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"Returning to London after a year in the countryside, the signs of societal collapse are everywhere - even at 7am
By Amanda Williams"

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-15311313/london-societal-collapse-amanda-williams.html

If you don't believe the judgment of the many pb-ers who live in London and none of whom even vaguely recognise this societal collapse, perhaps consider the judgment of the free market? People are still willing to pay half a million quid for a small two bed flat or a million quid for an ordinary terraced house in much of London, why would they do so if it was so bad?

It is bonkers, outright fiction.

And very on topic, if the question of the day is "why do voters believe things that just aren't true"?

The answer to that is very obvious. Extremely rich people pay billions for media, traditional and social, to lie to us.

This seems...not good.

https://x.com/RnaudBertrand/status/1991352574390227129?s=20

Combine that story with the story about the Dutch chipmaker and you have a picture of how Europe is at the mercy of both the US and China. And compared to those two, Russia should be easy, but Europe isn't really dealing with the war with Russia with much in the way of decisiveness and strength.

I find it hard to understand the timidity of European leaders (among which, I include my own country’s). When reading about the 1930’s, I used to ask myself “how could they be so cowardly and stupid?” The question still applies.

I'd say European leaders have, on the whole, done a pretty good job over my 60-year lifetime. Democracy has spread throughout most of the continent, we still have some of the best standards of living in the world, and very few of us have had to fight or die in wars.

Edit: Ah, I just read the tweet that started this thread. I agree, that is appaling.

And, SFAICS, Europe/EU/EuroNATO is sitting around taking for granted that it is the USA's job, not our job to fix a decent peace between Russia and Ukraine, when this is our continent's war and the USA bias is obvious.

This seems...not good.

https://x.com/RnaudBertrand/status/1991352574390227129?s=20

Combine that story with the story about the Dutch chipmaker and you have a picture of how Europe is at the mercy of both the US and China. And compared to those two, Russia should be easy, but Europe isn't really dealing with the war with Russia with much in the way of decisiveness and strength.

I find it hard to understand the timidity of European leaders (among which, I include my own country’s). When reading about the 1930’s, I used to ask myself “how could they be so cowardly and stupid?” The question still applies.

The new Irish foreign and defence minister said yesterday, "Ireland has always stood resolutely with Ukraine, and that certainly won't change."

Ireland is resolutely neutral and has refused to provide any lethal equipment to Ukraine. It could afford to spend a lot of money paying for Ukraine to manufacture its own weapons, or buying them from the Americans for Ukraine, but its notions of neutrality are more important than its resolve to help defend a fellow European country from Imperial aggression.

The dishonesty, naivety and complacency in Ireland's position on Ukraine is maddening.

I remember the weeks running up to lockdown very well.

Monday 9th March: full stadium for Leicester City playing Aston Villa (we won 4 nil). That was the last game that I attended for a year.
Clinics getting patient cancellations and no shows at a rate of 50%+ all week, Hand gel and gloves locked away at the end of clinics as it was being nicked. Panic buying in the shops, with bare shelves in parts.

Thursday 12th. Talk of imminent lockdown so did a scoop and run to pick up Fox jr2 at his student house, emptying his room. Eerie emptiness punctuated by sirens and flashing lights, and hacking coughs from neighbouring flats. 2 of his flatmates had already gone, one remained, unable to get back to Portugal as no flights.

Sunday 15th: very small congregation at Church. Prayers for when we would meet again.

Monday 16th: PM says stay at home if possible. Our estates team built perspex screens overnight to protect reception and patients

Monday 23rd: Official lockdown starts.

It was a weird time, but the country was already locking itself down. Without economic support many businesses would have simply disappeared. The choice wasn't lockdown or no lockdown, it was controlled or uncontrolled lockdown

The countries that managed best were those with a strong sense of social obligation like Japan, Taiwan, Korea, Scandanavia etc where people behaved responsibly to protect others, not ones of a libertarian mindset where only the individual matters, not their neighbours. Ironically it meant that many of them never legally locked down like we did.

Hindsight is a wonderful thing as we all know.

At the time, the coronavirus seemed a destructive malevolence almost outside control yet it wasn't quite like the apocolyptic tales of science fiction or even the cultural resonance of the Black Death - it was clear while there was death, there wasn't wholesale mortality. Cities weren't emptying, going silent but health facilities were being overwhelmed by the nature of the virus which required more oxygen and respirator capacity than was available.

It's worth mentioning the death toll was mitigated by modern technology - had this happened even 30 years ago, there would have been more deaths.

The decision to "lock down" was primarily to reduce that pressure on the health facilities until more could be made available. I suspect those in charge knew from an early stage mortality rates were not going to be unmanageable and it was also clear from an early stage external transmission of the virus in normal circumstances was rare - the problem was large numbers of people in confined spaces (history could have told you that).

It's also now likely the virus was in the country in February and probably anything we tried in March was too little and too late - whether it came back with the half term holidaymakers or whether it was in even earlier I don't know.

One of the aspects which exacerbated the situation was the prevalence of elderly people who didn't need to be in hospital to receive care but for whom no alternative care regimen had been put in place - this remains one of the ongoing aspects of the care debate, getting those who no longer need hospital care to more appropriate places of care.

I also suspect economic, psychological and cultural considerations around lockdowns had differing elements of priority at different times but it's also worth noting many agencies performed admirably - long standarding protocols based on resilience forums at local Government level enabled, I think, a decent response from councils, the NHS, Police and other groups.

But why did coronavirus seem like such a destructive malevolence? It was because the government created a unit to frighten us into submission.

Not true, remember the news from Italy at the beginning.

I'll wait to read the detail from covid but have to say I'm going to take a hell of a lot of convincing that locking down a week or two earlier would have reduced the overall deaths by 10ks they are claiming. Surely the deaths are simply postponed at that stage as there was no vaccine?

The only thing I'm 100% sure that they got wrong was allowing Cheltenham to go ahead. That was the UK super-spreader, and certainly how I got covid the first time - from colleagues that went there.

There were x million workers using the Tube at that time. Cheltenham was a minor blip.

Sure, but X million from London. Cheltenham brought together people from all around the UK.

I worked then in an office of 300 or so. The first to fall were all the Cheltenham attendees, and then those that sat next to them etc. I find it hard to imagine that a similar effect wasn't at work elsewhere. So I think I can reasonably conclude that it was a significant factor in the spread.

The first hit local to me was before restrictions, a colleague hosted a get-together and about 2 or 3 weeks later two of the guests were dead. That was before we read about the choir in USA who had one last rehearsal together before their restrictions came into force, with a very similar outcome. Frightening times.

On those stats 25 million Brits would have died.

That was one of the curious things about it - that under apparently the same conditions one got it badly but another didn't get it at all.

Or so it seemed. Many cases were asymptomatic, which made it that much more difficult to control the spread.

Those darned asymptomatic cases..where healthy people are told they're ill..🧐💩

They were infectious, that was the problem (and a particular issue with covid). They weren't healthy. Just seemed to be, unless one tested.

Edit: I particularly say that because asymptomatic covid has a real risk of long term effects, like symptomatic does. Not so much, but it's definitely there.

Not sure asymptomatic COVID actually exists tbh, read about a case where a cyclist noticed his heart rate was elevated for his normal effort, had a COVID test and was positive. Now that's a minor symptom and one that's tricky to notice but it's not truly asymptomatic

But there are plenty of actual examples. Enough to write scientific research papers on people who haven't had anything obvious but score positive, often to their surprise.

In any case, there is a normal level of fluctuation of mood, feelings, etc. It's only cos the cyclistr was so obsessive with fitbits and all that he even noticed.

Edit: rather impressive really.

My Trust was part of a study in the summer of 2000, in which we were all tested for covid antibodies. Obviously hospital staff were particularly exposed as we were working and often in contact with infectious patients, though I was covering non-Covid patients at that time. We had virtually no PPE, indeed were banned from wearing masks so those working with covid patients could have them.

Only 10% of us had antibodies, and when the results came back some (like me) were surprised to be negative and others surprised to be positive. For herd immunity the immunity rate would have to be close to 80%. So despite heavy exposure occupationally, with many ethnic staff and Leicester being a particular hotspot (we never fully unlocked that summer, unlike the rest of the UK) we were only a tiny way towards herd immunity.

"letting it rip" would have been carnage. I lost a dear friend in that wave.

My unscientific take on it is this. Original covid wasn’t that infectious. I spent many a tea/coffee break with my colleague who had covid without realising in March 2020. He had taste and smell,disturbance, a fever etc and then tested positive for antibodies in May. Yet I didn’t get it from him. Later strains were way more infectious.

One of the weird bits about covid is that peak infectivity occurred before symptoms, which is why we would get a wedding where one person infects a hundred, yet I could share a house with Mrs Foxy when she caught it, working in ITU, but I didn't catch it myself. She was symptomatic by that point, but no longer infective.

The plans were largely based on the influenza model, with peak infectivity after symptoms and a fulminant but short infection. Covid is quite a different beast, and the next pandemic will be different again.