Current Affairs Coronavirus Thread - Serious stuff !!!

[roydo]

You're right, but, I don't think that should be any reason for us not to look for long term solutions. We all know Covid-19 is here to stay and it'll flare up every so often, we now need to start thinking about the next 'black swan' event. We should embrace the power that technology has to mitigate things like this happening in the future.

In some ways we were lucky this time - people have been happy to buy newly issued government debt to support the economy. If this happened in the middle of a financial crisis... yeah... I wouldn't like to see that.

I think you will find, and be reassured, that the global community of clever folk who play with this stuff everyday, have been doing that for years

 

[Tramps_mate]

All the bars in Southport and Birkdale are absolutely chocka... Outside areas, separate groups are sat back to back. No surprise its rising!

 

[Mrk]

I think you will find, and be reassured, that the global community of clever folk who play with this stuff everyday, have been doing that for years

Of course they have, but they're a lot less willing to do so during a deleveraging - and, if they did, it would be on their terms.

 

[roydo]

Of course they have, but they're a lot less willing to do so during a deleveraging - and, if they did, it would be on their terms.

Reckon they would win that fight quite easily.

 

[Mrk]

Reckon they would win that fight quite easily.

They may well do - but again, I'm not saying it's impossible, I'm just saying we were lucky this happened when people are willing to buy government debt at 1%. Makes a huge difference to how much we can borrow.

 

[roydo]

They may well do - but again, I'm not saying it's impossible, I'm just saying we were lucky thishe happened when people are willing to buy government debt at 1%. Makes a huge difference to how much we can borrow.

Makes a huge difference to the premium. Not a day in modern history that major Governments have not been able to borrow/print money cos of interest rates though.

 

[tsubaki]

Probably because they've had hundreds of billions of dollars spent on R&D over the past 15 years, coupled with the fact that western democracies are not wired to deal with events like this, either socially or economically.

It'll take an international effort to develop such technology, processes and standards - I hope to god it happens - but it would be fair to acknowledge that all of the wests resources have gone into actually defeating what is immediately in front of them, rather than thinking long term. Far from ideal, but certainly understandable.

If our societies are not wired to deal with events like this, then we are in a very unsafe place indeed - this is (in the historical scale of things) a relatively minor global disaster.

I also disagree that this requires international level work to develop technology to do it (to say nothing of agreeing common standards) - all it requires is adopting and amending the systems we already have in place (for a wide variety of things) to get the state to be in a position where it can as close to guarantee picking up illness early enough and then for the people affected to be able to take the action required to contain it. Having a boss app would help in that, but its not essential.

Fundamentally, all this needs is enough staff to attend and arrange a response (plus do the follow-up work) and then the scientific support to do the tests. That was within our capability to start arranging in February and March 2020, and could have been in place a year ago.

 

[tsubaki]

What vaccines were developed in the Western world?

I mean I dont want to get into a Davek type geo political (not even sure what that is if I am honest), discussion, and mistakes were made, everywhere, but at the end of the day, the window to some relief has come pretty much from UK, EU, and US pharma.

The big enemy not that long ago.

Noone is saying the vaccines haven't helped, but it is almost guaranteed that with better detection and suppression systems we would have not have needed them as urgently as we did.

 

[tsubaki]

We have never had a track and trace system in the entire the history of humans and we've never had this issue in the past - the body will adapt and life carries on.

No, the body doesn't adapt. Millions (tens / hundreds in some cases) do not adapt and die in pandemics, needlessly.

 

[tsubaki]

Its correct though. It will never go away.

It isn't. People seem to be confusing it being totally eliminated with actually doing something to contain it when it emerges.

The former probably is impossible, but the latter is eminently achievable and loads of countries have done it better than we have. It is also the only long term defence we have against the lockdowns you lot all claim to oppose.

 

[LinekersLegs]

 

[LinekersLegs]

 

[Mrk]

If our societies are not wired to deal with events like this, then we are in a very unsafe place indeed - this is (in the historical scale of things) a relatively minor global disaster.

I also disagree that this requires international level work to develop technology to do it (to say nothing of agreeing common standards) - all it requires is adopting and amending the systems we already have in place (for a wide variety of things) to get the state to be in a position where it can as close to guarantee picking up illness early enough and then for the people affected to be able to take the action required to contain it. Having a boss app would help in that, but its not essential.

Fundamentally, all this needs is enough staff to attend and arrange a response (plus do the follow-up work) and then the scientific support to do the tests. That was within our capability to start arranging in February and March 2020, and could have been in place a year ago.

I think this thinking is a little archaic though and certainly wouldn't be a long-term solution. An effective solution would have to rely heavily on technology - it would be absurd not to. So we could in theory produce a short-term solution, but it would be nonsensical for individual counties to start formulating disparate solutions to this issue without some kind of collaboration.

As for it being in our capability - you may well be right, but begs the question, why has no western nation been able to/wanted to do it? Is it cost? Is it a lack of foresight? Is it a lack of deliverability? Maybe it's a combination of them all.

 

[LinekersLegs]

 

[grandjoeblue]

No, the body doesn't adapt. Millions (tens / hundreds in some cases) do not adapt and die in pandemics, needlessly.

See Spanish Flu etc.

There would be an extinction event every 100 years if you were right.