I keep coming back to this thread by epidemiologist @dgurdasani1. The gravity of the situation we find ourselves in & the government’s failure to intellectually grasp what is happening...is honestly terrifying. We are on the cusp of a whole new catastrophe.
Independent SAGE published this yesterday. The only option left it says is full lockdown now. What @dgurdasani1 explains so well is why closing schools is so vital. And why failing to do so now will have such a devastating outsized impact
The gaping chasm between the public perception of what is happening & the danger we are actually in has never been more profound. These are today’s papers. We’re in worse place than even March. That was result of genuine ignorance about exponential growth.This is wilful blindness
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This is what’s depressing me this morning. Independent SAGE, NI & Scottish govt all backed calls for #ZeroCOVID strategy. There was a window of opportunity to suppress the virus. It really didn’t have to be this way.
Scotland decided on elimination strategy. @IndependentSage wrote positioning paper on #ZeroCovid & partnered with @bmj_latest to bring together 4 nations to discuss.
For the last 6 months, I’ve been a member of a Signal group called ‘trollhunters’. A small group of people who’d noticed - & been disturbed by - the extreme trolling that happens here & had come together to try & figure it out. To understand how pile-ons were being organised..
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We take so much of what happens on here as ‘normal’. It’s not. That’s not say it’s ‘bots’ - though they come into it. Or Russian trolls - though they’re here too. Often it’s ordinary people. With a greater or less degree of organisation. Who come together to bully & inflame
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It’s been fascinating to eavesdrop on their conversations. And to learn with them. I feed them my trolls - look at this guy, I say, who doesn’t follow me or anyone I know but is on my case calling me a cunt & a criminal within seconds of a post. I have so many of those.
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Well, they don’t call it the Orwell Prize for nothing. The dystopian truth twisters are out again: @spectator has taken a verifiably false claim & woven it into ideological talking points from RT & Sputnik. Thank you for this incredible honour, @afneil spectator.co.uk/article/carole…
Here for the hell of it is George Orwell’s son - an amazing moment. And a funny-not-funny related story. An hour before this, Guardian’s lawyer @ladywell23 rang me in alarm: she’d just found out Banks had reported me to police. 2 days later, we drilled what to do in police raid..
That ploy failed but 2.5 years on, here we are. Where even free speech libertarians line up to take a whack. I’m grateful for support of @RSF_inter@pen_int & others who see the law as one part of changing & worsening threat landscape for journalists
NEW: the government has privately admitted the combined impact of Covid + pandemic will disrupt multiple essential services including food, medicine & drinking water & risks plunging UK into a ‘systemic financial crisis’. From @_EmmaGH & me
The ‘official sensitive’ briefing of ‘Reasonable Worst Case Scenarios’ has been distributed to multiple govt agencies.
Yesterday, the Cabinet Office refused to comment on both the content of the leaked documents or why these scenarios were being kept secret from the public
This document needs to be read by the British public. It’s Operation Yellowhammer updated to reflect situation now with the country preparing to exit Europe in the middle of a pandemic. It depicts a nation under huge pressure without time or capacity to prepare for what’s ahead
Okay, hands up who has ever left their job on the actual day they resigned/got the push with a big brown box? It literally doesn’t happen apart from in bottom-of-the-algorithm Netflix movies. I’m sorry but I suspect this is really far nearer the mark
Well, I for one, am sad that Cummings is going. He’s the living link to Vote Leave corruption. The reminder that the same govt that is bringing you Brexit, mass death & billion pound contracts to cronies came to power by deliberately subverting our electoral laws. What a legacy
A reminder of how much attention, BBC’s political team gave Cummings when Vote Leave was accused of electoral fraud (allegations later found & admitted). His claims of innocence & accusations against others were repeated. There was no other mention
And this was how his contempt of parliament was covered