You couldn't make it up.

[Suff]

There was a discussion on one of the climate forums about whether the world would wake up and realise that Global Warming is an equal, or worse, disaster to Covid-19 and how governments may change their approach to it and dismantle their economies to fix it.

My response paraphrased.

"Dream On".

[Workingman]

Run, run, runaway, who-hoo, run, run, runaway, who-hoo.

I'm gonna run away from you who-hoo.

Bless.

[TheOstrich]

Apparently not fast enough. He's developed symptoms ….

[Suff]

Today the number of cases, total, will go over 1 million.

The number of active cases will be close to 800,000.

The US is rapidly losing control, if they ever had any in the first place.

On the + side it appears that some of the preparations made by the government, like the emergency Nightingale hospital and the early bid to get more ventilators has borne fruit in the UK.

There is one solid fact that should not be ignored. For the next 2 weeks UK cases and deaths will rise, meteorically, because they are already infected and already vulnerable. Whether the peak level reached is sustained or not, or falls away as it is in Italy and other countries with lockdown, depends very much on the people and whether they put themselves within transmission distance or not.

There is no Good in this right now. However there may be some good in the future if lessons are learned. I'm not holding my breath, just an observation.

[Workingman]

On the + side it appears that some of the preparations made by the government, like the emergency Nightingale hospital and the early bid to get more ventilators has borne fruit in the UK.

I needed a laugh. Not.

But back on planet reality we hear that coronavirus patients most likely to die may have treatment withdrawn - even if they are improving. That's down to the fact that in the beginning the government didn't have a scooby and so we still do not have the ventilators and have had to rush into building an emergency temporary hospital, one of three announced so far, and also that we are opening up old RAF hangars as emergency morgues.

We fluked going past 3,000 today, but we will pass it easily tomorrow.

Thank God we are not being governed by incompetents.

[Suff]

Ah back to planet reality, was it really a week ago I talked about the recorded conversation between two Italian doctors who were discussing the fact that nobody over 60, in their hospitals, was getting ventilator treatment.

It is also useful to revisit an article from last week, where the French were discussing their problems getting ventilators. One Swedish manufacturer upping output by 60%, one German manufacturer with 10,000 machines ordered from Iran (a whole years supply), plus orders from Italy and a priority order from the German Government blocking any exports until their 10,000 are delivered.

France, you see, doesn't manufacture ventilators and has some of the highest ventilator standards in the world for it's hospitals. Meaning it takes longer to get their product. Meanwhile French die for a lack of them.

But, after all that, they had the same warning from Wuhan and Italy that we did. Nice to know that they are not triaging the infected and deciding who is going to die or not. Right now, France has been playing musical patients to cope. Pretty soon that is going to end and those stuck in a ventilator drought are going to die.

Of course if we had done what the medical profession advised and ring fenced the vulnerable whilst allowing the virus to circulate and burn itself out, things would be better. But, NO, the Scottish government, Welsh and Irish assemblies couldn't do that could they? No they'd do something different and to hell with advice. Then the people, had they not panicked and stripped the shops, day after day after day and just acted normally, the older would not have had to go further and further in search of basic necessities. They would have been protected and ring fenced.

Yep that's right, it's all our stupid assed government's fault. They had a plan. The problem was nobody was about to follow it because they thought they new better.

Even then, our ventilators will arrive before France gets theirs. Meanwhile Sweden and a raft of other countries are quietly ringfencing their old, going about their business, distancing in bars and not making total asses of themselves. Meaning their country and businesses can carry on.

I guess that'll be our governments fault too.

[Workingman]

Stop straw manning with other countries.

We are in the UK and it is governed by incompetents.

We have had 18 daily briefings and every one of them has had hopes, targets, rampings up, aims and goals, and hardly any of them have been met. Testing of NHS staff has been a priority for two weeks, and is still lacking. The delivery of the correct PPE, and in sufficient quantities, has also been a priority for the same period and it is still not happening. Ventilators are only this week about to be produced. It is all noise. Sorry, but it's not good enough.

The government is doing a lot of saying and very little doing.

Yes, we might have been able to let the virus run, to an extent, as I accepted at the time, so long as we did isolate the vulnerable. We didn't because there was no plan to do so. Full isolation of the 1.5 million really vulnerable would have taken huge resources so the plan was for them to self-isolate for 12 weeks - and hope. No thought was given about how to monitor or help those in difficulties with food and essentials or who would do it. It was all make do and mend - the British way. Herd immunity, but without a plan, anyone?

So, yes, it is mainly the stupid assed government's fault, but I do admit that they have been aided and abetted by society's morons.

[Suff]

We are in the UK and it is governed by incompetents.

So, yes, it is mainly the stupid assed government's fault, but I do admit that they have been aided and abetted by society's morons.

Reading Today's Guardian article on Matt Hancock's press briefing was revealing.

Especially when you get to the bottom where a very large slice of criticism was given to the press. Wherever you go the press has one and only ONE agenda. To tell you how badly the UK government is doing.

I do not deny that things have been a bit bumpy, but how many other countries have built a major reception centre, let alone have another 2 scheduled to be built in order to deal with a ramp up in serious cases? Let alone carried out the extensive legislation changes required to put in force the controls required to bring the outbreak to a decline and, eventually, stop.

The closest to what we see, today, with the federal UK and country based assemblies, is the US and Germany. The US is, truly, shambolic, with no central coordination, states going it alone and other states refusing to go it alone and demanding central solutions. Germany may look better than us right now, but cases per 1M population are higher and deaths are racking up at an ever increasing rate. Whilst the German society is, generally, more staid and law abiding, this contagion is too virulent for that to work too much longer without some serious effort. Yet, we learn, that Germany was very late in ordering its 10,000 ventilators and found the only way they could get them was to block the rest of the EU orders from being fulfilled until Germany have what they need.

The UK, on the other hand, recognising the issue, chose to manufacture in country. The UK will receive ventilators starting Monday and at an ever increasing rate to match the situation. Germany? Well you'd have to dig into the local German press for that and it doesn't look totally unshambolic there either.

I take an excerpt from the Guardian article.

He couldn’t exactly promise how many of the tests would be antibody and and how many antigen, but 100,000 was the hill he was prepared to die on. No more bullshit. No more obfuscation. A real target with his job on the line if he failed to deliver.

To add to the distinct air of the surreal – it’s so rare to find a politician behaving like a grownup – he even allowed journalists follow-up questions. Normally, the minister fails to answer the question and swiftly moves on to the next one. But now Matt was positively inviting interrogation. Had he been clear enough? Do you want more details? Most of the hacks were so startled by this new openness, they didn’t actually have any prepared follow-ups and ad-libbed. For once it was the media doing the waffling.

For reasons best known to itself, the BBC got bored with such an informative press conference and cut to the weather forecast halfway through. Apparently it’s going to be a nice weekend to stay indoors. But Sky persevered to the end and Matt extended the press conference to a record-beating 80 minutes. In more ways than one, he had raised the bar considerably for other ministers in the coming weeks.

When you talk about our government being shambolic. Consider the source. Or all of them.

This Guardian article was strangely honest for the press of the day. That is something I find with the Guardian though. They may not be my political cup of tea, but they have a brutal sense of honesty when faced with this kind of performance. Which is why they stay on my list of papers I read.