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The control is the historic mean weekly number of deaths from 2010-2019 (most other analysis use 5 years, but I processed all the ONS data available instead). This is the baseline in green (geometric mean and 95%) confidence limit for the mean. The model is an epidemic model of COVID19 deaths fitted to a simple parametric model (generalized logistic curve fitted to daily incidence), then this is lagged in time and used as a non-linear covariate to predict a multiplicative factor by which baseline all-cause deaths are multiplied.
The model fits the NHS regions simultaneously then aggregates them to count deaths in England and Wales. Model does not account for changes in parameters for ease of lockdown - it presumes things have remained basically fixed from about Mid-March. That turns out to be a pretty good description of the data. It might need relaxing in the tail, but it's not a big effect (yet!)
The further relaxation of lockdown will lead to increased transmission but we just don't know how much.
Who has ACTUALLY had a second wave so far? Iran?
Japan/Singapore have seen outbreaks that have been squashed, but anything more anywhere?
The spike at Wk 12 was brought down by lockdown only to pre-spike levels. Do they really think there won't be an immediate spike with the easing of lockdown? I counted 11 people on the skateboard ramp yesterday. I've seen one person wearing a mask in town. The lack of clarity, obfuscation of statistics and changing and unclear guidelines means that this easing is going to be dangerously shambolic, the Cummings Codger Cull.
I do wonder if the narrative is changing about Boris and his 3hr 'power naps' and playing tennis at the palace is preparing us for his departure on the basis of ill-health? Sunak is keen on the chlorinated trade deal, is popular with big business and what a way to 'address' the racism problem?
Cummings Codger Cull
Deserves recognition.
Next PM odds:
Starmer 7/4
Sunak 5/1
Gove 14/1
Raab 16/1
Hunt, Hancock 25/1
Ignoring the obvious problem for the Tories in that list right there, the job seems Sunak's to lose.
Who has ACTUALLY had a second wave so far? Iran?
Last time I looked Iran has a second wave of *cases* but not deaths. So *maybe* their second wave is just better testing and they aren't seeing a real second wave.
What the apparent lack of second waves means, who knows. Lot's of different possibilities.
That Whately yin is thicker than a whale omelette.
It's what you get when your main selection criterion is belief in a stupid 'project'.
You end up with stupid and/or unhinged people rising higher than they would in normal circumstances.
Ignoring the obvious problem for the Tories in that list
Would opposition be a problem for the Torys? They will have been in power for 15 years. The economy will have been tanked with lots of bitterly unpopular decisions to be made.
Sunak can take over in 2025 and a revitalized party can win against an unpopular Labour Govt in 2030 or earlier. (It could even force Labour into an unpopular coalition with the SNP or the kind of nightmare minority government the Torys endured last time.)
Suffering from CV plus the nightmare of the crisis has knocked Boris for 6, he's a wreck.
I reckon any Tory back benchers with reasonable majorities would be happy to lose the 2025 election. (If it wasn't for the threat of Corbyn they'd have been happy to lose in 2019.)
(Not sure what this has to do with CV.)
TiRed does you model differentiate between genuine Covid deaths and lockdown related deaths which are not directly linked to Covid. e.g. delay in seeking hospital treatment for cardiac events, delay to cancer diagnosis or withdrawal of cancer treatment etc? Some of these will obviously be long term - e.g. someone who didn't seek cancer diagnosis in early April may not die until 2021. It seems unlikely that your graph can return to the baseline so quickly given these effects - unless they are statistically trivial? This is actually the key question for government - when does the lockdown do more harm than good. Actually you need to look 10 years out to see the health implications of economic harm and educational harm - but you might expect to see some long tail on the total deaths this year even if direct covid associated deaths gets to zero.
Given how few data points you have, and the number of degrees of freedom your model must have its not exactly a great fit (you can probably visually see an asymmetry to the data) - I think you would be able to see how a tail on that could still see you having low numbers of deaths into weeks 32-26, without any impact from lockdown. I'm guessing your model assumes people die within a defined period, whereas there will be stragglers who linger on before finally Covid, or complications of intubation/ventilation catch up with them. If you model is pre-relaxation then the deviation from that model should be measurable which would be interesting?
Ignoring the obvious problem for the Tories in that list
I read that as being to do with the colour of Rishi Sunak's skin....
TiRed does you model differentiate between genuine Covid deaths and lockdown related deaths which are not directly linked to Covid
There’s a line on his graph for reported Covid deaths, and a line for all excess deaths. Unpicking those in the way you are asking may never be possible.
when does the lockdown do more harm than good.
without lockdown the nhs would still have to deal with far more many critical (lockdown reduced cases by 85%) cases so with or without lockdown there would still be an effect on the "unrelated" deaths
Actually the ONS have tried by looking at causes. There is no increase in cardiovascular deaths, with the majority ascribed to dementia (basically being old) in the absence of testing.
Now the model actually describes each of the health regions very well. I don’t model Wales deaths, but predict Wales excess from the population mean. Then the aggregation of multiple predictions (With bootstrap uncertainty) and central limit theorem pulls in the prediction interval. It’s good enough to tell me the immediate first wave excess deaths and is actually very sensitive to changes in COVID19 deaths (it’s not additive).
I don’t propagate any prediction uncertainty from the weekly expected deaths. If I did that as well, then the peak would be well-described as the range is about plus minus a thousand. The bands signify statistical significant differences rather than uncertainty year on year.
Those individual regions - I could model a change in behaviors with a switch between logistic and generalized logistic, and think that this is evidence of the effects of lockdown on the asymmetry. The effect is not huge though.
I remember being horrified at nearly 300 folk dying in one day in Italy.
We're opening Primark.
@tired what is the week 20 spike (/week 19 low) in non-covid deaths? Appears on both the ational and regional graphs.
As sharma witters on aimlessly about unlocking the economy, what plans do you have to release your pent-up demand for retail therapy from next Monday?
No scientists or experts present today; a sign they're being sidelined?
There must be someone in johnson's clown circus with some credibility to front the next presser.....
I was supposed to wait till Monday?
Ive somewhat hit the online sellers the last week or so.
what is the week 20 spike
Bank holiday weekend lowering previous week and raising the next I think
There must be someone in johnson’s clown circus with some credibility to front the next presser…..
Actually, I don't think there is.
Tossers.
We wants the Priti 🙂
No scientists or experts present today; a sign they’re being sidelined
The two senior advisors, Whitty and the other one who's name escapes me, were last on with Boris last week. Van Tamm and Harries haven't reappeared since they both gave implied criticism of Cummings
Bank holiday weekend lowering previous week and raising the next I think
Correct - VE day weekend.
I read that as being to do with the colour of Rishi Sunak’s skin….
I read it far more like Sunak has a soul and seems to be at least half decent unlike say randomly Patel though I think the major problem is Starmer batting for the other side.
Correct
See, I'm learning!!!
Piers Morgan - yes, I know but....
https://twitter.com/piersmorgan/status/1270417493790732289?s=20
Dunning-Kruger field test
Some of the replies to Morgan's tweet are quite tragic. They bang on about how the government has setup and paid out through the furlough scheme.
Furlough according to this link has so far cost £100bn
Wow - that is a lot of money you would think (and it is). It is actually vital money that has had a huge impact on people's lives in this country.
Hold that thought and take a look at the cost of this which (in the opinion of a lot of independent analysts) will cost the country far more than it has already for many, many years:
https://www.businessinsider.com/brexit-will-cost-uk-more-than-total-payments-to-eu-2020-1?r=US&IR=T
So - how good is Cummings' government really doing overall???
You make your own mind up.
You know how when railway franchise operators like First Group and National Express can't see out the duration of the contract they just hand the keys back? Can the government do the same thing please.
eskay - can't read the business insider link as I use an ad-blocker; I'm guessing the point is that brexit costs - financial, economic and opportunity - massively exceed CV19 support.
Yep, that's about the size of it and we still have the hard of thinking who believe the end of the brexit transition period will lead them to the land of milk and honey; elysium; ambrosia.
I'm a dedicated remainer; brexit is economically and culturally destructive; an incompetent gov which cannot see that the UK is nothing more than an irritant to the EU and an opportunity for the US
CV19 would challenge the most competent of governments but we don't have a gov in the UK with even a smidge of competence; a clown circus led by an incompetent with a cabinet of sycophants.They are directly responsible for tens of thousands of avoidable deaths.
Otherwise, we're in a great place - Ha!
Brexit costs to the country will soon be greater than all the money EVER paid to the EU by U.K. according to the article
Thanks dan; have read that before; no great surprise.
Talk about spaffing....
We know that on top of the public health issues around COVID-19, there will be an economic hit due to the measures enacted - lockdown/social distancing etc. A few articles I read looked at GDP going down by 10-12% GDP this year and unlikely to bounce back quickly. That in itself can be viewed as a public health issue - it negatively affects people's health and lifespans.
With a no-deal brexit looking likely, the (pre-COVID-19) government analysis suggested a no deal brexit could be a 10% hit to GDP.
Seems both of those hits will come around the same time - the end of 2020 and beginning of 2021.
That's a bit gloomy to say the least!
Brexit costs to the country will soon be greater than all the money EVER paid to the EU by U.K. according to the article
Ah but It was all about ‘taking back control of our borders‘.
Which strangely at the first sign of a global pandemic When other countries did we didn’t bother and even those countries held in thrall to the evil EU shut borders.
We even had a terribly greater advantage in er being an island.
(Sneaky edit as too much negativity in one post)
Now going to finally be allowed to open from Monday, for outdoor buildings only and take-away cafe. Let's hope this hasn't come too late for Chester and others, who have been really struggling financially during the pandemic.
eskay – can’t read the business insider link as I use an ad-blocker; I’m guessing the point is that brexit costs – financial, economic and opportunity – massively exceed CV19 support.
Yet all the praise of Sunak and his Furlough scheme he’s never been shy of making it know that TAXPAYERS will be footing the bill and TAXPAYERS are helping those out on Furlough and the TAXPAYERS will be footing the bill thereafter.
In other words and with reference to the economic chasm between the cost of Brexit to the cost of COVID19, the Furlough scheme balancing act is just a smoke screen for TAXPAYERS to pay for Brexit. Cummings strategy 101 - distraction.
This government has tipped the UK over the edge. Do we really have to wait another 4 years to get them out?
Small sample size, but not negligible. Looking good for normal life with some adaptions.
Two Missouri hairstylists with #COVID19 cut hair for 140 people. 45 of these decided to get tested. Results just came back: all negative. That's 30-60 mins of being within a foot of each other. Stylists and clients all wore #masks.
https://www.kbia.org/post/many-clients-great-clips-stylists-covid-19-test-negative-illness#stream/0
That Whately yin is thicker than a whale omelette.
And why is she doing a TV interview while sitting on the toilet?
The tories have never managed the economy well so they have a history of increasing profits by pay cuts, privatisation, government investment in their mates' private companies (eg Nudge Unit, Faculty, SERCO seems to do very well, Dido), zero hours contracts, cut pensions, tax cuts, ignoring tax evasion and encouraging avoidance, anti-union legislation. This is what Thatcher called 'rewarding the wealth creators'. You now have a significant number of them are neo-liberals who believe, like Gove, in creative destruction, whereby many rights are lost and workers' conditions will be diametrically opposed to those of an MP let alone a boss, whatever they get you won't. Wage cuts make people angry, and hungry, so you need to provide industrial food at minimal cost so we have the Agriculture Act and Rishi favouring American food standards and trade deals. Someone will be arguing that the NHS underperformed during CV, it has to go.
If the economy tanks and people protest, Priti will call in the tanks. Now, where are those water cannons? After the oil and banking crises, why would anyone think that employees won't be made to pay for all this? Blimey, the landlords and the credit companies want their money back with interest and they've got full backing from Starmer, who gets full backing from Mandelson. The only employees who get a rise will be the police, like under Thatcher, because it will be their job to be world beaters. When all this happens, blue Labour hasn't provided an alternative narrative but rather demands to do the same a bit better with 'get a grip', 'don't break the law', 'pay your rent'. As Thatcher said, 'There is no alternative' (certainly the case with the current Labour front bench).
A landlord was telling me last night how he's given tenants a month rent free (they have no income) but if they don't sort themselves out by Christmas, eviction awaits. This will be replicated all over the place. Tax payers funding exorbitant rents to private landlords for people who've been made homeless by other landlords, might even be the same people. People are persuaded or threatened not to fight their corner, Corbyn is a commie, wait five years until we get some limp neo-tory in a shiny suit and a boys' haircut calling out for 'professionalism and electability' and working hard for his sponsors.
This isn't going to go well.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-52993734
That's a really interesting look at how it spread. It'd be good to see more of this as the science progresses and more information is known.
That’s a really interesting look at how it spread. It’d be good to see more of this as the science progresses and more information is known.
many paths of transmission onto our island (by healthy or mildly ill holiday makers) is bad news for New Zealand, and on a smaller scale, remote communities with little current infection, is it not?
Bojo just now:
Bubbles for people who live alone
Shops and zoos from next week
Not much else of note.
Still not allowed to travel to grandparents in the countryside to stay with them, just in case we need childcare?
So the message is still that they have it under control but the R is close to 1 so be sensible.
So why are they opening all the shops then? If R is so close to the tipping point how is letting everyone go to the local shopping centre going to help? If the R is close to 1 then any small jumps are going to make a big difference. Glad I'm in Wales where we're being a bit more cautious, officially.
Not much else of note.
You mean he didn't say anything about Neil Ferguson's point that locking down a week earlier would have reduced the death toll by at least a half? 20,000 people dying due to his laziness and indecisiveness is going to be quite a legacy.
Glad I’m in Wales where we’re being a bit more cautious, officially.
You’ll all be back in the workplace and schools in Wales before us… but that’s what happens when you have a government that thinks getting something done means just promising a date and no more measures required...
Tory MP on Radio4 moaning about teachers and unions again… no dummy, get the virus probably under control and then schools can open safely… teachers and unions can’t do that... YOUR GOVERNMENT CAN.
Technically Boris is single (unless he got married recently) - this "bubble" malarkey is just a way for him to continue philandering. He doesn't want to fall foul of the rules like DomCumm did. He's creating rules to facilitate his "activities".
You mean he didn’t say anything about Neil Ferguson’s point that locking down a week earlier would have reduced the death toll by at least a half?
The journalists asked him about it. He basically said it was down to the scientists. That’s not going to make the scientists keep quiet… far from it.
You mean he didn’t say anything about Neil Ferguson’s point that locking down a week earlier would have reduced the death toll by at least a half? 20,000 people dying due to his laziness and indecisiveness is going to be quite a legacy.
Ferguson was actually pretty generous, he said the infection was doubling every 3-4 days prior to lockdown so locking down a week earlier would have at least halved the deaths, but 2x doubling times in a week would be more like a 4x reduction in death.
Ferguson had to downplay it a bit: he was estimating a doubling time of over 5 days at the time which is probably a significant part of why we were so slow to act.
So the message is still that they have it under control but the R is close to 1 so be sensible.
The message was that R is between 0.7 & 0.9 average across the UK using an average of 13 models.
That means that some outcomes from the ensemble of models will be much higher and maybe lower too.
There's more variability when you look at regional values.
Less and More we’re discussing lockdown dates today, they clearly said the models were wrong so maybe this one doesn’t fall at BoJo’s door.
he was estimating a doubling time of over 5 days
On March 18th this was the official position - as communicated by Boris. It wasn't however correct. Cases were actually doubling every three days and deaths every two days. We probably had a few days to act earlier, a week perhaps, but the statement about halving deaths is a conservative one given the calls for action up to two weeks earlier. These calls probably had some influence on transmission prior to lockdown. My first analysis was posted on March 14 and showed exponential growth of cases and deaths from that date. It didn't get any better during the following week.
On another note, over on lockdown skeptics I've been arguing about Sweden. Mortality rate in UK is 600/M. Sweden 450/M. Denmark and Germany 100/M. Finland and Norway 50/M. It is very hard to not compare Sweden with the other Scandinavian countries. To have created an intervention that has saved nine times more lives is nothing short of a miracle intervention in the medical world. Norway have no excess deaths in the 85+ age group according to euromomo. We have about 30,000.
Norway have no excess deaths in the 85+ age group according to euromomo. We have about 30,000.
That’s our ‘ring of steel’ around care homes.
Turns out that bullshit costs lives.
this one doesn’t fall at BoJo’s door
He wasn’t in. But of course it does.
International football matches and horse racing going ahead, while scientists and medical workers in other countries were screaming advice at us. This stuff isn’t about hindsight. It’s about a government being absent ‘till it was way too late, despite us having the advance warning that other countries unfortunately did not.
Still, can we now go and stay with grandparents in the countryside ‘just in case’ we need childcare? I want a holiday in Cornwall [don’t have somewhere to escape to in the North East].
johnson is PM so everything falls at his door.
All of this assumes, of course, that all countries are recording deaths in exactly the same way.
Otherwise, it's like comparing apples and a blue Ford Sierra.
It’s like counting thousand and thousands of apples. Don’t fall for that bullshit, there are plenty of ways to look at and compare the scale of the impact of the virus in comparable countries. The government were doing so daily, ‘till it became clear how badly they were doing.
feeding in to the SAGE were 3 main teams SPI-M, SPI-B & NERVTAG
https://www.gov.uk/government/groups/scientific-advisory-group-for-emergencies-sage-coronavirus-covid-19-response
at least some were concerned about the strategy 2 weeks before they did lockdown
https://www.channel4.com/news/uk-government-advised-to-have-lockdown-two-weeks-before-announcement-made
It was becoming obvious that government believed we were either further behind other countries than we were (or herd immunity was the goal?)
https://twitter.com/lewis_goodall/status/1238242156365721609
data was out there
https://twitter.com/jburnmurdoch/status/1239276487062233089
and the reason Johnson gets so flustered by Beth Rigbys questions is that he was saying this
https://twitter.com/RhubarbWaffle/status/1261948748382511104
while scientists and medical workers in other countries were screaming advice at us.
I remember being in the office like the calm before the storm moment and our lot started WFH a week before It was advised by Gov.
People were watching the news and getting in place for the fan and shit to hit, it really wasn’t a surprise.
I spoke to my boss yesterday and he said that all our main contractors are revising plans to move to 1m distancing by next week
Its the right move but, will be funny to see who they run over whilst reversing the bus
That video, picturing the UK as The proverbial Superman. Now look, we are the Verruca on the foot of the European continent that no-one wants to get anywhere near.
Water off a ducksback for BawJaws, he could fill an hour of you've been framed with such vids now.
Otherwise, it’s like comparing apples and a blue Ford Sierra
Not really. Excess mortality is counting cars. We can argue about the model and colour, but not whether it’s a car. That’s why excess mortality is the gold standard. Everyone dies once for the recording process.
The data is tragic. For the wrong reasons. If you learned probability and z-scores at school, those tables to find the chance of something happening stop at a score of 4. The U.K. was 40 standard deviations over its historic mean! To quote...
“You’re going to need a bigger table”.
data was out there
The data showing a clear trajectory was getting posted on this bloody thread while he let people go for one last night down the pub. It was obvious to any lay person who looked at it that we were doubling at least every three days. But they dithered, and people died.
he let people go for one last night down the pub.
He didn't "let" them down the pub, thats inaccurate.
He provided advance notice of shutting them and the selfishness and stupidity of some people meant that they used the opportunity to get down the nearest boozer as soon as possible.
I'm sure there were many people sat at home thinking "there's no way I'm doing that", but you can't account for the ignorant. He should have shut them down immediately accounting for that stupidity, rather than provide advanced warning which is a continued mistake.
Any areas in England showing a rise in cases (not R estimation) then due to the relaxation?
Every local health board region in Wales is showing a decline in cases.
Was wondering about 'ole Boris, who got hit pretty hard with COVID-19. It seems there are lots of longer term complications with this disease (e.g. https://www.vox.com/2020/5/8/21251899/coronavirus-long-term-effects-symptoms), and these reports of him needing big naps etc and him basically not doing much....
I don't know what I'm wondering, but I am wondering
but you can’t account for the ignorant.
Yes you can.
He should have shut them down immediately accounting for that stupidity, rather than provide advanced warning which is a continued mistake.
See you explained the answer yourself!
Ha! Fair enough...
Any areas in England showing a rise in cases (not R estimation) then due to the relaxation?
Somerset and North Devon. Whether it is relaxation related is a moot point.
Personally, I believe that given the machinations of government (meetings cycles and information filtering), we probably had less than a week to pull the trigger. Friday 20th would have been my Churchillian media moment. That would have saved a weekend and about one doubling time. Lives saved is again debatable because the source was most likely hospital and nursing home.
The biggest failure, which I have said all along, has been not devolving testing which limited all other options. NHS announced a ramping up on 11 March. SOP was published on 16 March for NHS labs - this should have been rolled out to ANY available labs (not just NHS/PHE) to expand capacity. Emptying hospitals of untested elderly to nursing homes looks like a tragedy and the untested part will have been capacity-limited.
"We conclude that face masks reduce the daily growth rate of reported infections by around 40%"
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3620070
The governments tactic of signalling changes in advance is a disaster, and you'd have hoped they'd have learned from the last night in the pub debacle, but no, in the run up to the last bank holiday they announced relaxing restrictions to come into force the following Monday. Immediately a significant minority go out and break the current lockdown.
Why they feel the need to test the water when it comes to the nations health is beyond me and is definitely one that needs answering in front of a select committee.
Short Cummings seems to need to blind taste every policy announcement rather than govern like a government that has been elected to do. It's almost like they don't have the strength of their own convictions and are reliant on the dark art of spin.
If one good thing has come out of this, I hope a lot of us are going to be angry enough to hold this shower of shit to account, I had turned my back on politics after the last election, but this is making my piss boil and I intend to work out how to constructively channel this anger to affect change.
And I'll post this once again - all-cause over 65 mortality in Scandinavia with England added for good measure from https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps#
If I was Swedish, I would want to know what my neighbors were doing so differently. I'm English...
You can’t leave the vulnerable to shield themselves… you have to control a virus like this by the actions of all of us who are not vulnerable. It was true in February, and it is still true.
It's telling / damming that this clip of Rory Stewart (a leadership contender at one stage) has surfaced...
https://twitter.com/WillBlackWriter/status/1270844518531846145
Various red-tops (I won't link to them) are going with variations of "fast food industry must share the blame over coronavirus".
Poor hygenie practise? Lack of distancing in restaurants pre-lockdown? Nope. Becasue they make people fat.
Whatever happened to personal responsibilty?
Why they feel the need to test the water when it comes to the nations health is beyond me and is definitely one that needs answering in front of a select committee.
They're kite-flying. They see what reaction they get then either confirm or deny it. This is how populism works. But you could see that they even lost their ever-loyal mates in the right wing press when they called this wrong, hinting at a lifting, then not following through after all their front covers had been splashed with YAY!! LOCKDOWNS OVER!!!! but it went down like a lead balloon with all but the seriously hard of thinking.
The thing that's bizarre about all this is that we have been told that the reason that Cummings is invaluable is because he can gauge the public mood and which way the wind is blowing. Well if that's the case then why is he effectively making policy by a rolling ongoing focus-grouping of the nation?
The governments tactic of signalling changes in advance is a disaster, and you’d have hoped they’d have learned from the last night in the pub debacle, but no, in the run up to the last bank holiday they announced relaxing restrictions to come into force the following Monday. Immediately a significant minority go out and break the current lockdown.
Why they feel the need to test the water when it comes to the nations health is beyond me and is definitely one that needs answering in front of a select committee.
Short Cummings seems to need to blind taste every policy announcement rather than govern like a government that has been elected to do. It’s almost like they don’t have the strength of their own convictions and are reliant on the dark art of spin.
This government - and many of its predecessors - is only interested in how things appear, what will "play well" with people whose votes they might gain or retain. The power of the focus group used to hold onto power.
The actual outcomes are secondary and can be explained away, have blame shifted elsewhere or can simply be diverted from.
They continue to be successful (if the measure of success is holding onto and consolidating power) because they understand the importance of messaging far better than their rivals, and have been able to conceal their subtle ability to control messaging behind a clownish facade. Ha ha ha, that Chris Grayling, giving out a ferry contract to a company with no boats! What an arsehole! Dominic Cummings! What a nasty piece of work in his scruffy clothes and toddler's hat, thinking the rules don't apply to him!
Meanwhile the concise, memorable three-word slogans keep coming, all the MPs are remembering to say "our country" and "our NHS" and the news keeps rolling, squeezing out the stories that really matter, such as the relationship between the government and Serco for instance, allowing them to continue pursuing their ideological aims.
These are dangerous times for this government though, as most people with the power to vote have a basic grasp of illness and death, unlike other things the government gets to decide, such as EU membership, foreign policy and the economy.
Can they ride it out? With a general election not due for another four years, and no fundamental shift in the modus operandi of the British media, I wouldn't bet against it.
that Will Black Tweet is the kind of thing we need to see on the news so that the hard of thinking can see what actually was going on back at the beginning of all of this, not what they remember or the govt has said was happening. Social media has it's issues but at times like this it's very handy for acting as a library of what was being said at the time.
Various red-tops (I won’t link to them) are going with variations of “fast food industry must share the blame over coronavirus”.
Poor hygenie practise? Lack of distancing in restaurants pre-lockdown? Nope. Becasue they make people fat.
Whatever happened to personal responsibilty?
You just have to look at the queues that formed for Burger King, KFC and McDonald's the instant they re-opened to realise that a large part of our society is addicted to their quick fix of jink food but, as with most addicts, it's never their fault but the fault of the companies for forcing them to eat there. Personal responsibility is an alien concept to most.
What did Hezeltine say about Johnson? Something like…
“He’s the kind of man who waits to see which door people are queuing to go through, then jumps to the front of the queue shouting ‘follow me’” (from memory, feel free to correct me)
Add into that the “source from no10” approach embraced by Cummings… ie. brief anything, and then either deny it or claim it as official, depending on the response, and we are where we are. Time for the media to put a name to all sub-announcements the PM’s team make, or refuse to carry them. That is the single most important step that needs to happen. Now.