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politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » That Boris could be so afflicted brings home in a powerful way
politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » That Boris could be so afflicted brings home in a powerful way why the shutdown is necessary
That the man who just four months ago led the Conservatives to their biggest General Election Victory in decades should now be in intensive care with the coronavirus brings home the sheer magnitude of what the world is facing and why governments are going to extraordinary lengths to try to impede it. This is a killer and at the moment there’s no way of of stopping it.
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You have the left wing who are honestly convinved their policies would make the county better
You have the right wing who honeslty think there policiess would make the country better
You have the selfish tw@t wing who will vote for whichever party most benefits them and their familes
sadly I think the bigged proportion of the electorate is the third
What a terrible demoralising day it was yesterday. When an enemy wants to knock the fight out of an opponent it tries to take out the leader, so now this virus tries to do exactly that.
It's as if it is sentient (yes, crazy, I know).
At least we'd been able to rely on an optimistic 'can do' attitude from the PM in these difficult times but how can the likes of Raab, Whitty and team keep that up now, when that has been so comprehensively shattered? I fear for what will happen to the country if the virus completes the job. Can the centre hold when the terrible reality is so front and centre?
On top of that, at regular intervals I hear/read of people who seem as though they would quite happily sacrifice me as collateral damage. I don't know how much more depressing it can get. Same age as Boris, similarly lacking in current fitness, maybe a bit less healthy, in fact. Is my generation just the cannon fodder of this war? It honestly seems that way, to me. Not old enough to be shielded, not young enough to be able to survive it, physically compromised but not compromised enough, economically useful as long as not too many of us make the ultimate sacrifice.
Back to bed.
I hear you, ukpaul. I wouldn't want to have battle this thing. Still not fully recovered from a chest infection picked up in December. Taken me from a devil-may-care guy to someone who is utterly paranoid that today's delivery of post is trying to kill me....
The other thing that 'almost' feels true is that if you start mocking this thing or taking it too lightly it comes knocking on your door.
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
According to the Intensive Care National Audit & Research Centre the survival chance of a man his age is 54% without the aforementioned points.
So if any of that is accurate, and I don't know for certain that it is, it indicates just how grim this is and that those headlines suggesting that Boris is 'fighting for his life' are about right.
This is all pretty devastating news. And many of us have a creeping sense of dread.
Get well Boris. Pull through. We are all rooting for you.
(Source for some of the above is today's D. Telegraph)
No man is an island,
entire of itself;
every man is a piece of the continent,
a part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less,
as well as if a promontory were.
as well as if a manor of thy friend’s
or of thine own were.
Any man’s death diminishes me,
because I am involved in mankind;
and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls;
it tolls for thee.
I think that Mike's also right that it will help to ensure that we don't relax measures too soon (albeit that we must do so eventually.) Though FWIW I've thought pretty much since the lockdown started that nothing would change when the data are reviewed at Easter. This is when the Government's learned advisers seem to expect the peak of deaths to occur. That's hardly the moment to start doing things differently; we might possibly see movement at the end of April/start of May if there are real signs of progress by then.
Meanwhile, we can all read the numbers that have already been published in relation to the mortality rate amongst people who end up in intensive care with this illness. We just have to hope that the odds fall in the Prime Minister's favour.
It's vital to remember that getting outside once a day for exercise is extremely important for physical and mental wellbeing. I do just wish this country weren't lagging so very far behind on the wearing of masks. They should be mandatory in public places during this lockdown.
One minor consolation is that it's put everything else in perspective. To think we were squabbling over whether the railways were in public ownership or not! Or even Brexit. All these things matter too, but first we need to collectively get through this as well as we can, with each other's support.
Was saddened to hear that the PM has been moved to intensive care. Hope that he makes a full recovery.
I never touch my mask and I carry anti-bacterials everywhere.
We are hopelessly behind the curve on this. They are absolutely 100%, clearly, a preventative for viral spreading, both from those who have it and those who don't. All Asian countries have known this for years but we are pathetically clinging to the last vestiges of 'we know best.' We don't.
Far far far more important than a message to stay indoors should be, 'wear a bloody mask.'
I still might catch the bloody virus, mind
https://news.sky.com/story/coronavirus-sacrificing-the-elderly-care-homes-asked-to-take-covid-19-patients-11969661
Five hours of speculation to fill...
https://twitter.com/jamesrbuk/status/1247242355742253056
Makes me even more careful. It reminds you what this is all about.
The cavalier people I see on social distancing are always the ones who aren't wearing masks.
He was very ill yesterday, when the message was "working from his hospital bed"
Spin is not helpful at this point
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/science-has-no-clear-answers-on-the-coronavirus-face-masks-are-no-exception/
It's a cultural blockage and somewhat arrogant. Brits recoil from them because it's what foreigners have done for years. Just as Boris took a cavalier and, frankly, slapdash approach to his own safety and those around him, so we continue to believe that this virus won't spread to us when we're walking past people or chatting to them.
Things are changing though. I saw 50% of people wearing masks yesterday when I was out in town and that did surprise and encourage me. The trouble is, it's far too late.
WEARING A MASK SAVES LIVES
That should be the main message not telling people they can't sunbathe.
The other big subtext behind this is that there aren't enough quality masks to go around. Which is pretty scandalous.
I've been hot onto this for years but that's probably because I spent 10 years living and working in Asia.
The PM almost certainly has a BMI over 30. Perhaps over 35. Not good.
And according to the medical stats expert on BBC Radio Scotland an hour ago, males in their 50s are 3 times (three times) more likely to die than females in their 50s. Not at all good.
Heavy alcohol consumption makes you a sitting duck for a vast range of diseases and afflictions, including Covid19.
I’m a bit younger than the PM and have a lower BMI. I assume I drink less alcohol than him too. And I’m scared. Every man over 40 with a poor track-record at the gym should be scared shitless.
That doesn't mean I don't now wish him well. I am desperately hoping he pulls through. If he does I suspect he may be a changed man.
Interesting Spanish article on the slow stages back to 'normality' after the peak and subsequent decline of the virus. The gist is: very slow return with continues isolation for all risk groups well into the summer and beyond. Slow return to work, even slower re-opening of tourist centres, bars, restaurants , etc. In short no return to normality much beyond getting more people back to work who can do so relatively safely. Remember, the UK is signficantly further back down the road than Spain and Italy.
IMHO it was probably a good thing no-one knew about Churchill's heart attack during the nadir of WW2.
Just being honest.
I was on a leadership team a while back and we all took the usual temperament tests, Myers-Briggs and all that (cue someone to post an article by Nate Silver explaining why they are unreliable).
It was actually really useful to see that us strongly N types (Intuitives) do need the 'Computer-says-Nooooooo' types to keep us in check.
Visionaries like me can be a pain in the arse.
Even though we're right.
I know that my year of cancer (two years if you include the pre-diagnosis decline, which is easy to see in hindsight but miss in reality) changed me beyond all recognition. Both physically and my personality. Entirely for the better.
I’ll never forget those doctors and nurses. I can see their faces and their mannerisms just as clearly as cherished childhood friends
There's also something socially distancing and upsetting about them - just like Balaclavas, burquas and the like.
I don't think covering your face is a good thing.
I suspect the ‘truth’ may be that masks, with the same mask used repeatedly by the average untrained amateur, provide a small net disbenefit to the wearer but a net benefit to everyone else. Therefore you want to be in a world where everyone wears them.
That’s the real reason that wearers get so agitated about it.
Us mere mortals can be a bit slow on the uptake.
A. a quirk in the stats due to small sample size (only a few hundred has been in intensive care for Covid19 when the table was published)
or
B. the effect of a lot of frail elderly people getting stage 2 Covid19
Right I'd best get writing. Another chapter of my novel beckons.
G'day to you all. Pb.com is almost the only regular place I visit online at the moment. I can only take in so much of this before my fuse box blows.
The widespread use of masks by the public has the same utility, to prevent transmission rather than protect the wearer. Fully filtering masks have a different use.
On my quiet drives to work and back, I would estimate that of the people on the streets, around a third are wearing masks, mostly the south asian community. Many demonstrate poor technique, but I am not surprised at that. I have been trained on these things, the public has not.
And what do you do with elderly people who are ill at home, if there aren't any hospital beds for them? The original herd immunity strategy (by which I mean a single two-month wave to "get it over with") would have meant many, many people dying at home, alone, without any medical care.
Though no doubt there are some fuckwits willing to call them traitors and suchlike for said hole blowing.
Batter my heart, three-person’d God, for you
As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;
That I may rise and stand, o’erthrow me, and bend
Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
I, like an usurp’d town to another due,
Labour to admit you, but oh, to no end;
Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,
But is captiv’d, and proves weak or untrue.
Yet dearly I love you, and would be lov’d fain,
But am betroth’d unto your enemy;
Divorce me, untie or break that knot again,
Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.
What's so frustrating is how powerless we are. I'm not physically able to volunteer to help others, so the best thing I can do is stay at home and not be a drain on hospital resources. It feels cowardly, yet it's the only course of action.
--AS
When will this charade come to an end .
Leaders need to project resilience and resolve if they are to inspire people.
I’d quote the whole thing, but out of deference to @Casino_Royale I'll go light on the poetry.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-australia-52183157
I assume he was a MAMIL?
I feel very sorry indeed for people in flats or terraces, especially if they have children.
And I feel very, very sorry for the 14-20 age group who should be developing their social relationships.
Fortunately after a middle age of indolence, I got a dog and started walking a lot more. Which has done wonders in late middle age, even though I do have some weight to lose (being in the apparently safest slightly overweight category).