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Coronavirus - the new strain X

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Richard Lines said:
We simply cannot afford to continue furlough schemes.
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Cannot afford not to - what do you do throw 2m people on the streets? Most people are only month or two away from being unable to pay the rent/mortgage. It's the poor, the sick, the elderly and the unemployed who will suffer more covid deaths than the comfortably off and relatively insulated middle classes.

Society is structured very differently today than the early in 80s and there wasn't much of a cushion for people then. I'm sure I don't need to remind you of the '81 riots.

The government could start with a £10bn covid tax, levied on all the major corporations, to pay a german style furlough scheme for the next 12 months
 
ks.234 said:
If the government can target people in order to fine them £10,000, why can’t it use the same targeting system to give them the money they need to live ?
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In fact, they can't do either. The police have said they can't/won't enforce the 'rule of six' except in extreme cases, such as illegal mass gatherings. So even if (as the Home Secretary suggests) you dob in your neighbours for mingling with too many other households, nothing will happen. If you instead take the PM's advice of having a quiet word with them, you'll probably get a lot of verbal and/or physical abuse for your trouble.

People are getting all agitated about 'state control' around the virus. The problem is rather that no-one's in control. Even the Tory press is starting to realise this.
 
Richard Lines said:
Good Morning All,

It's no use I am going to have to say what I really think here as some people are clearly on a different planet to the one I inhabit.

COVID-19 isn't the most important thing we need to be worrying about right now. The massive fires in Australia earlier this year, the current massive fires across the three US western states and the those in Siberia, large lumps of glaciers falling off the Antarctic ice shelf along with increasing severity of all manner of meteorological events are far more significant. The planet is trying to tell us something and such as SARS/ COVID is maybe a mother 'message'?

Even the worst case figure of 400k deaths in the UK would only have amounted to 0.006% of the population. My 85year old neighbour up the hill hasn't altered anything she has done since the outset of the pandemic and accepts if it happens it happens.

Somebody on this forum earlier stated that a society is judged by how it treats the old/ sick or something similar. I agree with the outline principal but you don't bring an economy to its knees by blindly following this to a logical conclusion.

IMHO if everybody WAS following the rules that were in place a couple of weeks back we wouldn't be where we are now.

We simply cannot afford to continue furlough schemes.
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I think you will find 400k of 68m is .58% or over 1 in 200 people. I know I don't want that level of deaths.

Also not sure the rules everyone should have followed were clear two weeks back. We were being told to eat out for half price, go back to work, go none food shopping, go on holiday in the uk. And then there was there madness of being told one day we can't go on holiday to Spain or Portugal, then we can and then we can't. I think for Portugal that flop flop was no longer than about 20 days.

Also why do holiday makers get less than 24 hours notice of a change of rules but those who go to the pub 72 hours notice so they can have a bit of a bender before the new rules come up. Government needs to be firmer yes, but also more consistent and with better communications. Boris or other ministers should be on everyday again.
 
The Sunday times is reporting that Johnson will reject scientists' calls for more restrictions 'circuit breaker' today. It's being led by the Treasury apparently - the same clowns who made no preparations for a future pandemic...
 
Andrew C! said:
@Seanm I include @russel post, as that was the one I was responding to, including his/her use of the word 'voluntary'. I think you have taken my response out of context by not linking it to the post I was responding to.

There is lots of behaviour, that should be 'voluntary', that has had to be covered by legislation 'cos some folk don't comply!

Also, and I suspect this is the case here, you might suggest I clarify my position, and what I was replying to, before having another go at me? It may well be that I have not sufficiently explained myself clearly enough in responding to a post, and I am happy to clarify things accordingly if needed.

FWIW again I say that the media strategy by the government is like a colander in some/many instances, and we are having to pick the bits out of it and interpret accordingly. I'm having to compromise accordingly also by filtering said info from them, plus lots of info from elsewhere. Some people have more capacity, and willingness, to do this than others, don't they? Or should I hang on the governments every word and believe/do everything they recommend?
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Apologies I’m easily triggered at the moment by anything at all suggestive of the Covidiot routine.

I think the government is using legislation and the threat of prosecution as a communications strategy: in the absence of clear and consistent advice they’ve roped cops in to do their PR. I also think that potential rule-breakers aren’t even the primary audience: the real purpose, as ever, is to deflect blame and keep newspaper-readers worked up about students having house parties.
 
Seanm said:
Apologies I’m easily triggered at the moment by anything at all suggestive of the Covidiot routine.
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Appreciated. FWIW I did say on a previous thread that the initial lock down, and any isolation requirements, should be backed up by legislation when initially announced in the spring. And I fully acknowledge that in some instances the police could have got the interpretation of those rules wrong, too, had they been imposed. The media reporting of such unprofessional behaviour has also be discussed on here.

It’s a forum, so I don’t expect it to be a balanced debate, tbh. Sad as that may seem.
 
Richard Lines said:
Good Morning All,

It's no use I am going to have to say what I really think here as some people are clearly on a different planet to the one I inhabit.

COVID-19 isn't the most important thing we need to be worrying about right now. The massive fires in Australia earlier this year, the current massive fires across the three US western states and the those in Siberia, large lumps of glaciers falling off the Antarctic ice shelf along with increasing severity of all manner of meteorological events are far more significant. The planet is trying to tell us something and such as SARS/ COVID is maybe a mother 'message'?

Even the worst case figure of 400k deaths in the UK would only have amounted to 0.006% of the population. My 85year old neighbour up the hill hasn't altered anything she has done since the outset of the pandemic and accepts if it happens it happens.

Somebody on this forum earlier stated that a society is judged by how it treats the old/ sick or something similar. I agree with the outline principal but you don't bring an economy to its knees by blindly following this to a logical conclusion.

IMHO if everybody WAS following the rules that were in place a couple of weeks back we wouldn't be where we are now.

We simply cannot afford to continue furlough schemes.
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It’s the casual way you accept half a million deaths, without bothering to inform yourself about basic facts or apply any kind of logical thinking, that I find so chilling. Where’s the evidence that schools aren’t following guidelines? Where’s the evidence that the system is being overwhelmed by people not following the guidelines? What makes you think furlough is unaffordable? What makes you think allowing half a million to die makes more economic sense than controlling the disease? What makes you think everything would be rosy if everyone followed advice to the letter 2 weeks ago? 2 weeks ago were all being exhorted to go back to the office even if we could work from home, and go to the pub afterwards! Whatever the actions of some the public has generally been way ahead of the government when it comes to acting responsibly, from day 1: we’ve had to ignore a lot of advice just to survive.

What’s really chilling, actually, is your interest in climate catastrophe. That’s real of course. But given your immediate instinct in the current crisis is to declare that vast numbers of people need to die to keep things as normal as possible for others I know exactly what your position is going to be when climate-induced migration means we have to open our borders or watch millions perish. I also know your attitude will be shared by the psychopaths currently running the UK.
 
Seanm said:
Apologies I’m easily triggered at the moment by anything at all suggestive of the Covidiot routine.

I think the government is using legislation and the threat of compensation as a communications strategy: in the absence of clear and consistent advice they’ve roped cops in to do their PR. I also think that potential rule-breakers aren’t even the primary audience: the real purpose, as ever, is to deflect blame and keep newspaper-readers worked up about students having house parties.
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The truth is there are fellow citizens who will undermine your safety out of conspiracy theory/libertarianism or plain selfishness. Non mask wearing is associated with psychopathic personality. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0191886920304219

The effect will of course will be dwarfed by government incompetence and failure of public trust in government due to misconduct (Johnson allowing Cummings to flout regulations without consequence).
 
Compare and contrast:


Government communication in a public health crisis requires logical clarity and moral authority.

Boris Johnson and his cronies have neither.
 
Hancock has finally done something useful. He annoyed Sophy. The flash in her eyes made listening to him worthwhile.
 
gavreid said:
France topped 13000 cases yesterday - another big jump. The Government remains in paralysis.
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and yet the level of hospitalisations are slightly lower than 3 weeks ago and in that same period there have been around a quarter of a million positive cases.
 
Richard Lines said:
We simply cannot afford to continue furlough schemes.
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Let's put the furlough cost into perspective - The OBR estimates the total cost of furlough when it ends in October 2020 will be about £52Bn (https://www.theweek.co.uk/107647/government-told-ending-furlough-cost-jobs#:~:text=The furlough scheme has supported,a total of £52bn.)

That is approximately 12% of the current ONS estimate of GDP of £408Bn https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/grossdomesticproductgdp/timeseries/abmi/pn2.

Now, if you want to take a hard-nosed view of things, furlough has cost 55% of the UK's annual state pension bill (https://obr.uk/forecasts-in-depth/tax-by-tax-spend-by-spend/welfare-spending-state-pension/#:~:text=In our latest forecast, we,93.8 billion in Great Britain). Given a typical worker on furlough is going to return to work and a pensioner isn't, which is a better investment for future UK economic recovery? ;)

As for affordability, it's all relative and always a political decision. The fact the UK economy is (erroneously) likened to a household budget, doesn't help.
 
@droodzilla the NZ PM certainly seems to know how to communicate at a level which shows leadership and empathy in equal measure.

FWIW Mrs Obama also seems to know how to do the same. Shame the democrats can’t get her to run... now that would be powerful.
 
So the original lockdown worked did it? From what can be gleaned from the current situation no, cases rising. so the clowns in charge suggest another, everytime countries try to return to anything like normal common sense dictates the same outcome.
Flawed from the outset.
 
christray said:
So the original lockdown worked did it?
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Yes, of course it did. We went from a nightmare scenario where >1000 people were dying every day to a situation where that number got down to <10 (even allowing for Tory statistical manipulation/altering the counting methodology).

The virus is unchanged. Reducing human to human contact along with high levels of hygiene is the *only* defence we have at present. There is nothing else. The government changing messaging all the time alters no facts, it is just the twisting of shysters, spivs and crooks. The science remains the science.
 
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