Current Affairs Coronavirus Thread - Serious stuff !!!

[whiteshadow]

I can say as an independent american, for a long time both parties have been busy throwing their weakest candidates up against eachother. Its pretty sad when you have 1000 friends, and you look at the candidates and realize the worst of them would still be better than either option. Clinton was scary, Trump a psychopath and an idiot, and Biden a crazy person and an idiot. You couldnt make this stuff up.

Indirectly its the parties faults(directly its the idiot voters), they've for decades just been obsessed with whipping their bases into hatred fueled frenzies towards the other side. What that leads to is ironically what they DONT want, their voters choosing the most extreme, insane candidates that fuel that hatred when a random junior middle of the road senator would easily win.

Yeah, pretty crazy world atm.

Politics seems to be getting really polarised everywhere. I blame social media too.

 

[marnie]

We are open for tourists in Greece from July 1st.This is going to be catastrophic I fear.

 

[COYBL25]

We are open for tourists in Greece from July 1st.This is going to be catastrophic I fear.

From what I’ve been reading, it’ll only be “ safe “ countries whose tourists that will be allowed in ?

 

[marnie]

From what I’ve been reading, it’ll only be “ safe “ countries whose tourists that will be allowed in ?

They are pushing for the Brit market though.

 

[Number_25]

We can sustain it for a while, luckily. Most countries, and I'm talking about developed countries, won't be able to. The fall out from this is going to be seismic I fear.

Almost as if the system doesn't work.

 

[tsubaki]

Almost as if the system doesn't work.

Been saying it for a while, but there is a global reserve of trillions of dollars that could be tapped to pay this off.

 

[Barnfred 55]

There is a delay in when those things become apparent. If concerns are raised in Jan/Feb and the answers follow:

'Capacity will be there'
'yes we'll note the issue and address it'
'Government is working on that'
'don't do this locally national arrangements are in place'

The time you become aware of it is when you need the equipment or need to rely on a process you expected to be in place and it's not.

@peteblue, for example, was suggesting that if people knew this and had worries they should just make local arrangements; which is ludicrous as there needs to be national oversight of distribution, there is not the local resource to simply procure millions of peices of equipment, the DfH put blocks on procurement of equipment they deemed excessive (effectively anything outside usual orders) and local planning arrangements were done in isolation from national planning arrangements and strategies - largely it seems because 'protect life' which should be the top priority was shunted as the national strategy in favour of 'protect the economy and take it on the chin'.

As I said, there will be numerous reasons why people don't post stuff in these forums especially where you may not want to alarm people; but what would you expect someone to post in January if they are assured arrangements are in place?

What we don't know at this stage are the conversations that have gone on at government level, within COBRA, within SAGE, between ministers and senior civil servants including CSO and CMO. These will unfold in the fullness of time. For now, the majority on here are assuming that the total blame lies with ministers, and I don't think that's the case or is fair. Ultimate responsibility lies with them yes, and in particular the Prime Minister, something he publically accepted early on in the crisis. But responsibility is not the same as blame. I can easily imagine a question being asked by Hancock, "Have we got sufficient PPE?" If the answer came back Yes, is he at fault? No. If the answer can back No and he did nothing, then he deserves to be prosecuted for manslaughter. If the answer came back No, and he said, well lets sort it out so we have enough, then the picture becomes more complex as other factors are added.

People are quick to apportion blame and that's very easy with the benefit of hindsight, but IMO, it's a lot more complex than that and I would rather wait until we have the full facts before I start calling them out. Having said that, there are some people, especially in the ministerial department, who are clearly out of their depth and I would include Matt Hancock in that list. He isn't up to the task, but that doesn't mean that he is automatically to blame for everything that has gone wrong on the medical side. I would still replace him though because I fear we are still in the early stages of this crisis.

I agree that the government made a big mistake by taking a too balanced approach to this crisis by trying to protect both the economy AND the nations health. It should have concentrated on the health side. But I have always said that we are dealing with 2 emergencies here. The longer this goes on the more weight the economy will be given and eventually it will become the driver in our decision making if a vaccine is not found and soon. You might not like that, I don't myself, and hopefully it will never get to that. Fortunately we have a relatively strong economy but I predict you'll see many of our European friends taking risks sooner rather than later to try and get the economy back on track.

 

[Barnfred 55]

We are open for tourists in Greece from July 1st.This is going to be catastrophic I fear.

Think it was inevitable with Greece's economy. Problem is you've all been so well sheltered from it too.

Have you seen any of your government hand outs yet mate. I know you said you were still waiting last time you posted about it. Must be over 2 months you are owed now isn't it? Hope you are managing OK.

 

[Barnfred 55]

From what I’ve been reading, it’ll only be “ safe “ countries whose tourists that will be allowed in ?

Did I read somewhere Israel is one of them, or is that Cyprus.?

 

[Jebus_lives]

What we don't know at this stage are the conversations that have gone on at government level, within COBRA, within SAGE, between ministers and senior civil servants including CSO and CMO. These will unfold in the fullness of time. For now, the majority on here are assuming that the total blame lies with ministers, and I don't think that's the case or is fair. Ultimate responsibility lies with them yes, and in particular the Prime Minister, something he publically accepted early on in the crisis. But responsibility is not the same as blame. I can easily imagine a question being asked by Hancock, "Have we got sufficient PPE?" If the answer came back Yes, is he at fault? No. If the answer can back No and he did nothing, then he deserves to be prosecuted for manslaughter. If the answer came back No, and he said, well lets sort it out so we have enough, then the picture becomes more complex as other factors are added.

People are quick to apportion blame and that's very easy with the benefit of hindsight, but IMO, it's a lot more complex than that and I would rather wait until we have the full facts before I start calling them out. Having said that, there are some people, especially in the ministerial department, who are clearly out of their depth and I would include Matt Hancock in that list. He isn't up to the task, but that doesn't mean that he is automatically to blame for everything that has gone wrong on the medical side. I would still replace him though because I fear we are still in the early stages of this crisis.

I agree that the government made a big mistake by taking a too balanced approach to this crisis by trying to protect both the economy AND the nations health. It should have concentrated on the health side. But I have always said that we are dealing with 2 emergencies here. The longer this goes on the more weight the economy will be given and eventually it will become the driver in our decision making if a vaccine is not found and soon. You might not like that, I don't myself, and hopefully it will never get to that. Fortunately we have a relatively strong economy but I predict you'll see many of our European friends taking risks sooner rather than later to try and get the economy back on track.

No you're right, we cannot blame the Government for every misstep, but they do set the strategy for the UK. They should be listening to advice and evidence, challenging and scrutinising.

They were right to change strategy when they did, but they adopted the wrong one to begin with. In the balance of economy vs health, there should only be one winner.

 

[ToffeeTim]

They are pushing for the Brit market though.

I dont think that many will travel abroad this summer. Everyone I know has cancelled (or going to cancel) or delayed to Autumn at the earliest.

 

[Catfish Blues]

Why have the government now done a complete volte face and decide to talk about checks and quarantining people coming into this island?

First, just so there's no confusion on my position, we screwed up on controlling our borders and making everyone quarantine when they came into the country.

Second, we're still late to the party, because, even though the numbers now coming into the country is relatively low, and would be easy enough to check that they're quarantining, we're not currently doing that.

Finally, I'd say the main reason for starting to do it in June is to discourage people from going abroad on holiday while transmission is still relatively high in the UK. On average, roughly 1 in 400 people in the UK is infected at any one time.

So, depending on the size of aircraft, there's anything from a 1 in 2 chance of an infected person being on an outbound flight. Even with social distancing at airports and resorts, and face masks on flights, that still makes large numbers of flights going in and out of the country relatively high risk.

If, until transmission rates and new infections are lower, you can make it much harder for people to take an early summer holiday, then it makes sense to do so. The likes of O'Leary might scream and shout, but feck em.

 

[LinekersLegs]

By the way, i advise you all to read this, it pretty much explains why in some countries we had 1000s of cases/deaths while in other countries the numbers are few hundreds, but in the same time it also explain the problem going forward:

Been following the author of that article for a while on twitter, good source of info and writes some interesting articles. Just posted this link to hydroxychloroquine paper

 

[COYBL25]

They are pushing for the Brit market though.

I’d be very surprised if there are flights from the UK tbh

 

[COYBL25]

Been following the author of that article for a while on twitter, good source of info and writes some interesting articles. Just posted this link to hydroxychloroquine paper

Have to be very careful with the second fellas name