Current Affairs Coronavirus Thread - Serious stuff !!!

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Bruce Wayne said:
Yes, you do.
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The above in response to Tubey's: "...After all, apparently you have to do a thing to have an opinion on things, right?..."

If you are correct, Bruce (and you are not, you are wrong), then I would never have written one word (you know what I'm talking about...).
 
Bruce Wayne said:
Of course. This is such a massive, complex, and unprecedented issue that it would be unbelievable if mistakes weren't made, and as you say, there will almost certainly be some kind of process at the end of this where behaviours are assessed. We can do our stuff on here all we like, and I love doing so as much as you do, but neither of us will be called as witnesses in that inevitable post-mortem, and with good reason :)
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I mean it feels unlikely, I’ve had enough of courtrooms so I suspect when it comes to my absence you ,me and the government will all breathe a sigh of relief
 
roydo said:
Nothing official yet, but a general concensus that another few weeks are nailed on.
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Common sense would say another 3 weeks for further review nearer the time. I think it's clear from the daily stats that we are not nearing the turning point yet, and until that happens we can't even consider even a phased withdrawal from lockdown.
 
Harryflashman said:
however what puzzles me are the statements coming out at the time that A large gathering wasn’t an issue . Clearly that’s completely changed now , so what’s caused that total reversal?
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To be fair, when she was asked abour large outdoor gatherings, she didn't say they weren't an issue, it was more that, in terms of risk rating, they were relatively low risk.

So, there could be transmission at Cheltenham, but, if the people hadn't gone to Cheltenham, unless they'd sat at home on their tod, transmission could, for example, have occurred in pubs and restaurants, and there may well have been more transmission, especially if the races went on behind closed doors.

Politically, to avoid blame, it would have probably been better to cancel Cheltenham, but, scientifically, it didn't make sense to do that in isolation, so you'd have had to shut everything down at the same time.

At this moment in time, with the benefit of hindsight, going into full lockdown in mid March seems sensible, but was the country ( ie the public ) ready for that at the time ?
 
Bruce Wayne said:
Of course. This is such a massive, complex, and unprecedented issue that it would be unbelievable if mistakes weren't made, and as you say, there will almost certainly be some kind of process at the end of this where behaviours are assessed. We can do our stuff on here all we like, and I love doing so as much as you do, but neither of us will be called as witnesses in that inevitable post-mortem, and with good reason :)
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There is a principle in disaster response that is used by all the UK agencies that respond to any major incident called the joint decision model, which effectively says you gather intelligence, assess risk, consider power and policy, identify contingencies and act. Now, let's say the option the UK picked was to balance the harm of the virus vs economic harm (which is a reasonable measure) then you could make a good case for keeping things open as long as possible; but you would have to peddle hard in the background getting your house in order for the peak; or, you lockdown immediately which gives you more time to get your house in order, but has a much greater impact on the economy. It's the 'least worst decision'.

The UK took option 1, then seemed to reevaluate based on new information. Which is exactly what they should've done.

However, where I think there is a legitimate criticism is, despite taking option 1, then failed to adequately put the UK in order to manage the impact properly - I suspect partly because they (Johnson especially) wasnt taking it particularly setiously. And knowing that, and seeking to prevent further scrutiny about it, they've no started to blame everyone for the failure or decry any scrutiny as damaging to the response effort.

The difference is that in response you accept it's the best endeavors in difficult circumstances (provided you accept the failing), politically no-one will allow you that grace.
 
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ToffeeTim said:
There are people already bored and starting to find it tough to follow the regulations. Theres already far more cars and people about than there was at start of the lockdown. If we had introduced this 2 or 3 weeks earlier I reckon the situation would be far far worse.

I was very sceptical at the time when they held off on clamping down by warning that the timing of measures was crucial. But now I'm starting to see where they were coming from. In my opinion we are definitely not ready to come out of the social distancing measures, but if we'd had 5 weeks now rather than 3, the clamour for relaxing the measures would be huge. Lockdown is clearly the right solution right now but it's not a longer term or permanent solution. So it's a very tricky decision down the line for when we need to relax things.
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I think even when we do start coming out of this social distancing will still be part and parcel of our lives for a few more months at least. But for the sake of our business's and our minds, we need to get some of our cafes, bars and restaurants operating again, even on a reduced capacity basis. I'm not saying now, but in maybe 4/6 weeks time god willing. Mass gatherings need to be put n the back burner for the foreseeable future.
 
Catfish Blues said:
To be fair, when she was asked abour large outdoor gatherings, she didn't say they weren't an issue, it was more that, in terms of risk rating, they were relatively low risk.

So, there could be transmission at Cheltenham, but, if the people hadn't gone to Cheltenham, unless they'd sat at home on their tod, transmission could, for example, have occurred in pubs and restaurants, and there may well have been more transmission, especially if the races went on behind closed doors.

Politically, to avoid blame, it would have probably been better to cancel Cheltenham, but, scientifically, it didn't make sense to do that in isolation, so you'd have had to shut everything down at the same time.

At this moment in time, with the benefit of hindsight, going into full lockdown in mid March seems sensible, but was the country ( ie the public ) ready for that at the time ?
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fair answers mate . I suppose having a PM joking about shaking hands with sufferers and an inalienable right to go the pub didn’t really prepare us , I’m unsure I was massively prepared at that stage If I’m Honest and I suspect that could well be a failure of government as well .
 
Catfish Blues said:
To be fair, when she was asked abour large outdoor gatherings, she didn't say they weren't an issue, it was more that, in terms of risk rating, they were relatively low risk.

So, there could be transmission at Cheltenham, but, if the people hadn't gone to Cheltenham, unless they'd sat at home on their tod, transmission could, for example, have occurred in pubs and restaurants, and there may well have been more transmission, especially if the races went on behind closed doors.

Politically, to avoid blame, it would have probably been better to cancel Cheltenham, but, scientifically, it didn't make sense to do that in isolation, so you'd have had to shut everything down at the same time.

At this moment in time, with the benefit of hindsight, going into full lockdown in mid March seems sensible, but was the country ( ie the public ) ready for that at the time ?
Click to expand...
Agree with all that.
 
Bismark famously said "God has a special providence for fools, drunkards, and the United States of America." I wonder if he would say it if he were around today?

 
JEBUS_LIVES said:
There is a principle in disaster response that is used by all the UK agencies that respond to any major incident called the joint decision model, which effectively says you gather intelligence, assess risk, consider power and policy, identify contingencies and act. Now, let's say the option the UK picked was to balance the harm of the virus vs economic harm (which is a reasonable measure) then you could make a good case for keeping things open as long as possible; but you would have to peddle hard in the background getting your house in order for the peak; or, you lockdown immediately which gives you more time to get your house in order, but has a much greater impact on the economy. It's the 'least worst decision'.

The UK took option 1, then seemed to reevaluate based on new information. Which is exactly what they should've done.

However, where I think there is a legitimate criticism is, despite taking option 1, then failed to adequately put the UK in order to manage the impact properly - I suspect partly because they (Johnson especially) wasnt taking it particularly setiously. And knowing that, and seeking to prevent further scrutiny about it, they've no started to blame everyone for the failure or decry any scrutiny as damaging to the response effort.

The difference is that in response you accept it's the best endeavors in difficult circumstances (provided you accept the failing), politically no-one will allow you that grace.
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It's always extremely problematic making straight comparisons between different countries with differing demographics and population densities too.

Any post-mortem will have to take into account varying parameters which differ greatly not just between countries but between and within different areas of a particular country.

An older population is vulnerable, that's well known, but some parts of the country are also extremely densely populated, London for example, the largest city in Europe by population, has 9m people in a relatively small area, which would differ hugely from more sparsely populated areas both in likely transmission rate and therefore virulence of the virus, and that's without the news clips of packed markets etc. It also raises the point that different parts of a country will have different timings of their peaks and therefore be past their worst time way before other parts.

Australia has been remarkably successful in keeping its death rate far, far lower than most other countries despite far laxer social distancing, more businesses being open for far longer and schools stayed open for example. You could point to the tough immigration and travel policies making it very difficult for foreign nationals, or even the early travel bans on badly hit countries like Iran, South Korea and Italy, but far more likely for me is the actual demographics. Almost all the populated areas are concentrated in cities on the east coast, Sydney the largest, Brisbane to the north east and Melbourne down in Victoria. Adelaide in South Australia and Perth on the west coast the notable others.

The point being that most of the country consists of vast swathes of sparsely populated land and the great distances between their 'isolated' densely populated cities is so large that most travel between them by air.

So a variety of differences in a countries population, area size and demographics will almost always indicate differing vulnerabilities and which would have far more natural protection, and this is before any divergence from common strategies used by many
 
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