If I wanted loonies in government, I'd have voted Labour

[Nimbus]

"Lockdown hard, suppress the virus, ride the economic storm".

Just slows it down doesn't stop it

"Unlock, hope the vaccine arrives soon and works, dig mass graves in the meantime".

That is the way to go,

It boils down to,
Nobody knows what to do to defeat this virus

It’s a virus with a finite life. It spreads by contact. No contact = no more virus. The difficult part is those who can’t or won’t follow rules.

 

[StormsInAfrica]

My grandmother died with it last saturday. Very sad. She thought it was b******* anyway and lamented not seeing her grandkids. Nevertheless we stayed away and tried to help her understand why. She had dementia.

They have internet but my grandfather turns the router off; might catch fire you see so no online deliveries for them.

He popped out every week to Aldi in West Brom despite our protestations: 'If you catch this then you're dead'. All ignored.

Anyway, she caught it from him (no one else entered the home) and 3 days later was gone (after 24 hours where she appeared to improve).

Point being we can all go to the ends of the Earth to protect these folks, but my experience of old people during this pandemic is that they are exclusively monumentally stupid and do everything to render these efforts null and void.

There are other demographics in the UK performing similarly.

 

[LepetitCaporal]

the difficult part is for who can't think it's not for them

 

[Steamboat]

The country takes on crippling debt for a pandemic so we increase public sector pay?

Regardless of where you are on the political spectrum, that's economically illiterate.

Your Government Employees should be happy. A raise during a pandemic is an obscenity.

 

[jarrod248]

Your Government Employees should be happy. A raise during a pandemic is an obscenity.

Difficult one really as there’s not been much in way of pay rises for a decade. If they’d increased Nurses etc pay before it’d make it easier to swallow doing without now.

 

[rampant]

Your Government Employees should be happy. A raise during a pandemic is an obscenity.

Frankly NHS staff deserve it they've been fucked about for years, the service has been stripped to the bone, and they have busted their arrses this year in appalling conditions.

What's obscene is the cronyism and profiteering we've seen in the awarding of PPE contracts to mates and donors to the party who have never seen a item of PPE in their lives, whilst experienced PPE manufacturers and suppliers were ignored. And all those dormant companies who strangely became solvent traders like this example from Private Eye

 

[Steamboat]

Difficult one really as there’s not been much in way of pay rises for a decade. If they’d increased Nurses etc pay before it’d make it easier to swallow doing without now.

True but nurses are just part of the team.
In order to balance the books, your country is going to have to make cuts in some areas. Foreign aid was a start. The welfare state will have to absorb some cuts as well.

 

[jarrod248]

True but nurses are just part of the team.
In order to balance the books, your country is going to have to make cuts in some areas. Foreign aid was a start. The welfare state will have to absorb some cuts as well.

Can’t speak for other professions but loads of the public sector have done very badly for years, pensions messed with, few if any rises. Nobody would mind losing out now and then if it would help others.

 

[TheSockPuppet]

hmmm.... except for the two previously very fit and 100% healthy RN types I work with that are now being pensioned off thanks to the long term effects of their Covid infections.

I call bullshit.

 

[TheSockPuppet]

If we look at the countries that have suffered least from the pandemic, that all did the same thing, they locked down early, they locked down hard.

Our Government dithered until the last possible moment, which meant the country was thoroughly seeded with the virus from top to bottom.

Add on top of that a failure to manage or establish a decent track, trace and isolate program meant we would always be playing catch up.

On top of that, add in people taking the piss, despite lockdown rules many families and friends were still mingling in each others homes ensuring that the virus continually had some where nice to spread.

Then we, as people were starting to panic about the economy, we started to open up too soon, especially places where people could mingle in close proximity (in HK, despite low COVID spread in comparison to us in the West they found that Bars & Restaurants were the biggest spreaders of disease - though they were still far more lucky than we were.

Then sending the kids back to school, and university students too was always going to be a disaster, and we had warning from those countries that sent they're students back before we did - yet that flashing redlight was flaty ignored.

Now had we done the early and hard, we wouldn't have had this issue, The dithering, desperation, evasion and incompetence that have been the hallmarks of this Government's approach leaves us where we are. It wouldn't be so expensive if we learned and listened to what people were doing out east.

(I'll skip the issue of cutting our public institutions like the NHS to the bone, or failing to make use of local NHS and University Laboratories to do the track and trace, or the sidelining of dedicated PPE providers for mates and donors to the Tory party who'd never seen an item of PPE in their lives, or loosing moral authority by allowing Cummings to remain in post after his little walk about, or the sending of the sick to die in Care Homes increasing the spread and death rates there, or the decision to charge headlong forward with Brexit, a short extension until the pandemic was over would have been understandable and accepted. otherwise we'll be here all night)

On the subject of spending if we had done the right things we wouldn't have to be spending all this money now. Having said that, going large now is the right thing to do, interest rates are at an all time historical low, so borrowing is not to hurt us a much as it would say back in '08 and the Crash. As we currently stand Savings are fairly high, and interest rates low, investment is weak as is risk appetite, this is keeping the long term rates down low. The Markets need Investment to come from somewhere and at this stage it its a bit frightened, but is desperate, Now we've been here before and it is manageable.


The money to invest isn't going to come from the private sector, it needs to come from the state. Yes we will eventually have to bring it down (we've always we had the longest debt duration of any developed nation [about twice the average of other Western Nations]) but we can spread that across a longer period.

I just hope they sign a deal before Jan 1st or we will be in a far worse state.

I respectfully disagree with almost every single thing you have said there.

 

[rampant]

I respectfully disagree with almost every single thing you have said there.

Elucidate then

Best vs Worst

The Countries Who've Handled COVID-19 the Best and Worst | MoveHub

We take a look at the different steps taken by governments across the globe to combat COVID-19, and discover which ones were most effective.

www.movehub.com

 

[Legallybald]

Anyone know why the Liverpool "Covid hotspot / we're all going to die" went off the pages once the Army got involved with the Lateral Flow Test rather than the rt-PCR test and the infection rate collapsed?

The clue's in the question.

 

[Chalky101]

I respectfully disagree with almost every single thing you have said there.

Covid?
I don't care about my family, why would I care about yours?

Re start the country, I've been flat out on sites spread over a vast area apart from guys saying "oh my Mrs sisters dog walkers aunt caught it" no one I've met has any first hand experience.

Don't get me started on this many people died a day of covid. Died of or died with, there's a massive difference stop being disingenuous.

 

[PhotEx]

Can’t speak for other professions but loads of the public sector have done very badly for years, pensions messed with, few if any rises. Nobody would mind losing out now and then if it would help others.

is that you McCloud?

cheeky cnuts, and they were warned.

 

[jarrod248]

Covid?
I don't care about my family, why would I care about yours?

Re start the country, I've been flat out on sites spread over a vast area apart from guys saying "oh my Mrs sisters dog walkers aunt caught it" no one I've met has any first hand experience.

Don't get me started on this many people died a day of covid. Died of or died with, there's a massive difference stop being disingenuous.

While you’ve not met me I do have a lot of firsthand experience of it.
I’ve seen a 91yr old very, very ill with it but survived and very young people die
I’ve no idea how the 91 yr old survived, he was very anaemic, his chest sounded dreadful. I could get no sensible reading on a pulse oximeter, 74% was only one reading I got. Refused to go to hospital.

 

[jarrod248]

is that you McCloud?

cheeky cnuts, and they were warned.

Who?

 

[Chalky101]

While you’ve not met me I do have a lot of firsthand experience of it.
I’ve seen a 91yr old very, very ill with it but survived and very young people die
I’ve no idea how the 91 yr old survived, he was very anaemic, his chest sounded dreadful. I could get no sensible reading on a pulse oximeter, 74% was only one reading I got. Refused to go to hospital.

It's the hospitals killing them

 

[rampant]

Some comparisons to back up my earlier post.

These countries managed to turn COVID-19 around. Here’s how we could do the same.

A number of other countries have used masks and social distancing—combined with strategies such as mass testing, contact tracing, and lockdowns—to rein in the novel coronavirus.

www.popsci.com

What the U.S. did wrong on Covid-19 — and what others did right

When it comes to public health communications and Covid-19, an expert sees clear differences between countries around the world.

www.statnews.com

What developing countries can teach rich countries about how to respond to a pandemic

When it comes to leadership and innovation, there's much that industrialised nations can learn.

theconversation.com

The Best Global Responses to the COVID-19 Pandemic

From New Zealand to Germany, Ian Bremmer breaks down which countries have had the best responses to COVID-19 and the economic crisis.

time.com

Whose coronavirus strategy worked best? Scientists hunt top policies

Researchers sift through data to compare nations’ vastly different containment measures.

www.nature.com

These are the countries doing well with COVID-19 contact tracing. Here's how they differ from Australia

Contact tracing is critical to limiting the spread of COVID-19 according to the World Health Organization. From the use of facial recognition to credit card statements, rapid cooperation and massive testing efforts, here is a look at how some other countries tackle contact tracing.

www.abc.net.au

What explains Africa’s successful response to the COVID-19 pandemic?

In this opinion piece, Prof. Agnes Binagwaho and Kedest Mathewos explain why African countries outperformed their Western counterparts in the COVID-19 response.

www.medicalnewstoday.com

What explains Africa’s successful response to the COVID-19 pandemic?

In this opinion piece, Prof. Agnes Binagwaho and Kedest Mathewos explain why African countries outperformed their Western counterparts in the COVID-19 response.

www.medicalnewstoday.com

 

[Lardbeast]

...It boils down to,
Nobody knows what to do to defeat this virus

Judging by the success of defeating and totally eradicating seasonal flu, it's either return to normal jogging, taking precautions for the vulnerable (just as we do for flu), or lock down again, allow the economy to go down the shitter and watch the world descend into the dark ages.

Hiding under the bed while hoping it goes away is not a workable solution, as has been proven.

 

[Wooden Wonder]

My grandmother died with it last saturday. Very sad. She thought it was b******* anyway and lamented not seeing her grandkids. Nevertheless we stayed away and tried to help her understand why. She had dementia.

They have internet but my grandfather turns the router off; might catch fire you see so no online deliveries for them.

He popped out every week to Aldi in West Brom despite our protestations: 'If you catch this then you're dead'. All ignored.

Anyway, she caught it from him (no one else entered the home) and 3 days later was gone (after 24 hours where she appeared to improve).

Point being we can all go to the ends of the Earth to protect these folks, but my experience of old people during this pandemic is that they are exclusively monumentally stupid and do everything to render these efforts null and void.

There are other demographics in the UK performing similarly.

Condolences.