Current Affairs Coronavirus Thread - Serious stuff !!!

[davek]

How very right wing of you.

Lol. You confuse socialist with liberal. Which doesn't surprise me, tbh.

 

[JimmyJeffers]

I've just had a look back through posts on this thread.

The amount of horrendous shouts in here about how it wasn't going to be a big deal is terrible.

To be fair, it wasn’t until North Italy went into full lockdown that I really took notice. Seemed very distant and exaggerated until that point.
However, when that happened we should have followed suit and gone into lockdown shortly afterwards. We all knew it was coming for a couple of weeks beforehand and there was this weird period where we we’re just waiting for confirmation.

 

[Old Blue 2]

Make of this what you will. I don't know what to think about it. Food for thought. Never heard of the guy before, so don't have an opinion either way about him. Educate me. Don't shoot the messenger.

 

[Jebus_lives]

You can assume anything you wish, you usually do anyway......

The first mention of Ferguson you make in this thread is here:

Telegraph....

”The scientist whose calculations about the potentially devastating impact of the coronavirus directly led to the countrywide lockdown has been criticised in the past for flawed research.

Professor Neil Ferguson, of the MRC Centre for Global Infectious Disease Analysis at Imperial College in London, produced a paper predicting that Britain was on course to lose 250,000 people during the coronavirus epidemic unless stringent measures were taken. His research is said to have convinced Prime Minister Boris Johnson and his advisors to introduce the lockdown.

However, it has now emerged that Ferguson has been criticised in the past for making predictions based on allegedly faulty assumptions....”.........

Which is from the free to read part of a Telegraph article. It gives no information as to what the criticism is of Ferguson's modelling or if the criticism is valid.

Interesting about your post regarding if the UK will have Europe's highest death toll?

absolute crap.....

Your next post on Ferguson is this:

I’m very glad he has quit. That Imperial College guy, Neil Ferguson, has been the one who spooked everyone with his forecasts and has a history of getting them wrong. So we should all be glad he’s gone......I reckon he’s done this on purpose to slide away......

Interestingly contrasting with this regarding Cummings:

If he was guilty of breaking a law then prosecute him just like anyone else. But the more I see of this the more it seems to be a politically inspired witch hunt, having nothing to do with public health. It’s about the man not the event....

Your next post about Ferguson is this:

Without doubt we have screwed up. Cabinet, Civil Service, NHS, PHE, CMO, CSA, the lot of them...from PPE to sending old folk back to the care homes to reinfect others, it hasn’t shown up the U.K. in a good light. But we are where we are and how we come out at the end is what counts. This disease and it’s effects have either been grossly underrated, by government and most of us on here, or grossly overrated, by Ferguson and the wild eyed media. We need to calm down a bit, stop trying to score political points, get the media and its outlets to behave a bit more responsibly, stop this ‘murderer’ nonsense and use what we have now learnt to deal with this virus. It’s worth remembering that no one, not even Germany, truly understood what was happening. The world knows a little bit more now, so we shall have to see how it goes......

Which seems like a 'everyone is to blame but let's wait and see' type response

Which then transferred into another copy and paste of a free to read Telegraph:

Bloody Ferguson.....

”The Covid-19 modelling that sent Britain into lockdown, shutting the economy and leaving millions unemployed, has been slammed by a series of experts.

Professor Neil Ferguson's computer coding was derided as “totally unreliable” by leading figures, who warned it was “something you wouldn’t stake your life on".

The model, credited with forcing the Government to make a U-turn and introduce a nationwide lockdown, is a “buggy mess that looks more like a bowl of angel hair pasta than a finely tuned piece of programming”, says David Richards, co-founder of British data technology company WANdisco.“.......

Then followed by:

As I read that I couldn’t help think that for the most part he is merely stating the bleeding obvious and forecasting what just about anyone on here would guess at.....

Which is a bit of a contrast to your 'nobody knows'

Then we get this:

His ‘modelling’, which has been shown to be incorrect many times in the past, has been discredited yet again. @davek ‘s numbers and projections are closer to the reality than his.......

Presumably the 'many times' are the 6 paragraphs from the non paywall part of the Telegraph?

Then we finally arrive at this drivel:

‘We didn’t know, and I didn’t say, but looking back I can confidently say, now I’m not part of SAGE and my reputation is in the sewer, that 20 million people less would have died if I hade been in charge, or if I’d mentioned it at the time’.....the man is now an ex expert and proving himself to be a bit of a tosser.....burning his bridges with his fellow SAGE members....

I don't have to assume, the thread is a record...you read a headline in the Telegraph and saw an opportunity to shift blame away from Government at a time in March when the UK had gone from 100 deaths to 1000 deaths in just under two weeks.

You've just doubled down on your initial 'evidence' since as if it is established fact. It's honestly pathetic.

 

[JimmyJeffers]

Make of this what you will. I don't know what to think about it. Food for thought. Never heard of the guy before, so don't have an opinion either way about him. Educate me. Don't shoot the messenger.

His waistcoat really clashes with that mahogany book case. I do love that old leather chair though. I imagine it makes all manner of noises when you sit down on it.

 

[Hickson9]

To be fair, it wasn’t until North Italy went into full lockdown that I really took notice. Seemed very distant and exaggerated until that point.
However, when that happened we should have followed suit and gone into lockdown shortly afterwards. We all knew it was coming for a couple of weeks beforehand and there was this weird period where we we’re just waiting for confirmation.

I'm sure the reason we waited was because the Tories didn't want to shut down the economy.

Perversely, waiting to go in to lockdown has meant a much longer lockdown and a much bigger hit to the economy.

The OECD is projecting the UK is going to have the worst contraction of any developed economy, at 11.5%.

Factor in the 63 000 excess deaths and it has been a disaster.

 

[Toast]

I've just had a look back through posts on this thread.

The amount of horrendous shouts in here about how it wasn't going to be a big deal is terrible.

If you look back on the Schneiderlin thread loads thought he was boss at first.

You are allowed to change your opinion you know.

 

[JimmyJeffers]

I'm sure the reason we waited was because the Tories didn't want to shut down the economy.

Perversely, waiting to go in to lockdown has meant a much longer lockdown and a much bigger hit to the economy.

The OECD is projecting the UK is going to have the worst contraction of any developed economy, at 11.5%.

Factor in the 63 000 excess deaths and it has been a disaster.

Yeah I think they didn’t want to believe what they were seeing to be honest. I can understand that to a degree but these people were elected to make tough decisions. They failed.
Fairly certain that if this had happened under a Labour government, a few ‘certain’ posters would be using similar language to what @davek is using now.

 

[Hickson9]

If you look back on the Schneiderlin thread loads thought he was boss at first.

You are allowed to change your opinion you know.

The scientific evidence of transmission was available, supported by examples of huge outbreaks in Europe.

The temporary form of a player being projected forwards by football fans isn't quite as robust is it mate, or relevant.

 

[davmaher]

So did we the stats rise after the packed out beaches on the bank holiday?

I wouldn't have thought so. The risk of catching it in most outdoor situations seems very low. The main risk for a rise in cases will be when we start going into work, shops, restaurants, pubs etc. as the lock-down continues to be eased.

 

[JimmyJeffers]

If you look back on the Schneiderlin thread loads thought he was boss at first.

You are allowed to change your opinion you know.

He looked great at first to be fair.

 

[xena]

I think this is the week when people are starting to find out the reality job wise . I know two people who’ve been made redundant In the last couple of days . It’s really going to start biting now .

I agree my eldest son as just been in for a consultation 60 jobs going out of 250 luckily he's been told his job is safe he's been worried for weeks. Think this is the time companies have to make these decisions because of the notice they need to give .A lot of families are going to really struggle.

 

[AUXLEN]

I had a big argument with my partner on the evening of the 16 March, the day BoJo told everyone to stay at home, avoid non essential travel but didn't close down pubs/restaurants/shops.

We went for a walk and every pub we passed had loads of people in. I said we should be in full lockdown right now and this semi lockdown was going to kill people. She was of the opinion that people were fine to go for a drink and we shouldn't judge.

It was so obvious to me at the time and unfortunately I was completely right, with tens of thousands of deaths the result of BoJo acting too late.

This is why, for me, anyone acting like it is only clear in hindsight is a load of rubbish.

It was obvious, if you understood exponential growth and were willing to actually take the decision.

I never predicted it was going to be as bad as it was but I was laughed at in Feb by work colleagues when i said we would likely have to stay indoors and was not shaking hands.

 

[Hickson9]

I never predicted it was going to be as bad as it was but I was laughed at in Feb by work colleagues when i said we would likely have to stay indoors and was not shaking hands.

Must have been frustrating mate.

I drew up a Covid-19 protocol week of 9 March in work for how we should run all of our Boards because my workplace (a central Government Department) weren't cascading anything down or taking any proactive action, due to not wanting to seem out of step with what the Cabinet were doing. It was quite shambolic really.

On a plus side, my work place has been excellent since the lockdown started.

 

[brieverton]

Without a sensible programme of government intervention, certainly.

A good place to start would be to get every UK airline to replace every aircraft more than ten (or five if we really want to be thorough) years old and where the cabin cannot have some element of social distancing, and help them buy more efficient, more suitable (in the current climate) aircraft off Airbus. The same could be done for cars and vans, getting the more polluting vehicles off the road and scrapped whilst helping car firms here keep going.

Getting many more track and trace teams would also be a big help - we should be looking at a system that can get people to your door 90% of the time within an hour of you reporting symptoms, this would mean around 70-80000 people but they'd be employed and would help the rest of us stay employed by keeping the economy open when this disease comes back.

This is exactly the type of aggressiveness that is needed with this virus. A containment strategy is not enough. It should be hunted down ruthlessly, and that will bring massive benefit for all and a much faster return to the vaunted "normality". The alternative is a cycle of repeated and/or localised lockdowns, causing yet more economic damage, until and if a vaccine is developed.

In all timeframes, ultimately there is no conflict between public health interests and the economy.