RandoEFC

I'm staying well clear of the sensationalism around Moise Kean. Seems to be another case of many people waiting to be able to label him a flop or the next Balotelli or whatever. He's not scored as many goals this season as was probably expected after his late season form for Juventus but he was 19 when he joined and has shown flashes of ability. In this instance he's been a very silly boy. I don't think the coverage has been that much different to what happened with Kyle Walker or Jack Grealish, but there certainly is an element of lazy journalism (but not actually from many journalists, mainly keyboard warriors on Twitter) with the shouts that he's another Balotelli, and while it's mainly because he's a young, Italian striker with a wild streak, there probably is a racial element to it, but a subconscious one more than anything particularly sinister.

Yeah if they get a tenner off everyone for 50 million tests that's half a billion pounds they'll make back. The amount they've spent on this crisis and will lose in all sorts of tax (VAT, income tax, etc.) will require an increase in taxation for a long time, some have said it could be a generation before it's paid off. This seems like a pretty harmless way to take an initial chunk out of that deficit. The arguments about whether those that are less financially stable than others should have to pay for it themselves remain valid as well though. Aside from the token strange comparison between a virus and a mugger, and frankly bizarre reference to our "apparent success" the day after we hit 20,000 hospital deaths, Johnson was otherwise on point with his statement and his return comes at an important time today. Things appeared to just have started floating again in the UK. The message needs to be that we're on top now and we have to finish the job. He's a dishonest moron but people listen to him and he does have some leadership qualities as a public figure. You can feel a void being filled with Johnson returning as there's a real lack of depth in what he has to offer across the rest of that cabinet.

An update on my local situation: The blue curve represents expected cases if no social distancing or lockdown was put in place. The red curve is an expected trajectory with social distancing measures. The yellow curve is a best case scenario. The green curve is a three day average of actual positive cases. The island has tested almost 3000 residents out of 90000, people have adhered to the government guidance and the borders were closed to new arrivals on the day that the first locally transmitted case of the virus was discovered. As cases started to drop, residents stranded overseas were repatriated and put up in a hotel for two weeks of quarantine before returning to their homes. We now have no confirmed new cases for three days and only 4 people have died in hospital. Unfortunately the major black spot on our record is in a local care home where 12 residents have died after 40+ tested positive for coronavirus. No news on how this happened but a truly awful outbreak there. The lockdown measures are now gradually being eased. The 1 hour restriction on outdoor exercise has been lifted and construction workers and other trades are now allowed to return to work if they deem it possible to do so while continuing to observe social distancing. A good effort overall from our government and community. (Touch wood).

Rishi Sunak actually demonstrates an understanding of detail when he does the briefings, and I do feel a bit sorry for Matt Hancock in all of this. I genuinely think he is working as hard as he can to resolve this thing but I'm not sure everyone around him is working as hard in exactly the same direction. Hopefully some of the new blood on the opposite benches prove to be a bit more impressive. Angela Rayner is the only one left from the Corbyn era of any prominence and I am a fan of hers. Sturgeon, predictably as the only one with any experience amongst the prominent leaders, seems to have struck the right balance between humanity and states(wo)manship throughout this.

Genuinely the sort of comment that would go viral if Trump came out with it, until he did his next stupid. The Tories' very own Diane Abbott.

We won't be locked down like this for the rest of the year but social distancing will be required to varying levels until there's a vaccine or effective treatment.

I have enough problems with Boris Johnson and this cabinet but there is a much wider issue involving SAGE and that "Nerve" unit who clearly didn't grasp the situation fully until far too late. Johnson wasn't attending the COBRA meetings because our scientists advised him that the virus wasn't a significant issue at the time and it didn't require urgent action from the Prime Minister. How they came to that conclusion, I have no answer. They could be forgiven for thinking it was a distant problem when it was isolated to China but as soon as we had Italian surgeons ringing their colleagues in the UK begging us to go into lockdown instead of leaving it too late like they did I don't understand how it took them several more weeks to get their shit together. Their reluctance to go into lockdown too early on the basis that the public wouldn't stick with it if lockdown went on for too long was wildly misguided as well. Anyone with access to Twitter or BBC News was very aware of the severity of the situation way before we went into lockdown. The hope that "social distancing" which was entirely dependent on every single person in the country obeying "optional" measures was naive at best as well. However, when the government say that they're following the science, it is true, they are following the advice of our scientists instead of what the experts of the WHO have been saying. The government are right to do this at the end of the day, and the questions should be asked of our scientific experts behind the scenes who gave them this advice. There are many missteps the government have taken on a political level, don't get me wrong, but it's a pretty regular thing apparently that prime ministers don't attend every single COBRA meeting. Former ministers from both parties have admitted this today. Johnson has many, many faults but I'm not having this part-time prime minister narrative. He wants to be Winston Churchill and this crisis is the best opportunity he'll get to be spoken of in those terms. It does seem that he over-worked himself after initially being diagnosed with the virus and that contributed to him eventually being admitted to hospital and intensive care. I'm not going to call him stupid for doing so either because I think in the same circumstances I'd probably be just as pig-headed and try to battle through, as would many of us on here.

The one thing that punctuates these press briefings now are the constant "we've been very clear that..." and "as I said at the start of this briefing..." comments from ministers instead of actually answering the questions directly or clearly. It's a very deliberate use of language from the cabinet because it's consistent across the various ministers, trying to make it sound like it's the media or the public who are misinterpreting or not listening properly to their instructions. Annoying and fascinating at the same time. Everyone seen the footage of the clap on Westminster Bridge last night? Fucking braindead twats.

That's most students then. I'm surprised by that.

I love how Piers Morgan has become what he would previously have called a "rampant lefty". Careful with this, I saw the same headline but it turns out it will initially only be for certain pupils. Schools in the UK are still open to an extent already with vulnerable students and those that have key workers for parents still attending with a skeleton staff in school. I was in school on Monday morning, providing what I suppose amounts to a "daycare" service for those kids who sadly have nowhere else to go during the day.

Looks like I also need to add to this: You can simultaneously criticise the government for their slow response and also blame individuals breaking lockdown rules for their own decisions. I know this country has been all about Remain vs Leave, In vs Out, Black vs White for the last 5 years but can we please try and stop trying to make everything an absolute black and white answer? I thought we were relatively safe from that on this forum.

You can criticise and question your government's for their response without absolving the Chinese government for their role in how this has developed. You can simultaneously be pleased that the prime minister has recovered from Covid-19 while still questioning his and his government's handling of the crisis. Questioning the government on one issue doesn't make you a "left wing fanatic" any more than supporting the government on one issue makes you a "right wing nut job". Come on guys. Don't expect everyone who doesn't like Johnson or the Conservatives to suddenly "see the light" just because the bloke got sick and recovered. I've genuinely seen about 100 times more posts like this one here than people actually wishing him ill. What I have seen is a lot of people pointing out quite rightly that Boris Johnson rode the Brexit bus to power, a campaign which was built heavily upon anti-immigrant sentiment, and that he was a part of the Conservative party that voted against giving nurses a pay rise just a few years ago and cheered in the House of Commons when the result was announced. Both of these things are factual and relevant today where the same Boris Johnson owes his life to two immigrants working for the NHS. Another thing I've seen is a lot of Johnson/Conservative sympathisers across the internet trying to conflate these points with wishing the prime minister ill to make those asking fair questions look like the bad guys. The bloke has literally had his life saved by people he arguably trod on on his way to being prime minister (see above). These are nice words, yes, but that's not enough to forget the fact that his ticket to power, Vote Leave, campaigned heavily on reducing immigration to this country as if it was a bad thing, he literally voted against those who have this week saved his life from getting a pay rise back in 2017 while his party cheered and sneered, and even in 2020, his government begins working to kick out "unskilled workers" that weren't born here. 10 years of contempt for public services and immigrants from the Conservative party and ironically he could have died without either a matter of days ago. It will take a bit more than a short speech thanking them for the slate to be wiped clean. They'd appreciate the appropriate protective equipment and effective testing to take place to ease the pressure on the NHS more than more empty words. That said, the decimation of the NHS over the past decade doesn't fall as much at Johnson's feet or the current government. This is an issue that goes back to David Cameron's premiership. And it was a nice touch to mention the two nurses by name.

The headlines have made the 10k thing sound worse than it is. At the end of the day they shouldn't have to put their hands in their own pockets to pay for materials necessary to do their incredibly important jobs any more than anybody else. It isn't a pay rise.

Twats, I heard about this on the radio this morning. If only this virus would punish just them with severe illness instead of them having a cough for a few days and passing it onto people who are going to suffer worse. I think the government have to respond with tougher enforcement unfortunately. The measures are totally reasonable if people actually follow them.

The herd immunity thing was a disaster, and the only reason most of us didn't think it was obvious is that we aren't scientists and assumed that the experts knew better than us. The evidence was there at the time: - China had already shown by that point that you can stem the spread of the virus by introducing severe lockdown measures. I'm not saying it's realistic in a country like the UK to do exactly what they did but they squashed it pretty damn fast. - Northern Italy was already in absolute crisis at the time and the front-line reports and images from hospitals and morgues were readily available in the UK on national news, social media and national radio. Italian medics were ringing us up begging us to act faster than they did. - They literally talked about 'flattening the curve' in the same press conference that they were talking about letting it work its way through the population, which would have created the steepest curve of all. It seemed so stupid to me at the time that I just assumed I knew so little about it that it wasn't worth me passing judgement, but no, they genuinely thought letting loads of people catch it so that they could develop immunity would 'flatten the curve'. - The NHS, by every measure I've seen, was one of the least prepared health services in Europe when it comes to dealing with demand on intensive care. We had already seen the virus run rings around the much superior health service of Northern Italy, Germany has something like double the number of beds per head than the UK, etc. This is another reason why any strategy involving the herd immunity/take it on the chin approach fails to stand up to even minor scrutiny. If there was some other science that it was based on, then they didn't explain it very well at any of the press briefings. Now isn't the time to go in two-footed on the government though. They went back on it pretty quickly which is all you can ask once they've misjudged something. We'll have a much better idea of how to analyse their approach after this is all over and I might get proven completely wrong, but on the evidence available to a "layman" like me, the herd immunity philosophy, while fleeting, doesn't look either competent or responsible.

I honestly don't think you can properly judge any government's handling of the situation until after the whole thing has died down, and even then it's a massive case of hindsight. I think Johnson has shown leadership qualities throughout the crisis in some ways. In other ways I think he should have been more decisive earlier on and introduced the lockdown measures sooner. We could see from what other countries were doing that introducing those measures was effective and we left it a bit too late because we were busy twatting around with herd immunity and Cummings' behavioural science units. The bum/contradictory advice Johnson got from the government scientists can't be blamed on him though.

Good signs I think, hopefully he recovers soon.

I think she's on the way out of it. It's concerning that Johnson's condition has deteriorated as when he posted those videos last week he did only seem to be showing fairly mild symptoms.

That is concerning. You have to hope that not too many other animals can carry it. I know they released some dogs from quarantine a while back in one country after concluding that they can't be infected.

Sake.

Wait wtf. Your post on my phone has the graphs from FT showing the trajectories from each country but when I quote you it turns into the tweet about the American pro-Trump media chatting shit about the virus last month.

Who the government?

It will all come out in time exactly how much China have fucked us. It sounds like there isn't necessarily an organised cover up but more that the people who could have warned us were scared of doing so because they would lose their jobs rather than be listened to if they spoke out. There was also that doctor who tried to get the work out weeks before it was taken seriously but was essentially told to shut up and he eventually died from the virus in December.

There's a lot of shite getting spouted about Johnson 'hiding'. I have no time for the bloke and yes he dodged scrutiny at all turns during the election campaign but he's got the virus ffs. He should be self isolating, it isn't hiding.