Jolly Roger

The jogging thing was something I wondered about earlier, taking the dogs for a loop walk around the country road and footpath near me. A couple of times stopping at the side to let a runner overtake, the path is about two metres wide but then of course I carry on walking in their slipstream of huffed and puffed air. Felt a bit exposed and paranoid as they are doing a lot of heavy exhaling on their route, unlike other walkers or cyclists.

Sweden seem to be doing reasonably well despite having effectively no lockdown. I suppose the population density being less than a tenth of ours and socially distancing as a cultural norm (leaving gaps at bus stop queues) will be helping.

This "died from" vs "died with" distinction is curious. How are the editing guidelines being sold to the journos? In other news, a father of three who fell off an eighteen foot ladder is said to have died with the coronavirus...

Second home owners down the road turned up a few days ago, car with the vanity plate car but no sign of their dedicated holiday VW Transporter. Thought they were down here to lay low but only seemed to hang around a day or two, perhaps they came for their bog roll.

Seems like there are several complications that can skew the understanding of the real threat (as opposed to a calculated or estimated threat), the two most important being a) how causes of death are recorded, and b) how much testing is being carried out and how that feeds into modelling and fatality rates. The testing is obviously not currently reflective of infections as a whole, including recoveries and asymptomatic cases, and the wildly varying rates across countries indicate disparities in testing regimes as well as variance in recording causes of death. The latter point is interesting as according to the most popular article in The Spectator by a retired consultant pathologist: https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/The-evidence-on-Covid-19-is-not-as-clear-as-we-think This suggests that, previously, many flu deaths might be recorded as cancer or motor neurone deaths but in the current epidemic the reverse may be true - if a cancer patient dies and tests positive for coronavirus then it is likely to be recorded as a COVID-19 fatality. This makes ultimate death rates problematic to determine and also comparisons against flu trickier. I suppose the government would "prefer" a high-ish predicted CFR to justify the extreme lockdown measures and economic damage, with as low a real death total as possible to demonstrate that the measures are working. I read a Telegraph article earlier describing how Neil Ferguson, behind the Imperial College "510,000 deaths" paper, was also criticised for his earlier modelling of BSE deaths and the total cull of livestock during the Foot and Mouth crisis of 2001 - subsequent studies suggested that the mathematical models behind the cull strategy were not "fit for purpose". Millions of healthy animals were destroyed as a result. If this guy has the ear of the Prime Minister then I really hope the calculations are fit for purpose, though Ferguson did tweet that the model is based on thousands of lines of undocumented C code from 13 years ago (lol). Seems like anecdotally there are "happenings" that are quite concerning, around clusters of deaths, hospitals full and staff at breaking point, bu the wider picture is very strange and confused.

Bet they give it a wanky name like Dyson Breathe

If anything I hope the good old bar of soap makes a comeback. Can't stand those crappy latherless handwashes, also all those bottles of overly scented shower gel...what a waste of plastic.

Imagine rationing in this day and age. I mean, how would it even work? Will there be a gluten free ration book? Beyond the medical and economic consequences what will the cultural effects be - in this era of wokeness, will people still give a toss about gendered bathrooms when they can't get any bread?

There's a world of difference between stating the observation that herd immunity will provide benefits and pursuing herd immunity by encouraging infections through inaction. Health Secretary has said ""That is a scientific concept, not a goal or a strategy. Our goal is to protect life from this virus, our strategy is to protect the most vulnerable and protect the NHS through contain, delay, research and mitigate."" So where has this "UK against the world" strategy actually come from? Is it just not closing schools as quickly as others?

According to ONS "In 2018, there were 541,589 deaths registered in England and Wales, an increase of 1.6% compared with 2017 (533,253). This is the highest annual number of deaths since 1999 (553,532)." So if 2020 had been again worse year for deaths, but less than 1999 (what happened in 1999?). You could have 540K deaths this year without coronavirus and nobody would really bat an eyelid. So the question becomes, if those deaths are essentially baked in due to serious disease, road accidents, old age, slipping in the bath, how much net change is due to the virus? If many fatalities of the virus are already seriously old, immunocompromised etc. Then might it bring forward the next couple of years numbers? I know it is a morbid subject but will suicides increase? Seems reasonable to expect so if things get bleak, jobs lost etc. Road accidents could be down due to reduced journeys, lockdown. If you add half a million more deaths of people who weren't due to die, effectively the death rate for year has been doubled.

It all seems surreal, like something out of a film. I'm seeing news articles pop up on my phone and almost feel like I'm in some weird semi-dream and losing my grip on reality. You know how moments like 9/11 or other "happenings" induce that primal adrenaline, car crash feeling that's usually sustained over a few seconds or minutes initially, this could be like the same thing over several months. It almost starts to seem a reasonable possibility I could lose one or both parents, last surviving grandparent who lives abroad. Reality intrudes.

What's the deal with testing and the rest kits - is it easy to make them? What do they need in terms of supply chain? Could there be shortages?

So the casualty rate as a proportion of the population for World War One was 1.88-2.2 percent. Assuming worst case scenario could we be seeing the same kind of lasting demographic consequences? Granted the time scales are not the same. I also wonder, health aside, what the law and order consequences will be. Police already saying they will prioritise crimes accordingly. London and a few cities already burned because a drug dealer was shot, could a lockdown or mass quarantine see similar rioting and looting as emergency services are diverted? If you dont feel vulnerable to the disease and want a new pair of trainers then you might not need much of an excuse to cause trouble. Or maybe the sense of paranoia and tribal safety in a crisis causes violence in our more vibrant areas...

I can't help but wonder what would have happened during the migrant crisis of 2015 if this had been kicking off then and infections were happening in the Middle East and North Africa. Also I wonder how large the percentage of people is who secretly welcome the zombie apocalypse scenario,

Agreed. I've said as much in other threads here before but Superdry is an attempt to take a decade (plus)-old fad and make it an enduring business. I remember back in 2008 a friend of a friend buying a "Brad" men's leather jacket to encouraging comments in the pub...now if you wear a hoodie with kanji characters on the sleeve you look like your nan bought you it for Christmas or you have an old Peacocks knock-off. How can you reinvent a brand that is cemented in a very particular style at a specific point in time? Same with Jack Wills - the preppy New England Ivy League style aimed at a narrow age range is only sustainable if the conveyor belt of young people coming into that age range continue to agree that the aesthetic is desirable - if not then poof goes your core market.