Current Affairs Coronavirus Thread - Serious stuff !!!

[Kenshin]

It's a completely spurious argument to use demographics in this way. There will be ramifications for the long term health of many young people who have been exposed to this virus. The long covid19 problem is something the health professions know all about and have warned younger age groups to heed.

What you're proposing will store up a health disaster years down the line.


We all must be protected from the virus.

With all due respect Dave.

If noone was dying from covid at all then it wouldn't be classed as a pandemic.

So the death numbers are absolutely the marker for this and the demographic is long term surely important , even if in the short term not so much.

So any country in the world would not be arsed if people were getting sick, it's what has happened afterwards that has made it such a serious situation.

 

[davek]

In and out of freezers, physically demanding and in sustained close proximity to others.

Yes. Depends on the size of the enterprise I suppose. If it's a small restarurant then only a single chef plus assistant would be cutting the meats I'd imagine. It's not meat factory levels of contamination but droplets can and must be picked up, hence the rates of infection in that trade.

 

[Jebus_lives]

If locking down = catastrophe for an area or sector that's a result of a political decision to stand aside and make it happen. There's nothing axiomatic about lockdowns leading to economic catastrophe.

And it might be difficult for an area to shift gears in terms of its economic activity but it's not impossible. Look at Liverpool shifting from a port related core economy to tourism; or certain Scottish mining or steel areas turning into silicon glen.

That's just the churn of economic activity in any nation.

By the same logic it's a political decision to balance the health risk vs the economic or as is more appropriate the short term health 'benefit' vs long term health detriment. Lockdown should not be done lightly, it should be targeted and specific for maximum benefit and it should not be done without regard to oblique consequences.

Again, locking down may not cause economic catastrophe for an entire industry, but it can cause significant difficulties for a significant number of people and subsequently supporting services in that area.

Patrick Minford would be proud of your last point.

 

[Jebus_lives]

Yes. Depends on the size of the enterprise I suppose. If it's a small restarurant then only a single chef plus assistant would be cutting the meats I'd imagine. It's not meat factory levels of contamination but droplets can and must be picked up, hence the rates of infection in that trade.

Requirement to touch multiple surfaces too

 

[davek]

With all due respect Dave.

If noone was dying from covid at all then it wouldn't be classed as a pandemic.

So the death numbers are absolutely the marker for this and the demographic is long term surely important , even if in the short term not so much.

So any country in the world would not be arsed if people were getting sick, it's what has happened afterwards that has made it such a serious situation.

It isn't just death though. It's the ill health that goes with infection, because these are uncharted waters and no one has any idea how long the after effects of covid19 will take to wear off...if at all. So in that category there are hundreds of thousands worldwide exhibiting debilitating effects of post-covid symptoms....of all ages.

 

[JLW]

No offence but I'm only replying mainly to your first sentence as the others are a bit away from what I asked. There is no doubt that medical staff will be learning all the time, and you hope that shielding the most vulnerable who are likely to be hospitalised will also be more effective. The testing is an utter shambles so I don't think we can count that in the plus column, now that is totally on this and previous austerity driven governments but even though it is their fault once it has failed we have to find other measures to prevent overwhelming the healthcare systems. I'm not sure anyone thinks this is the only thing that can kill you but it does appear to be only or most obvious thing currently that can overwhelm hospitals, shut down schools and close businesses and all the things you are rightly concerned about. That being said I think it is probably sensible that it is given something of a priority, and doing so doesn't mean you are living in fear or being controlled by cotton merchants so they can sell their masks and take over the world with their ill gotten gains, it just means you are willing to act with consideration and willing to listen to scientific consensus on a subject we the average joe knows next to nothing about.

That’s a fair comment but I’m not prepared to sit tight over the next 6 months or 3 years how ever long it takes to get through this. I know many will think I’m inconsiderate/selfish with my opinions but I don’t care. The death rate is very low, ok cases have risen but isn’t that because we’re testing more people now? We are getting guided by the lowest form of the human race, who are telling us one thing but doing the other. The whole thing doesn’t make any sense of what they’re trying to do is madness. I see two things, we either lockdown totally everything or we open everything. Doing this half hearted cobblers is doing nothing because people are still interacting with each other, so do we have a killer virus or not? Because if we did people would be locked down and wouldn’t even go outside with a mask on regardless of the rules the government set.
The way the media and government are acting you would think people are dropping dead on the streets!

 

[NilSatisOptimum]

I have to say I like Rishi. The only person in the government coming out with credit for me.

The current furlough scheme is unaffordable in the long term. If we get people back working part time, and then subsidise their wages, we probably make the best of a bad situation.

Firstly, people's incomes are maintained, or at least to 80-90%. And secondly, getting people back even part time should help preserve their job in the longer term. The longer someone stays out of work the more likely an employer is to feel they are dispensable, and it's also good for people's mental and physical health to be back working.

He is typical Tory spiv, Del boy Trotter with a posh accent, made himself the career in banking sector when it went to the wall and the rest of us paid for it with austerity. I don't like him...

I'd give him some credit if he was speaking about this in July like others such as those affected by the furlough scheme, instead he was spitting all over it. He has somewhat belatedly just seen an opportunity to further himself, tis all.

If he were a real politician he would have been all over this months ago.

 

[Kenshin]

It isn't just death though. It's the ill health that goes with infection, because these are uncharted waters and no one has any idea how long the after effects of covid19 will take to wear off...if at all. So in that category there are hundreds of thousands worldwide exhibiting debilitating effects of post-covid symptoms....of all ages.

That may be true.

But it's absolutely the deaths that is the driving reason for it being a pandemic worthy of a lockdown in the first place.

Noone cares if you are sick, they care about you dying though.

No deaths = no locking the country down. Hence why the government did nothing until the deaths were starting to increase.

 

[Walken]

That’s a fair comment but I’m not prepared to sit tight over the next 6 months or 3 years how ever long it takes to get through this. I know many will think I’m inconsiderate/selfish with my opinions but I don’t care. The death rate is very low, ok cases have risen but isn’t that because we’re testing more people now? We are getting guided by the lowest form of the human race, who are telling us one thing but doing the other. The whole thing doesn’t make any sense of what they’re trying to do is madness. I see two things, we either lockdown totally everything or we open everything. Doing this half hearted cobblers is doing nothing because people are still interacting with each other, so do we have a killer virus or not? Because if we did people would be locked down and wouldn’t even go outside with a mask on regardless of the rules the government set.
The way the media and government are acting you would think people are dropping dead on the streets!

We are at an impasse I'm afraid because I don't really see it that way, I've said on here how impressed I am with certain businesses such as gyms and local coffee/food shops have been in adapting to the crisis to make me feel safe when using them. I don't expect anyone to do nothing for 6 months, but I do expect an attitude of caution and consideration to others and a willingness to adapt and where needed sacrifice. The problem for me is it comes back to have a testing system capable of handling this but we obviously don't and I haven't the first clue when that infrastructure will be up and running, I do feel the process will be slowed down as we payout to cummings pals and tory donors instead of concentrating on performance

 

[Deleted member 48881]

Keir

 

[ToffeeTim]

He is typical Tory spiv, Del boy Trotter with a posh accent, made himself the career in banking sector when it went to the wall and the rest of us paid for it with austerity. I don't like him...

I'd give him some credit if he was speaking about this in July like others such as those affected by the furlough scheme, instead he was spitting all over it. He has somewhat belatedly just seen an opportunity to further himself, tis all.

If he were a real politician he would have been all over this months ago.

The furlough scheme doesn't end for another 6 weeks so I don't understand your point. Why would he bring in an alternative, less generous scheme when the current scheme had months left to run.

It's a bit narrow to just not like him because he's a tory, even though he's produced a policy that any normal labour government would have liked.

And his background is neither here nor there. Class politics irrelevant to me.

 

[JLW]

Without googling as far I know the apps have been fairly low on download

We are at an impasse I'm afraid because I don't really see it that way, I've said on here how impressed I am with certain businesses such as gyms and local coffee/food shops have been in adapting to the crisis to make me feel safe when using them. I don't expect anyone to do nothing for 6 months, but I do expect an attitude of caution and consideration to others and a willingness to adapt and where needed sacrifice. The problem for me is it comes back to have a testing system capable of handling this but we obviously don't and I haven't the first clue when that infrastructure will be up and running, I do feel the process will be slowed down as we payout to cummings pals and tory donors instead of concentrating on performance

A testing system like this mate

And people want to follow the governments guidelines

 

[davek]

Requirement to touch multiple surfaces too

Yeah. It sounds a nightmare. Long shifts, tight working stations, re-circulating air.

 

[Walken]

A testing system like this mate

I'm always wary of anecdotal twitter posts, but yeah there is no doubt its a shambles and will have a hugely detrimental effect of how things go until it can cope

 

[davek]

I think you may be glossing over several extremely painful decades for the city of Liverpool between the two, as well as over a billion pounds of investment from the EU to facilitate that.

Silicon glen was more from the shipping area of the Clyde estuary and is not a huge employer.

I didn't say it was an overnight phenomenon, I said it was difficlut but not impossible.