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politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » It won’t be Brexit that defines Boris but the decisions he mad
politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » It won’t be Brexit that defines Boris but the decisions he made at the start of the coronavirus crisis
With the UK death toll rising by the day it is perhaps worth reflecting on the two decisions the government made at the start of the crisis. Firstly there was the reluctance to follow other nations to impose lockdowns straight away after the first death and then there was the agreement to allow this year’s Cheltenham Festival to take place as planned.
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https://twitter.com/chunkymark/status/1245608567236726784?s=19
3 weeks seems like years ago on the current timelines, things change so quickly. The next day the Football leagues suspended their fixtures.
Every Vaccine and Treatment in Development for COVID-19, So Far
https://www.visualcapitalist.com/every-vaccine-treatment-covid-19-so-far/
I don’t see much UK representation in the list of diagnostics (or treatments in the clinic), which goes some way to explain why we can’t ramp up testing very quickly
I'd say the greater risk to Boris continuing in office is that there is not a general election in sight, and there are now plausible alternative leaders like Matt Hancock and Rishi Sunak.
I have several Conservative friends who think the Govt's handling of this has been 'shambolic' and that Johnson is 'unfit' to lead such a crisis. They are surprised that I've been more pro.
The decision to allow Cheltenham to go ahead was frankly unbelievable.
The key thing is what you do once it is clear you have made a mistake.
A shame I don’t use much gas during the summer.
I think too that's it's very easy to be wise after the event. Our, and our Government's, eyes were elsewhere, although that's not to say that somebody in a high place shouldn't have been watching the world outside Brexit.
I once accidentally smuggled one into a flight. I'd been given a Swiss Army Knife as a present and had it on my key ring. To be honest rarely used the knife blade itself besides opening parcels but found permanently carrying a bottle opener and screwdriver heads in it to be useful.
After parking at the airport I unthinkingly just put my keys in my carry on bag and went through. It was only when I landed overseas and went into my bag I saw the knife and realised what I'd done.
Needless to say none of the "Security Theatre" of the airport did anything to spot the knife.
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2020/apr/02/cheltenham-faces-criticism-after-racegoers-suffer-covid-19-symptoms
Second on Cheltenham. Was it a mass infecting event? No idea. Of all the people I know who went, and all the people I met in close proximity after I returned, none have it. Or all had it asymptomatically.
But that's just an anecdote so who knows what the numbers really are.
On the other hand, they really were bloody incompetent and typically cavalier early on. As I've mentioned on here frequently, if someone like me can be buying masks and anti-bacterials in January it beggars belief that our Government didn't act for a further six weeks.
Tickling the buccal cavity seems a little hit and miss. This is ignorance speaking as I've no idea. Are there any figures on the rate of false negatives? The result can only be as good as the sampling procedure after all.
You usually know when you have blood for the antibody procedure so this shouldn't be a problem.
It'll be all "the report makes clear that the government addressed the *right* disease, the 1918 flu pandemic, but that the *wrong* disease subsequently infected the population..."
Like all these things out isn't the initial issue, but how it's handled and I think if the govt doesn't get to grips with and increase the amount of testing soon, and if they fail to reach some of the set out numbers, they will suffer at the hands of public opinion.
https://twitter.com/alphatrends/status/1245877018446548993
It shows what a poor candidate Biden is that punters (including yours truly) will not back a man who, if it were anyone else in any other circumstances, would be almost home and hosed.
My support for the Government stems from the fact that they eventually got it right. And I don't mind it if people learn from their mistakes. But let's not pretend it was anything other than that.
Other countries, particularly in Asia had been dealing this for months, various different policy responses had been tried and we already knew a lot about what worked and what didn't. The British government apparently chose to ignore all of them and stick to a plan they wrote years ago for a different disease.
I've also until recently regularly carried exotic plants in my luggage. I know, I know ... I don't anymore.
Although that doesn't mean Jeremy Corbyn. The other Jeremy, Hunt, would have been absolutely brilliant in this. He's the Prime Minister we needed in this crisis.
Entirely right, in my view.
I don't mind defending Boris but not on the indefensible.
The same people think it is the job of the government to insure them against any event.
A lockdown is what you're getting because less disruptive things weren't done when there was time, and the government's run out of runway.
And this lockdown is fucking shit. The later it starts and sooner it’s over - the better.
And what about those of us warning in January about the severity of this?
Let me be clear for your benefit though. Jeremy Corbyn would have been a total disaster in this crisis. And I am currently broadly supportive of Boris: more so than many of my Conservative friends.
But let's not window dress this. The inability of the Right-wingers on here to be honest with themselves and this forum does little credit.
Our Government were slow out of the blocks, nonchalant bordering on cavalier. They have failed to get their act together on testing and protective equipment. That much is known by everyone. So don't lie.
On all fronts it eventually did the right thing. The cost of this government’s lethargy has yet to be calculated.
Rant and rave all you like on here but you've lost this argument so you're wasting your energy. Even the tory press have called the Government to account.
As I say, I'm currently broadly supportive of the Gov't but lying about their crass mistakes demeans the integrity of your posting both now and in the future.
Have a good day everyone.
xx
In reality Cheltenham would have needed to be cancelled on or before the Thursday of the week before (March 5th) and that would definitely have been a far more awkward call.
The whole style of government from at least New Labour onwards, that a problem is something to be spun rather than solved, is at fault.
In China, they were doing brochoscopy with washings on CT suspects when nasopharangeal swabs were negative, but we don't seem to do that here.
The big spike in Chinese cases came when they used CT Thorax scans to make a presumptive diagnosis, rather than virology, but those were taken out of the figures.
Looking for raised CRP, D dimers and FBC changes are all current blood tests with strong predictive ability for severity of disease, but only done on inpatients at present.
The hair shirt brigade / busybodies seem mainly interested in policing people who leave the house, policing that they properly clap according to approved doctrine on the doorsteps of their houses, and trying to shame them as to what they do inside their houses.
They can fuck off.
I may start carrying an Easter egg, just to get the rozzers really annoyed...
One Man, Two Governors.
Enjoy
Entirely correct.
I do agree that far more than the incidental detail of Brexit the handling of the CV is going to define Boris's premiership. For me the question will be whether Rishi Sunak's bold and innovative plans work and/or bankrupt the country. We are facing a situation where despite these efforts hundreds of thousands of small businesses are going to be insolvent creating significant unemployment in this country for the first time in years and potentially wiping out a generation of entrepreneurs. Mitigating that and the speed of any bounce back will for me determine the success or failure of the Boris years. It makes the job Osborne inherited in 2010 look like a walk in the park.
I advocated for both to be stopped here and am no genius.
What you need to do is find out what changes you can make that are enough to contain it but with the least possible disruption. This isn't easy - there's a two-week lag between action and results, and that's long enough for the virus to get a lot of growth if you make the wrong moves in the "normality" direction (which Japan did, after initially stabilizing it by acting early).
Doing what the British did and doing next-to-nothing then going into a full lockdown doesn't avoid this, because sooner or later you're going to have to end the lockdown, and if you go back to normal it's just going to come back again and the whole cycle will repeat.
What would you have suggested instead and when?
As far as I can tell you’ve been arguing for a lockdown (vociferously) since day one.
Still, the government did admit that it got it wrong initially, even before PM, CMO and Health Secretary all came down with it.
https://www.gov.uk/buying-carrying-knives
There will always be risk though. Even if one or two younger people die after it (purely by statistical fluke) whilst millions are fine headlines galore will ensue so the Government needs to be careful about managing that message on reasonable risk.
Although he has from day one been accusing the U.K. govt (and other western Govt’s, when pushed) of failing to follow approaches of Asian Govt’s. Although given that Korean/Japanese/ Chinese approaches seem to have been vastly different, whether on lockdowns or testing it wasn’t exactly easy to pick a consistent example to follow!
It was known that the virus doubles its hosts approximately every 2.5 days left uncontrolled, takes approx 7 days to manifest symptons and then perhaps another 13 to die. You're always behind the 8 ball on this one, so you need to make decisions as if you're 20 to 25 days in the future with approx 3000 times more cases than you have at the moment.
One thing I'll give the Gov't credit for is the lockdown has seemed fair and sensible though I worry it's a bit of a white collar lockdown with infection amongst warehouse staff etc continuing at a greater rate. Since R in any subgroup is exponential you need to have as much locked off as possible.