Yet again showing how ignorant many of the comfortable class are about how the world functions outside of their wants.

Another example was something I posted about from a week or so ago. On a popvox someone asked about whether they are they worried about shops being shut because so many people are ill or can't work and getting hold of groceries, they weren't because they would order it from Amazon to be delivered....

Even intelligent people are not used to thinking about how something happens in the modern world. I'm only aware and think about it as my professional life has often had me in operations roles so someone who has to work out what needs to happen to get X to happen.

Can someone tell this idiot that Newfoundland and Prince Edward Island, both actual islands, with relatively small populations that are overwhelmingly white, both have confirmed cases? Hearing that news is what really brought home this pandemic to me. Thinking of the chain of infections you'd need to get this into places like that makes you realize how bad off more populous and more connected places must be.

In Denmark, not one single case is related directly to China. And at this point, most people are infected here:

Yeah, that's about right.


The average Kanassian has never heard of these places, probably won't believe they exist and is cocooned in their own stupidity and ignorance.

BTW, if anyone is interested in helping out in the ventilator area (realisticlaly rather than BoJo's rants) I recommend checking the Open Source Ventilator initiative

One thing that brought a smile on my face about today's press briefing with our federal ministers:

Someone asked the question about why doesn't the federal government limit travel between the provinces to essential travel only (shipping, deliveries). And one of the ministers got a little pissed and answered (I paraphrase): "Because we're Canadians. We're not Quebecers, we're not Albertans, we're not Ontarians. We are Canadians first and we're all in this thing together. The virus is the enemy, not each other."

I couldn't agree more and I'm glad he slapped that idea down quicker than it had a chance to fester. Shutting provincial borders is not going to stop the virus from spreading. The only thing it will succeed at doing is sowing division amongst ourselves, pitting provinces against one another. We're stronger together as a whole. We need to be handling this situation in the same way our grandparents handled their situation during the two world wars.... united as a country and helping each other out. One country, not 13 little countries.

Yeah.... I'm talking to you "Albertans".

I doubt many people will agree with you hatred of Chruchill.

Hatred of him? I have no emotional connection to Churchill.

One other bit of good news for the UK:

Coronavirus: Thousands of extra hospital beds and staff

Basically it seems the NHS has 'rented out' a big chunk of the private medical sector providing:

Kentucky elected a Democratic governor. Tennessee did not. Guess what happened.

This looks like fun: https://www.politico.com/news/2020/0...-powers-140023

I suspect that this will have "interesting" implications once the Coronavirus crisis has abated. The private sector will be fully integrated into the NHS will will allow more and more services to be transferred into the private sector - as the government wants. :(

Or the exact opposite, the law of unintended consequences may well apply, plus I suspect the crisis is going to remind everyone why the NHS is so important.

I wonder what the cost of that will be compared to not cutting the many thousands of beds from the NHS over the last 10 years?

It's already been said by the Health Secretary that the NHS will need 'Major reconfiguration' after the crisis is over.

John Bolton Tweeted

John Bolton
@AmbJohnBolton
China silenced coronavirus whistleblowers, expelled journalists, destroyed samples, refused CDC help, and concealed counts of deaths and infections. It's fact there was a massive coverup. China is responsible. The world must act to hold them accountable.

Seems he lost interest in Iran.

Should not be renting them, should simply be requisitioned and salary paid.

Wow.
The Moustache rightly fears that he will get the blame for disbanding the Pandemic Response Team. So he supports Trump's "Yellow Peril" narrative.

Yep, we need to go full bore "A pox on both their houses". Yes, China is responsible for its cover-up. But so is Trump et al. Despite the best efforts of China, the US had everything it needed to know this would be a big problem back in January, but Trump and his gang of idiots decided to stick their fingers in their ears and lie about it all. They also need to be held responsible for their failures.

Trump Tweets

Ford, General Motors and Tesla are being given the go ahead to make ventilators and other metal products, FAST! @fema Go for it auto execs, lets see how good you are? @RepMarkMeadows @GOPLeader @senatemajldr

Working very well with States and our Nation’s Governors. #TEAMWORK

An anecdote from today IMO illustrates a fundamental weakness with the UK's handling of the situation. We were out leafleting the local area (Mrs Don is the local coordinator for the area Covid-19 action group) and bumped into our next door neighbours (never getting closer than 3m).

They reported that they were self-isolating because another pair of mutual friends "had coronavirus" and that they had had dinned together a week ago. We were shocked that people we knew had Coronavirus but as the conversation progressed it became clear that these friends had not been tested for Coronavirus, nor was there any plan to do so.

Both are over 65 and are therefore in a higher risk group and the symptoms they described certainly sound like it could possibly be Coronavirus, then again it could have been 'flu or another infection.

The UK government isn't collecting the information to allow it to gauge whether its approach to managing Coronavirus is effective - they are flying blind.

"Just announced on Greek news by PM Mitsotakis:

Full lockdown from 6 a.m, tomorrow Monday 23 March.

Exceptions for
- work, food shopping, doctors,
- dog walking, personal excercise - only in your area of residence

Carry Passport or ID card at all times.

Fine of 150 euros for each violation.

More details coming in an hour or so, seems we will need to download forms and fill them in before leaving the house. Phone version of permission code available."

Meanwhile, Brits are desperate to keep pubs open, are heading for seaside resorts, jamming the roads to Snowdonia and whatever. FFS, the twats. When will Johnson get his ****** finger out and act rather than hoping people will 'play nice'?

I say this without hyperbole - we're going to be worse off than Italy. Our death curve is exactly the same (to the exact same number of deaths today), and the public are acting in exactly the same way that the Italian public was. But if we take the timeline, as measured by the death curves, then Italy started lockdowns in two days' time. There's been hints at the planning of locking down London, but I'll be very surprised if it happens on Tuesday.

And that's just to put us in the same position as Italy. We should be aiming to learn those lessons and do better. But we're not.

And I think one of the biggest things that has to happen immediately is a massive public information campaign. Scare the **** out of people and get it through to them that this isn't being blown out of proportion and that they do need to take it seriously. It's not a ******* bank holiday.

Amen.

We're just watching Johnson's news conference and despairing. Despairing quite loudly. Did he start off by thanking people who'd followed 'advice' to shut pubs, restaurants, gyms and the like? Other nations are ordering such things.

The problem is in the UK we do not have ID cards. Unlike most of Europe e.g. Italy it has never been the law that you must carry an ID card when you are out and about. I do not want the government distracted into producing ID cards at present. Maybe it is naive to hope people will 'play the game', but I am sure that that those who dislike Johnson would have accused him of totalitarianism if he had gone straight for criminalising standing within 2m of another person, or being in groups of more than 5 etc. Perhaps he will need to do so but persuasion needs to have failed. I can just imagine the response from the left wing of the labour party if ID cards had been made compulsory, public gatherings criminalised etc.

Some form of i.d. ffs. I have no i.d. card but I have a passport, a residence permit, a driving licence, a NHS booklet, and who knows what else.

So, no, that isn't 'the problem'. Do try to be less pedantic.

Other countries/cities are obliging social establishments to shut down. Johnson is dragging his feet on strict measures while Brits swarm around spreading the ******* virus. Why?

Ron Paul says it's a hoax.
Son Rand Paul has tested positive.
Schadenfreude feels so good!

I agree that part of the problem is that people don't trust Johnson, and in part that's because he's spent decades cultivating an image of being a buffoon.

But he needs to step up to the plate. There's an article floating around talking about when the attitude in the government shifted from Dominic Cummings saying "if some pensioners die, then so what?" to realising that we're in genuine trouble. The thing that allegedly swayed them was getting a report saying that if they carried on as they were then 250,000 people were going to die.

So tell the people that. Have graphs and charts prepared. Show how closely we're hewing to Italy of 14 days ago and explain why doing what Italy did is not enough. This is too important not to. Thousands of people are going to die.

I think you may have just stepped in from an alternative world.

but mainly it's because he's lied repeatedly and brazenly....

McConnell and his cronies never miss an opportunity to pad the pockets of the rich:

NPR: No Deal Yet For Massive Coronavirus Aid Package

When will the UK government - and people - start taking this seriously?

When the people around them start dropping like flies.

Boris Johnson isn't taking it seriously yet and prefers to keep his head in the sand hoping it will go away, so why would the populace be any different?

People don't want to change the way they live their daily lives (not even temporarily), so they'll look for any excuse to justify not changing their ways. Boris Johnson is giving them that excuse.

For all the talk about panic in the UK its denialism that seems to dominate. Before I got assigned to work from home I heard every excuse under the sun not to take this seriously. Starting with 'the press are exaggerating', working through 'its only people with underlying conditions who are dying' and 'its not killing as many as the flu' all the way to, 'there was some bug going round my family a couple of months ago, it was probably coronavirus but they just didn't have a name for it'. People in the UK just don't want to believe that there could be something that qualifies as genuine honest to goodness crisis. Disasters here mean train crashes and terrorist attacks, terrible sure but limited in scale and duration, that something that could truly be a disaster on a national scale is something they think only happens in movies or on TV.

Trump Tweets

@JBPritzker, Governor of Illinois, and a very small group of certain other Governors, together with Fake News @CNN & Concast (MSDNC), shouldn’t be blaming the Federal Government for their own shortcomings. We are there to back you up should you fail, and always will be!

The news media is no longer covering Trump's rallies in their entirety (as of >year ago).

Look, he's discovered daily briefings with the same old phony promises are getting full coverage. A little sparring with the reporters, lots of name calling and passing out blame tickets keeps them interested.

And Rand was haolding up the Corona Virus bill with a BS Amendment that had no chance of passing.
Looks like Karma decided to kill two birds with one stone.

Aaaaannnnd the press conference begins.

He's reading off a bunch of big numbers, the biggest numbers, the best numbers, perfect numbers....

Tells us he's acting, taking big actions, bold perfect actions....

Incompetrump prefers reading off long meaningless lists of his accomplishments.

Droning on and on.

Umm ... posts #236 onwards seem to be about US politics.

Now his minions are saying the same things.

Second guy, Navarro, repeats more of the same, praises incompetrump.

There's nothing here anyone needed to know. And they've said before, it will be there by week's end. We are on the 3rd-4th week's end with little to show.

Pence holds up his plan again, same one he has held up multiple days in a row now. Promises whatever in a couple days. :rolleyes:

Trump's back now repeating what he already said about the two hospital ships. Maybe he didn't think he gave enough attention to the great things he's doing. Not clear when those ships will be ready to sail, again.

Blames Democrats for the partisan blocking of the relief bill even though McConnell is doing his usual, my way or the highway.

Trump claims signing a bill means he's acting even though he hasn't acted. Equates instructing companies to make needed equipment with Venezuela.

Of course, he prefers to grant big contracts to cronies.

He claims he's ignorant about company capabilities like that's hard to find out. What's in Pence's plan he keeps holding up? Did they not assess production capacity?

Incompetrump is at it again, bragging about himself.

Now he denies defunding the CDC pandemic planning team. Blames China.

Acts like a 14-15 day shut-down will fix everything.

Talks about how important it is for corporate bailouts (not his words), adds we have to help small business and workers as what sounds like an after thought.

He's too good to ask past POTUSes for help. Such help wouldn't save one life.

Goes back to the 14-15 day projected shutdown and blames China again. Claims he took fantastic action again blocking Chinese coming from China.

"No one could have seen this coming" repeated again. :rolleyes:

He has no clue that N95s and other masks don't need to be sterilized (not counting the OR). Confuses reusing the masks with use in general.

Now he's whining for not getting enough credit for giving up his salary and sacrificing his riches.

Now he's excited about his magical chloroquine cure again. Fauci is not there to contradict him.

He blames China again. Thinks China turned down US help out of pride. Loses track of the timeline there. Claims if we had sent people in sooner, we would have known the pandemic was coming.

He thinks he acted early again.

Pence thinks his test swab went into his sinuses. Of course he doesn't know basic anatomy, why would I think he did.

Claims they'll be caught up on testing in a couple days. Admonishes labs to run those tests first. Of course they are running prioritized tests first. One more thing they pretend they have done something when they haven't.

Claims payroll was going way way up before this happened. That'd be a surprise to a lot of workers with stagnant wages.

Incompetrump claims he gave up billions to be POTUS when asked if he sold stock.

Makes up more **** about that and about other sacrifices he claims he's made. Going over a list of his accomplishments. He says he's too rich to care about making money.

More :words: about his sacrifices and great accomplishments.

He's still pretending the GOP has a great health care plan just around the corner and claims the ACA is better now because of how they are running it.


You may wonder why I watched this. So do I.

There's a coronavirus thread in the US politics section. Posts about US politics should go in there.

The UK government's advice to engage in social distancing has had a profound effect here in rural areas.

On a typical Sunday we'd have a handful of walkers coming past our house all day and the local attractions like the Eagles' Nest and 365 Steps would have a few dozen in total.

Yesterday the lanes were packed with people engaged in social distancing. Car parks which are usually at 25% capacity were completely full and cars were parked down the lanes - which, because they are single track made things rather tricky for larger farm vehicles.

Thank goodness that the weather is excellent, cold but sunny. I cannot imagine how depressing it would be if the rainy, foggy, murky weather of the last three months had continued and forced us all indoors.

Little thought:
If enough Republican senators need to isolate compared to Democrats, they might sneak in a little Impeachment Conviction ...