Does anyone have any insight on the SNP trying to end jury trials? It's not a good look.
It’s a possible answer to what is actually a tricky problem. We cannot have jury trials at the moment for obvious reasons. There are people in custody waiting for trial. There is also a serious backlog of cases. The courts were already clogged up with historic sex cases.
So the Scottish government proposed trials with single judges. The Faculty is grimly opposed and I understand that the idea has been dropped, at least for now, but to be honest I rather saw where they were coming from.
While I agree with much of what you say, what we are dealing with in terms of anger is an expression of anxiety, and that anxiety is driven by fear. There is a lot to fear at the moment. Loss of income, of freedom, of jobs, of lifestyle, of home, of family, and of life. A lot of that anger will be displaced onto convenient targets. I understand that, it is counterproductive but very human.
China is not a “convenient target”, it literally is the source of this virus, and its tendency to lies and obfuscation is one big reason this virus is now so menacing
if they had listened to the Wuhan doctors (now dead) rather than arresting them and silencing them, and if they had confessed the real mortality rate, rather than hiding it, the world would have been forewarned, months ago. They did not. China lied. And here we are.
This is rewriting history. The world was sufficiently warned, whether the 'true' number of deaths/cases was underreported or not. This is just a cheap copout for those who failed to respond to the facts more decisively.
Yes, I agree. It's clear that the first doctors to spot it were punished as troublemakers (I suspect by local bureaucrats used to suppressing bad news) - the Government has apologised for that, but it remains utterly shameful and typical of what happens in autocracies. But, once they realised what was happening they did get on it much more decisively than we did at the point when it was clear that it was a major threat (to be fair eadric was among the first here to raise a real alarm).
I've been trying not to be critical in the middle of a national crisis, but it's just embarassing that politicians try to evade responsibility for failures by vaguely pointing at China. They should bloody well get on with the job of testing and curbing the virus and giving CLEAR guidance to the population on what we should and shouldn't do, and they can tell us later what they think about how other countries handled it.
Well said.
I suspect the right wing press turning on the government will properly up the focus on testing but, I shudder to say it, those in the cabinet might just turn out to be very poor leaders.
Extraordinary headlines for The Telegraph and The Mail, whom one would expect to be Boris's friends. What's brought all that on?
They can detect the groundswell of anger bubbling up on this testing mess?
Possibly but this is fast moving and in the next few weeks when testing is much improved they will find something else because the right wing papers hate the lockdown no matter how important it is
I don't think it is the lockdown.
I've been supportive of Boris and the Government so far but the lack of clarity on testing (2,000 out of 550,000 NHS staff??) is very friustrating, even to the Mail and Telegraph and their readers. Boris is in danger of losing the confidence of the public. If he does the lockdown is over in practice.
I'm a bit curious where the 550,000 NHS number comes from.
Ok China has to take a lot of the blame for this pandemic. But it's a bit weird how everyone suddenly knows that the Chinese are hiding tens of thousands of deaths. This sudden realisation coincides with the understanding that the UK and the US are going to have more deaths than the 3k so far admitted to in China. The timing is a bit suspicious.
And last week it was all: the Germans are definitely cheating on their death figures.
Is there any actual evidence for these tens or hundreds of thousands of deaths?
No..I have posted that my wife works on medical journals where the whole international medical community has recognised the transparency of the Chinese doctors with publishing their data....
When this shitshow started in mid November they covered their tracks....
But since January they have been transparent...and they showed us the way to lockdown to contain...they gave us the road map...they told us to test and isolate....
but as I said...why let the truth get in the way with a spot of right wing fake news that deflects the blame....
While I agree with much of what you say, what we are dealing with in terms of anger is an expression of anxiety, and that anxiety is driven by fear. There is a lot to fear at the moment. Loss of income, of freedom, of jobs, of lifestyle, of home, of family, and of life. A lot of that anger will be displaced onto convenient targets. I understand that, it is counterproductive but very human.
China is not a “convenient target”, it literally is the source of this virus, and its tendency to lies and obfuscation is one big reason this virus is now so menacing
if they had listened to the Wuhan doctors (now dead) rather than arresting them and silencing them, and if they had confessed the real mortality rate, rather than hiding it, the world would have been forewarned, months ago. They did not. China lied. And here we are.
This is rewriting history. The world was sufficiently warned, whether the 'true' number of deaths/cases was underreported or not. This is just a cheap copout for those who failed to respond to the facts more decisively.
We really weren’t warned. The Chinese government lied to us, via WHO
I am surprised that someone as smart as you is parroting this drivel.
China's a police state and it hasn't been truthful on the numbers. But Matthias is right. If they had come out with a death rate that was five times bigger, it wouldn't have made the slightest bit difference to our preparation, or the lack of it.
PB is in danger of disappearing up its own arse. Yer demanding a place at government pressers and every fucker is an expert in everything. And the last thread was a shocker. Not the header, but the way that you all decided the coppers are all corrupt, lazy, incompetent bastards. Not PBs finest hour.
You took something very different from that discussion than I did. Not least that even where people are making gripes they of course mean that must apply that to 'all' of the group in question.
Not your finest hour perhaps. The press conference stuff was clearly light hearted banter, I'd suggest taking that seriously is is more telling than the comments themselves. Lighten up for christ's sake.
Regarding the banks not lending out government backed loans, wasn't I raising this crisis last week?
I was looking at the detail today and thinking, huh, there are quite a few limits on these loans that will disqualify many from the amount they'll need to lend.
It will probably work for us, because we're a quite high salary, quite high turnover business. I suspect lowish salary lowish turnover businesses, including quite a lot of one man Ltds, might struggle to access the amount they'll need to remain viable.
I would expect some (more!) downward pressure on the banks from the treasury in the coming weeks.
Can I have a plea for all the anti Chinese conspiracy theorists to stay clear tonight and let a sensible discussion prevail....
No.
China lied from the beginning and is still lying. The disease started in China because of their pretty disgusting habit of eating wild animals in wet markets.
Denying this is futile. Indeed, China’s lies are one reason this plague will now shatter the world economy and kill 100,000s of people. Denying it isn’t just futile it is WRONG.
They must, after this is done, be held to account.
Nuke the fuckers....
Maybe the 'China, China, China' schtick would be more convincing if it wasn't directed by those who are so obviously desperate to deflect the blame for their own erstwhile inactivity and ongoing inadequacy.
It's entirely possible that we screwed up AND China lied. You don't have to pick sides, both can and may well be true.
You are correct, in principle. The problem is that the 'China must be brought to heel' faction are claiming that Chinas inadequacies are a sufficient excuse for the failings of their own governments. These people are saying explicitly that it's all China's fault, we ourselves are free from blame.
No one on here is saying that. Everyone accepts that blame must be shared, yes China is the source of the virus and must take a huge chunk of condemnation, but Trump is an arsehole, HMG has been wet, the WHO has been craven and pathetic, etc etc.
For some bizarre reason you seem very keen to exonerate China in particular. And target blame elsewhere. Strange. And disappointing.
I'm not trying to exonerate China. Every actor in this drama has made mistakes, all mistakes must be identified, if only to learn from them for the next time.
It's the fantasy of "bringing China to heel" (this is a verbatim quote from an earlier thread) which irks me.
Extraordinary headlines for The Telegraph and The Mail, whom one would expect to be Boris's friends. What's brought all that on?
They can detect the groundswell of anger bubbling up on this testing mess?
Possibly but this is fast moving and in the next few weeks when testing is much improved they will find something else because the right wing papers hate the lockdown no matter how important it is
I don't think it is the lockdown.
I've been supportive of Boris and the Government so far but the lack of clarity on testing (2,000 out of 550,000 NHS staff??) is very friustrating, even to the Mail and Telegraph and their readers. Boris is in danger of losing the confidence of the public. If he does the lockdown is over in practice.
I'm a bit curious where the 550,000 NHS number comes from.
A temporary field hospital which is being converted from a huge facility in Glasgow is to be named after a World War One nurse, the Scottish Government has announced.
Glasgow's SEC Centre, Scotland's largest exhibition centre, a huge 64 acre site, which has a seating capacity of around 15,000, will soon be known as the NHS Louisa Jordan.
PB is in danger of disappearing up its own arse. Yer demanding a place at government pressers and every fucker is an expert in everything. And the last thread was a shocker. Not the header, but the way that you all decided the coppers are all corrupt, lazy, incompetent bastards. Not PBs finest hour.
I didn't.
I defended resolutely North Wales police action and that it has wide support here in North Wales
Frankly, anybody who willingly travels to North Wales deserves arresting.
I don't know why I know this...but I think north Wales has the lowest average age for virginity in the UK..
I was stranded in Canaerfon one evening...this was years ago...but it was an indication of what was coming (like Ibetha uncovered)...I had to walk back to our campsite after I lost my friends..and kids were literally shagging all over the place....
"Here lie the bones of Elizabeth Charlotte, Born a virgin, died a harlot, She was still a virgin at seventeen, A very rare thing in Prestatyn"
On a Gravestone - Verse and Worse - circa 1960 from memory.
While I agree with much of what you say, what we are dealing with in terms of anger is an expression of anxiety, and that anxiety is driven by fear. There is a lot to fear at the moment. Loss of income, of freedom, of jobs, of lifestyle, of home, of family, and of life. A lot of that anger will be displaced onto convenient targets. I understand that, it is counterproductive but very human.
China is not a “convenient target”, it literally is the source of this virus, and its tendency to lies and obfuscation is one big reason this virus is now so menacing
if they had listened to the Wuhan doctors (now dead) rather than arresting them and silencing them, and if they had confessed the real mortality rate, rather than hiding it, the world would have been forewarned, months ago. They did not. China lied. And here we are.
This is rewriting history. The world was sufficiently warned, whether the 'true' number of deaths/cases was underreported or not. This is just a cheap copout for those who failed to respond to the facts more decisively.
We really weren’t warned. The Chinese government lied to us, via WHO
I am surprised that someone as smart as you is parroting this drivel.
Considering that was only a week after the first death, and the virus was only identified on the 12th Jan, that was the state of knowledge at that time. On the 23rd of Jan the WHO met and declared it a "Public Health Emergency of International Concern"
Not warned? I certainly was. Perhaps the government wasn't listening? I don't think so as on Feb 1st our government warned against all but essential travel to China, and a few days later we had our first case.
Questioning actions, or inactions, after this point seems quite reasonable to me.
Just to add - you do wonder if a lot of the media and print journalists are being paid through companies so particularly stand to lose if Sunak regularises the situation between the employed and self-employed.
That’s a huge part of it, also why they were so focused on compensation for the self employed
While I agree with much of what you say, what we are dealing with in terms of anger is an expression of anxiety, and that anxiety is driven by fear. There is a lot to fear at the moment. Loss of income, of freedom, of jobs, of lifestyle, of home, of family, and of life. A lot of that anger will be displaced onto convenient targets. I understand that, it is counterproductive but very human.
China is not a “convenient target”, it literally is the source of this virus, and its tendency to lies and obfuscation is one big reason this virus is now so menacing
if they had listened to the Wuhan doctors (now dead) rather than arresting them and silencing them, and if they had confessed the real mortality rate, rather than hiding it, the world would have been forewarned, months ago. They did not. China lied. And here we are.
This is rewriting history. The world was sufficiently warned, whether the 'true' number of deaths/cases was underreported or not. This is just a cheap copout for those who failed to respond to the facts more decisively.
Yes, I agree. It's clear that the first doctors to spot it were punished as troublemakers (I suspect by local bureaucrats used to suppressing bad news) - the Government has apologised for that, but it remains utterly shameful and typical of what happens in autocracies. But, once they realised what was happening they did get on it much more decisively than we did at the point when it was clear that it was a major threat (to be fair eadric was among the first here to raise a real alarm).
I've been trying not to be critical in the middle of a national crisis, but it's just embarassing that politicians try to evade responsibility for failures by vaguely pointing at China. They should bloody well get on with the job of testing and curbing the virus and giving CLEAR guidance to the population on what we should and shouldn't do, and they can tell us later what they think about how other countries handled it.
Whatever is going on in China will, it is true, have very little bearing on adequacy or not of our own response, so attempts to distract should be warily assessed, but the leaping to defence of what is noted in a rather grudging and offhand manner to be a bunch of brutal authoritarians, being very mealy mouthed about them in a way we never would with our own government, is itself somewhat peculiar.
PB is in danger of disappearing up its own arse. Yer demanding a place at government pressers and every fucker is an expert in everything. And the last thread was a shocker. Not the header, but the way that you all decided the coppers are all corrupt, lazy, incompetent bastards. Not PBs finest hour.
PB is in danger of disappearing up its own arse. Yer demanding a place at government pressers and every fucker is an expert in everything. And the last thread was a shocker. Not the header, but the way that you all decided the coppers are all corrupt, lazy, incompetent bastards. Not PBs finest hour.
I didn't.
I defended resolutely North Wales police action and that it has wide support here in North Wales
Frankly, anybody who willingly travels to North Wales deserves arresting.
I don't know why I know this...but I think north Wales has the lowest average age for virginity in the UK..
I was stranded in Canaerfon one evening...this was years ago...but it was an indication of what was coming (like Ibetha uncovered)...I had to walk back to our campsite after I lost my friends..and kids were literally shagging all over the place....
"Here lie the bones of Elizabeth Charlotte, Born a virgin, died a harlot, She was still a virgin at seventeen, A very rare thing in Prestatyn"
On a Gravestone - Verse and Worse - circa 1960 from memory.
Excellent..this is why I like Nighthawks...not to talk about global pandemics and meltdown....but to share some nice, amusing posts with a glass of vino
Ok China has to take a lot of the blame for this pandemic. But it's a bit weird how everyone suddenly knows that the Chinese are hiding tens of thousands of deaths. This sudden realisation coincides with the understanding that the UK and the US are going to have more deaths than the 3k so far admitted to in China. The timing is a bit suspicious.
And last week it was all: the Germans are definitely cheating on their death figures.
Is there any actual evidence for these tens or hundreds of thousands of deaths?
Just use your brain and look on social media (more reliable than any MSM)
Sieve the evidence, look at the videos, assay the rumors, and the truth is obvious. China would not have sacrificed half of its economy, and risked national unrest, for a bug that was only going to kill 3k people.
This is the essential truth I saw at the start.
The first time I realised that this was going to be really bad was that NO2 picture from NASA showing industrial output had virtually stopped in northern China. It was immediately obvious that this was far worse than they were letting on. It was also obvious that we were going to be hard hit by this and I said so repeatedly on here and elsewhere.
China lied and failed to ring the alarm bell for the world but frankly what our government needed to do was look and think. They did, but it took them a long time and that time definitely sold the pass on containment. Whether that would ever have worked in this country is a moot point but it was made so by a combination of duplicity and stupidity.
This is a pretty depressing discussion tonight. A few questions / thoughts:
i) Is there a reason to think the UK should be very much worse impacted than other European countries? Not really - we will not be the best, but nor is there a reason to think we will be massively worse effected than France / Italy / Spain. In the latter two cases (especially Italy) they are now slowly getting over the peak and towards a more manageable situation.
ii) What would more testing help us with today? It would help get a scale of the epidemic but, in some sense, should not change any of our behaviours - we should all be in lockdown mode. The clear exception is for healthcare professionals.
iii) What would more testing help us with tomorrow? A lot, we would understand the scale of the epidemic (antibody tests) and be much better prepared (antigen / PCR-based tests) for determining whether anyone with symptoms has indeed been infected.
iv) What will we do after the first phase is over? We should ease off restrictions slowly to make sure we don't have an immediate outbreak and massively ramp up testing to control future outbreaks.
v) Are we doomed to repeat the same mistakes over and over again? Hopefully not! Every country (across all of Europe, certainly), will need to learn lessons from this first wave. Clearly we will need better testing, but we will also have better understanding of 'best clinical practice' plus insight from numerous clinical trials that are testing a variety of drugs to see how well they work. With some luck (and this has a reasonably good probability) some of these will have an impact on how the disease spreads following infection, slowing it down and/or preventing it proceeding towards the pneumonia state.
Sorry for the rather long post, but just shouting and trying to blame people is not very helpful - it would be more useful to think about what we might need to do moving forward and what is critical today.
Extraordinary headlines for The Telegraph and The Mail, whom one would expect to be Boris's friends. What's brought all that on?
They can detect the groundswell of anger bubbling up on this testing mess?
Possibly but this is fast moving and in the next few weeks when testing is much improved they will find something else because the right wing papers hate the lockdown no matter how important it is
I don't think it is the lockdown.
I've been supportive of Boris and the Government so far but the lack of clarity on testing (2,000 out of 550,000 NHS staff??) is very friustrating, even to the Mail and Telegraph and their readers. Boris is in danger of losing the confidence of the public. If he does the lockdown is over in practice.
Which is the issue with the media pile on
It may be “news” but it is also thoroughly irresponsible
Can I have a plea for all the anti Chinese conspiracy theorists to stay clear tonight and let a sensible discussion prevail....
No.
China lied from the beginning and is still lying. The disease started in China because of their pretty disgusting habit of eating wild animals in wet markets.
Denying this is futile. Indeed, China’s lies are one reason this plague will now shatter the world economy and kill 100,000s of people. Denying it isn’t just futile it is WRONG.
They must, after this is done, be held to account.
Nuke the fuckers....
Maybe the 'China, China, China' schtick would be more convincing if it wasn't directed by those who are so obviously desperate to deflect the blame for their own erstwhile inactivity and ongoing inadequacy.
It's entirely possible that we screwed up AND China lied. You don't have to pick sides, both can and may well be true.
You are correct, in principle. The problem is that the 'China must be brought to heel' faction are claiming that Chinas inadequacies are a sufficient excuse for the failings of their own governments. These people are saying explicitly that it's all China's fault, we ourselves are free from blame.
No one on here is saying that. Everyone accepts that blame must be shared, yes China is the source of the virus and must take a huge chunk of condemnation, but Trump is an arsehole, HMG has been wet, the WHO has been craven and pathetic, etc etc.
For some bizarre reason you seem very keen to exonerate China in particular. And target blame elsewhere. Strange. And disappointing.
It's the fantasy of "bringing China to heel" (this is a verbatim quote from an earlier thread) which irks me.
I'd guess that there'll be recriminations and disbelief expressed, some angry words in the next 6 months, some cancelled plans (ones which had not yet been confirmed at any rate), and in a year or so it will be business as usual but something that is brought up now and then as a vague aspiration of needing to be less tied up with the Chinese,something we'll think about soon, but needs to be coordinated, and probably country x wouldn't do it so there's no reason for us to do it alone.
Extraordinary headlines for The Telegraph and The Mail, whom one would expect to be Boris's friends. What's brought all that on?
They can detect the groundswell of anger bubbling up on this testing mess?
Possibly but this is fast moving and in the next few weeks when testing is much improved they will find something else because the right wing papers hate the lockdown no matter how important it is
I don't think it is the lockdown.
I've been supportive of Boris and the Government so far but the lack of clarity on testing (2,000 out of 550,000 NHS staff??) is very friustrating, even to the Mail and Telegraph and their readers. Boris is in danger of losing the confidence of the public. If he does the lockdown is over in practice.
I'm a bit curious where the 550,000 NHS number comes from.
Unrelatedly, my family - in multiple places - is reporting issues getting a BBC signal.
Anyone else had this?
There were rumors that we might see power cuts, with so many staff falling ill.
We've been having trouble with the TV signal in its totality for the last couple of days. iPlayer has been put into service for viewing the Beeb (it coming through the broadband and, therefore, being glitch free.) Not sure if the signal issues are down to atmospherics or the aerial on the block of flats having an episode.
Anyway, as for power cuts there are few things that would surprise one nowadays. We'll just have to wait and see. Although I'm finding the reports of people falling ill by the sackload here there and everywhere mystifying. I mean, you can understand it with healthcare workers but, with infection rates in the UK estimated at something like 2-3% of the population, why would there by mass absenteeism amongst, for example, National Grid workers on a sufficient scale to cause the service to collapse.
Given that I work in manufacturing I still have to go to the factory to do my job. Nobody in my department (aside from one vulnerable person who's self-isolating) is off or has ever been off on account of Covid, and almost nobody else who's still in the building (the officey types having been despatched to work from home) has been directly impacted by it either. Amongst the great mass of the population, at least so far, anybody who gets this thing can count themselves very unlucky and anyone who suffers from it badly enough to require admission to hospital doubly so.
The notion that a sufficient number of workers in any key sector outside of health and social care (and possibly teaching) has been floored by Covid to materially imperil the delivery of that service is implausible.
Can I have a plea for all the anti Chinese conspiracy theorists to stay clear tonight and let a sensible discussion prevail....
No.
China lied from the beginning and is still lying. The disease started in China because of their pretty disgusting habit of eating wild animals in wet markets.
Denying this is futile. Indeed, China’s lies are one reason this plague will now shatter the world economy and kill 100,000s of people. Denying it isn’t just futile it is WRONG.
They must, after this is done, be held to account.
Nuke the fuckers....
Maybe the 'China, China, China' schtick would be more convincing if it wasn't directed by those who are so obviously desperate to deflect the blame for their own erstwhile inactivity and ongoing inadequacy.
It's entirely possible that we screwed up AND China lied. You don't have to pick sides, both can and may well be true.
You are correct, in principle. The problem is that the 'China must be brought to heel' faction are claiming that Chinas inadequacies are a sufficient excuse for the failings of their own governments. These people are saying explicitly that it's all China's fault, we ourselves are free from blame.
No one on here is saying that. Everyone accepts that blame must be shared, yes China is the source of the virus and must take a huge chunk of condemnation, but Trump is an arsehole, HMG has been wet, the WHO has been craven and pathetic, etc etc.
For some bizarre reason you seem very keen to exonerate China in particular. And target blame elsewhere. Strange. And disappointing.
I'm not trying to exonerate China. Every actor in this drama has made mistakes, all mistakes must be identified, if only to learn from them for the next time.
It's the fantasy of "bringing China to heel" (this is a verbatim quote from an earlier thread) which irks me.
Can't remember. Did PB decide in the end to nuke Spain over Gibraltar? I suppose we can lob the left over missiles in the direction of Beijing.
A few things do appear to have changed in the last couple of days, as we approach a rapid rise to a peak. First, press as a whole is getting more meaningfully negative for the government, on more substantive complaints. Two, there has been a focus on raising the early faults of China and its success which looks so atypical to everyone else and increasing talk of them being suspect.
The first was probably inevitable, but the timing of the second is more interesting as even if it is all true, why the concerns are being raised prominently right now is less so.
Ok China has to take a lot of the blame for this pandemic. But it's a bit weird how everyone suddenly knows that the Chinese are hiding tens of thousands of deaths. This sudden realisation coincides with the understanding that the UK and the US are going to have more deaths than the 3k so far admitted to in China. The timing is a bit suspicious.
And last week it was all: the Germans are definitely cheating on their death figures.
Is there any actual evidence for these tens or hundreds of thousands of deaths?
Just use your brain and look on social media (more reliable than any MSM)
Sieve the evidence, look at the videos, assay the rumors, and the truth is obvious. China would not have sacrificed half of its economy, and risked national unrest, for a bug that was only going to kill 3k people.
This is the essential truth I saw at the start.
So you're saying there's no actual evidence?
I don't have an opinion on how inaccurate the Chinese death figures are - what do I know? But the people with very definite opinions don't seem to actually know any more than me about it.
So here goes, can you properly rise to the challenge. That is, what is it’s work...
The nub of it I will explain like this. Sky Q. Go to a movie. Go parental advice. It gives you ratings as warning for what is deemed vices in it, profanity, sex nudity, violence, consumerism.
Consumerism? Are you wondering why this is on the list, something to shield children from?
If you are wondering what on earth consumerism is doing on the warning list, it is not your bias I am calling out, after all we all have bias. But your ignorance. I call you out as being behind the times. Claim you are lacking a consciousness of the garden you have been sitting in.
What Corona crisis teaches us, it is mindfulness, sacrifice, and community our civilisation boils down to when faced with such a threat. But nothing stays the same in this world. where the garden around you changes for worst you need to appreciate your own soul to see this, and act to allow the mindfulness, sacrifice and community to flourish.
And never is the lack of conscious awareness more stark on PB than when we all thrash around, being defensive, deflecting blame to others, in the abuse we give and names we call each other we come close to calling corona virus evil. Ask yourself, do you wish to excommunicate Coronavirus from the kingdom of heaven? what is your case for excommunication?
Truth is, when it dies Coronavirus goes to heaven. And God thanks it for its work. Doesn’t he?
Are you a vampire? Are you Dracula? eh? I don’t think so.
What is the good work God thanks it for?
There is a bigger picture. A huge holistic puzzle, and corona virus reminds us to be not lazy to keep working on it.
Men are biologically the weaker sex. Women have stronger immune systems due to more ex chromosomes. Because they get born with all the eggs, they are more precious to fertility than the male, so they are made stronger. So do your immune system a favour swap your pint of Kwak for a pint of a young woman’s blood. They have a sixth sense in fighting virus.
But you are not going to drink the young lady’s blood in search of immortality, because you have already started work on that holistic puzzle, and you know so much now about the anatomy of your soul.
Spain has the worst electrical system uptime in Western Europe thanks to some ridiculous policies on renewables few years ago. (They used to subsidise solar more than the Germans despite there being alot more sunshine than in Hamburg.)
So, I'm not sure that that tells you anything other than the fact that the wind stopped blowing or a cloud crossed in front of a big solar farm.
The only explanation I can think of for why some people don't like the criticism of China is that they find any type of criticism by Western countries, or people in Western countries, directed towards non-Western countries to be distasteful (and possibly bigoted, racist, etc). They view the fact that genuine racists might be in agreement with such criticism to be the final straw. Guilt by association, etc.
While I agree with much of what you say, what we are dealing with in terms of anger is an expression of anxiety, and that anxiety is driven by fear. There is a lot to fear at the moment. Loss of income, of freedom, of jobs, of lifestyle, of home, of family, and of life. A lot of that anger will be displaced onto convenient targets. I understand that, it is counterproductive but very human.
China is not a “convenient target”, it literally is the source of this virus, and its tendency to lies and obfuscation is one big reason this virus is now so menacing
if they had listened to the Wuhan doctors (now dead) rather than arresting them and silencing them, and if they had confessed the real mortality rate, rather than hiding it, the world would have been forewarned, months ago. They did not. China lied. And here we are.
This is rewriting history. The world was sufficiently warned, whether the 'true' number of deaths/cases was underreported or not. This is just a cheap copout for those who failed to respond to the facts more decisively.
Yes, I agree. It's clear that the first doctors to spot it were punished as troublemakers (I suspect by local bureaucrats used to suppressing bad news) - the Government has apologised for that, but it remains utterly shameful and typical of what happens in autocracies. But, once they realised what was happening they did get on it much more decisively than we did at the point when it was clear that it was a major threat (to be fair eadric was among the first here to raise a real alarm).
I've been trying not to be critical in the middle of a national crisis, but it's just embarassing that politicians try to evade responsibility for failures by vaguely pointing at China. They should bloody well get on with the job of testing and curbing the virus and giving CLEAR guidance to the population on what we should and shouldn't do, and they can tell us later what they think about how other countries handled it.
Ok China has to take a lot of the blame for this pandemic. But it's a bit weird how everyone suddenly knows that the Chinese are hiding tens of thousands of deaths. This sudden realisation coincides with the understanding that the UK and the US are going to have more deaths than the 3k so far admitted to in China. The timing is a bit suspicious.
And last week it was all: the Germans are definitely cheating on their death figures.
Is there any actual evidence for these tens or hundreds of thousands of deaths?
Just use your brain and look on social media (more reliable than any MSM)
Sieve the evidence, look at the videos, assay the rumors, and the truth is obvious. China would not have sacrificed half of its economy, and risked national unrest, for a bug that was only going to kill 3k people.
This is the essential truth I saw at the start.
The first time I realised that this was going to be really bad was that NO2 picture from NASA showing industrial output had virtually stopped in northern China. It was immediately obvious that this was far worse than they were letting on. It was also obvious that we were going to be hard hit by this and I said so repeatedly on here and elsewhere.
China lied and failed to ring the alarm bell for the world but frankly what our government needed to do was look and think. They did, but it took them a long time and that time definitely sold the pass on containment. Whether that would ever have worked in this country is a moot point but it was made so by a combination of duplicity and stupidity.
One thing that the government really should be condemned for is the utterly casual attitude towards continuing air travel and the lack of quarantine for arrivals.
Assuming that is the things I read on PB are correct.
I'll add that when things ease and overseas travel becomes possible then the government should make it clear that people doing so do so at their own risk and that there will be no more emergency flights to rescue them.
Can I have a plea for all the anti Chinese conspiracy theorists to stay clear tonight and let a sensible discussion prevail....
No.
China lied from the beginning and is still lying. The disease started in China because of their pretty disgusting habit of eating wild animals in wet markets.
Denying this is futile. Indeed, China’s lies are one reason this plague will now shatter the world economy and kill 100,000s of people. Denying it isn’t just futile it is WRONG.
They must, after this is done, be held to account.
Nuke the fuckers....
Maybe the 'China, China, China' schtick would be more convincing if it wasn't directed by those who are so obviously desperate to deflect the blame for their own erstwhile inactivity and ongoing inadequacy.
It's entirely possible that we screwed up AND China lied. You don't have to pick sides, both can and may well be true.
You are correct, in principle. The problem is that the 'China must be brought to heel' faction are claiming that Chinas inadequacies are a sufficient excuse for the failings of their own governments. These people are saying explicitly that it's all China's fault, we ourselves are free from blame.
No one on here is saying that. Everyone accepts that blame must be shared, yes China is the source of the virus and must take a huge chunk of condemnation, but Trump is an arsehole, HMG has been wet, the WHO has been craven and pathetic, etc etc.
For some bizarre reason you seem very keen to exonerate China in particular. And target blame elsewhere. Strange. And disappointing.
It's the fantasy of "bringing China to heel" (this is a verbatim quote from an earlier thread) which irks me.
I'd guess that there'll be recriminations and disbelief expressed, some angry words in the next 6 months, some cancelled plans (ones which had not yet been confirmed at any rate), and in a year or so it will be business as usual but something that is brought up now and then as a vague aspiration of needing to be less tied up with the Chinese,something we'll think about soon, but needs to be coordinated, and probably country x wouldn't do it so there's no reason for us to do it alone.
I hope it pans out like that, but I'm watching the Orange Blob right now and I have to admit I'm a bit worried.
Extraordinary headlines for The Telegraph and The Mail, whom one would expect to be Boris's friends. What's brought all that on?
They can detect the groundswell of anger bubbling up on this testing mess?
Possibly but this is fast moving and in the next few weeks when testing is much improved they will find something else because the right wing papers hate the lockdown no matter how important it is
I don't think it is the lockdown.
I've been supportive of Boris and the Government so far but the lack of clarity on testing (2,000 out of 550,000 NHS staff??) is very friustrating, even to the Mail and Telegraph and their readers. Boris is in danger of losing the confidence of the public. If he does the lockdown is over in practice.
Which is the issue with the media pile on
It may be “news” but it is also thoroughly irresponsible
You'd prefer the Chinese approach? Feed the public what you want them to hear.
While I agree with much of what you say, what we are dealing with in terms of anger is an expression of anxiety, and that anxiety is driven by fear. There is a lot to fear at the moment. Loss of income, of freedom, of jobs, of lifestyle, of home, of family, and of life. A lot of that anger will be displaced onto convenient targets. I understand that, it is counterproductive but very human.
China is not a “convenient target”, it literally is the source of this virus, and its tendency to lies and obfuscation is one big reason this virus is now so menacing
if they had listened to the Wuhan doctors (now dead) rather than arresting them and silencing them, and if they had confessed the real mortality rate, rather than hiding it, the world would have been forewarned, months ago. They did not. China lied. And here we are.
This is rewriting history. The world was sufficiently warned, whether the 'true' number of deaths/cases was underreported or not. This is just a cheap copout for those who failed to respond to the facts more decisively.
We really weren’t warned. The Chinese government lied to us, via WHO
I am surprised that someone as smart as you is parroting this drivel.
The first indication the NERVTAG Committee had of human to human transmission from China was on 20th January. It is right there in the minutes of the Committee meeting from 2st January.
Aha - you will no doubt be shocked to hear that my house in France lost power for hours after a storm in, I think I recall correctly August.
I have suffered power cuts here in the UK fairly recently.
Show me a story that actually blames staff shortages due to COVID
Shouldn't be hard, the press will be all over it.
Britons have been told to keep torches and gloves handy in case there are power outages, amid potential engineer shortages. A combination of staff sickness due to the coronavirus pandemic and the government’s guidance on non-essential workers to stay at home, mean energy teams are more stretched. However, the National Grid insisted that the network will be able to cope amid the pandemic and has comprehensive contingency plans in place, with industry leaders praising the county’s system as ‘one of the most reliable in the world’. One British electrical infrastructure firm has written to customers telling them to prepare for a power blackout, as the nation remains at home amid the lockdown.
The only explanation I can think of for why some people don't like the criticism of China is that they find any type of criticism by Western countries, or people in Western countries, directed towards non-Western countries to be distasteful (and possibly bigoted, racist, etc). They view the fact that genuine racists might be in agreement with such criticism to be the final straw. Guilt by association, etc.
The other explanation is that facile blaming of foreigners is a convenient way of evading our own governments responsibility. Not just for Coronavirus too.
Aha - you will no doubt be shocked to hear that my house in France lost power for hours after a storm in, I think I recall correctly August.
I have suffered power cuts here in the UK fairly recently.
Show me a story that actually blames staff shortages due to COVID
Shouldn't be hard, the press will be all over it.
Britons have been told to keep torches and gloves handy in case there are power outages, amid potential engineer shortages. A combination of staff sickness due to the coronavirus pandemic and the government’s guidance on non-essential workers to stay at home, mean energy teams are more stretched. However, the National Grid insisted that the network will be able to cope amid the pandemic and has comprehensive contingency plans in place, with industry leaders praising the county’s system as ‘one of the most reliable in the world’. One British electrical infrastructure firm has written to customers telling them to prepare for a power blackout, as the nation remains at home amid the lockdown.
Maybe so. But social media has been a more reliable indicator of upcoming issues and underlying problems than anything on MSM in recent weeks,
Sure.
But given how people unintensive most electricty generation is (particularly things like wind and solar), and given that Spain has grid stability problems, and given that the France-Spain interconnector has not seen any spikes in demand caused by the Spanish desparately trying to get more power into their country, then I reserve the right to be a little bit sceptical.
Ok China has to take a lot of the blame for this pandemic. But it's a bit weird how everyone suddenly knows that the Chinese are hiding tens of thousands of deaths. This sudden realisation coincides with the understanding that the UK and the US are going to have more deaths than the 3k so far admitted to in China. The timing is a bit suspicious.
And last week it was all: the Germans are definitely cheating on their death figures.
Is there any actual evidence for these tens or hundreds of thousands of deaths?
Just use your brain and look on social media (more reliable than any MSM)
Sieve the evidence, look at the videos, assay the rumors, and the truth is obvious. China would not have sacrificed half of its economy, and risked national unrest, for a bug that was only going to kill 3k people.
This is the essential truth I saw at the start.
So you're saying there's no actual evidence?
I don't have an opinion on how inaccurate the Chinese death figures are - what do I know? But the people with very definite opinions don't seem to actually know any more than me about it.
It does seem, based upon stories in the press, that within the US and UK governments reports from intelligence agencies have been circulating about the true scale of the pandemic in China. I would expect most of the intelligence to have been gleaned from signals intelligence sources. That is obviously not going to be made public.
It will be worth keeping an eye out for similar stories about other governments.
Yes - it seems like they are into that depressing phase (2.5 weeks after lockdown) that Italy went through where numbers plateaued and stubbornly refused to fall. It seems like the plateau is about a week, so by the end of the weekend / beginning of next week they should noticeably start to fall. Although there will be variation, the lockdowns across Europe seem all fairly similar so it's reasonable to expect that they have a similar timeline.
France should likely follow a similar (although slightly delayed) timeline and the UK will start seeing a measurable easing in pressure in terms of new admissions around Easter Sunday. Not going to be a very fun 10-11 days in terms of new cases / fatalities though. But we should expect a plateau in new cases here this weekend (since much of the lockdown had started on the Friday night with the closure of bars / restaurants / clubs).
Aha - you will no doubt be shocked to hear that my house in France lost power for hours after a storm in, I think I recall correctly August.
I have suffered power cuts here in the UK fairly recently.
Show me a story that actually blames staff shortages due to COVID
Shouldn't be hard, the press will be all over it.
Britons have been told to keep torches and gloves handy in case there are power outages, amid potential engineer shortages. A combination of staff sickness due to the coronavirus pandemic and the government’s guidance on non-essential workers to stay at home, mean energy teams are more stretched. However, the National Grid insisted that the network will be able to cope amid the pandemic and has comprehensive contingency plans in place, with industry leaders praising the county’s system as ‘one of the most reliable in the world’. One British electrical infrastructure firm has written to customers telling them to prepare for a power blackout, as the nation remains at home amid the lockdown.
Well I’ve had none must be crossed wires when power cuts was mentioned. Pissing down so I might have spoken too soon. Of course no power brings on the nightmare raised earlier about no communications.
The only explanation I can think of for why some people don't like the criticism of China is that they find any type of criticism by Western countries, or people in Western countries, directed towards non-Western countries to be distasteful (and possibly bigoted, racist, etc). They view the fact that genuine racists might be in agreement with such criticism to be the final straw. Guilt by association, etc.
In intention, at any rate, the English intelligentsia are Europeanized. They take their cookery from Paris and their opinions from Moscow. In the general patriotism of the country they form a sort of island of dissident thought. England is perhaps the only great country whose intellectuals are ashamed of their own nationality. In left-wing circles it is always felt that there is something slightly disgraceful in being an Englishman and that it is a duty to snigger at every English institution, from horse racing to suet puddings. It is a strange fact, but it is unquestionably true that almost any English intellectual would feel more ashamed of standing to attention during “God save the King” than of stealing from a poor box. All through the critical years many left-wingers were chipping away at English morale, trying to spread an outlook that was sometimes squashily pacifist, sometimes violently pro-Russian, but always anti-British.
The only explanation I can think of for why some people don't like the criticism of China is that they find any type of criticism by Western countries, or people in Western countries, directed towards non-Western countries to be distasteful (and possibly bigoted, racist, etc). They view the fact that genuine racists might be in agreement with such criticism to be the final straw. Guilt by association, etc.
The other explanation is that facile blaming of foreigners is a convenient way of evading our own governments responsibility. Not just for Coronavirus too.
Perhaps both the Chinese leadership and ours are both to blame for failures in different ways?
Our Government can be held to account by the press and of course the medical profession has been speaking about failings in our response.
We all know how the Chinese state reacts to criticism.
I've just looked up the figures for the Spain-France interconnector, and for much of Monday and Tuesday the Spanish were exporting electricity TO France.
So, I'm going to go with my earlier thesis of there not being a crisis in Spanish electricity production.
Ok China has to take a lot of the blame for this pandemic. But it's a bit weird how everyone suddenly knows that the Chinese are hiding tens of thousands of deaths. This sudden realisation coincides with the understanding that the UK and the US are going to have more deaths than the 3k so far admitted to in China. The timing is a bit suspicious.
And last week it was all: the Germans are definitely cheating on their death figures.
Is there any actual evidence for these tens or hundreds of thousands of deaths?
Just use your brain and look on social media (more reliable than any MSM)
Sieve the evidence, look at the videos, assay the rumors, and the truth is obvious. China would not have sacrificed half of its economy, and risked national unrest, for a bug that was only going to kill 3k people.
This is the essential truth I saw at the start.
The first time I realised that this was going to be really bad was that NO2 picture from NASA showing industrial output had virtually stopped in northern China. It was immediately obvious that this was far worse than they were letting on. It was also obvious that we were going to be hard hit by this and I said so repeatedly on here and elsewhere.
China lied and failed to ring the alarm bell for the world but frankly what our government needed to do was look and think. They did, but it took them a long time and that time definitely sold the pass on containment. Whether that would ever have worked in this country is a moot point but it was made so by a combination of duplicity and stupidity.
One thing that the government really should be condemned for is the utterly casual attitude towards continuing air travel and the lack of quarantine for arrivals.
Assuming that is the things I read on PB are correct.
I'll add that when things ease and overseas travel becomes possible then the government should make it clear that people doing so do so at their own risk and that there will be no more emergency flights to rescue them.
The priority given to freedom of movement for air travellers is genuinely bewildering but we are far from atypical in this. So many early cases were caused by those who had flown in in so many countries. It’s almost as if those who indulge in frequent flying are more important than the rest of the population.
Maybe so. But social media has been a more reliable indicator of upcoming issues and underlying problems than anything on MSM in recent weeks,
Sure.
But given how people unintensive most electricty generation is (particularly things like wind and solar), and given that Spain has grid stability problems, and given that the France-Spain interconnector has not seen any spikes in demand caused by the Spanish desparately trying to get more power into their country, then I reserve the right to be a little bit sceptical.
Nicely done sir.
But some bloke on twitter trumps reason when there is panic to spread.
I think there was a big problem with today's Downing Street press conference.
Not just Sharma but more importantly the lady from the NHS - I don't think she was anything like as good a communicator as the other medical experts we have had up to now.
I have no wish to criticise her - she is probably very good at her job. But she didn't have the media and communication skills of everyone else who has appeared at those press conferences up to now.
I think it's imperative that they get back to the top team tomorrow - which in Boris's absence means Jenrick, Harries and Vallance.
Aha - you will no doubt be shocked to hear that my house in France lost power for hours after a storm in, I think I recall correctly August.
I have suffered power cuts here in the UK fairly recently.
Show me a story that actually blames staff shortages due to COVID
Shouldn't be hard, the press will be all over it.
Britons have been told to keep torches and gloves handy in case there are power outages, amid potential engineer shortages. A combination of staff sickness due to the coronavirus pandemic and the government’s guidance on non-essential workers to stay at home, mean energy teams are more stretched. However, the National Grid insisted that the network will be able to cope amid the pandemic and has comprehensive contingency plans in place, with industry leaders praising the county’s system as ‘one of the most reliable in the world’. One British electrical infrastructure firm has written to customers telling them to prepare for a power blackout, as the nation remains at home amid the lockdown.
Well I’ve had none must be crossed wires when power cuts was mentioned. Pissing down so I might have spoken too soon. Of course no power brings on the nightmare raised earlier about no communications.
The worst nightmare is if the sewers stop working because of all the junk substitute loo paper and shortage of staff. No easy substitute like candles and torches.
I've just looked up the figures for the Spain-France interconnector, and for much of Monday and Tuesday the Spanish were exporting electricity TO France.
So, I'm going to go with my earlier thesis of there not being a crisis in Spanish electricity production.
You will forgive me a little snigger I am sure :-)
Ok China has to take a lot of the blame for this pandemic. But it's a bit weird how everyone suddenly knows that the Chinese are hiding tens of thousands of deaths. This sudden realisation coincides with the understanding that the UK and the US are going to have more deaths than the 3k so far admitted to in China. The timing is a bit suspicious.
And last week it was all: the Germans are definitely cheating on their death figures.
Is there any actual evidence for these tens or hundreds of thousands of deaths?
No..I have posted that my wife works on medical journals where the whole international medical community has recognised the transparency of the Chinese doctors with publishing their data....
When this shitshow started in mid November they covered their tracks....
But since January they have been transparent...and they showed us the way to lockdown to contain...they gave us the road map...they told us to test and isolate....
but as I said...why let the truth get in the way with a spot of right wing fake news that deflects the blame....
I believe this. I would also hazard a guess that that the bulk of the missing bodies were removed by local bureaucrats deciding it would be easier for their careers to classify the cause of death as something less controversial. And in fact there was relatively little direct manipulation of the aggregate figures by the central authorities - although they might have had little incentive to challenge said bureaucrats.
While I agree with much of what you say, what we are dealing with in terms of anger is an expression of anxiety, and that anxiety is driven by fear. There is a lot to fear at the moment. Loss of income, of freedom, of jobs, of lifestyle, of home, of family, and of life. A lot of that anger will be displaced onto convenient targets. I understand that, it is counterproductive but very human.
China is not a “convenient target”, it literally is the source of this virus, and its tendency to lies and obfuscation is one big reason this virus is now so menacing
if they had listened to the Wuhan doctors (now dead) rather than arresting them and silencing them, and if they had confessed the real mortality rate, rather than hiding it, the world would have been forewarned, months ago. They did not. China lied. And here we are.
This is rewriting history. The world was sufficiently warned, whether the 'true' number of deaths/cases was underreported or not. This is just a cheap copout for those who failed to respond to the facts more decisively.
We really weren’t warned. The Chinese government lied to us, via WHO
I am surprised that someone as smart as you is parroting this drivel.
The first indication the NERVTAG Committee had of human to human transmission from China was on 20th January. It is right there in the minutes of the Committee meeting from 2st January.
What is this bien pensant excuse-China mindset?
It’s mad
“Taiwan has accused the World Health Organization of failing to communicate an early warning about transmission of the coronavirus between humans, slowing the global response to the pandemic.
Health officials in Taipei said they alerted the WHO at the end of December about the risk of human-to-human transmission of the new virus but said its concerns were not passed on to other countries.
Taiwan is excluded from the WHO because China, which claims it as part of its territory, demands that third countries and international bodies do not treat it in any way that resembles how independent states are treated.”
Financial Times, March 20 ($$)
I was not excusing China at all - quite the opposite. I was excusing our own scientific experts who were working on false information although there was no way they could know that.
It is clear from your quote that not only did China fail to warn the rest of the world but they also blocked the warnings coming out of Taiwan making use of their position of influence on the WHO.
PB is in danger of disappearing up its own arse. Yer demanding a place at government pressers and every fucker is an expert in everything. And the last thread was a shocker. Not the header, but the way that you all decided the coppers are all corrupt, lazy, incompetent bastards. Not PBs finest hour.
You took something very different from that discussion than I did. Not least that even where people are making gripes they of course mean that must apply that to 'all' of the group in question.
Not your finest hour perhaps. The press conference stuff was clearly light hearted banter, I'd suggest taking that seriously is is more telling than the comments themselves. Lighten up for christ's sake.
Extraordinary headlines for The Telegraph and The Mail, whom one would expect to be Boris's friends. What's brought all that on?
They can detect the groundswell of anger bubbling up on this testing mess?
Possibly but this is fast moving and in the next few weeks when testing is much improved they will find something else because the right wing papers hate the lockdown no matter how important it is
I don't think it is the lockdown.
I've been supportive of Boris and the Government so far but the lack of clarity on testing (2,000 out of 550,000 NHS staff??) is very friustrating, even to the Mail and Telegraph and their readers. Boris is in danger of losing the confidence of the public. If he does the lockdown is over in practice.
Which is the issue with the media pile on
It may be “news” but it is also thoroughly irresponsible
You'd prefer the Chinese approach? Feed the public what you want them to hear.
No, but listening to the BBC today the only thing they have talked about is testing. It’s part of the story, but not the panacea people pretend. Ultimately we need people to have confidence that the government strategy is sensible and to obey the lockdown.
PB is in danger of disappearing up its own arse. Yer demanding a place at government pressers and every fucker is an expert in everything. And the last thread was a shocker. Not the header, but the way that you all decided the coppers are all corrupt, lazy, incompetent bastards. Not PBs finest hour.
You took something very different from that discussion than I did. Not least that even where people are making gripes they of course mean that must apply that to 'all' of the group in question.
Not your finest hour perhaps. The press conference stuff was clearly light hearted banter, I'd suggest taking that seriously is is more telling than the comments themselves. Lighten up for christ's sake.
Shit the bed, I love this place.
Well I wouldn't recommend shitting the bed as a reaction, but each to their own.
As the Governments disastrous inability to ramp up testing and the fact have only tested 2000 of 1.3m nhs workers comes to light.
The clappers try to deflect blame onto China.
Did they advise we plod along testing less than 10,000 for weeks and weeks on end?
I may have mentioned it's a fiasco that will cost lots of additional lives as cross infection in hospitals is bound to be rife as untested healthcare professionals infect thousands. It gives me know pleasure at all to be proved right it just makes me f**king angry.
Trump: "Did you know I am number 1 on Facebook? I just found out. That's very nice."
In the middle of the greatest crisis since the War.
Someone should tell him he is a perfect exemplar of narcissism, I doubt he'd get beyond 'perfect exemplar' so he might repeat it, which would be good for a laugh.
Ok China has to take a lot of the blame for this pandemic. But it's a bit weird how everyone suddenly knows that the Chinese are hiding tens of thousands of deaths. This sudden realisation coincides with the understanding that the UK and the US are going to have more deaths than the 3k so far admitted to in China. The timing is a bit suspicious.
And last week it was all: the Germans are definitely cheating on their death figures.
Is there any actual evidence for these tens or hundreds of thousands of deaths?
Just use your brain and look on social media (more reliable than any MSM)
Sieve the evidence, look at the videos, assay the rumors, and the truth is obvious. China would not have sacrificed half of its economy, and risked national unrest, for a bug that was only going to kill 3k people.
This is the essential truth I saw at the start.
The first time I realised that this was going to be really bad was that NO2 picture from NASA showing industrial output had virtually stopped in northern China. It was immediately obvious that this was far worse than they were letting on. It was also obvious that we were going to be hard hit by this and I said so repeatedly on here and elsewhere.
China lied and failed to ring the alarm bell for the world but frankly what our government needed to do was look and think. They did, but it took them a long time and that time definitely sold the pass on containment. Whether that would ever have worked in this country is a moot point but it was made so by a combination of duplicity and stupidity.
One thing that the government really should be condemned for is the utterly casual attitude towards continuing air travel and the lack of quarantine for arrivals.
Assuming that is the things I read on PB are correct.
I'll add that when things ease and overseas travel becomes possible then the government should make it clear that people doing so do so at their own risk and that there will be no more emergency flights to rescue them.
The priority given to freedom of movement for air travellers is genuinely bewildering but we are far from atypical in this. So many early cases were caused by those who had flown in in so many countries. It’s almost as if those who indulge in frequent flying are more important than the rest of the population.
Those who indulge in frequent flying include politicians and media types.
While I agree with much of what you say, what we are dealing with in terms of anger is an expression of anxiety, and that anxiety is driven by fear. There is a lot to fear at the moment. Loss of income, of freedom, of jobs, of lifestyle, of home, of family, and of life. A lot of that anger will be displaced onto convenient targets. I understand that, it is counterproductive but very human.
China is not a “convenient target”, it literally is the source of this virus, and its tendency to lies and obfuscation is one big reason this virus is now so menacing
if they had listened to the Wuhan doctors (now dead) rather than arresting them and silencing them, and if they had confessed the real mortality rate, rather than hiding it, the world would have been forewarned, months ago. They did not. China lied. And here we are.
This is rewriting history. The world was sufficiently warned, whether the 'true' number of deaths/cases was underreported or not. This is just a cheap copout for those who failed to respond to the facts more decisively.
We really weren’t warned. The Chinese government lied to us, via WHO
I am surprised that someone as smart as you is parroting this drivel.
The first indication the NERVTAG Committee had of human to human transmission from China was on 20th January. It is right there in the minutes of the Committee meeting from 2st January.
What is this bien pensant excuse-China mindset?
It’s mad
“Taiwan has accused the World Health Organization of failing to communicate an early warning about transmission of the coronavirus between humans, slowing the global response to the pandemic.
Health officials in Taipei said they alerted the WHO at the end of December about the risk of human-to-human transmission of the new virus but said its concerns were not passed on to other countries.
Taiwan is excluded from the WHO because China, which claims it as part of its territory, demands that third countries and international bodies do not treat it in any way that resembles how independent states are treated.”
Financial Times, March 20 ($$)
I was not excusing China at all - quite the opposite. I was excusing our own scientific experts who were working on false information although there was no way they could know that.
It is clear from your quote that not only did China fail to warn the rest of the world but they also blocked the warnings coming out of Taiwan making use of their position of influence on the WHO.
You must agree though that when the WHO declared it a "Public Health Emergency of International Concern" on Jan 23rd, that the warning was well and truly out there for all to see?
As the Governments disastrous inability to ramp up testing and the fact have only tested 2000 of 1.3m nhs workers comes to light.
The clappers try to deflect blame onto China.
Did they advise we plod along testing less than 10,000 for weeks and weeks on end?
I may have mentioned it's a fiasco that will cost lots of additional lives as cross infection in hospitals is bound to be rife as untested healthcare professionals infect thousands. It gives me no pleasure at all to be proved right it just makes me f**king angry.
Trump: "Did you know I am number 1 on Facebook? I just found out. That's very nice."
In the middle of the greatest crisis since the War.
I can't stand watching anymore, it makes me too angry. I read the news about his briefings the following day instead.
One likes to think that in a few years when the multiple catastrophes that Trump has brought down on his nation have played out, that at least some of his supporters in the GOP will hang their heads in deep shame.
This is a problem now that BoZo has proclaimed testing is the only way out of lockdown
Well, I’m not sure, because he has been getting ready for it.
Todays evening news and front pages really seem to have turned on the government. The Mail did this yesterday and claim victory today for Boris to promise more testing. the Telegraph is a bit of a shocker.
Their mind seems to be where I was yesterday, I have changed my mind actually, the more I looked into it, I am no longer sure testing is a government shambles.
There was a point of decision put to ministers early on, pressure on from WHO to test, lobbying from private enterprise, throw it open as quickly as possible to as many Laboratories in the private sector as possible, copying mass testing programmes of other countries. The alternative lobby, such as Profs from the university’s, was control and standardisation. You lose control you lose some degree of reliability and credibility in the results.
It’s not that U.K. government had given up on testing, just working towards control and standardisation over the testing once new centres were ready, the sort of control and standardisation others country’s leaping into mass testing won’t really have. I not sure if what I am saying is clearly coming across, I now appreciate the control thing is subtly important, it’s not just sheer numbers.
The threat to the government now is, under media pressure, not least Daily Mail, they are seen to be flip flopping away from that original decision. The mail claiming victory as Boris changing mind and promising more testing, but truth is all along government already promising more testing, just carefully ensuring control and standardisation as the new centres now ramp up.
The U.K. media is behind the 8 ball. I want Mail and Tele to focus on Care Homes now if they want to claim victories for pressure they put on. Correct me where I’m wrong. Our Dr Foxy advised Big G to keep his relative out a care home if possible, saying it will go in them and they have next to no PPE in them. He didn’t go on to explain exactly what that means, but I am putting 2 and 2 together on behalf of the vulnerable people in them, the brilliant carers and nursing staff, and I don’t like what the calculus comes up with.
Ok China has to take a lot of the blame for this pandemic. But it's a bit weird how everyone suddenly knows that the Chinese are hiding tens of thousands of deaths. This sudden realisation coincides with the understanding that the UK and the US are going to have more deaths than the 3k so far admitted to in China. The timing is a bit suspicious.
And last week it was all: the Germans are definitely cheating on their death figures.
Is there any actual evidence for these tens or hundreds of thousands of deaths?
Just use your brain and look on social media (more reliable than any MSM)
Sieve the evidence, look at the videos, assay the rumors, and the truth is obvious. China would not have sacrificed half of its economy, and risked national unrest, for a bug that was only going to kill 3k people.
This is the essential truth I saw at the start.
The first time I realised that this was going to be really bad was that NO2 picture from NASA showing industrial output had virtually stopped in northern China. It was immediately obvious that this was far worse than they were letting on. It was also obvious that we were going to be hard hit by this and I said so repeatedly on here and elsewhere.
China lied and failed to ring the alarm bell for the world but frankly what our government needed to do was look and think. They did, but it took them a long time and that time definitely sold the pass on containment. Whether that would ever have worked in this country is a moot point but it was made so by a combination of duplicity and stupidity.
One thing that the government really should be condemned for is the utterly casual attitude towards continuing air travel and the lack of quarantine for arrivals.
Assuming that is the things I read on PB are correct.
I'll add that when things ease and overseas travel becomes possible then the government should make it clear that people doing so do so at their own risk and that there will be no more emergency flights to rescue them.
It is slightly weird. Purely anecdotal but factual nevertheless, an acquaintance went off to China (Beijing rather than Wuhan, but still) for a TEFLy type thing in November, shipped back last Friday, relieved and silly selfies in London Saturday and back to his oldish parent in the Borders on Sunday, without the slightest impediment.
It’s up there with the Mail’s story from the early 90s that, in order to celebrate the upcoming millennium, the government was going to rotate Stonehenge 3 degrees to the left so that it was properly aligned with the rising sun at the Spring Solstice.
Ok China has to take a lot of the blame for this pandemic. But it's a bit weird how everyone suddenly knows that the Chinese are hiding tens of thousands of deaths. This sudden realisation coincides with the understanding that the UK and the US are going to have more deaths than the 3k so far admitted to in China. The timing is a bit suspicious.
And last week it was all: the Germans are definitely cheating on their death figures.
Is there any actual evidence for these tens or hundreds of thousands of deaths?
Just use your brain and look on social media (more reliable than any MSM)
Sieve the evidence, look at the videos, assay the rumors, and the truth is obvious. China would not have sacrificed half of its economy, and risked national unrest, for a bug that was only going to kill 3k people.
This is the essential truth I saw at the start.
The first time I realised that this was going to be really bad was that NO2 picture from NASA showing industrial output had virtually stopped in northern China. It was immediately obvious that this was far worse than they were letting on. It was also obvious that we were going to be hard hit by this and I said so repeatedly on here and elsewhere.
China lied and failed to ring the alarm bell for the world but frankly what our government needed to do was look and think. They did, but it took them a long time and that time definitely sold the pass on containment. Whether that would ever have worked in this country is a moot point but it was made so by a combination of duplicity and stupidity.
One thing that the government really should be condemned for is the utterly casual attitude towards continuing air travel and the lack of quarantine for arrivals.
Assuming that is the things I read on PB are correct.
I'll add that when things ease and overseas travel becomes possible then the government should make it clear that people doing so do so at their own risk and that there will be no more emergency flights to rescue them.
The priority given to freedom of movement for air travellers is genuinely bewildering but we are far from atypical in this. So many early cases were caused by those who had flown in in so many countries. It’s almost as if those who indulge in frequent flying are more important than the rest of the population.
Those who indulge in frequent flying include politicians and media types.
Plus business fatcats and various 'celebrities'.
The Gov't seems to have absolutely no control over our airports, Heathrow in particular. They're only reduced their flights because other places in the world have cut flights and casual travellers/reasonable businesses have decided it is too risky to fly.
It's utterly beyond belief when people are now restricted in their own movement outside their house.
As the Governments disastrous inability to ramp up testing and the fact have only tested 2000 of 1.3m nhs workers comes to light.
The clappers try to deflect blame onto China.
Did they advise we plod along testing less than 10,000 for weeks and weeks on end?
I may have mentioned it's a fiasco that will cost lots of additional lives as cross infection in hospitals is bound to be rife as untested healthcare professionals infect thousands. It gives me know pleasure at all to be proved right it just makes me f**king angry.
Would you rather we test healthcare staff or patients?
“Ambition and anxiety both gnaw at him constantly,” the columnist Walter Lippmann wrote to Felix Frankfurter, then a law professor and later a Supreme Court justice, as Hoover floundered desperately during the early days of the Great Depression. “He has no resiliency. And if things continue to break badly for him, I think the chances are against his being able to avoid a breakdown. When men of his temperament get to his age without ever having had real opposition, and then meet it in its most dramatic form, it’s quite dangerous.”...
It appears to be the first 3rd World country (unless you count Iran) where the Bug has really got a horrible grip - and therefore might be a sign of things to come across Lat Am and Africa
I’ll link to just two tweets, there are plenty more which are equally vivid and distressing
The striking thing is how much these echo the first horrific vids that came out of Wuhan.
For me the major concern is how this will impact such countries. It's clearly going to be bad here (say 25K deaths in the first wave, fewer in the following as we get better prepared) but in less well-prepared countries they are going to only have one wave, and it is going to just be appalling.
Ok China has to take a lot of the blame for this pandemic. But it's a bit weird how everyone suddenly knows that the Chinese are hiding tens of thousands of deaths. This sudden realisation coincides with the understanding that the UK and the US are going to have more deaths than the 3k so far admitted to in China. The timing is a bit suspicious.
And last week it was all: the Germans are definitely cheating on their death figures.
Is there any actual evidence for these tens or hundreds of thousands of deaths?
Just use your brain and look on social media (more reliable than any MSM)
Sieve the evidence, look at the videos, assay the rumors, and the truth is obvious. China would not have sacrificed half of its economy, and risked national unrest, for a bug that was only going to kill 3k people.
This is the essential truth I saw at the start.
The first time I realised that this was going to be really bad was that NO2 picture from NASA showing industrial output had virtually stopped in northern China. It was immediately obvious that this was far worse than they were letting on. It was also obvious that we were going to be hard hit by this and I said so repeatedly on here and elsewhere.
China lied and failed to ring the alarm bell for the world but frankly what our government needed to do was look and think. They did, but it took them a long time and that time definitely sold the pass on containment. Whether that would ever have worked in this country is a moot point but it was made so by a combination of duplicity and stupidity.
One thing that the government really should be condemned for is the utterly casual attitude towards continuing air travel and the lack of quarantine for arrivals.
Assuming that is the things I read on PB are correct.
I'll add that when things ease and overseas travel becomes possible then the government should make it clear that people doing so do so at their own risk and that there will be no more emergency flights to rescue them.
The priority given to freedom of movement for air travellers is genuinely bewildering but we are far from atypical in this. So many early cases were caused by those who had flown in in so many countries. It’s almost as if those who indulge in frequent flying are more important than the rest of the population.
This problem wasn't caused by frequent flyers. It's silly to mention them IMO.
As the Governments disastrous inability to ramp up testing and the fact have only tested 2000 of 1.3m nhs workers comes to light.
The clappers try to deflect blame onto China.
Did they advise we plod along testing less than 10,000 for weeks and weeks on end?
I may have mentioned it's a fiasco that will cost lots of additional lives as cross infection in hospitals is bound to be rife as untested healthcare professionals infect thousands. It gives me know pleasure at all to be proved right it just makes me f**king angry.
Would you rather we test healthcare staff or patients?
We need to do both stop being a Clapper.
The testing strategy has been a disaster as I have said consistently for weeks.
It appears the PM and even the right wing press now know it.
Comments
(This is a joke, for the avoidance of Nat fury)
So the Scottish government proposed trials with single judges. The Faculty is grimly opposed and I understand that the idea has been dropped, at least for now, but to be honest I rather saw where they were coming from.
I suspect the right wing press turning on the government will properly up the focus on testing but, I shudder to say it, those in the cabinet might just turn out to be very poor leaders.
And the focus is the “War on Drugs”
Squirrel, much?
The ONS give over 1.5 million NHS workers:
https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/publicsectorpersonnel/timeseries/g7gl/pse
No..I have posted that my wife works on medical journals where the whole international medical community has recognised the transparency of the Chinese doctors with publishing their data....
When this shitshow started in mid November they covered their tracks....
But since January they have been transparent...and they showed us the way to lockdown to contain...they gave us the road map...they told us to test and isolate....
but as I said...why let the truth get in the way with a spot of right wing fake news that deflects the blame....
Not your finest hour perhaps. The press conference stuff was clearly light hearted banter, I'd suggest taking that seriously is is more telling than the comments themselves. Lighten up for christ's sake.
It will probably work for us, because we're a quite high salary, quite high turnover business. I suspect lowish salary lowish turnover businesses, including quite a lot of one man Ltds, might struggle to access the amount they'll need to remain viable.
I would expect some (more!) downward pressure on the banks from the treasury in the coming weeks.
It's the fantasy of "bringing China to heel" (this is a verbatim quote from an earlier thread) which irks me.
Born a virgin, died a harlot,
She was still a virgin at seventeen,
A very rare thing in Prestatyn"
On a Gravestone - Verse and Worse - circa 1960 from memory.
On the 25th Jan the WHO issued this video:
https://vimeo.com/387664679
Not warned? I certainly was. Perhaps the government wasn't listening? I don't think so as on Feb 1st our government warned against all but essential travel to China, and a few days later we had our first case.
Questioning actions, or inactions, after this point seems quite reasonable to me.
China lied and failed to ring the alarm bell for the world but frankly what our government needed to do was look and think. They did, but it took them a long time and that time definitely sold the pass on containment. Whether that would ever have worked in this country is a moot point but it was made so by a combination of duplicity and stupidity.
i) Is there a reason to think the UK should be very much worse impacted than other European countries? Not really - we will not be the best, but nor is there a reason to think we will be massively worse effected than France / Italy / Spain. In the latter two cases (especially Italy) they are now slowly getting over the peak and towards a more manageable situation.
ii) What would more testing help us with today? It would help get a scale of the epidemic but, in some sense, should not change any of our behaviours - we should all be in lockdown mode. The clear exception is for healthcare professionals.
iii) What would more testing help us with tomorrow? A lot, we would understand the scale of the epidemic (antibody tests) and be much better prepared (antigen / PCR-based tests) for determining whether anyone with symptoms has indeed been infected.
iv) What will we do after the first phase is over? We should ease off restrictions slowly to make sure we don't have an immediate outbreak and massively ramp up testing to control future outbreaks.
v) Are we doomed to repeat the same mistakes over and over again? Hopefully not! Every country (across all of Europe, certainly), will need to learn lessons from this first wave. Clearly we will need better testing, but we will also have better understanding of 'best clinical practice' plus insight from numerous clinical trials that are testing a variety of drugs to see how well they work. With some luck (and this has a reasonably good probability) some of these will have an impact on how the disease spreads following infection, slowing it down and/or preventing it proceeding towards the pneumonia state.
Sorry for the rather long post, but just shouting and trying to blame people is not very helpful - it would be more useful to think about what we might need to do moving forward and what is critical today.
Incoming !!!!!!!
It may be “news” but it is also thoroughly irresponsible
And what is the 'right thing'.
Now I'm sure there is scope for individual initiative - so one hospital orders more PPE while another doesn't.
But should the first be applauded and should the second be criticised ?
Anyway, as for power cuts there are few things that would surprise one nowadays. We'll just have to wait and see. Although I'm finding the reports of people falling ill by the sackload here there and everywhere mystifying. I mean, you can understand it with healthcare workers but, with infection rates in the UK estimated at something like 2-3% of the population, why would there by mass absenteeism amongst, for example, National Grid workers on a sufficient scale to cause the service to collapse.
Given that I work in manufacturing I still have to go to the factory to do my job. Nobody in my department (aside from one vulnerable person who's self-isolating) is off or has ever been off on account of Covid, and almost nobody else who's still in the building (the officey types having been despatched to work from home) has been directly impacted by it either. Amongst the great mass of the population, at least so far, anybody who gets this thing can count themselves very unlucky and anyone who suffers from it badly enough to require admission to hospital doubly so.
The notion that a sufficient number of workers in any key sector outside of health and social care (and possibly teaching) has been floored by Covid to materially imperil the delivery of that service is implausible.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/01/family-of-dead-british-man-appeal-to-florida-to-let-zaandam-dock-coronavirus
Spain 104,118 +8,195 9,387 +923
The first was probably inevitable, but the timing of the second is more interesting as even if it is all true, why the concerns are being raised prominently right now is less so.
I don't have an opinion on how inaccurate the Chinese death figures are - what do I know? But the people with very definite opinions don't seem to actually know any more than me about it.
What is the good work God thanks it for?
There is a bigger picture. A huge holistic puzzle, and corona virus reminds us to be not lazy to keep working on it.
Men are biologically the weaker sex. Women have stronger immune systems due to more ex chromosomes. Because they get born with all the eggs, they are more precious to fertility than the male, so they are made stronger. So do your immune system a favour swap your pint of Kwak for a pint of a young woman’s blood. They have a sixth sense in fighting virus.
But you are not going to drink the young lady’s blood in search of immortality, because you have already started work on that holistic puzzle, and you know so much now about the anatomy of your soul.
So, I'm not sure that that tells you anything other than the fact that the wind stopped blowing or a cloud crossed in front of a big solar farm.
Stay home. Save lives.
Everything else is detail
I have suffered power cuts here in the UK fairly recently.
Show me a story that actually blames staff shortages due to COVID
Shouldn't be hard, the press will be all over it.
Assuming that is the things I read on PB are correct.
I'll add that when things ease and overseas travel becomes possible then the government should make it clear that people doing so do so at their own risk and that there will be no more emergency flights to rescue them.
Read more: https://metro.co.uk/2020/03/31/power-companies-remind-customers-ready-lights-go-12488892/?ito=cbshare
Twitter: https://twitter.com/MetroUK | Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MetroUK/
But given how people unintensive most electricty generation is (particularly things like wind and solar), and given that Spain has grid stability problems, and given that the France-Spain interconnector has not seen any spikes in demand caused by the Spanish desparately trying to get more power into their country, then I reserve the right to be a little bit sceptical.
It will be worth keeping an eye out for similar stories about other governments.
France should likely follow a similar (although slightly delayed) timeline and the UK will start seeing a measurable easing in pressure in terms of new admissions around Easter Sunday. Not going to be a very fun 10-11 days in terms of new cases / fatalities though. But we should expect a plateau in new cases here this weekend (since much of the lockdown had started on the Friday night with the closure of bars / restaurants / clubs).
https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwell/essays-and-other-works/the-lion-and-the-unicorn-socialism-and-the-english-genius/
In the middle of the greatest crisis since the War.
Our Government can be held to account by the press and of course the medical profession has been speaking about failings in our response.
We all know how the Chinese state reacts to criticism.
So, I'm going to go with my earlier thesis of there not being a crisis in Spanish electricity production.
We heard the same. Some will have to make do with setting light to their big roll mountain as torches and batteries have almost gone.
But some bloke on twitter trumps reason when there is panic to spread.
Not just Sharma but more importantly the lady from the NHS - I don't think she was anything like as good a communicator as the other medical experts we have had up to now.
I have no wish to criticise her - she is probably very good at her job. But she didn't have the media and communication skills of everyone else who has appeared at those press conferences up to now.
I think it's imperative that they get back to the top team tomorrow - which in Boris's absence means Jenrick, Harries and Vallance.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MEqp0x6ajGE&feature=youtu.be
It is clear from your quote that not only did China fail to warn the rest of the world but they also blocked the warnings coming out of Taiwan making use of their position of influence on the WHO.
The British media is behaving more like this
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=14njUwJUg1I
Just trying to understand the 'joke'.
The clappers try to deflect blame onto China.
Did they advise we plod along testing less than 10,000 for weeks and weeks on end?
I may have mentioned it's a fiasco that will cost lots of additional lives as cross infection in hospitals is bound to be rife as untested healthcare professionals infect thousands.
It gives me know pleasure at all to be proved right it just makes me f**king angry.
Plus business fatcats and various 'celebrities'.
Todays evening news and front pages really seem to have turned on the government. The Mail did this yesterday and claim victory today for Boris to promise more testing. the Telegraph is a bit of a shocker.
Their mind seems to be where I was yesterday, I have changed my mind actually, the more I looked into it, I am no longer sure testing is a government shambles.
There was a point of decision put to ministers early on, pressure on from WHO to test, lobbying from private enterprise, throw it open as quickly as possible to as many Laboratories in the private sector as possible, copying mass testing programmes of other countries. The alternative lobby, such as Profs from the university’s, was control and standardisation. You lose control you lose some degree of reliability and credibility in the results.
It’s not that U.K. government had given up on testing, just working towards control and standardisation over the testing once new centres were ready, the sort of control and standardisation others country’s leaping into mass testing won’t really have. I not sure if what I am saying is clearly coming across, I now appreciate the control thing is subtly important, it’s not just sheer numbers.
The threat to the government now is, under media pressure, not least Daily Mail, they are seen to be flip flopping away from that original decision. The mail claiming victory as Boris changing mind and promising more testing, but truth is all along government already promising more testing, just carefully ensuring control and standardisation as the new centres now ramp up.
The U.K. media is behind the 8 ball. I want Mail and Tele to focus on Care Homes now if they want to claim victories for pressure they put on. Correct me where I’m wrong. Our Dr Foxy advised Big G to keep his relative out a care home if possible, saying it will go in them and they have next to no PPE in them. He didn’t go on to explain exactly what that means, but I am putting 2 and 2 together on behalf of the vulnerable people in them, the brilliant carers and nursing staff, and I don’t like what the calculus comes up with.
One thing I've noticed is that it seems to take an insanely long time from test to result.
So is that anything to do with it?
Purely anecdotal but factual nevertheless, an acquaintance went off to China (Beijing rather than Wuhan, but still) for a TEFLy type thing in November, shipped back last Friday, relieved and silly selfies in London Saturday and back to his oldish parent in the Borders on Sunday, without the slightest impediment.
It's utterly beyond belief when people are now restricted in their own movement outside their house.
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/04/01/trump-breakdown-threaten-sink-presidency-158321
Before Herbert Hoover earned a reputation as a tragic failure, he had a reputation for heroic success—a can-do businessman who arrived in the presidency with no previous elective experience. He was one of the most celebrated men of his times. Then times changed.
“Ambition and anxiety both gnaw at him constantly,” the columnist Walter Lippmann wrote to Felix Frankfurter, then a law professor and later a Supreme Court justice, as Hoover floundered desperately during the early days of the Great Depression. “He has no resiliency. And if things continue to break badly for him, I think the chances are against his being able to avoid a breakdown. When men of his temperament get to his age without ever having had real opposition, and then meet it in its most dramatic form, it’s quite dangerous.”...
Ecuador 2,748 +446 93 +14
The testing strategy has been a disaster as I have said consistently for weeks.
It appears the PM and even the right wing press now know it.
https://www.wsbtv.com/news/trending/coronavirus-anthony-fauci-bobbleheads-will-help-raise-funds-100-million-mask-challenge/YHY4TX2NM5EG5LXJS5KKD4NPKA/
New York (JFK) to London/Heathrow (LHR)
6 Apr $180
Unbelievable.