Excoriating piece by AEP, which importantly contains the views of a leading COVID doctor.
“Boris survived because they gave him oxygen. High flow oxygen wasn’t available as a treatment option for all patients.”
“Our policy was to let the virus rip and then ‘cocoon the elderly’,” he wrote. “You don’t know whether to laugh or cry when you contrast that with what we actually did...We actively seeded this into the very population that was most vulnerable."
It's actually extremely angering to think that basically all of the poor decision making stems from our lack of testing capacity at the beginning of this crisis and our "experts" telling the government that they have it under control. The delay in getting testing capacity to at least 20k per day is why we couldn't mass test all of the care patients before sending them back, it's why we stopped testing community transmission and why we're so late to the party with track and trace.
As I've said before it's Hancock that is ultimately at fault, but our experts have been lacking in judgement on far too many occasions. Especially given that there have been successful models in other countries and not just in Asia, similar European countries/cultures have made it work a lot better but the commonality among those countries was decentralised mass testing capacity.
I'm supportive of Boris at the moment but we were piss-poor early on. Nothing to do with hindsight. Anyone prepared to lift their eyes to the east could see what was happening. That scientists and politicians refused to pay attention is a scandal.
That having been written, from the beginning of April onwards they did get their act together. By that time the virus had spread willy-nilly and the result was 30,000 deaths, 25,000 of which were preventable. So, not great.
On the other hand, without wishing to go all 'herd immunity' (remember that?) by this time next year we may be in a better position than somewhere like, say, New Zealand. The more people are exposed to this the faster we exit it.
I am thinking more and more that people judging and ranking global governments' responses now are at least 12 possibly 18-24 months too early.
It is perfectly possible to judge governments now. You don’t ignore GCSE results because there are A Levels and Degrees to come.
And what is the government’s Covid19 GCSE result?
Quarantine: E, Fail Testing: D, Fail NHS Capacity: B, Success Trace and Isolate: E, Fail Masks: E-, Fail Protect the Vulnerable: D, Fail Avoid Undue Economic Harm: D, Fail PPE: D, Fail
Britain Failed.
How would you rate the public's performance ?
Washing Hands ? Using transport for non essential ? Meeting up with friends and relatives against advice ? Attending banned religious gatherings ? Spousal battery ? Being old ?
If we had all been better at the above wouldn't the infection level be lower ?
I'd rate the public at an A for their performance.
Trouble is you can get an A with 70%
We need A**** even a few % non-compliance can screw us over
I thought you could get away with 10-20% not being fully compliant in the simulations, but I might be misremembering that.
Some signs of a return to more normal NHS. I have now been given a date for a long treatment starting in June. This treatment will be somewhat debilitating so, I have a plan. We can now travel within reason and exercise, and run with a friend at 2M distance. So I intend to complete all my favourite fell runs over the next few weeks, these runs are miles from anyone and not the usual hot spots. I will run with a friend for safety, and enter treatment as fit and strong as possible.
Sounds like an excellent plan. Hit that operating table/treatment as fit as possible is always a great idea.
SARS-CoV-2 ORF3b is a potent interferon antagonist whose activity is further increased by a naturally occurring elongation variant https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.11.088179v1 ...One of the features distinguishing SARS-CoV-2 from its more pathogenic counterpart SARS-CoV is the presence of premature stop codons in its ORF3b gene. Here, we show that SARS-CoV-2 ORF3b is a potent interferon antagonist, suppressing the induction of type I interferon more efficiently than its SARS-CoV ortholog. Phylogenetic analyses and functional assays revealed that SARS-CoV-2-related viruses from bats and pangolins also encode truncated ORF3b gene products with strong anti-interferon activity. Furthermore, analyses of more than 15,000 SARS-CoV-2 sequences identified a natural variant, in which a longer ORF3b reading frame was reconstituted. This variant was isolated from two patients with severe disease and further increased the ability of ORF3b to suppress interferon induction. Thus, our findings not only help to explain the poor interferon response in COVID-19 patients, but also describe a possibility of the emergence of natural SARS-CoV-2 quasispecies with extended ORF3b that may exacerbate COVID-19 symptoms..
Nothing represents the media having a bad crisis more than assuring us the furlough scheme would drop to 60% after June up until minutes before Sunak spoke. They couldn't even get something as fundemanetal as that correct.
They got that something was up and that it wasn't 80% until further notice.
And indeed something is up, the furlough is changing and we'll see to what extent.
So yes, the media sniffing at it was a good thing for transparency and accountability.
I see Sunak has pulled the wool over people's eyes re the furlough, saying he's extended it until October. No you haven't mate, after July no employer is going to pay staff to stay at home
Imagine a business that in the short term can generate 95% of its income using 70% of its staff.
Without getting too hung up on the precise numbers why would such a business not choose to keep 30% of its staff on furlough (with the government contributing to their wages) for as long as they can get away with it?
I see Sunak has pulled the wool over people's eyes re the furlough, saying he's extended it until October. No you haven't mate, after July no employer is going to pay staff to stay at home
Imagine a business that in the short term can generate 95% of its income using 70% of its staff.
Without getting too hung up on the precise numbers why would such a business not choose to keep 30% of its staff on furlough (with the government contributing to their wages) for as long as they can get away with it?
Such a business appears to have discovered that 30% of its staff are unnecessary. I'm not sure quite how common that is.
I think it is common for a business to be able to trade for some time generating most of its income with a significant minority of its staff doing nothing. I have worked at several places where this has been true. Many white collar jobs (private and public sector) are not particularly essential. This includes a lot of quite highly paid ones.
I see Sunak has pulled the wool over people's eyes re the furlough, saying he's extended it until October. No you haven't mate, after July no employer is going to pay staff to stay at home
Imagine a business that in the short term can generate 95% of its income using 70% of its staff.
Without getting too hung up on the precise numbers why would such a business not choose to keep 30% of its staff on furlough (with the government contributing to their wages) for as long as they can get away with it?
Agreed. There will be plenty of employers who would rather keep employees on furlough with taxpayer (the future one!) paying most of the bill, in the hope that the economy picks up and they will be able to immediately call up their "reserve". This is a lot better than having to rehire and retrain a load of people at short notice which would be expensive and inefficient. A lot will depend on who trusts the "bounce back" theory.
There is a huge amount to criticise the government on their generally hopeless response to this crisis. I think so far though, Sunak should be congratulated on his package of support for business, and by extension their employees.
It will depend on how much employers are asked to cough up, surely, a detail which Sunak helpfully left out of today's announcement.
The IFS reckons this little scheme will cost GBP100bn by the time its done, something that Sunak also strangely failed to mention.
But then with folk like you complimenting him as he flushes all our money down the drain, why would he need to?
Listening to Nicola Sturgeon I have a feeling that the virus is much more prevelant in Scotland than it is in many parts of England. Where I am in Hampshire hospitals here are returning to normal. Operating theatres have opened, normal operations are being carried out, there are hardly any Covid-19 admissions, yet in Scotland yesterday there was a 165 increase in the number in Hospital with suspected Covid-19
It's almost like they're different countries at different stages of the pandemic.
Yo u would also think they may read the info and see it has far lower death rate than England but is a few weeks behind, rather than just talking out their jacksie.
I know you are desperate to promote the myth that Scotland is weeks behind, but the figures confirm otherwise. The peak in England was 8th April and 14th April in Scotland.
The problem for Scotland, is that unlike England, the deaths pretty much hit a plateau around that peak and the reduction since has been small.
The risible level of testing (1,239 on 11/5) is not helping.
Little Scotlanders will continue to support, but others will be looking at lack of business support, failing education, inability to deal with this crisis and will start to question.
Hoorray, another 'SNP honeymoon soon to be over' joins the PB throng. The more the merrier I say.
The SNP honeymoon will only end when either:
* Scotland goes independent and the SNP can't blame Westminster for their mistakes.
Or
* An alternative Scottish party with a better proposition for Scotland comes forward.
Or
* The SNP self destructs from the inside.
I don't see any of them happening any time soon. Not good or healthy for Scottish politics.
The SNP civil war of Salmondite hard cybernats led by Joanna Cherry and Sturgeon and her ditherers has already begun
It may have, but coronavirus has hugely strengthened Nicola's position, particularly with the nationalist community. Suspect the "civil war" will peter out or, if not, Sturgeon will trounce them.
Covid, politically, has been a godsend for her. She was increasingly being seen as both divisive and failing in key policy areas such as education. But that's all wiped away for the time being at least by her performance in the Covid briefings and a naturally tendency to rally round the flag.
I see Sunak has pulled the wool over people's eyes re the furlough, saying he's extended it until October. No you haven't mate, after July no employer is going to pay staff to stay at home
Imagine a business that in the short term can generate 95% of its income using 70% of its staff.
Without getting too hung up on the precise numbers why would such a business not choose to keep 30% of its staff on furlough (with the government contributing to their wages) for as long as they can get away with it?
I see Sunak has pulled the wool over people's eyes re the furlough, saying he's extended it until October. No you haven't mate, after July no employer is going to pay staff to stay at home
Imagine a business that in the short term can generate 95% of its income using 70% of its staff.
Without getting too hung up on the precise numbers why would such a business not choose to keep 30% of its staff on furlough (with the government contributing to their wages) for as long as they can get away with it?
Such a business appears to have discovered that 30% of its staff are unnecessary. I'm not sure quite how common that is.
I think it is common for a business to be able to trade for some time generating most of its income with a large minority of its staff doing nothing. I have worked at several places where this has been true. Many white collar jobs (private and public sector) are not particularly essential. This includes a lot of quite highly paid ones.
True in places - what often gets missed is that the usefulness of jobs ebbs and flows. So you can cut savagely, it all looks great and you get your bonus. Then a year or 2 later an oil rig explodes.
Excoriating piece by AEP, which importantly contains the views of a leading COVID doctor.
“Boris survived because they gave him oxygen. High flow oxygen wasn’t available as a treatment option for all patients.”
“Our policy was to let the virus rip and then ‘cocoon the elderly’,” he wrote. “You don’t know whether to laugh or cry when you contrast that with what we actually did...We actively seeded this into the very population that was most vulnerable."
It's actually extremely angering to think that basically all of the poor decision making stems from our lack of testing capacity at the beginning of this crisis and our "experts" telling the government that they have it under control. The delay in getting testing capacity to at least 20k per day is why we couldn't mass test all of the care patients before sending them back, it's why we stopped testing community transmission and why we're so late to the party with track and trace.
As I've said before it's Hancock that is ultimately at fault, but our experts have been lacking in judgement on far too many occasions. Especially given that there have been successful models in other countries and not just in Asia, similar European countries/cultures have made it work a lot better but the commonality among those countries was decentralised mass testing capacity.
I'm supportive of Boris at the moment but we were piss-poor early on. Nothing to do with hindsight. Anyone prepared to lift their eyes to the east could see what was happening. That scientists and politicians refused to pay attention is a scandal.
That having been written, from the beginning of April onwards they did get their act together. By that time the virus had spread willy-nilly and the result was 30,000 deaths, 25,000 of which were preventable. So, not great.
On the other hand, without wishing to go all 'herd immunity' (remember that?) by this time next year we may be in a better position than somewhere like, say, New Zealand. The more people are exposed to this the faster we exit it.
I am thinking more and more that people judging and ranking global governments' responses now are at least 12 possibly 18-24 months too early.
It is perfectly possible to judge governments now. You don’t ignore GCSE results because there are A Levels and Degrees to come.
And what is the government’s Covid19 GCSE result?
Quarantine: E, Fail Testing: D, Fail NHS Capacity: B, Success Trace and Isolate: E, Fail Masks: E-, Fail Protect the Vulnerable: D, Fail Avoid Undue Economic Harm: D, Fail PPE: D, Fail
Britain Failed.
OK
Not by any means saying that UK has A*s, but we've only answered questions 1-3 so far. This is not over by a long chalk would you agree on that?
We’ve answered most of the questions. Take just one: masks (a bugbear of mine, but a useful measure of their general incompetence).
Britain was the last big country - the very last - to ask for mask wearing on public transport. Why? Even the Americans - who began, like us, wrongly saying masks don’t work - realised their mistake some time ago, and changed advice.
It’s just shit. A big serving of shit in an entire menu of shite.
Incidentally I think this perception of our covid-response is now percolating through to the public. The government’s polling resembles a cartoon character running off a cliff. For a while, after the disaster, the legs keep whirring and gravity is ignored.
But when reality hits - Whoosh.
I wonder if Boris will make it through a full term. The backlash is going to be intense.
Both the UK and US seem to have assumed we are somehow naturally better equipped than the rest of the world at coping with and responding to the crisis, while the data slowly reveals that both of us are coping less well than most of Asia and continental Europe.
Most striking in the UK has been our continual changes of direction:
- Testing was vital in the early days, with the government rushing to open drive-thru centres where anyone could go get a test. Shortly afterwards these were closed and we were told that testing was no longer important; even people with symptoms wouldn’t automatically be tested. Shortly afterwards, the government decided testing was once again critical and started promoting (and promising) a major expansion in test capacity.
- The first batch of returning travellers from the Princess cruise ship (all of whom had at that point tested negative) were greeted by men in hazmat suits and taken under escort to the Wirral where they were incarcerated for a fortnight, before being allowed home. Yet within days we were waving incomers from all the virus hotspots of the world through our airports with not so much as a ‘how are you feeling?’. Now we are being told quarantine for travellers is once again vital.
- At the government’s very first press conference we were told that, while the old folks would stay indoors, we actively needed more infections among the general population. Then the government, spooked by the Imperial model, locked us all down. Next, they briefed the press that the lockdown was going to be significantly relaxed. But, spooked by an uptick in case numbers, many of the flagged changes have been dropped.
I welcome government changing its mind when the evidence suggests it has been wrong. But the one thing the UK has not been doing is working to any sort of consistent or coherent overall plan.
I see Sunak has pulled the wool over people's eyes re the furlough, saying he's extended it until October. No you haven't mate, after July no employer is going to pay staff to stay at home
Imagine a business that in the short term can generate 95% of its income using 70% of its staff.
Without getting too hung up on the precise numbers why would such a business not choose to keep 30% of its staff on furlough (with the government contributing to their wages) for as long as they can get away with it?
Agreed. There will be plenty of employers who would rather keep employees on furlough with taxpayer (the future one!) paying most of the bill, in the hope that the economy picks up and they will be able to immediately call up their "reserve". This is a lot better than having to rehire and retrain a load of people at short notice which would be expensive and inefficient. A lot will depend on who trusts the "bounce back" theory.
There is a huge amount to criticise the government on their generally hopeless response to this crisis. I think so far though, Sunak should be congratulated on his package of support for business, and by extension their employees.
It will depend on how much employers are asked to cough up, surely, a detail which Sunak helpfully left out of today's announcement.
The IFS reckons this little scheme will cost GBP100bn by the time its done, something that Sunak also strangely failed to mention.
But then with folk like you complimenting you as he flushes all our money down the drain, why would he need to?
Don;t tell me Corona has been with us for longer than we thought.
That would not be great for governments anywhere.
Doesn't mean it was/is widespread.
I reckon it was what my wife had, will be interesting to see once we have decent antibody tests. Imagine most countries will be looking back at odd pneumonia's they could not figure out what cause/type was.
Excoriating piece by AEP, which importantly contains the views of a leading COVID doctor.
“Boris survived because they gave him oxygen. High flow oxygen wasn’t available as a treatment option for all patients.”
“Our policy was to let the virus rip and then ‘cocoon the elderly’,” he wrote. “You don’t know whether to laugh or cry when you contrast that with what we actually did...We actively seeded this into the very population that was most vulnerable."
It's actually extremely angering to think that basically all of the poor decision making stems from our lack of testing capacity at the beginning of this crisis and our "experts" telling the government that they have it under control. The delay in getting testing capacity to at least 20k per day is why we couldn't mass test all of the care patients before sending them back, it's why we stopped testing community transmission and why we're so late to the party with track and trace.
As I've said before it's Hancock that is ultimately at fault, but our experts have been lacking in judgement on far too many occasions. Especially given that there have been successful models in other countries and not just in Asia, similar European countries/cultures have made it work a lot better but the commonality among those countries was decentralised mass testing capacity.
I'm supportive of Boris at the moment but we were piss-poor early on. Nothing to do with hindsight. Anyone prepared to lift their eyes to the east could see what was happening. That scientists and politicians refused to pay attention is a scandal.
That having been written, from the beginning of April onwards they did get their act together. By that time the virus had spread willy-nilly and the result was 30,000 deaths, 25,000 of which were preventable. So, not great.
On the other hand, without wishing to go all 'herd immunity' (remember that?) by this time next year we may be in a better position than somewhere like, say, New Zealand. The more people are exposed to this the faster we exit it.
I am thinking more and more that people judging and ranking global governments' responses now are at least 12 possibly 18-24 months too early.
It is perfectly possible to judge governments now. You don’t ignore GCSE results because there are A Levels and Degrees to come.
And what is the government’s Covid19 GCSE result?
Quarantine: E, Fail Testing: D, Fail NHS Capacity: B, Success Trace and Isolate: E, Fail Masks: E-, Fail Protect the Vulnerable: D, Fail Avoid Undue Economic Harm: D, Fail PPE: D, Fail
Britain Failed.
OK
Not by any means saying that UK has A*s, but we've only answered questions 1-3 so far. This is not over by a long chalk would you agree on that?
We’ve tanswered most of the questions. Take just one: masks (a bugbear of mine, but a useful measure of their general incompetence).
Britain was the last big country - the very last - to ask for mask wearing on public transport. Why? Even the Americans - who began, like us, wrongly saying masks don’t work - realised their mistake some time ago, and changed advice.
It’s just shit. A big serving of shit in an entire menu of shite.
Incidentally I think this perception of our covid-response is now percolating through to the public. The government’s polling resembles a cartoon character running off a cliff. For a while, after the disaster, the legs keep whirring and gravity is ignored.
But when reality hits - Whoosh.
I wonder if Boris will make it through a full term. The backlash is going to be intense.
Nah most people aren't obsessive hypochondriac internet cranks over this.
Take mask wearing on public transport - who's even been going on public transport in the past month or so? What proportion of the nation?
Vast majority of people don't use public transport in the first place and even for those that do most people are now locked down. So vast, vast majority of people won't have been on public transport in the past month with or without any masks.
Recent visit to a general hospital - couple of days ago. Even the reception staff not bothering with masks. Likewise in the local M&S. Not sure "mask-gate" is really going to take off TBH.
Excoriating piece by AEP, which importantly contains the views of a leading COVID doctor.
“Boris survived because they gave him oxygen. High flow oxygen wasn’t available as a treatment option for all patients.”
“Our policy was to let the virus rip and then ‘cocoon the elderly’,” he wrote. “You don’t know whether to laugh or cry when you contrast that with what we actually did...We actively seeded this into the very population that was most vulnerable."
It's actually extremely angering to think that basically all of the poor decision making stems from our lack of testing capacity at the beginning of this crisis and our "experts" telling the government that they have it under control. The delay in getting testing capacity to at least 20k per day is why we couldn't mass test all of the care patients before sending them back, it's why we stopped testing community transmission and why we're so late to the party with track and trace.
As I've said before it's Hancock that is ultimately at fault, but our experts have been lacking in judgement on far too many occasions. Especially given that there have been successful models in other countries and not just in Asia, similar European countries/cultures have made it work a lot better but the commonality among those countries was decentralised mass testing capacity.
I'm supportive of Boris at the moment but we were piss-poor early on. Nothing to do with hindsight. Anyone prepared to lift their eyes to the east could see what was happening. That scientists and politicians refused to pay attention is a scandal.
That having been written, from the beginning of April onwards they did get their act together. By that time the virus had spread willy-nilly and the result was 30,000 deaths, 25,000 of which were preventable. So, not great.
On the other hand, without wishing to go all 'herd immunity' (remember that?) by this time next year we may be in a better position than somewhere like, say, New Zealand. The more people are exposed to this the faster we exit it.
I am thinking more and more that people judging and ranking global governments' responses now are at least 12 possibly 18-24 months too early.
It is perfectly possible to judge governments now. You don’t ignore GCSE results because there are A Levels and Degrees to come.
And what is the government’s Covid19 GCSE result?
Quarantine: E, Fail Testing: D, Fail NHS Capacity: B, Success Trace and Isolate: E, Fail Masks: E-, Fail Protect the Vulnerable: D, Fail Avoid Undue Economic Harm: D, Fail PPE: D, Fail
Britain Failed.
How would you rate the public's performance ?
Washing Hands ? Using transport for non essential ? Meeting up with friends and relatives against advice ? Attending banned religious gatherings ? Spousal battery ? Being old ?
If we had all been better at the above wouldn't the infection level be lower ?
I'd rate the public at an A for their performance.
Trouble is you can get an A with 70%
We need A**** even a few % non-compliance can screw us over
I thought you could get away with 10-20% not being fully compliant in the simulations, but I might be misremembering that.
Well IANAE but that Korean outbreak in the last few days seemed to come from one person infecting a few others who were breaking the rules, or at least breaking what our rules are?
Excoriating piece by AEP, which importantly contains the views of a leading COVID doctor.
“Boris survived because they gave him oxygen. High flow oxygen wasn’t available as a treatment option for all patients.”
“Our policy was to let the virus rip and then ‘cocoon the elderly’,” he wrote. “You don’t know whether to laugh or cry when you contrast that with what we actually did...We actively seeded this into the very population that was most vulnerable."
It's actually extremely angering to think that basically all of the poor decision making stems from our lack of testing capacity at the beginning of this crisis and our "experts" telling the government that they have it under control. The delay in getting testing capacity to at least 20k per day is why we couldn't mass test all of the care patients before sending them back, it's why we stopped testing community transmission and why we're so late to the party with track and trace.
As I've said before it's Hancock that is ultimately at fault, but our experts have been lacking in judgement on far too many occasions. Especially given that there have been successful models in other countries and not just in Asia, similar European countries/cultures have made it work a lot better but the commonality among those countries was decentralised mass testing capacity.
I'm supportive of Boris at the moment but we were piss-poor early on. Nothing to do with hindsight. Anyone prepared to lift their eyes to the east could see what was happening. That scientists and politicians refused to pay attention is a scandal.
That having been written, from the beginning of April onwards they did get their act together. By that time the virus had spread willy-nilly and the result was 30,000 deaths, 25,000 of which were preventable. So, not great.
On the other hand, without wishing to go all 'herd immunity' (remember that?) by this time next year we may be in a better position than somewhere like, say, New Zealand. The more people are exposed to this the faster we exit it.
I am thinking more and more that people judging and ranking global governments' responses now are at least 12 possibly 18-24 months too early.
It is perfectly possible to judge governments now. You don’t ignore GCSE results because there are A Levels and Degrees to come.
And what is the government’s Covid19 GCSE result?
Quarantine: E, Fail Testing: D, Fail NHS Capacity: B, Success Trace and Isolate: E, Fail Masks: E-, Fail Protect the Vulnerable: D, Fail Avoid Undue Economic Harm: D, Fail PPE: D, Fail
Britain Failed.
How would you rate the public's performance ?
Washing Hands ? Using transport for non essential ? Meeting up with friends and relatives against advice ? Attending banned religious gatherings ? Spousal battery ? Being old ?
If we had all been better at the above wouldn't the infection level be lower ?
I'd rate the public at an A for their performance.
Trouble is you can get an A with 70%
We need A**** even a few % non-compliance can screw us over
I thought you could get away with 10-20% not being fully compliant in the simulations, but I might be misremembering that.
Well IANAE but that Korean outbreak in the last few days seemed to come from one person infecting a few others who were breaking the rules, or at least breaking what our rules are?
The situation was very different in the UK with widespread community transmission. One person flouting the rules would not have prevented the dramatic reduction in transmission that has occurred.
Listening to Nicola Sturgeon I have a feeling that the virus is much more prevelant in Scotland than it is in many parts of England. Where I am in Hampshire hospitals here are returning to normal. Operating theatres have opened, normal operations are being carried out, there are hardly any Covid-19 admissions, yet in Scotland yesterday there was a 165 increase in the number in Hospital with suspected Covid-19
It's almost like they're different countries at different stages of the pandemic.
Yo u would also think they may read the info and see it has far lower death rate than England but is a few weeks behind, rather than just talking out their jacksie.
I know you are desperate to promote the myth that Scotland is weeks behind, but the figures confirm otherwise. The peak in England was 8th April and 14th April in Scotland.
The problem for Scotland, is that unlike England, the deaths pretty much hit a plateau around that peak and the reduction since has been small.
The risible level of testing (1,239 on 11/5) is not helping.
Little Scotlanders will continue to support, but others will be looking at lack of business support, failing education, inability to deal with this crisis and will start to question.
Hoorray, another 'SNP honeymoon soon to be over' joins the PB throng. The more the merrier I say.
The SNP honeymoon will only end when either:
* Scotland goes independent and the SNP can't blame Westminster for their mistakes.
Or
* An alternative Scottish party with a better proposition for Scotland comes forward.
Or
* The SNP self destructs from the inside.
I don't see any of them happening any time soon. Not good or healthy for Scottish politics.
The SNP civil war of Salmondite hard cybernats led by Joanna Cherry and Sturgeon and her ditherers has already begun
It may have, but coronavirus has hugely strengthened Nicola's position, particularly with the nationalist community. Suspect the "civil war" will peter out or, if not, Sturgeon will trounce them.
Covid, politically, has been a godsend for her. She was increasingly being seen as both divisive and failing in key policy areas such as education. But that's all wiped away for the time being at least by her performance in the Covid briefings and a naturally tendency to rally round the flag.
She has to get past a few hurdles though , enquiry re lying to parliament for one and the enquiry into the failed case where huge costs were paid due to government lying , so far from certain her luck will hold.
Excoriating piece by AEP, which importantly contains the views of a leading COVID doctor.
“Boris survived because they gave him oxygen. High flow oxygen wasn’t available as a treatment option for all patients.”
“Our policy was to let the virus rip and then ‘cocoon the elderly’,” he wrote. “You don’t know whether to laugh or cry when you contrast that with what we actually did...We actively seeded this into the very population that was most vulnerable."
It's actually extremely angering to think that basically all of the poor decision making stems from our lack of testing capacity at the beginning of this crisis and our "experts" telling the government that they have it under control. The delay in getting testing capacity to at least 20k per day is why we couldn't mass test all of the care patients before sending them back, it's why we stopped testing community transmission and why we're so late to the party with track and trace.
As I've said before it's Hancock that is ultimately at fault, but our experts have been lacking in judgement on far too many occasions. Especially given that there have been successful models in other countries and not just in Asia, similar European countries/cultures have made it work a lot better but the commonality among those countries was decentralised mass testing capacity.
I'm supportive of Boris at the moment but we were piss-poor early on. Nothing to do with hindsight. Anyone prepared to lift their eyes to the east could see what was happening. That scientists and politicians refused to pay attention is a scandal.
That having been written, from the beginning of April onwards they did get their act together. By that time the virus had spread willy-nilly and the result was 30,000 deaths, 25,000 of which were preventable. So, not great.
On the other hand, without wishing to go all 'herd immunity' (remember that?) by this time next year we may be in a better position than somewhere like, say, New Zealand. The more people are exposed to this the faster we exit it.
I am thinking more and more that people judging and ranking global governments' responses now are at least 12 possibly 18-24 months too early.
It is perfectly possible to judge governments now. You don’t ignore GCSE results because there are A Levels and Degrees to come.
And what is the government’s Covid19 GCSE result?
Quarantine: E, Fail Testing: D, Fail NHS Capacity: B, Success Trace and Isolate: E, Fail Masks: E-, Fail Protect the Vulnerable: D, Fail Avoid Undue Economic Harm: D, Fail PPE: D, Fail
Britain Failed.
OK
Not by any means saying that UK has A*s, but we've only answered questions 1-3 so far. This is not over by a long chalk would you agree on that?
We’ve answered most of the questions. Take just one: masks (a bugbear of mine, but a useful measure of their general incompetence).
Britain was the last big country - the very last - to ask for mask wearing on public transport. Why? Even the Americans - who began, like us, wrongly saying masks don’t work - realised their mistake some time ago, and changed advice.
It’s just shit. A big serving of shit in an entire menu of shite.
Incidentally I think this perception of our covid-response is now percolating through to the public. The government’s polling resembles a cartoon character running off a cliff. For a while, after the disaster, the legs keep whirring and gravity is ignored.
But when reality hits - Whoosh.
I wonder if Boris will make it through a full term. The backlash is going to be intense.
I am going to say as neutrally as i can that this post is a keeper. One way or another.
I see Sunak has pulled the wool over people's eyes re the furlough, saying he's extended it until October. No you haven't mate, after July no employer is going to pay staff to stay at home
Imagine a business that in the short term can generate 95% of its income using 70% of its staff.
Without getting too hung up on the precise numbers why would such a business not choose to keep 30% of its staff on furlough (with the government contributing to their wages) for as long as they can get away with it?
I see Sunak has pulled the wool over people's eyes re the furlough, saying he's extended it until October. No you haven't mate, after July no employer is going to pay staff to stay at home
Imagine a business that in the short term can generate 95% of its income using 70% of its staff.
Without getting too hung up on the precise numbers why would such a business not choose to keep 30% of its staff on furlough (with the government contributing to their wages) for as long as they can get away with it?
Such a business appears to have discovered that 30% of its staff are unnecessary. I'm not sure quite how common that is.
I think it is common for a business to be able to trade for some time generating most of its income with a large minority of its staff doing nothing. I have worked at several places where this has been true. Many white collar jobs (private and public sector) are not particularly essential. This includes a lot of quite highly paid ones.
True in places - what often gets missed is that the usefulness of jobs ebbs and flows. So you can cut savagely, it all looks great and you get your bonus. Then a year or 2 later an oil rig explodes.
Yes - resilience.
I'm more thinking of the short term. A few months, say.
Now that we have testing capacity to spare I'd like for all previous patients who tested positive to be sent a home testing kit to see how long it takes on average to no longer test positive.
Excoriating piece by AEP, which importantly contains the views of a leading COVID doctor.
“Boris survived because they gave him oxygen. High flow oxygen wasn’t available as a treatment option for all patients.”
“Our policy was to let the virus rip and then ‘cocoon the elderly’,” he wrote. “You don’t know whether to laugh or cry when you contrast that with what we actually did...We actively seeded this into the very population that was most vulnerable."
It's actually extremely angering to think that basically all of the poor decision making stems from our lack of testing capacity at the beginning of this crisis and our "experts" telling the government that they have it under control. The delay in getting testing capacity to at least 20k per day is why we couldn't mass test all of the care patients before sending them back, it's why we stopped testing community transmission and why we're so late to the party with track and trace.
As I've said before it's Hancock that is ultimately at fault, but our experts have been lacking in judgement on far too many occasions. Especially given that there have been successful models in other countries and not just in Asia, similar European countries/cultures have made it work a lot better but the commonality among those countries was decentralised mass testing capacity.
I'm supportive of Boris at the moment but we were piss-poor early on. Nothing to do with hindsight. Anyone prepared to lift their eyes to the east could see what was happening. That scientists and politicians refused to pay attention is a scandal.
That having been written, from the beginning of April onwards they did get their act together. By that time the virus had spread willy-nilly and the result was 30,000 deaths, 25,000 of which were preventable. So, not great.
On the other hand, without wishing to go all 'herd immunity' (remember that?) by this time next year we may be in a better position than somewhere like, say, New Zealand. The more people are exposed to this the faster we exit it.
I am thinking more and more that people judging and ranking global governments' responses now are at least 12 possibly 18-24 months too early.
It is perfectly possible to judge governments now. You don’t ignore GCSE results because there are A Levels and Degrees to come.
And what is the government’s Covid19 GCSE result?
Quarantine: E, Fail Testing: D, Fail NHS Capacity: B, Success Trace and Isolate: E, Fail Masks: E-, Fail Protect the Vulnerable: D, Fail Avoid Undue Economic Harm: D, Fail PPE: D, Fail
Britain Failed.
OK
Not by any means saying that UK has A*s, but we've only answered questions 1-3 so far. This is not over by a long chalk would you agree on that?
We’ve tanswered most of the questions. Take just one: masks (a bugbear of mine, but a useful measure of their general incompetence).
Britain was the last big country - the very last - to ask for mask wearing on public transport. Why? Even the Americans - who began, like us, wrongly saying masks don’t work - realised their mistake some time ago, and changed advice.
It’s just shit. A big serving of shit in an entire menu of shite.
Incidentally I think this perception of our covid-response is now percolating through to the public. The government’s polling resembles a cartoon character running off a cliff. For a while, after the disaster, the legs keep whirring and gravity is ignored.
But when reality hits - Whoosh.
I wonder if Boris will make it through a full term. The backlash is going to be intense.
Nah most people aren't obsessive hypochondriac internet cranks over this.
Take mask wearing on public transport - who's even been going on public transport in the past month or so? What proportion of the nation?
Vast majority of people don't use public transport in the first place and even for those that do most people are now locked down. So vast, vast majority of people won't have been on public transport in the past month with or without any masks.
Recent visit to a general hospital - couple of days ago. Even the reception staff not bothering with masks. Likewise in the local M&S. Not sure "mask-gate" is really going to take off TBH.
I never said it would. Masks won’t bring down a government.
My point is that the confusion and failure on masks is just one reason we have such a high death toll. We have more infected people dying partly because people aren’t wearing masks where they should: as your comment shows. They aren’t even wearing them in hospitals?? It’s incredible.
I would admire our British insouciance if we were similarly shrugging off the virus elsewhere. But we’re not. We’ve fucked the economy, at the same time.
LOL
perhaps you can name all those economies booming under the present circumstances
“No risk of catching coronavirus on the Tube” says Sadiq Khan
Sadiq is another one who has had a bad war. His idiotic fares freeze pledge has left TfL at the mercy of a government bail out because there's no rainy day money left.
Excoriating piece by AEP, which importantly contains the views of a leading COVID doctor.
“Boris survived because they gave him oxygen. High flow oxygen wasn’t available as a treatment option for all patients.”
“Our policy was to let the virus rip and then ‘cocoon the elderly’,” he wrote. “You don’t know whether to laugh or cry when you contrast that with what we actually did...We actively seeded this into the very population that was most vulnerable."
It's actually extremely angering to think that basically all of the poor decision making stems from our lack of testing capacity at the beginning of this crisis and our "experts" telling the government that they have it under control. The delay in getting testing capacity to at least 20k per day is why we couldn't mass test all of the care patients before sending them back, it's why we stopped testing community transmission and why we're so late to the party with track and trace.
As I've said before it's Hancock that is ultimately at fault, but our experts have been lacking in judgement on far too many occasions. Especially given that there have been successful models in other countries and not just in Asia, similar European countries/cultures have made it work a lot better but the commonality among those countries was decentralised mass testing capacity.
I'm supportive of Boris at the moment but we were piss-poor early on. Nothing to do with hindsight. Anyone prepared to lift their eyes to the east could see what was happening. That scientists and politicians refused to pay attention is a scandal.
That having been written, from the beginning of April onwards they did get their act together. By that time the virus had spread willy-nilly and the result was 30,000 deaths, 25,000 of which were preventable. So, not great.
On the other hand, without wishing to go all 'herd immunity' (remember that?) by this time next year we may be in a better position than somewhere like, say, New Zealand. The more people are exposed to this the faster we exit it.
I am thinking more and more that people judging and ranking global governments' responses now are at least 12 possibly 18-24 months too early.
It is perfectly possible to judge governments now. You don’t ignore GCSE results because there are A Levels and Degrees to come.
And what is the government’s Covid19 GCSE result?
Quarantine: E, Fail Testing: D, Fail NHS Capacity: B, Success Trace and Isolate: E, Fail Masks: E-, Fail Protect the Vulnerable: D, Fail Avoid Undue Economic Harm: D, Fail PPE: D, Fail
Britain Failed.
OK
Not by any means saying that UK has A*s, but we've only answered questions 1-3 so far. This is not over by a long chalk would you agree on that?
We’ve tanswered most of the questions. Take just one: masks (a bugbear of mine, but a useful measure of their general incompetence).
Britain was the last big country - the very last - to ask for mask wearing on public transport. Why? Even the Americans - who began, like us, wrongly saying masks don’t work - realised their mistake some time ago, and changed advice.
It’s just shit. A big serving of shit in an entire menu of shite.
Incidentally I think this perception of our covid-response is now percolating through to the public. The government’s polling resembles a cartoon character running off a cliff. For a while, after the disaster, the legs keep whirring and gravity is ignored.
But when reality hits - Whoosh.
I wonder if Boris will make it through a full term. The backlash is going to be intense.
Nah most people aren't obsessive hypochondriac internet cranks over this.
Take mask wearing on public transport - who's even been going on public transport in the past month or so? What proportion of the nation?
Vast majority of people don't use public transport in the first place and even for those that do most people are now locked down. So vast, vast majority of people won't have been on public transport in the past month with or without any masks.
Recent visit to a general hospital - couple of days ago. Even the reception staff not bothering with masks. Likewise in the local M&S. Not sure "mask-gate" is really going to take off TBH.
I never said it would. Masks won’t bring down a government.
My point is that the confusion and failure on masks is just one reason we have such a high death toll. We have more infected people dying partly because people aren’t wearing masks where they should: as your comment shows. They aren’t even wearing them in hospitals?? It’s incredible.
I would admire our British insouciance if we were similarly shrugging off the virus elsewhere. But we’re not. We’ve fucked the economy, at the same time.
On masks, I seem to recall there was an argument against them on behavioural grounds, ie, that people with masks would consider themselves protected and not observe the 2m social distancing rule. Might explain the lack of interest in them.
Boris is still using the word alert in two different senses which, as previously asserted, just adds to the confusion. The alert level is R + N = 223,000.9 and stay alert.
Excoriating piece by AEP, which importantly contains the views of a leading COVID doctor.
“Boris survived because they gave him oxygen. High flow oxygen wasn’t available as a treatment option for all patients.”
“Our policy was to let the virus rip and then ‘cocoon the elderly’,” he wrote. “You don’t know whether to laugh or cry when you contrast that with what we actually did...We actively seeded this into the very population that was most vulnerable."
It's actually extremely angering to think that basically all of the poor decision making stems from our lack of testing capacity at the beginning of this crisis and our "experts" telling the government that they have it under control. The delay in getting testing capacity to at least 20k per day is why we couldn't mass test all of the care patients before sending them back, it's why we stopped testing community transmission and why we're so late to the party with track and trace.
As I've said before it's Hancock that is ultimately at fault, but our experts have been lacking in judgement on far too many occasions. Especially given that there have been successful models in other countries and not just in Asia, similar European countries/cultures have made it work a lot better but the commonality among those countries was decentralised mass testing capacity.
I'm supportive of Boris at the moment but we were piss-poor early on. Nothing to do with hindsight. Anyone prepared to lift their eyes to the east could see what was happening. That scientists and politicians refused to pay attention is a scandal.
That having been written, from the beginning of April onwards they did get their act together. By that time the virus had spread willy-nilly and the result was 30,000 deaths, 25,000 of which were preventable. So, not great.
On the other hand, without wishing to go all 'herd immunity' (remember that?) by this time next year we may be in a better position than somewhere like, say, New Zealand. The more people are exposed to this the faster we exit it.
I am thinking more and more that people judging and ranking global governments' responses now are at least 12 possibly 18-24 months too early.
It is perfectly possible to judge governments now. You don’t ignore GCSE results because there are A Levels and Degrees to come.
And what is the government’s Covid19 GCSE result?
Quarantine: E, Fail Testing: D, Fail NHS Capacity: B, Success Trace and Isolate: E, Fail Masks: E-, Fail Protect the Vulnerable: D, Fail Avoid Undue Economic Harm: D, Fail PPE: D, Fail
Britain Failed.
How would you rate the public's performance ?
Washing Hands ? Using transport for non essential ? Meeting up with friends and relatives against advice ? Attending banned religious gatherings ? Spousal battery ? Being old ?
If we had all been better at the above wouldn't the infection level be lower ?
I'd rate the public at an A for their performance.
Trouble is you can get an A with 70%
We need A**** even a few % non-compliance can screw us over
I thought you could get away with 10-20% not being fully compliant in the simulations, but I might be misremembering that.
Well IANAE but that Korean outbreak in the last few days seemed to come from one person infecting a few others who were breaking the rules, or at least breaking what our rules are?
No - they were following their rules - in a nightclub.
Unfortunately its a gay nightclub so attendees have been very unwilling to come forward for testing/denying they were there because of Korean societal homophobic discrimination (family ostracisation, sacking from employment). The Korean government have 12,000 names from mobile phone records for the area - but many are unwilling to come forward, for obvious reasons.
It's interesting - while societies have managed to get on top of this in the general population, all of them seem to have significant weaknesses in discriminated against/under valued sections of their populations - care homes across the UK (and much of Europe), foreign workers in Singapore and now gays in Korea. No doubt in the unfolding catastrophe that is the US when the smoke clears a similar picture will emerge.
“No risk of catching coronavirus on the Tube” says Sadiq Khan
Sadiq is another one who has had a bad war. His idiotic fares freeze pledge has left TfL at the mercy of a government bail out because there's no rainy day money left.
Have not heard a peep out of him during the whole crisis.
Excoriating piece by AEP, which importantly contains the views of a leading COVID doctor.
“Boris survived because they gave him oxygen. High flow oxygen wasn’t available as a treatment option for all patients.”
“Our policy was to let the virus rip and then ‘cocoon the elderly’,” he wrote. “You don’t know whether to laugh or cry when you contrast that with what we actually did...We actively seeded this into the very population that was most vulnerable."
It's actually extremely angering to think that basically all of the poor decision making stems from our lack of testing capacity at the beginning of this crisis and our "experts" telling the government that they have it under control. The delay in getting testing capacity to at least 20k per day is why we couldn't mass test all of the care patients before sending them back, it's why we stopped testing community transmission and why we're so late to the party with track and trace.
As I've said before it's Hancock that is ultimately at fault, but our experts have been lacking in judgement on far too many occasions. Especially given that there have been successful models in other countries and not just in Asia, similar European countries/cultures have made it work a lot better but the commonality among those countries was decentralised mass testing capacity.
I'm supportive of Boris at the moment but we were piss-poor early on. Nothing to do with hindsight. Anyone prepared to lift their eyes to the east could see what was happening. That scientists and politicians refused to pay attention is a scandal.
That having been written, from the beginning of April onwards they did get their act together. By that time the virus had spread willy-nilly and the result was 30,000 deaths, 25,000 of which were preventable. So, not great.
On the other hand, without wishing to go all 'herd immunity' (remember that?) by this time next year we may be in a better position than somewhere like, say, New Zealand. The more people are exposed to this the faster we exit it.
I am thinking more and more that people judging and ranking global governments' responses now are at least 12 possibly 18-24 months too early.
It is perfectly possible to judge governments now. You don’t ignore GCSE results because there are A Levels and Degrees to come.
And what is the government’s Covid19 GCSE result?
Quarantine: E, Fail Testing: D, Fail NHS Capacity: B, Success Trace and Isolate: E, Fail Masks: E-, Fail Protect the Vulnerable: D, Fail Avoid Undue Economic Harm: D, Fail PPE: D, Fail
Britain Failed.
OK
Not by any means saying that UK has A*s, but we've only answered questions 1-3 so far. This is not over by a long chalk would you agree on that?
We’ve tanswered most of the questions. Take just one: masks (a bugbear of mine, but a useful measure of their general incompetence).
Britain was the last big country - the very last - to ask for mask wearing on public transport. Why? Even the Americans - who began, like us, wrongly saying masks don’t work - realised their mistake some time ago, and changed advice.
It’s just shit. A big serving of shit in an entire menu of shite.
Incidentally I think this perception of our covid-response is now percolating through to the public. The government’s polling resembles a cartoon character running off a cliff. For a while, after the disaster, the legs keep whirring and gravity is ignored.
But when reality hits - Whoosh.
I wonder if Boris will make it through a full term. The backlash is going to be intense.
Nah most people aren't obsessive hypochondriac internet cranks over this.
Take mask wearing on public transport - who's even been going on public transport in the past month or so? What proportion of the nation?
Vast majority of people don't use public transport in the first place and even for those that do most people are now locked down. So vast, vast majority of people won't have been on public transport in the past month with or without any masks.
Recent visit to a general hospital - couple of days ago. Even the reception staff not bothering with masks. Likewise in the local M&S. Not sure "mask-gate" is really going to take off TBH.
I never said it would. Masks won’t bring down a government.
My point is that the confusion and failure on masks is just one reason we have such a high death toll. We have more infected people dying partly because people aren’t wearing masks where they should: as your comment shows. They aren’t even wearing them in hospitals?? It’s incredible.
I would admire our British insouciance if we were similarly shrugging off the virus elsewhere. But we’re not. We’ve fucked the economy, at the same time.
LOL
perhaps you can name all those economies booming under the present circumstances
No one is booming, of course. But our GDP fall will be one of the worst. Just watch
Frankly you have no idea of knowing, nor indeed over what time period. If CV19 has several waves until a population can deal with it the world will be on a roller coaster until it is brought under control. Until that point is reached no one can say whether S Korea or Sweden had the better approach.
Excoriating piece by AEP, which importantly contains the views of a leading COVID doctor.
“Boris survived because they gave him oxygen. High flow oxygen wasn’t available as a treatment option for all patients.”
“Our policy was to let the virus rip and then ‘cocoon the elderly’,” he wrote. “You don’t know whether to laugh or cry when you contrast that with what we actually did...We actively seeded this into the very population that was most vulnerable."
It's actually extremely angering to think that basically all of the poor decision making stems from our lack of testing capacity at the beginning of this crisis and our "experts" telling the government that they have it under control. The delay in getting testing capacity to at least 20k per day is why we couldn't mass test all of the care patients before sending them back, it's why we stopped testing community transmission and why we're so late to the party with track and trace.
As I've said before it's Hancock that is ultimately at fault, but our experts have been lacking in judgement on far too many occasions. Especially given that there have been successful models in other countries and not just in Asia, similar European countries/cultures have made it work a lot better but the commonality among those countries was decentralised mass testing capacity.
I'm supportive of Boris at the moment but we were piss-poor early on. Nothing to do with hindsight. Anyone prepared to lift their eyes to the east could see what was happening. That scientists and politicians refused to pay attention is a scandal.
That having been written, from the beginning of April onwards they did get their act together. By that time the virus had spread willy-nilly and the result was 30,000 deaths, 25,000 of which were preventable. So, not great.
On the other hand, without wishing to go all 'herd immunity' (remember that?) by this time next year we may be in a better position than somewhere like, say, New Zealand. The more people are exposed to this the faster we exit it.
I am thinking more and more that people judging and ranking global governments' responses now are at least 12 possibly 18-24 months too early.
It is perfectly possible to judge governments now. You don’t ignore GCSE results because there are A Levels and Degrees to come.
And what is the government’s Covid19 GCSE result?
Quarantine: E, Fail Testing: D, Fail NHS Capacity: B, Success Trace and Isolate: E, Fail Masks: E-, Fail Protect the Vulnerable: D, Fail Avoid Undue Economic Harm: D, Fail PPE: D, Fail
Britain Failed.
OK
Not by any means saying that UK has A*s, but we've only answered questions 1-3 so far. This is not over by a long chalk would you agree on that?
We’ve tanswered most of the questions. Take just one: masks (a bugbear of mine, but a useful measure of their general incompetence).
Britain was the last big country - the very last - to ask for mask wearing on public transport. Why? Even the Americans - who began, like us, wrongly saying masks don’t work - realised their mistake some time ago, and changed advice.
It’s just shit. A big serving of shit in an entire menu of shite.
Incidentally I think this perception of our covid-response is now percolating through to the public. The government’s polling resembles a cartoon character running off a cliff. For a while, after the disaster, the legs keep whirring and gravity is ignored.
But when reality hits - Whoosh.
I wonder if Boris will make it through a full term. The backlash is going to be intense.
Nah most people aren't obsessive hypochondriac internet cranks over this.
Take mask wearing on public transport - who's even been going on public transport in the past month or so? What proportion of the nation?
Vast majority of people don't use public transport in the first place and even for those that do most people are now locked down. So vast, vast majority of people won't have been on public transport in the past month with or without any masks.
About a month ago you were still reassuring us that hand-shaking is fine, because Boris said so.
I’d be wary of reminding people what they have posted previously, if I were you.
“No risk of catching coronavirus on the Tube” says Sadiq Khan
Sadiq is another one who has had a bad war. His idiotic fares freeze pledge has left TfL at the mercy of a government bail out because there's no rainy day money left.
Have not heard a peep out of him during the whole crisis.
Probably for the best, his pronouncements about not being able to catch it on the tube were irresponsible and may have resulted in a spike in the London infection rate as people went into the office instead of staying home early on.
I see Sunak has pulled the wool over people's eyes re the furlough, saying he's extended it until October. No you haven't mate, after July no employer is going to pay staff to stay at home
Imagine a business that in the short term can generate 95% of its income using 70% of its staff.
Without getting too hung up on the precise numbers why would such a business not choose to keep 30% of its staff on furlough (with the government contributing to their wages) for as long as they can get away with it?
Agreed. There will be plenty of employers who would rather keep employees on furlough with taxpayer (the future one!) paying most of the bill, in the hope that the economy picks up and they will be able to immediately call up their "reserve". This is a lot better than having to rehire and retrain a load of people at short notice which would be expensive and inefficient. A lot will depend on who trusts the "bounce back" theory.
There is a huge amount to criticise the government on their generally hopeless response to this crisis. I think so far though, Sunak should be congratulated on his package of support for business, and by extension their employees.
It will depend on how much employers are asked to cough up, surely, a detail which Sunak helpfully left out of today's announcement.
The IFS reckons this little scheme will cost GBP100bn by the time its done, something that Sunak also strangely failed to mention.
But then with folk like you complimenting him as he flushes all our money down the drain, why would he need to?
I have been watching the BBC series on Thatcher on iPlayer, which is very good. I'm a Conservative but one thing I fund myself agreeing with Neil Kinnock on was that Thatcher never realised that when you closed the pits, you killed the community. Economically, you have to wonder whether the costs saved by closing the pits was more than outweighed by the extra social welfare payments, government help and subsidies caused by the closures, not to mention the social problems. My personal view was that it would have made sense to keep the pits going, even if the coal was just been bought by the Government and not used, until those communities could have been weaned off coal.
I think it's the same with the furlough scheme. You can argue that the cost of the scheme is enormous, which it is. But how much would the cost be if you let millions and millions be made redundant, pay for their welfare and all the associated problems with it and completely collapsed consumer spending at the same time?
So they are going to do a million tests a day in Wuham. Do you think they might think they have a problem again & their bullshit figures about a handful of cases is actually significantly more?
Not necessarily more than 6 actual cases, although it is implied there might be more incubating - hence the mass testing. China's policy is to wipe out the virus the moment it appears. Cheaper to do it now rather than let it rip.
Excoriating piece by AEP, which importantly contains the views of a leading COVID doctor.
“Boris survived because they gave him oxygen. High flow oxygen wasn’t available as a treatment option for all patients.”
“Our policy was to let the virus rip and then ‘cocoon the elderly’,” he wrote. “You don’t know whether to laugh or cry when you contrast that with what we actually did...We actively seeded this into the very population that was most vulnerable."
It's actually extremely angering to think that basically all of the poor decision making stems from our lack of testing capacity at the beginning of this crisis and our "experts" telling the government that they have it under control. The delay in getting testing capacity to at least 20k per day is why we couldn't mass test all of the care patients before sending them back, it's why we stopped testing community transmission and why we're so late to the party with track and trace.
As I've said before it's Hancock that is ultimately at fault, but our experts have been lacking in judgement on far too many occasions. Especially given that there have been successful models in other countries and not just in Asia, similar European countries/cultures have made it work a lot better but the commonality among those countries was decentralised mass testing capacity.
I'm supportive of Boris at the moment but we were piss-poor early on. Nothing to do with hindsight. Anyone prepared to lift their eyes to the east could see what was happening. That scientists and politicians refused to pay attention is a scandal.
That having been written, from the beginning of April onwards they did get their act together. By that time the virus had spread willy-nilly and the result was 30,000 deaths, 25,000 of which were preventable. So, not great.
On the other hand, without wishing to go all 'herd immunity' (remember that?) by this time next year we may be in a better position than somewhere like, say, New Zealand. The more people are exposed to this the faster we exit it.
I am thinking more and more that people judging and ranking global governments' responses now are at least 12 possibly 18-24 months too early.
It is perfectly possible to judge governments now. You don’t ignore GCSE results because there are A Levels and Degrees to come.
And what is the government’s Covid19 GCSE result?
Quarantine: E, Fail Testing: D, Fail NHS Capacity: B, Success Trace and Isolate: E, Fail Masks: E-, Fail Protect the Vulnerable: D, Fail Avoid Undue Economic Harm: D, Fail PPE: D, Fail
Britain Failed.
OK
Not by any means saying that UK has A*s, but we've only answered questions 1-3 so far. This is not over by a long chalk would you agree on that?
We’ve tanswered most of the questions. Take just one: masks (a bugbear of mine, but a useful measure of their general incompetence).
Britain was the last big country - the very last - to ask for mask wearing on public transport. Why? Even the Americans - who began, like us, wrongly saying masks don’t work - realised their mistake some time ago, and changed advice.
It’s just shit. A big serving of shit in an entire menu of shite.
Incidentally I think this perception of our covid-response is now percolating through to the public. The government’s polling resembles a cartoon character running off a cliff. For a while, after the disaster, the legs keep whirring and gravity is ignored.
But when reality hits - Whoosh.
I wonder if Boris will make it through a full term. The backlash is going to be intense.
Nah most people aren't obsessive hypochondriac internet cranks over this.
Take mask wearing on public transport - who's even been going on public transport in the past month or so? What proportion of the nation?
Vast majority of people don't use public transport in the first place and even for those that do most people are now locked down. So vast, vast majority of people won't have been on public transport in the past month with or without any masks.
Recent visit to a general hospital - couple of days ago. Even the reception staff not bothering with masks. Likewise in the local M&S. Not sure "mask-gate" is really going to take off TBH.
I never said it would. Masks won’t bring down a government.
My point is that the confusion and failure on masks is just one reason we have such a high death toll. We have more infected people dying partly because people aren’t wearing masks where they should: as your comment shows. They aren’t even wearing them in hospitals?? It’s incredible.
I would admire our British insouciance if we were similarly shrugging off the virus elsewhere. But we’re not. We’ve fucked the economy, at the same time.
LOL
perhaps you can name all those economies booming under the present circumstances
No one is booming, of course. But our GDP fall will be one of the worst. Just watch
Frankly you have no idea of knowing, nor indeed over what time period. If CV19 has several waves until a population can deal with it the world will be on a roller coaster until it is brought under control. Until that point is reached no one can say whether S Korea or Sweden had the better approach.
Tell you what, I’m going to go way way way out on a limb, and say South Korea has a better approach. Precocious, I know.
Excoriating piece by AEP, which importantly contains the views of a leading COVID doctor.
“Boris survived because they gave him oxygen. High flow oxygen wasn’t available as a treatment option for all patients.”
“Our policy was to let the virus rip and then ‘cocoon the elderly’,” he wrote. “You don’t know whether to laugh or cry when you contrast that with what we actually did...We actively seeded this into the very population that was most vulnerable."
It's actually extremely angering to think that basically all of the poor decision making stems from our lack of testing capacity at the beginning of this crisis and our "experts" telling the government that they have it under control. The delay in getting testing capacity to at least 20k per day is why we couldn't mass test all of the care patients before sending them back, it's why we stopped testing community transmission and why we're so late to the party with track and trace.
As I've said before it's Hancock that is ultimately at fault, but our experts have been lacking in judgement on far too many occasions. Especially given that there have been successful models in other countries and not just in Asia, similar European countries/cultures have made it work a lot better but the commonality among those countries was decentralised mass testing capacity.
I'm supportive of Boris at the moment but we were piss-poor early on. Nothing to do with hindsight. Anyone prepared to lift their eyes to the east could see what was happening. That scientists and politicians refused to pay attention is a scandal.
That having been written, from the beginning of April onwards they did get their act together. By that time the virus had spread willy-nilly and the result was 30,000 deaths, 25,000 of which were preventable. So, not great.
On the other hand, without wishing to go all 'herd immunity' (remember that?) by this time next year we may be in a better position than somewhere like, say, New Zealand. The more people are exposed to this the faster we exit it.
I am thinking more and more that people judging and ranking global governments' responses now are at least 12 possibly 18-24 months too early.
It is perfectly possible to judge governments now. You don’t ignore GCSE results because there are A Levels and Degrees to come.
And what is the government’s Covid19 GCSE result?
Quarantine: E, Fail Testing: D, Fail NHS Capacity: B, Success Trace and Isolate: E, Fail Masks: E-, Fail Protect the Vulnerable: D, Fail Avoid Undue Economic Harm: D, Fail PPE: D, Fail
Britain Failed.
OK
Not by any means saying that UK has A*s, but we've only answered questions 1-3 so far. This is not over by a long chalk would you agree on that?
We’ve tanswered most of the questions. Take just one: masks (a bugbear of mine, but a useful measure of their general incompetence).
Britain was the last big country - the very last - to ask for mask wearing on public transport. Why? Even the Americans - who began, like us, wrongly saying masks don’t work - realised their mistake some time ago, and changed advice.
It’s just shit. A big serving of shit in an entire menu of shite.
Incidentally I think this perception of our covid-response is now percolating through to the public. The government’s polling resembles a cartoon character running off a cliff. For a while, after the disaster, the legs keep whirring and gravity is ignored.
But when reality hits - Whoosh.
I wonder if Boris will make it through a full term. The backlash is going to be intense.
Nah most people aren't obsessive hypochondriac internet cranks over this.
Take mask wearing on public transport - who's even been going on public transport in the past month or so? What proportion of the nation?
Vast majority of people don't use public transport in the first place and even for those that do most people are now locked down. So vast, vast majority of people won't have been on public transport in the past month with or without any masks.
Recent visit to a general hospital - couple of days ago. Even the reception staff not bothering with masks. Likewise in the local M&S. Not sure "mask-gate" is really going to take off TBH.
I never said it would. Masks won’t bring down a government.
My point is that the confusion and failure on masks is just one reason we have such a high death toll. We have more infected people dying partly because people aren’t wearing masks where they should: as your comment shows. They aren’t even wearing them in hospitals?? It’s incredible.
I would admire our British insouciance if we were similarly shrugging off the virus elsewhere. But we’re not. We’ve fucked the economy, at the same time.
On masks, I seem to recall there was an argument against them on behavioural grounds, ie, that people with masks would consider themselves protected and not observe the 2m social distancing rule. Might explain the lack of interest in them.
Then let's educate people on how to wear them properly and ensure that the same social distancing is observed with them on. A couple of months ago it wouldn't have seemed possible that people would wait in 2m distanced queues to get into Sainsbury's, but we are. Group behaviour isn't fixed in time. If there is a way to get to the end of this crisis faster but needs a public education air war then let's do that.
Excoriating piece by AEP, which importantly contains the views of a leading COVID doctor.
“Boris survived because they gave him oxygen. High flow oxygen wasn’t available as a treatment option for all patients.”
“Our policy was to let the virus rip and then ‘cocoon the elderly’,” he wrote. “You don’t know whether to laugh or cry when you contrast that with what we actually did...We actively seeded this into the very population that was most vulnerable."
It's actually extremely angering to think that basically all of the poor decision making stems from our lack of testing capacity at the beginning of this crisis and our "experts" telling the government that they have it under control. The delay in getting testing capacity to at least 20k per day is why we couldn't mass test all of the care patients before sending them back, it's why we stopped testing community transmission and why we're so late to the party with track and trace.
As I've said before it's Hancock that is ultimately at fault, but our experts have been lacking in judgement on far too many occasions. Especially given that there have been successful models in other countries and not just in Asia, similar European countries/cultures have made it work a lot better but the commonality among those countries was decentralised mass testing capacity.
I'm supportive of Boris at the moment but we were piss-poor early on. Nothing to do with hindsight. Anyone prepared to lift their eyes to the east could see what was happening. That scientists and politicians refused to pay attention is a scandal.
That having been written, from the beginning of April onwards they did get their act together. By that time the virus had spread willy-nilly and the result was 30,000 deaths, 25,000 of which were preventable. So, not great.
On the other hand, without wishing to go all 'herd immunity' (remember that?) by this time next year we may be in a better position than somewhere like, say, New Zealand. The more people are exposed to this the faster we exit it.
I am thinking more and more that people judging and ranking global governments' responses now are at least 12 possibly 18-24 months too early.
It is perfectly possible to judge governments now. You don’t ignore GCSE results because there are A Levels and Degrees to come.
And what is the government’s Covid19 GCSE result?
Quarantine: E, Fail Testing: D, Fail NHS Capacity: B, Success Trace and Isolate: E, Fail Masks: E-, Fail Protect the Vulnerable: D, Fail Avoid Undue Economic Harm: D, Fail PPE: D, Fail
Britain Failed.
How would you rate the public's performance ?
Washing Hands ? Using transport for non essential ? Meeting up with friends and relatives against advice ? Attending banned religious gatherings ? Spousal battery ? Being old ?
If we had all been better at the above wouldn't the infection level be lower ?
I'd rate the public at an A for their performance.
Proof is in the results - the govt cannot micromanage our activities.
Excoriating piece by AEP, which importantly contains the views of a leading COVID doctor.
“Boris survived because they gave him oxygen. High flow oxygen wasn’t available as a treatment option for all patients.”
“Our policy was to let the virus rip and then ‘cocoon the elderly’,” he wrote. “You don’t know whether to laugh or cry when you contrast that with what we actually did...We actively seeded this into the very population that was most vulnerable."
It's actually extremely angering to think that basically all of the poor decision making stems from our lack of testing capacity at the beginning of this crisis and our "experts" telling the government that they have it under control. The delay in getting testing capacity to at least 20k per day is why we couldn't mass test all of the care patients before sending them back, it's why we stopped testing community transmission and why we're so late to the party with track and trace.
As I've said before it's Hancock that is ultimately at fault, but our experts have been lacking in judgement on far too many occasions. Especially given that there have been successful models in other countries and not just in Asia, similar European countries/cultures have made it work a lot better but the commonality among those countries was decentralised mass testing capacity.
I'm supportive of Boris at the moment but we were piss-poor early on. Nothing to do with hindsight. Anyone prepared to lift their eyes to the east could see what was happening. That scientists and politicians refused to pay attention is a scandal.
That having been written, from the beginning of April onwards they did get their act together. By that time the virus had spread willy-nilly and the result was 30,000 deaths, 25,000 of which were preventable. So, not great.
On the other hand, without wishing to go all 'herd immunity' (remember that?) by this time next year we may be in a better position than somewhere like, say, New Zealand. The more people are exposed to this the faster we exit it.
I am thinking more and more that people judging and ranking global governments' responses now are at least 12 possibly 18-24 months too early.
It is perfectly possible to judge governments now. You don’t ignore GCSE results because there are A Levels and Degrees to come.
And what is the government’s Covid19 GCSE result?
Quarantine: E, Fail Testing: D, Fail NHS Capacity: B, Success Trace and Isolate: E, Fail Masks: E-, Fail Protect the Vulnerable: D, Fail Avoid Undue Economic Harm: D, Fail PPE: D, Fail
Britain Failed.
OK
Not by any means saying that UK has A*s, but we've only answered questions 1-3 so far. This is not over by a long chalk would you agree on that?
We’ve tanswered most of the questions. Take just one: masks (a bugbear of mine, but a useful measure of their general incompetence).
Britain was the last big country - the very last - to ask for mask wearing on public transport. Why? Even the Americans - who began, like us, wrongly saying masks don’t work - realised their mistake some time ago, and changed advice.
It’s just shit. A big serving of shit in an entire menu of shite.
Incidentally I think this perception of our covid-response is now percolating through to the public. The government’s polling resembles a cartoon character running off a cliff. For a while, after the disaster, the legs keep whirring and gravity is ignored.
But when reality hits - Whoosh.
I wonder if Boris will make it through a full term. The backlash is going to be intense.
Nah most people aren't obsessive hypochondriac internet cranks over this.
Take mask wearing on public transport - who's even been going on public transport in the past month or so? What proportion of the nation?
Vast majority of people don't use public transport in the first place and even for those that do most people are now locked down. So vast, vast majority of people won't have been on public transport in the past month with or without any masks.
Recent visit to a general hospital - couple of days ago. Even the reception staff not bothering with masks. Likewise in the local M&S. Not sure "mask-gate" is really going to take off TBH.
I never said it would. Masks won’t bring down a government.
My point is that the confusion and failure on masks is just one reason we have such a high death toll. We have more infected people dying partly because people aren’t wearing masks where they should: as your comment shows. They aren’t even wearing them in hospitals?? It’s incredible.
I would admire our British insouciance if we were similarly shrugging off the virus elsewhere. But we’re not. We’ve fucked the economy, at the same time.
On masks, I seem to recall there was an argument against them on behavioural grounds, ie, that people with masks would consider themselves protected and not observe the 2m social distancing rule. Might explain the lack of interest in them.
Then let's educate people on how to wear them properly and ensure that the same social distancing is observed with them on. A couple of months ago it wouldn't have seemed possible that people would wait in 2m distanced queues to get into Sainsbury's, but we are. Group behaviour isn't fixed in time. If there is a way to get to the end of this crisis faster but needs a public education air war then let's do that.
The initial hand washing public information campaign was decent, but that is still running on Sky News. They really should have pivottes by now to "how to act in public".
Excoriating piece by AEP, which importantly contains the views of a leading COVID doctor.
“Boris survived because they gave him oxygen. High flow oxygen wasn’t available as a treatment option for all patients.”
“Our policy was to let the virus rip and then ‘cocoon the elderly’,” he wrote. “You don’t know whether to laugh or cry when you contrast that with what we actually did...We actively seeded this into the very population that was most vulnerable."
It's actually extremely angering to think that basically all of the poor decision making stems from our lack of testing capacity at the beginning of this crisis and our "experts" telling the government that they have it under control. The delay in getting testing capacity to at least 20k per day is why we couldn't mass test all of the care patients before sending them back, it's why we stopped testing community transmission and why we're so late to the party with track and trace.
As I've said before it's Hancock that is ultimately at fault, but our experts have been lacking in judgement on far too many occasions. Especially given that there have been successful models in other countries and not just in Asia, similar European countries/cultures have made it work a lot better but the commonality among those countries was decentralised mass testing capacity.
I'm supportive of Boris at the moment but we were piss-poor early on. Nothing to do with hindsight. Anyone prepared to lift their eyes to the east could see what was happening. That scientists and politicians refused to pay attention is a scandal.
That having been written, from the beginning of April onwards they did get their act together. By that time the virus had spread willy-nilly and the result was 30,000 deaths, 25,000 of which were preventable. So, not great.
On the other hand, without wishing to go all 'herd immunity' (remember that?) by this time next year we may be in a better position than somewhere like, say, New Zealand. The more people are exposed to this the faster we exit it.
I am thinking more and more that people judging and ranking global governments' responses now are at least 12 possibly 18-24 months too early.
It is perfectly possible to judge governments now. You don’t ignore GCSE results because there are A Levels and Degrees to come.
And what is the government’s Covid19 GCSE result?
Quarantine: E, Fail Testing: D, Fail NHS Capacity: B, Success Trace and Isolate: E, Fail Masks: E-, Fail Protect the Vulnerable: D, Fail Avoid Undue Economic Harm: D, Fail PPE: D, Fail
Britain Failed.
OK
Not by any means saying that UK has A*s, but we've only answered questions 1-3 so far. This is not over by a long chalk would you agree on that?
We’ve tanswered most of the questions. Take just one: masks (a bugbear of mine, but a useful measure of their general incompetence).
Britain was the last big country - the very last - to ask for mask wearing on public transport. Why? Even the Americans - who began, like us, wrongly saying masks don’t work - realised their mistake some time ago, and changed advice.
It’s just shit. A big serving of shit in an entire menu of shite.
Incidentally I think this perception of our covid-response is now percolating through to the public. The government’s polling resembles a cartoon character running off a cliff. For a while, after the disaster, the legs keep whirring and gravity is ignored.
But when reality hits - Whoosh.
I wonder if Boris will make it through a full term. The backlash is going to be intense.
Nah most people aren't obsessive hypochondriac internet cranks over this.
Take mask wearing on public transport - who's even been going on public transport in the past month or so? What proportion of the nation?
Vast majority of people don't use public transport in the first place and even for those that do most people are now locked down. So vast, vast majority of people won't have been on public transport in the past month with or without any masks.
Recent visit to a general hospital - couple of days ago. Even the reception staff not bothering with masks. Likewise in the local M&S. Not sure "mask-gate" is really going to take off TBH.
I never said it would. Masks won’t bring down a government.
My point is that the confusion and failure on masks is just one reason we have such a high death toll. We have more infected people dying partly because people aren’t wearing masks where they should: as your comment shows. They aren’t even wearing them in hospitals?? It’s incredible.
I would admire our British insouciance if we were similarly shrugging off the virus elsewhere. But we’re not. We’ve fucked the economy, at the same time.
On masks, I seem to recall there was an argument against them on behavioural grounds, ie, that people with masks would consider themselves protected and not observe the 2m social distancing rule. Might explain the lack of interest in them.
Then let's educate people on how to wear them properly and ensure that the same social distancing is observed with them on. A couple of months ago it wouldn't have seemed possible that people would wait in 2m distanced queues to get into Sainsbury's, but we are. Group behaviour isn't fixed in time. If there is a way to get to the end of this crisis faster but needs a public education air war then let's do that.
I have a feeling that there's an element of a sort of xenophobia here. Over the years I've phases such as 'look at the funny East Asians all wearing masks'.
Me; no problem. I don't wear one when I'm out for a walk, yet at any rate, since we walk in places that are pretty deserted. But I do wear one when I go to fetch a take-away.
Don;t tell me Corona has been with us for longer than we thought.
That would not be great for governments anywhere.
Doesn't mean it was/is widespread.
I wonder what made it spread so slowly when we were living life normally!! surely impossible under lockdown rationale.
Maybe one day we might find out. But I doubt it, because that would expose the gigantic policy errors Western governments have made, and are still making trying to prove they were right.
A railway ticket office worker has died of coronavirus after being spat at while on duty.
Belly Mujinga, 47, was on the concourse of Victoria station in south-west London in March when a member of the public who said he had Covid-19 spat and coughed at her and a colleague. Within days of the assault, both women fell ill with the virus.
Don;t tell me Corona has been with us for longer than we thought.
That would not be great for governments anywhere.
Doesn't mean it was/is widespread.
I wonder what made it spread so slowly when we were living life normally!! surely impossible under lockdown rationale.
Maybe one day we might find out. But I doubt it, because that would expose the gigantic policy errors Western governments have made, and are still making trying to prove they were right.
Depends on the lives of those infected at the time, doesn't it? If none of them were particularly social, the impact would have been minimal. The more infections you have, the more those kind of things average out.
Do all of the public know what vigilant means? Especially english as a second language? Could cause.. what's the word.... confusion.
I look forward to our Nat friends who trashed "Stay Alert" sing the praises of "Remain Vigilant".....maybe she just wanted to sneak "Remain" into the slogan.....
Excoriating piece by AEP, which importantly contains the views of a leading COVID doctor.
“Boris survived because they gave him oxygen. High flow oxygen wasn’t available as a treatment option for all patients.”
“Our policy was to let the virus rip and then ‘cocoon the elderly’,” he wrote. “You don’t know whether to laugh or cry when you contrast that with what we actually did...We actively seeded this into the very population that was most vulnerable."
It's actually extremely angering to think that basically all of the poor decision making stems from our lack of testing capacity at the beginning of this crisis and our "experts" telling the government that they have it under control. The delay in getting testing capacity to at least 20k per day is why we couldn't mass test all of the care patients before sending them back, it's why we stopped testing community transmission and why we're so late to the party with track and trace.
As I've said before it's Hancock that is ultimately at fault, but our experts have been lacking in judgement on far too many occasions. Especially given that there have been successful models in other countries and not just in Asia, similar European countries/cultures have made it work a lot better but the commonality among those countries was decentralised mass testing capacity.
I'm supportive of Boris at the moment but we were piss-poor early on. Nothing to do with hindsight. Anyone prepared to lift their eyes to the east could see what was happening. That scientists and politicians refused to pay attention is a scandal.
That having been written, from the beginning of April onwards they did get their act together. By that time the virus had spread willy-nilly and the result was 30,000 deaths, 25,000 of which were preventable. So, not great.
On the other hand, without wishing to go all 'herd immunity' (remember that?) by this time next year we may be in a better position than somewhere like, say, New Zealand. The more people are exposed to this the faster we exit it.
I am thinking more and more that people judging and ranking global governments' responses now are at least 12 possibly 18-24 months too early.
It is perfectly possible to judge governments now. You don’t ignore GCSE results because there are A Levels and Degrees to come.
And what is the government’s Covid19 GCSE result?
Quarantine: E, Fail Testing: D, Fail NHS Capacity: B, Success Trace and Isolate: E, Fail Masks: E-, Fail Protect the Vulnerable: D, Fail Avoid Undue Economic Harm: D, Fail PPE: D, Fail
Britain Failed.
OK
Not by any means saying that UK has A*s, but we've only answered questions 1-3 so far. This is not over by a long chalk would you agree on that?
We’ve tanswered most of the questions. Take just one: masks (a bugbear of mine, but a useful measure of their general incompetence).
Britain was the last big country - the very last - to ask for mask wearing on public transport. Why? Even the Americans - who began, like us, wrongly saying masks don’t work - realised their mistake some time ago, and changed advice.
It’s just shit. A big serving of shit in an entire menu of shite.
Incidentally I think this perception of our covid-response is now percolating through to the public. The government’s polling resembles a cartoon character running off a cliff. For a while, after the disaster, the legs keep whirring and gravity is ignored.
But when reality hits - Whoosh.
I wonder if Boris will make it through a full term. The backlash is going to be intense.
Nah most people aren't obsessive hypochondriac internet cranks over this.
Take mask wearing on public transport - who's even been going on public transport in the past month or so? What proportion of the nation?
Vast majority of people don't use public transport in the first place and even for those that do most people are now locked down. So vast, vast majority of people won't have been on public transport in the past month with or without any masks.
Recent visit to a general hospital - couple of days ago. Even the reception staff not bothering with masks. Likewise in the local M&S. Not sure "mask-gate" is really going to take off TBH.
I never said it would. Masks won’t bring down a government.
My point is that the confusion and failure on masks is just one reason we have such a high death toll. We have more infected people dying partly because people aren’t wearing masks where they should: as your comment shows. They aren’t even wearing them in hospitals?? It’s incredible.
I would admire our British insouciance if we were similarly shrugging off the virus elsewhere. But we’re not. We’ve fucked the economy, at the same time.
LOL
perhaps you can name all those economies booming under the present circumstances
Vietnam seems to have one of the world's lowest obesity rates. Is that why a poor country with a higher population density than the UK has had a few 100 cases and no reported deaths?
Or is it that tropical sunshine gives everyone enough vitamin D ... or is it both?
627 all settings deaths reported. It looks bad but after a three day weekend it's probably on the better side of expectations. The number of new infections is finally starting to drop as well, only 3.4k positive tests.
Excoriating piece by AEP, which importantly contains the views of a leading COVID doctor.
“Boris survived because they gave him oxygen. High flow oxygen wasn’t available as a treatment option for all patients.”
“Our policy was to let the virus rip and then ‘cocoon the elderly’,” he wrote. “You don’t know whether to laugh or cry when you contrast that with what we actually did...We actively seeded this into the very population that was most vulnerable."
It's actually extremely angering to think that basically all of the poor decision making stems from our lack of testing capacity at the beginning of this crisis and our "experts" telling the government that they have it under control. The delay in getting testing capacity to at least 20k per day is why we couldn't mass test all of the care patients before sending them back, it's why we stopped testing community transmission and why we're so late to the party with track and trace.
As I've said before it's Hancock that is ultimately at fault, but our experts have been lacking in judgement on far too many occasions. Especially given that there have been successful models in other countries and not just in Asia, similar European countries/cultures have made it work a lot better but the commonality among those countries was decentralised mass testing capacity.
I'm supportive of Boris at the moment but we were piss-poor early on. Nothing to do with hindsight. Anyone prepared to lift their eyes to the east could see what was happening. That scientists and politicians refused to pay attention is a scandal.
That having been written, from the beginning of April onwards they did get their act together. By that time the virus had spread willy-nilly and the result was 30,000 deaths, 25,000 of which were preventable. So, not great.
On the other hand, without wishing to go all 'herd immunity' (remember that?) by this time next year we may be in a better position than somewhere like, say, New Zealand. The more people are exposed to this the faster we exit it.
I am thinking more and more that people judging and ranking global governments' responses now are at least 12 possibly 18-24 months too early.
It is perfectly possible to judge governments now. You don’t ignore GCSE results because there are A Levels and Degrees to come.
And what is the government’s Covid19 GCSE result?
Quarantine: E, Fail Testing: D, Fail NHS Capacity: B, Success Trace and Isolate: E, Fail Masks: E-, Fail Protect the Vulnerable: D, Fail Avoid Undue Economic Harm: D, Fail PPE: D, Fail
Britain Failed.
OK
Not by any means saying that UK has A*s, but we've only answered questions 1-3 so far. This is not over by a long chalk would you agree on that?
We’ve tanswered most of the questions. Take just one: masks (a bugbear of mine, but a useful measure of their general incompetence).
Britain was the last big country - the very last - to ask for mask wearing on public transport. Why? Even the Americans - who began, like us, wrongly saying masks don’t work - realised their mistake some time ago, and changed advice.
It’s just shit. A big serving of shit in an entire menu of shite.
Incidentally I think this perception of our covid-response is now percolating through to the public. The government’s polling resembles a cartoon character running off a cliff. For a while, after the disaster, the legs keep whirring and gravity is ignored.
But when reality hits - Whoosh.
I wonder if Boris will make it through a full term. The backlash is going to be intense.
Nah most people aren't obsessive hypochondriac internet cranks over this. n Take mask wearing on public transport - who's even been going on public transport in the past month or so? What proportion of the nation?
Vast majority of people don't use public transport in the first place and even for those that do most people are now locked down. So vast, vast majority of people won't have been on public transport in the past month with or without any masks.
Recent visit to a general hospital - couple of days ago. Even the reception staff not bothering with masks. Likewise in the local M&S. Not sure "mask-gate" is really going to take off TBH.
Indeed the government have asked people to start wearing them well before people took matters into their own hands. So I don't think people will think its "too late" besides cranks online.
No - they were following their rules - in a nightclub.
Unfortunately its a gay nightclub so attendees have been very unwilling to come forward for testing/denying they were there because of Korean societal homophobic discrimination (family ostracisation, sacking from employment). The Korean government have 12,000 names from mobile phone records for the area - but many are unwilling to come forward, for obvious reasons.
It's interesting - while societies have managed to get on top of this in the general population, all of them seem to have significant weaknesses in discriminated against/under valued sections of their populations - care homes across the UK (and much of Europe), foreign workers in Singapore and now gays in Korea. No doubt in the unfolding catastrophe that is the US when the smoke clears a similar picture will emerge.
So Korean intelligence knows who the 12,000 were. That must make for, ooh, about 12,000 recruiting opportunities.
And when it comes to undervaluing our care homes, we haven't yet had the army go into our are homes and find the corpses of abandoned residents. Have we, Spain? Anyone who thinks they have had a better Covid than us, think on...
I see Sunak has pulled the wool over people's eyes re the furlough, saying he's extended it until October. No you haven't mate, after July no employer is going to pay staff to stay at home
Imagine a business that in the short term can generate 95% of its income using 70% of its staff.
Without getting too hung up on the precise numbers why would such a business not choose to keep 30% of its staff on furlough (with the government contributing to their wages) for as long as they can get away with it?
Agreed. There will be plenty of employers who would rather keep employees on furlough with taxpayer (the future one!) paying most of the bill, in the hope that the economy picks up and they will be able to immediately call up their "reserve". This is a lot better than having to rehire and retrain a load of people at short notice which would be expensive and inefficient. A lot will depend on who trusts the "bounce back" theory.
There is a huge amount to criticise the government on their generally hopeless response to this crisis. I think so far though, Sunak should be congratulated on his package of support for business, and by extension their employees.
It will depend on how much employers are asked to cough up, surely, a detail which Sunak helpfully left out of today's announcement.
The IFS reckons this little scheme will cost GBP100bn by the time its done, something that Sunak also strangely failed to mention.
But then with folk like you complimenting him as he flushes all our money down the drain, why would he need to?
I have been watching the BBC series on Thatcher on iPlayer, which is very good. I'm a Conservative but one thing I fund myself agreeing with Neil Kinnock on was that Thatcher never realised that when you closed the pits, you killed the community. Economically, you have to wonder whether the costs saved by closing the pits was more than outweighed by the extra social welfare payments, government help and subsidies caused by the closures, not to mention the social problems. My personal view was that it would have made sense to keep the pits going, even if the coal was just been bought by the Government and not used, until those communities could have been weaned off coal.
I think it's the same with the furlough scheme. You can argue that the cost of the scheme is enormous, which it is. But how much would the cost be if you let millions and millions be made redundant, pay for their welfare and all the associated problems with it and completely collapsed consumer spending at the same time?
Sir Geoffrey Howe also wondered if the Thatcher government had gone too far, iirc (and it is a long time since I read his book so it is possible I'm mixing him up with someone else). It destroyed communities in both social and economic terms.
Excoriating piece by AEP, which importantly contains the views of a leading COVID doctor.
“Boris survived because they gave him oxygen. High flow oxygen wasn’t available as a treatment option for all patients.”
“Our policy was to let the virus rip and then ‘cocoon the elderly’,” he wrote. “You don’t know whether to laugh or cry when you contrast that with what we actually did...We actively seeded this into the very population that was most vulnerable."
It's actually extremely angering to think that basically all of the poor decision making stems from our lack of testing capacity at the beginning of this crisis and our "experts" telling the government that they have it under control. The delay in getting testing capacity to at least 20k per day is why we couldn't mass test all of the care patients before sending them back, it's why we stopped testing community transmission and why we're so late to the party with track and trace.
As I've said before it's Hancock that is ultimately at fault, but our experts have been lacking in judgement on far too many occasions. Especially given that there have been successful models in other countries and not just in Asia, similar European countries/cultures have made it work a lot better but the commonality among those countries was decentralised mass testing capacity.
I'm supportive of Boris at the moment but we were piss-poor early on. Nothing to do with hindsight. Anyone prepared to lift their eyes to the east could see what was happening. That scientists and politicians refused to pay attention is a scandal.
That having been written, from the beginning of April onwards they did get their act together. By that time the virus had spread willy-nilly and the result was 30,000 deaths, 25,000 of which were preventable. So, not great.
On the other hand, without wishing to go all 'herd immunity' (remember that?) by this time next year we may be in a better position than somewhere like, say, New Zealand. The more people are exposed to this the faster we exit it.
I am thinking more and more that people judging and ranking global governments' responses now are at least 12 possibly 18-24 months too early.
It is perfectly possible to judge governments now. You don’t ignore GCSE results because there are A Levels and Degrees to come.
And what is the government’s Covid19 GCSE result?
Quarantine: E, Fail Testing: D, Fail NHS Capacity: B, Success Trace and Isolate: E, Fail Masks: E-, Fail Protect the Vulnerable: D, Fail Avoid Undue Economic Harm: D, Fail PPE: D, Fail
Britain Failed.
OK
Not by any means saying that UK has A*s, but we've only answered questions 1-3 so far. This is not over by a long chalk would you agree on that?
We’ve tanswered most of the questions. Take just one: masks (a bugbear of mine, but a useful measure of their general incompetence).
Britain was the last big country - the very last - to ask for mask wearing on public transport. Why? Even the Americans - who began, like us, wrongly saying masks don’t work - realised their mistake some time ago, and changed advice.
It’s just shit. A big serving of shit in an entire menu of shite.
Incidentally I think this perception of our covid-response is now percolating through to the public. The government’s polling resembles a cartoon character running off a cliff. For a while, after the disaster, the legs keep whirring and gravity is ignored.
But when reality hits - Whoosh.
I wonder if Boris will make it through a full term. The backlash is going to be intense.
Nah most people aren't obsessive hypochondriac internet cranks over this.
Take mask wearing on public transport - who's even been going on public transport in the past month or so? What proportion of the nation?
Vast majority of people don't use public transport in the first place and even for those that do most people are now locked down. So vast, vast majority of people won't have been on public transport in the past month with or without any masks.
Recent visit to a general hospital - couple of days ago. Even the reception staff not bothering with masks. Likewise in the local M&S. Not sure "mask-gate" is really going to take off TBH.
I never said it would. Masks won’t bring down a government.
My point is that the confusion and failure on masks is just one reason we have such a high death toll. We have more infected people dying partly because people aren’t wearing masks where they should: as your comment shows. They aren’t even wearing them in hospitals?? It’s incredible.
I would admire our British insouciance if we were similarly shrugging off the virus elsewhere. But we’re not. We’ve fucked the economy, at the same time.
LOL
perhaps you can name all those economies booming under the present circumstances
Vietnam seems to have one of the world's lowest obesity rates. Is that why a poor country with a higher population density than the UK has had a few 100 cases and no reported deaths?
Or is it that tropical sunshine gives everyone enough vitamin D ... or is it both?
The fact that Covid-19 left Vietnam alone is incredible
Here we go, NigelB’s admirable post on masks from yesterday:
The research since the beginning of the pandemic has not been utterly conclusive, but it has without a shadow of doubt trended in one direction only. And the evidence of countries with high mask usage is unequivocal.
It's quite possible that universal mask usage has a similar efficacy to lockdown, and it's an order of magnitude cheaper. Not that hard to manufacture, either, if government tried in the same way it did with ventilators.
Universal Masking is Urgent in the COVID-19 Pandemic: SEIR and Agent Based Models, Empirical Validation, Policy Recommendations https://arxiv.org/pdf/2004.13553.pdf
I see Sunak has pulled the wool over people's eyes re the furlough, saying he's extended it until October. No you haven't mate, after July no employer is going to pay staff to stay at home
Imagine a business that in the short term can generate 95% of its income using 70% of its staff.
Without getting too hung up on the precise numbers why would such a business not choose to keep 30% of its staff on furlough (with the government contributing to their wages) for as long as they can get away with it?
Agreed. There will be plenty of employers who would rather keep employees on furlough with taxpayer (the future one!) paying most of the bill, in the hope that the economy picks up and they will be able to immediately call up their "reserve". This is a lot better than having to rehire and retrain a load of people at short notice which would be expensive and inefficient. A lot will depend on who trusts the "bounce back" theory.
There is a huge amount to criticise the government on their generally hopeless response to this crisis. I think so far though, Sunak should be congratulated on his package of support for business, and by extension their employees.
It will depend on how much employers are asked to cough up, surely, a detail which Sunak helpfully left out of today's announcement.
The IFS reckons this little scheme will cost GBP100bn by the time its done, something that Sunak also strangely failed to mention.
But then with folk like you complimenting him as he flushes all our money down the drain, why would he need to?
I have been watching the BBC series on Thatcher on iPlayer, which is very good. I'm a Conservative but one thing I fund myself agreeing with Neil Kinnock on was that Thatcher never realised that when you closed the pits, you killed the community. Economically, you have to wonder whether the costs saved by closing the pits was more than outweighed by the extra social welfare payments, government help and subsidies caused by the closures, not to mention the social problems. My personal view was that it would have made sense to keep the pits going, even if the coal was just been bought by the Government and not used, until those communities could have been weaned off coal.
I think it's the same with the furlough scheme. You can argue that the cost of the scheme is enormous, which it is. But how much would the cost be if you let millions and millions be made redundant, pay for their welfare and all the associated problems with it and completely collapsed consumer spending at the same time?
Sir Geoffrey Howe also wondered if the Thatcher government had gone too far, iirc (and it is a long time since I read his book so it is possible I'm mixing him up with someone else). It destroyed communities in both social and economic terms.
The basic problem was that many pit villages/towns were created by the collieries. They are located in the wrong places for anything else. Attempts were made to create new jobs, but they often foundered on inertia - from the former miners and employers.
Do all of the public know what vigilant means? Especially english as a second language? Could cause.. what's the word.... confusion.
The confusion in Scottish minds will come tomorrow when the English drive all the way up to the Scottish border - to moon them. Because they can. And then go to garden centres.
Sady, this trolling will have little effect, because the Scots will be at home. Being vigilant. Wondering "why can't I do that?". In a vigilant manner of thinking.
I see Sunak has pulled the wool over people's eyes re the furlough, saying he's extended it until October. No you haven't mate, after July no employer is going to pay staff to stay at home
Imagine a business that in the short term can generate 95% of its income using 70% of its staff.
Without getting too hung up on the precise numbers why would such a business not choose to keep 30% of its staff on furlough (with the government contributing to their wages) for as long as they can get away with it?
Agreed. There will be plenty of employers who would rather keep employees on furlough with taxpayer (the future one!) paying most of the bill, in the hope that the economy picks up and they will be able to immediately call up their "reserve". This is a lot better than having to rehire and retrain a load of people at short notice which would be expensive and inefficient. A lot will depend on who trusts the "bounce back" theory.
There is a huge amount to criticise the government on their generally hopeless response to this crisis. I think so far though, Sunak should be congratulated on his package of support for business, and by extension their employees.
It will depend on how much employers are asked to cough up, surely, a detail which Sunak helpfully left out of today's announcement.
The IFS reckons this little scheme will cost GBP100bn by the time its done, something that Sunak also strangely failed to mention.
But then with folk like you complimenting him as he flushes all our money down the drain, why would he need to?
I have been watching the BBC series on Thatcher on iPlayer, which is very good. I'm a Conservative but one thing I fund myself agreeing with Neil Kinnock on was that Thatcher never realised that when you closed the pits, you killed the community. Economically, you have to wonder whether the costs saved by closing the pits was more than outweighed by the extra social welfare payments, government help and subsidies caused by the closures, not to mention the social problems. My personal view was that it would have made sense to keep the pits going, even if the coal was just been bought by the Government and not used, until those communities could have been weaned off coal.
I think it's the same with the furlough scheme. You can argue that the cost of the scheme is enormous, which it is. But how much would the cost be if you let millions and millions be made redundant, pay for their welfare and all the associated problems with it and completely collapsed consumer spending at the same time?
Sir Geoffrey Howe also wondered if the Thatcher government had gone too far, iirc (and it is a long time since I read his book so it is possible I'm mixing him up with someone else). It destroyed communities in both social and economic terms.
The basic problem was that many pit villages/towns were created by the collieries. They are located in the wrong places for anything else. Attempts were made to create new jobs, but they often foundered on inertia - from the former miners and employers.
That is very true re the geography but, if that was the case, then it is even clearer that a path of crash "creative destruction" was the wrong one.
And when it comes to undervaluing our care homes, we haven't yet had the army go into our are homes and find the corpses of abandoned residents. Have we, Spain? Anyone who thinks they have had a better Covid than us, think on...
And when it comes to undervaluing our care homes, we haven't yet had the army go into our are homes and find the corpses of abandoned residents. Have we, Spain? Anyone who thinks they have had a better Covid than us, think on...
Don;t tell me Corona has been with us for longer than we thought.
That would not be great for governments anywhere.
Doesn't mean it was/is widespread.
I wonder what made it spread so slowly when we were living life normally!! surely impossible under lockdown rationale.
Maybe one day we might find out. But I doubt it, because that would expose the gigantic policy errors Western governments have made, and are still making trying to prove they were right.
Someone posted a link to a study last week that identified two different strains of the virus. The later strain, which emerged in Lombardy, was identified as being more infectious than the older strain.
Here we go, NigelB’s admirable post on masks from yesterday:
The research since the beginning of the pandemic has not been utterly conclusive, but it has without a shadow of doubt trended in one direction only. And the evidence of countries with high mask usage is unequivocal.
It's quite possible that universal mask usage has a similar efficacy to lockdown, and it's an order of magnitude cheaper. Not that hard to manufacture, either, if government tried in the same way it did with ventilators.
Universal Masking is Urgent in the COVID-19 Pandemic: SEIR and Agent Based Models, Empirical Validation, Policy Recommendations https://arxiv.org/pdf/2004.13553.pdf
I see Sunak has pulled the wool over people's eyes re the furlough, saying he's extended it until October. No you haven't mate, after July no employer is going to pay staff to stay at home
Imagine a business that in the short term can generate 95% of its income using 70% of its staff.
Without getting too hung up on the precise numbers why would such a business not choose to keep 30% of its staff on furlough (with the government contributing to their wages) for as long as they can get away with it?
Agreed. There will be plenty of employers who would rather keep employees on furlough with taxpayer (the future one!) paying most of the bill, in the hope that the economy picks up and they will be able to immediately call up their "reserve". This is a lot better than having to rehire and retrain a load of people at short notice which would be expensive and inefficient. A lot will depend on who trusts the "bounce back" theory.
There is a huge amount to criticise the government on their generally hopeless response to this crisis. I think so far though, Sunak should be congratulated on his package of support for business, and by extension their employees.
It will depend on how much employers are asked to cough up, surely, a detail which Sunak helpfully left out of today's announcement.
The IFS reckons this little scheme will cost GBP100bn by the time its done, something that Sunak also strangely failed to mention.
But then with folk like you complimenting him as he flushes all our money down the drain, why would he need to?
I have been watching the BBC series on Thatcher on iPlayer, which is very good. I'm a Conservative but one thing I fund myself agreeing with Neil Kinnock on was that Thatcher never realised that when you closed the pits, you killed the community. Economically, you have to wonder whether the costs saved by closing the pits was more than outweighed by the extra social welfare payments, government help and subsidies caused by the closures, not to mention the social problems. My personal view was that it would have made sense to keep the pits going, even if the coal was just been bought by the Government and not used, until those communities could have been weaned off coal.
I think it's the same with the furlough scheme. You can argue that the cost of the scheme is enormous, which it is. But how much would the cost be if you let millions and millions be made redundant, pay for their welfare and all the associated problems with it and completely collapsed consumer spending at the same time?
Sir Geoffrey Howe also wondered if the Thatcher government had gone too far, iirc (and it is a long time since I read his book so it is possible I'm mixing him up with someone else). It destroyed communities in both social and economic terms.
The basic problem was that many pit villages/towns were created by the collieries. They are located in the wrong places for anything else. Attempts were made to create new jobs, but they often foundered on inertia - from the former miners and employers.
They're in the right place for UK wide distribution centres.
Excoriating piece by AEP, which importantly contains the views of a leading COVID doctor.
“Boris survived because they gave him oxygen. High flow oxygen wasn’t available as a treatment option for all patients.”
“Our policy was to let the virus rip and then ‘cocoon the elderly’,” he wrote. “You don’t know whether to laugh or cry when you contrast that with what we actually did...We actively seeded this into the very population that was most vulnerable."
It's actually extremely angering to think that basically all of the poor decision making stems from our lack of testing capacity at the beginning of this crisis and our "experts" telling the government that they have it under control. The delay in getting testing capacity to at least 20k per day is why we couldn't mass test all of the care patients before sending them back, it's why we stopped testing community transmission and why we're so late to the party with track and trace.
As I've said before it's Hancock that is ultimately at fault, but our experts have been lacking in judgement on far too many occasions. Especially given that there have been successful models in other countries and not just in Asia, similar European countries/cultures have made it work a lot better but the commonality among those countries was decentralised mass testing capacity.
I'm supportive of Boris at the moment but we were piss-poor early on. Nothing to do with hindsight. Anyone prepared to lift their eyes to the east could see what was happening. That scientists and politicians refused to pay attention is a scandal.
That having been written, from the beginning of April onwards they did get their act together. By that time the virus had spread willy-nilly and the result was 30,000 deaths, 25,000 of which were preventable. So, not great.
On the other hand, without wishing to go all 'herd immunity' (remember that?) by this time next year we may be in a better position than somewhere like, say, New Zealand. The more people are exposed to this the faster we exit it.
I am thinking more and more that people judging and ranking global governments' responses now are at least 12 possibly 18-24 months too early.
It is perfectly possible to judge governments now. You don’t ignore GCSE results because there are A Levels and Degrees to come.
And what is the government’s Covid19 GCSE result?
Quarantine: E, Fail Testing: D, Fail NHS Capacity: B, Success Trace and Isolate: E, Fail Masks: E-, Fail Protect the Vulnerable: D, Fail Avoid Undue Economic Harm: D, Fail PPE: D, Fail
Britain Failed.
OK
Not by any means saying that UK has A*s, but we've only answered questions 1-3 so far. This is not over by a long chalk would you agree on that?
We’ve tanswered most of the questions. Take just one: masks (a bugbear of mine, but a useful measure of their general incompetence).
Britain was the last big country - the very last - to ask for mask wearing on public transport. Why? Even the Americans - who began, like us, wrongly saying masks don’t work - realised their mistake some time ago, and changed advice.
It’s just shit. A big serving of shit in an entire menu of shite.
Incidentally I think this perception of our covid-response is now percolating through to the public. The government’s polling resembles a cartoon character running off a cliff. For a while, after the disaster, the legs keep whirring and gravity is ignored.
But when reality hits - Whoosh.
I wonder if Boris will make it through a full term. The backlash is going to be intense.
Nah most people aren't obsessive hypochondriac internet cranks over this.
Take mask wearing on public transport - who's even been going on public transport in the past month or so? What proportion of the nation?
Vast majority of people don't use public transport in the first place and even for those that do most people are now locked down. So vast, vast majority of people won't have been on public transport in the past month with or without any masks.
Recent visit to a general hospital - couple of days ago. Even the reception staff not bothering with masks. Likewise in the local M&S. Not sure "mask-gate" is really going to take off TBH.
I never said it would. Masks won’t bring down a government.
My point is that the confusion and failure on masks is just one reason we have such a high death toll. We have more infected people dying partly because people aren’t wearing masks where they should: as your comment shows. They aren’t even wearing them in hospitals?? It’s incredible.
I would admire our British insouciance if we were similarly shrugging off the virus elsewhere. But we’re not. We’ve fucked the economy, at the same time.
LOL
perhaps you can name all those economies booming under the present circumstances
Vietnam seems to have one of the world's lowest obesity rates. Is that why a poor country with a higher population density than the UK has had a few 100 cases and no reported deaths?
Or is it that tropical sunshine gives everyone enough vitamin D ... or is it both?
The fact that Covid-19 left Vietnam alone is incredible
Thailand's not doing too badly, either. Apparently their main problem now is with migrant workers coming across from Malaysia.
Do all of the public know what vigilant means? Especially english as a second language? Could cause.. what's the word.... confusion.
The confusion in Scottish minds will come tomorrow when the English drive all the way up to the Scottish border - to moon them. Because they can. And then go to garden centres.
Sady, this trolling will have little effect, because the Scots will be at home. Being vigilant. Wondering "why can't I do that?". In a vigilant manner of thinking.
Looking forward to a round of golf on Sunday with a mate- will be taunting all my Scotch mates who are stuck indoors north of the border with pics.
Excoriating piece by AEP, which importantly contains the views of a leading COVID doctor.
“Boris survived because they gave him oxygen. High flow oxygen wasn’t available as a treatment option for all patients.”
“Our policy was to let the virus rip and then ‘cocoon the elderly’,” he wrote. “You don’t know whether to laugh or cry when you contrast that with what we actually did...We actively seeded this into the very population that was most vulnerable."
It's actually extremely angering to think that basically all of the poor decision making stems from our lack of testing capacity at the beginning of this crisis and our "experts" telling the government that they have it under control. The delay in getting testing capacity to at least 20k per day is why we couldn't mass test all of the care patients before sending them back, it's why we stopped testing community transmission and why we're so late to the party with track and trace.
As I've said before it's Hancock that is ultimately at fault, but our experts have been lacking in judgement on far too many occasions. Especially given that there have been successful models in other countries and not just in Asia, similar European countries/cultures have made it work a lot better but the commonality among those countries was decentralised mass testing capacity.
I'm supportive of Boris at the moment but we were piss-poor early on. Nothing to do with hindsight. Anyone prepared to lift their eyes to the east could see what was happening. That scientists and politicians refused to pay attention is a scandal.
That having been written, from the beginning of April onwards they did get their act together. By that time the virus had spread willy-nilly and the result was 30,000 deaths, 25,000 of which were preventable. So, not great.
On the other hand, without wishing to go all 'herd immunity' (remember that?) by this time next year we may be in a better position than somewhere like, say, New Zealand. The more people are exposed to this the faster we exit it.
I am thinking more and more that people judging and ranking global governments' responses now are at least 12 possibly 18-24 months too early.
It is perfectly possible to judge governments now. You don’t ignore GCSE results because there are A Levels and Degrees to come.
And what is the government’s Covid19 GCSE result?
Quarantine: E, Fail Testing: D, Fail NHS Capacity: B, Success Trace and Isolate: E, Fail Masks: E-, Fail Protect the Vulnerable: D, Fail Avoid Undue Economic Harm: D, Fail PPE: D, Fail
Britain Failed.
OK
Not by any means saying that UK has A*s, but we've only answered questions 1-3 so far. This is not over by a long chalk would you agree on that?
We’ve tanswered most of the questions. Take just one: masks (a bugbear of mine, but a useful measure of their general incompetence).
Britain was the last big country - the very last - to ask for mask wearing on public transport. Why? Even the Americans - who began, like us, wrongly saying masks don’t work - realised their mistake some time ago, and changed advice.
It’s just shit. A big serving of shit in an entire menu of shite.
Incidentally I think this perception of our covid-response is now percolating through to the public. The government’s polling resembles a cartoon character running off a cliff. For a while, after the disaster, the legs keep whirring and gravity is ignored.
But when reality hits - Whoosh.
I wonder if Boris will make it through a full term. The backlash is going to be intense.
Nah most people aren't obsessive hypochondriac internet cranks over this.
Take mask wearing on public transport - who's even been going on public transport in the past month or so? What proportion of the nation?
Vast majority of people don't use public transport in the first place and even for those that do most people are now locked down. So vast, vast majority of people won't have been on public transport in the past month with or without any masks.
Recent visit to a general hospital - couple of days ago. Even the reception staff not bothering with masks. Likewise in the local M&S. Not sure "mask-gate" is really going to take off TBH.
I never said it would. Masks won’t bring down a government.
My point is that the confusion and failure on masks is just one reason we have such a high death toll. We have more infected people dying partly because people aren’t wearing masks where they should: as your comment shows. They aren’t even wearing them in hospitals?? It’s incredible.
I would admire our British insouciance if we were similarly shrugging off the virus elsewhere. But we’re not. We’ve fucked the economy, at the same time.
LOL
perhaps you can name all those economies booming under the present circumstances
Vietnam seems to have one of the world's lowest obesity rates. Is that why a poor country with a higher population density than the UK has had a few 100 cases and no reported deaths?
Or is it that tropical sunshine gives everyone enough vitamin D ... or is it both?
The fact that Covid-19 left Vietnam alone is incredible
Thailand's not doing too badly, either. Apparently their main problem now is with migrant workers coming across from Malaysia.
The fact that thousands of workers returned to these locations from Wuhan makes it more amazing
I see Sunak has pulled the wool over people's eyes re the furlough, saying he's extended it until October. No you haven't mate, after July no employer is going to pay staff to stay at home
Imagine a business that in the short term can generate 95% of its income using 70% of its staff.
Without getting too hung up on the precise numbers why would such a business not choose to keep 30% of its staff on furlough (with the government contributing to their wages) for as long as they can get away with it?
Agreed. There will be plenty of employers who would rather keep employees on furlough with taxpayer (the future one!) paying most of the bill, in the hope that the economy picks up and they will be able to immediately call up their "reserve". This is a lot better than having to rehire and retrain a load of people at short notice which would be expensive and inefficient. A lot will depend on who trusts the "bounce back" theory.
There is a huge amount to criticise the government on their generally hopeless response to this crisis. I think so far though, Sunak should be congratulated on his package of support for business, and by extension their employees.
It will depend on how much employers are asked to cough up, surely, a detail which Sunak helpfully left out of today's announcement.
The IFS reckons this little scheme will cost GBP100bn by the time its done, something that Sunak also strangely failed to mention.
But then with folk like you complimenting him as he flushes all our money down the drain, why would he need to?
I have been watching the BBC series on Thatcher on iPlayer, which is very good. I'm a Conservative but one thing I fund myself agreeing with Neil Kinnock on was that Thatcher never realised that when you closed the pits, you killed the community. Economically, you have to wonder whether the costs saved by closing the pits was more than outweighed by the extra social welfare payments, government help and subsidies caused by the closures, not to mention the social problems. My personal view was that it would have made sense to keep the pits going, even if the coal was just been bought by the Government and not used, until those communities could have been weaned off coal.
I think it's the same with the furlough scheme. You can argue that the cost of the scheme is enormous, which it is. But how much would the cost be if you let millions and millions be made redundant, pay for their welfare and all the associated problems with it and completely collapsed consumer spending at the same time?
Sir Geoffrey Howe also wondered if the Thatcher government had gone too far, iirc (and it is a long time since I read his book so it is possible I'm mixing him up with someone else). It destroyed communities in both social and economic terms.
Many of them still on the canvas almost 40 years later.
Don;t tell me Corona has been with us for longer than we thought.
That would not be great for governments anywhere.
Doesn't mean it was/is widespread.
I wonder what made it spread so slowly when we were living life normally!! surely impossible under lockdown rationale.
Maybe one day we might find out. But I doubt it, because that would expose the gigantic policy errors Western governments have made, and are still making trying to prove they were right.
Someone posted a link to a study last week that identified two different strains of the virus. The later strain, which emerged in Lombardy, was identified as being more infectious than the older strain.
This information fits with that.
That would be OK if the new one was less lethal, although it might favour a policy of let it spread among the healthy (Sweden) rather than wipe it out at all costs (NZ).
We *don't* want a virus which is
1) highly infectious and 2) as deadly as SARS-COV-1 of 2003.
The possibility of such a virus, at any time in the past 100 years, makes it incredible how badly-prepared we were. We have piles of nuclear weapons against an almost non-existent 'threat' but we don't have 'pandemic insurance'.
There will be an interesting dynamic on public transport wrt face masks.
They as has been acknowledged, to prevent you passing the virus on to someone else. So there is an issue here because if you are wearing one and someone else isn't, then that person is being protected by you but is not doing his/her part to protect you.
Apologies if this has already been discussed, but this long article by Lawrence Freedman on what how he UK scientific advice and government actions developed as the virus spread is really, really good. You can get a feel from just the Twitter thread, but I do recommend reading the whole article. It is, as far as I can see, completely free from any partisan bias, which makes it virtually unique.
As Mike Leavitt, a former US secretary of health and human services, observed: ‘In advance of a pandemic, anything you say sounds alarmist. After a pandemic starts, everything you’ve done is inadequate.’
I see Sunak has pulled the wool over people's eyes re the furlough, saying he's extended it until October. No you haven't mate, after July no employer is going to pay staff to stay at home
Imagine a business that in the short term can generate 95% of its income using 70% of its staff.
Without getting too hung up on the precise numbers why would such a business not choose to keep 30% of its staff on furlough (with the government contributing to their wages) for as long as they can get away with it?
Agreed. There will be plenty of employers who would rather keep employees on furlough with taxpayer (the future one!) paying most of the bill, in the hope that the economy picks up and they will be able to immediately call up their "reserve". This is a lot better than having to rehire and retrain a load of people at short notice which would be expensive and inefficient. A lot will depend on who trusts the "bounce back" theory.
There is a huge amount to criticise the government on their generally hopeless response to this crisis. I think so far though, Sunak should be congratulated on his package of support for business, and by extension their employees.
It will depend on how much employers are asked to cough up, surely, a detail which Sunak helpfully left out of today's announcement.
The IFS reckons this little scheme will cost GBP100bn by the time its done, something that Sunak also strangely failed to mention.
But then with folk like you complimenting him as he flushes all our money down the drain, why would he need to?
I have been watching the BBC series on Thatcher on iPlayer, which is very good. I'm a Conservative but one thing I fund myself agreeing with Neil Kinnock on was that Thatcher never realised that when you closed the pits, you killed the community. Economically, you have to wonder whether the costs saved by closing the pits was more than outweighed by the extra social welfare payments, government help and subsidies caused by the closures, not to mention the social problems. My personal view was that it would have made sense to keep the pits going, even if the coal was just been bought by the Government and not used, until those communities could have been weaned off coal.
I think it's the same with the furlough scheme. You can argue that the cost of the scheme is enormous, which it is. But how much would the cost be if you let millions and millions be made redundant, pay for their welfare and all the associated problems with it and completely collapsed consumer spending at the same time?
Sir Geoffrey Howe also wondered if the Thatcher government had gone too far, iirc (and it is a long time since I read his book so it is possible I'm mixing him up with someone else). It destroyed communities in both social and economic terms.
The basic problem was that many pit villages/towns were created by the collieries. They are located in the wrong places for anything else. Attempts were made to create new jobs, but they often foundered on inertia - from the former miners and employers.
That is very true re the geography but, if that was the case, then it is even clearer that a path of crash "creative destruction" was the wrong one.
The problem was that no-one could define a way out of the subsidy trap - short of large numbers of people moving to where jobs were.
For comedy value - Civil Service policy since the nationalisation of the mines had been to discourage other employment in mining areas. They were worried that miner might find better jobs...
Don;t tell me Corona has been with us for longer than we thought.
That would not be great for governments anywhere.
Doesn't mean it was/is widespread.
I wonder what made it spread so slowly when we were living life normally!! surely impossible under lockdown rationale.
Maybe one day we might find out. But I doubt it, because that would expose the gigantic policy errors Western governments have made, and are still making trying to prove they were right.
Someone posted a link to a study last week that identified two different strains of the virus. The later strain, which emerged in Lombardy, was identified as being more infectious than the older strain.
This information fits with that.
That would be OK if the new one was less lethal, although it might favour a policy of let it spread among the healthy (Sweden) rather than wipe it out at all costs (NZ).
We *don't* want a virus which is
1) highly infectious and 2) as deadly as SARS-COV-1 of 2003.
The possibility of such a virus, at any time in the past 100 years, makes it incredible how badly-prepared we were. We have piles of nuclear weapons against an almost non-existent 'threat' but we don't have 'pandemic insurance'.
Comments
Don;t tell me Corona has been with us for longer than we thought.
That would not be great for governments anywhere.
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.11.088179v1
...One of the features distinguishing SARS-CoV-2 from its more pathogenic counterpart SARS-CoV is the presence of premature stop codons in its ORF3b gene. Here, we show that SARS-CoV-2 ORF3b is a potent interferon antagonist, suppressing the induction of type I interferon more efficiently than its SARS-CoV ortholog. Phylogenetic analyses and functional assays revealed that SARS-CoV-2-related viruses from bats and pangolins also encode truncated ORF3b gene products with strong anti-interferon activity. Furthermore, analyses of more than 15,000 SARS-CoV-2 sequences identified a natural variant, in which a longer ORF3b reading frame was reconstituted. This variant was isolated from two patients with severe disease and further increased the ability of ORF3b to suppress interferon induction. Thus, our findings not only help to explain the poor interferon response in COVID-19 patients, but also describe a possibility of the emergence of natural SARS-CoV-2 quasispecies with extended ORF3b that may exacerbate COVID-19 symptoms..
And indeed something is up, the furlough is changing and we'll see to what extent.
So yes, the media sniffing at it was a good thing for transparency and accountability.
The IFS reckons this little scheme will cost GBP100bn by the time its done, something that Sunak also strangely failed to mention.
But then with folk like you complimenting him as he flushes all our money down the drain, why would he need to?
Covid, politically, has been a godsend for her. She was increasingly being seen as both divisive and failing in key policy areas such as education. But that's all wiped away for the time being at least by her performance in the Covid briefings and a naturally tendency to rally round the flag.
f(Current infections, R_t). With f to be decided by the politicians and eggheads.
Most striking in the UK has been our continual changes of direction:
- Testing was vital in the early days, with the government rushing to open drive-thru centres where anyone could go get a test. Shortly afterwards these were closed and we were told that testing was no longer important; even people with symptoms wouldn’t automatically be tested. Shortly afterwards, the government decided testing was once again critical and started promoting (and promising) a major expansion in test capacity.
- The first batch of returning travellers from the Princess cruise ship (all of whom had at that point tested negative) were greeted by men in hazmat suits and taken under escort to the Wirral where they were incarcerated for a fortnight, before being allowed home. Yet within days we were waving incomers from all the virus hotspots of the world through our airports with not so much as a ‘how are you feeling?’. Now we are being told quarantine for travellers is once again vital.
- At the government’s very first press conference we were told that, while the old folks would stay indoors, we actively needed more infections among the general population. Then the government, spooked by the Imperial model, locked us all down. Next, they briefed the press that the lockdown was going to be significantly relaxed. But, spooked by an uptick in case numbers, many of the flagged changes have been dropped.
I welcome government changing its mind when the evidence suggests it has been wrong. But the one thing the UK has not been doing is working to any sort of consistent or coherent overall plan.
At check-in it's £19.99 plus £5 credit card usage fee (no cash, no debit cards).
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8310465/France-Germany-got-public-transport-running-TfL.html
I am glad we got that straightened out.
I'm more thinking of the short term. A few months, say.
Today's BBC: we're on Level 4 currently.
Fucking shambles*.
*assessment comes after thinking about it for myself.
perhaps you can name all those economies booming under the present circumstances
Unfortunately its a gay nightclub so attendees have been very unwilling to come forward for testing/denying they were there because of Korean societal homophobic discrimination (family ostracisation, sacking from employment). The Korean government have 12,000 names from mobile phone records for the area - but many are unwilling to come forward, for obvious reasons.
It's interesting - while societies have managed to get on top of this in the general population, all of them seem to have significant weaknesses in discriminated against/under valued sections of their populations - care homes across the UK (and much of Europe), foreign workers in Singapore and now gays in Korea. No doubt in the unfolding catastrophe that is the US when the smoke clears a similar picture will emerge.
I think it's the same with the furlough scheme. You can argue that the cost of the scheme is enormous, which it is. But how much would the cost be if you let millions and millions be made redundant, pay for their welfare and all the associated problems with it and completely collapsed consumer spending at the same time?
Me; no problem. I don't wear one when I'm out for a walk, yet at any rate, since we walk in places that are pretty deserted. But I do wear one when I go to fetch a take-away.
Maybe one day we might find out. But I doubt it, because that would expose the gigantic policy errors Western governments have made, and are still making trying to prove they were right.
Belly Mujinga, 47, was on the concourse of Victoria station in south-west London in March when a member of the public who said he had Covid-19 spat and coughed at her and a colleague. Within days of the assault, both women fell ill with the virus.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/may/12/uk-rail-worker-dies-coronavirus-spat-belly-mujinga
https://www.reuters.com/article/vietnam-economy-rates/update-1-vietnam-central-bank-to-cut-policy-rates-from-wednesday-to-boost-growth-idUSL4N2CU2LU?rpc=401&
Vietnam seems to have one of the world's lowest obesity rates. Is that why a poor country with a higher population density than the UK has had a few 100 cases and no reported deaths?
Or is it that tropical sunshine gives everyone enough vitamin D ... or is it both?
like a clown
And when it comes to undervaluing our care homes, we haven't yet had the army go into our are homes and find the corpses of abandoned residents. Have we, Spain? Anyone who thinks they have had a better Covid than us, think on...
Protecting one person's identity more important than general public health...
https://twitter.com/DHSCgovuk/status/1260215899623227392?s=19
What matters is the share of the two party vote Labour gets.
Which scenario would you rather?
Scenario A: Labour gets 40%, and Tories get 42%
Scenario B: Labour gets 38%, and Tories get 34%
Sady, this trolling will have little effect, because the Scots will be at home. Being vigilant. Wondering "why can't I do that?". In a vigilant manner of thinking.
Renault and McLaren apparently offering him a place.
This information fits with that.
Japan, they are everywhere.
Witch.
We *don't* want a virus which is
1) highly infectious
and
2) as deadly as SARS-COV-1 of 2003.
The possibility of such a virus, at any time in the past 100 years, makes it incredible how badly-prepared we were. We have piles of nuclear weapons against an almost non-existent 'threat' but we don't have 'pandemic insurance'.
They as has been acknowledged, to prevent you passing the virus on to someone else. So there is an issue here because if you are wearing one and someone else isn't, then that person is being protected by you but is not doing his/her part to protect you.
I foresee some tense times ahead.
https://twitter.com/LawDavF/status/1259959295149563906
It also contains this rather good quote:
As Mike Leavitt, a former US secretary of health and human services, observed: ‘In advance of a pandemic, anything you say sounds alarmist. After a pandemic starts, everything you’ve done is inadequate.’
For comedy value - Civil Service policy since the nationalisation of the mines had been to discourage other employment in mining areas. They were worried that miner might find better jobs...