When will this shit end?

[steviewevie]

Sweden.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/27/dont-judge-swedens-light-touch-on-covid-19-yet-says-minister

[jparx]

Seems like small nuggets of positivity today with South Korea reporting no new cases and Remdesivir potentially being effective.

[Zoo Music Girl]

My friend in Switzerland sent me this today. Pretty detailed account of the next stages (just posting for interest really):

 

Edited April 30, 2020 by Zoo Music Girl

[Neil]

1 minute ago, jparx said:

Remdesivir potentially being effective

it makes a difference, but from what's been reported the difference isn't very much. It's a long way short of being a game changer (apart from for the individuals who benefit from it).

[Guest]

Wasn’t Remdesivir discredited last week or was that something else?

[jparx]

2 minutes ago, Ozanne said:

Wasn’t Remdesivir discredited last week or was that something else?

Are you thinking of disinfectant? 😝

[Matt42]

1 hour ago, Neil said:

nowadays...? :lol: 

I suggest you have a read-up about the Labour Party in 1931, 1945, 1983, etc, etc, etc.  

Potentially but it I think it’s a different beast now. It’s too big of a discussion not related to Covid but in the most simple way I can put it is like this.

The Labour Party or the Labour membership has two wings at the moment.

1. the new age socialist / communist leaning side - their priorities are based in social justice, gender politics, redistribution of wealth, etc. All important stuff but the problem with them is that these issues are their top priority.

2. the more centrist leaning wing of the party. Old school Labour. Some might call this a shy Tory side. They would like a better society but don’t necessarily subscribe to the radical views of the lefter wing. They probably have some views that the more radical side would find offensive or abhorrent.

The problem I’ve found with the Labour Party in recent years is that these two factions of the party don’t like eachother. This is one reason why I think the organisation of the party has been a total mess, as two large chunks of their membership want different things. The problem with this is a that wing 2, if bullied by wing 1 enough, will swing to Tory.

This is the same thing I’m seeing happen in the USA. The Bernie wing and the Biden wing of the party are just two completely different camps. Unlike in the U.K., the Bernie wing (some might say corbyn wing) didn’t win leadership. The problem the USA is going to have is that some Bernie supporters might just not bother voting for Biden, which obviously hands the presidency further to trump.

I think a sole reason why Conservative parties have been doing so well in recent decades is because their membership isn’t split at all. The brexit issue had potential to split the party, but the conservatives did something that labour would never do. They ousted anyone and everyone who doubted their direction. Labour won’t do that because they are in a position where they need anyone they can get, and they can’t lose any more people to the tories.

Edited April 30, 2020 by Matt42

[Neil]

2 minutes ago, Matt42 said:

The Labour Party or the Labour membership has two wings at the moment.

it's always had those two wings, and they've always been in conflict. And history shows things go tits up for Labour when the more-radical side have greater influence.

A radical party only has a hope if the electorate is also radical. It only takes a quick look around you to know a radical Labour party won't have a hope.

[zahidf]

4 minutes ago, Ozanne said:

Wasn’t Remdesivir discredited last week or was that something else?

Chinese trial but it had less participants than the US and UK trials.

It reduces recovery time to 11 from 14 days on average and the improves the survival rate so far by 0.5% or something like that. So it's useful and probably a good pathway for better treatment (in that they can improve on that framework) but isnt a gamechanger per se

[Matt42]

2 minutes ago, Neil said:

it's always had those two wings, and they've always been in conflict. And history shows things go tits up for Labour when the more-radical side have greater influence.

A radical party only has a hope if the electorate is also radical. It only takes a quick look around you to know a radical Labour party won't have a hope.

This is waaaaay more of a problem nowadays though. I’m seeing some improvement with the election of starmz... but I don’t think I’ve seen two sides of the Labour Party so fundamentally different.

[Neil]

12 minutes ago, Matt42 said:

This is waaaaay more of a problem nowadays though.

it's no more of a problem than it was in 1983, for example. That took 3 general elections for Labour to be electable again.

And it's probably going to be much the same this time, unfortunately. Starmer is an obvious improvement but he's probably a stepping stone and not a future PM.

[Zoo Music Girl]

14 minutes ago, Matt42 said:

This is waaaaay more of a problem nowadays though. I’m seeing some improvement with the election of starmz... but I don’t think I’ve seen two sides of the Labour Party so fundamentally different.

Nah it's always been this way and it goes up and down through history depending on the issues of the day or who's in charge. The left struggles to unite, it's always been that way. Don't know how well you remember the Blair years even but what looked united on the surface really wasn't throughout the party. The Tories have always been better at putting their differences aside for the good of the party (Brexit being the exception but they still unite at election time, when it counts).

Back on topic, just seen this:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-52481522

Hard to imagine how they can possibly reopen the tube and enforce a 15% capacity! I think me and my partner will be working from home for quite some time...

[stuartbert two hats]

25 minutes ago, Matt42 said:

This is waaaaay more of a problem nowadays though. I’m seeing some improvement with the election of starmz... but I don’t think I’ve seen two sides of the Labour Party so fundamentally different.

I suspect this is because you seem to be looking at only the last 20-30 years. It's funny to hear the "New Labour" wing being described as "Old school".

[stuartbert two hats]

10 minutes ago, Zoo Music Girl said:

Nah it's always been this way and it goes up and down through history depending on the issues of the day or who's in charge. The left struggles to unite, it's always been that way. Don't know how well you remember the Blair years even but what looked united on the surface really wasn't throughout the party. The Tories have always been better at putting their differences aside for the good of the party (Brexit being the exception but they still unite at election time, when it counts).

Back on topic, just seen this:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-52481522

Hard to imagine how they can possibly reopen the tube and enforce a 15% capacity! I think me and my partner will be working from home for quite some time...

Although arguably the reason Blair won three terms is because the Tories simply couldn't unite for many years around Europe for so long. 

[Matt42]

14 minutes ago, Zoo Music Girl said:

Back on topic, just seen this:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-52481522

Hard to imagine how they can possibly reopen the tube and enforce a 15% capacity! I think me and my partner will be working from home for quite some time...

I really don’t get how this will work at all. I sat in on a call the other day at my work for how they plan to reopen the office. IT and staff on the ground (printing etc) will be back. But anyone who doesn’t need to come back to the office (for example ... me. As there will be no face to face meetings for the rest of 2020) will remain working from home. I’ve been told it’s unlikely I will be expected back in the office until 2021. Seems a bit of a staggering amount of time. 

[Matt42]

6 minutes ago, stuartbert two hats said:

I suspect this is because you seem to be looking at only the last 20-30 years. It's funny to hear the "New Labour" wing being described as "Old school".

Hmm I understand this point but studying labours history I’ve never seen the divide be one so crucial to the foundations of Labour as a party. It seems to be that (making a bit of a sweep here) the traditional labour voter (and I’m talking back in the early days of the party) doesn’t vote for labour anymore. The social justice and working class wings seem further apart than any past divide in the Labour Party?

[Crazyfool01]

It’s strange thinking about all the repercussions going forward ... simple things like supermarket shopping at Christmas will be unworkable with any forms of social distancing ... the volume of people going through the shops will make queues that take over supermarket car parks so leaving no parking spaces ... add In public transport issues and wow  

[stuartbert two hats]

3 minutes ago, Matt42 said:

I really don’t get how this will work at all. I sat in on a call the other day at my work for how they plan to reopen the office. IT and staff on the ground (printing etc) will be back. But anyone who doesn’t need to come back to the office (for example ... me. As there will be no face to face meetings for the rest of 2020) will remain working from home. I’ve been told it’s unlikely I will be expected back in the office until 2021. Seems a bit of a staggering amount of time. 

Remote working is ok when there's no pandemic on. I miss some of the ambient communication that goes on in an office, but I don't miss the commute - been mainly WFH for almost ten years now and prefer it. But the lockdown has made it very difficult - if you're finding it tough it might not just be about working from home. I suspect it's going to get easier for us all when things have opened up a little.

[Zoo Music Girl]

I usually work from home half the time and enjoy it (I hate the commute even though it's just the tube for me, but always horribly busy), but I do miss seeing everyone in the office from time to time. That said, I've no desire to try and be part of the bunfight that the tube will be if they try to limit passengers to 15% of normal capacity. I think that basically means just key workers and those that really can't work from home then.

The thing is this will also affect social things. How easy will it be to get the tube at weekends for example? I live in zone 2 and I'd say it's normally at about 50 to 60% capacity minimum on a weekend (considered quiet!). So we won't really be able to go anywhere. Sadly we have no friends or family in walking distance and no car, so in real terms we'd be on our own for quite some time yet.

Just to add that I think the tube on a normal weekday morning is pretty dehumanising and increasingly a source of anxiety for me, so I welcome a long-term shift on this. But struggling to see how this will work at all.

[Neil]

5 minutes ago, Matt42 said:

Hmm I understand this point but studying labours history I’ve never seen the divide be one so crucial to the foundations of Labour as a party.

it was much worse after 1983, with loads of members expelled from the party over the following years.

 

5 minutes ago, Matt42 said:

It seems to be that (making a bit of a sweep here) the traditional labour voter (and I’m talking back in the early days of the party) doesn’t vote for labour anymore. The social justice and working class wings seem further apart than any past divide in the Labour Party?

the "traditional" labour voter stopped voting for the party in 1979, after a decade of economic turmoil (oil crisis, too-powerful unions, etc) and the decline of the traditional industries those traditional voters worked in. Add in a bit of Thatcher buying them off over the next ten years with selling council houses on the cheap, tax cuts, and easy money from privatisations, and everything had changed forever.... or had it really?

Fact is that the whole idea of that 'traditional' voter Labour was always a bit of a myth, because the tories have always won more elections than Labour. Huge numbers of those 'traditional' types had always been voting tory on the sly.

[zahidf]

 

Oh god

[steviewevie]

It's the 100k tests a day d-day for Hancock. They probably wont' reach it, might try and fudge it, but testing definitely on the increase. But these are tests to tell you whether you have it, right? The whole antibody test thing been binned?

[Deaf Nobby Burton]

1 hour ago, jparx said:

I'd be curious for @SwedgeAntilles's take on that. I'd certainly trust his account over ITV news.

 

This video is in this report so you can draw your own conclusions, we certainly feel like being a long way from sitting in beer gardens like they are: https://www.itv.com/news/2020-04-29/is-sweden-s-lack-of-coronavirus-lockdown-a-fatal-mistake/

[Crazyfool01]

6 minutes ago, steviewevie said:

It's the 100k tests a day d-day for Hancock. They probably wont' reach it, might try and fudge it, but testing definitely on the increase. But these are tests to tell you whether you have it, right? The whole antibody test thing been binned?

I’m sure  I got a news alert of a 99% accurate antibody test yesterday ... probably not in the uk yet? I can’t find it now  

[steviewevie]

What Sweden have done is put a lot of trust in their citizens to do the social distancing thing without so many restrictions. Maybe wouldn't work everywhere.