 

[teuchter]

They've also reallocated a few between neighbouring areas for privacy reasons. So zero might actually be two and vice versa.