COVID-19 — Coronavirus

[Tim of the Oak]

I posted the quote this morning. Are you telling me that you were unaware of the ‘herd immunity’ strategy? It’s all the media talked about. People were posting ‘informative’ Twitter threads on the science and thinking behind it. Patrick Vallance, govt’s chief scientific officer, two days ago:

"Our aim is to try to reduce the peak, broaden the peak, not suppress it completely; also, because the vast majority of people get a mild illness, to build up some kind of herd immunity"

The strategy is to extend the peak as you have posted and “also” in doing so build “some kind of herd immunity.” The strategy isn’t all about “herd immunity” as you have posted. That’s an aim as a byproduct of the main strategy as is evident from the quote.

 

[bluethrunthru]

Herd immunity....sounds a lot like Stay Put policy......fuck that

we are days away from being told to fashion a shelter out of your homes internal doors up against a solid wall in the lounge and mark out a place in another room where you can dispose of the inevitable dead - anyone else remember this?

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/mar/16/protect-survive-nuclear-war-republished-pamphlet

 

[alexmcity]

 

[BobKowalski]

I would expect/hope/guess that the UK government's strategy is that being determined by the medical and scientific leaders / experts.

Why on earth would any UK PM/Government do anything else????

It would simply not make sense.....

Option 1: Follow the medical and scientific advice and you are safe from criticism in the future if it goes wrong and you can take the credit if it is proven to have been correct

Option 2: Do not follow the medical and scientific advice - and if the route you go is proven to be incorrect you are utterly toast.

I think that Johnson has a host of character flaws - but those flaws only make me think that he would hide behind the medical and scientific advice

People are just being irrational IMO - some just because of their need to hate

The converse is also true. The desire to support, the need to see a purposeful pattern in what the Govt does. In times of crisis it becomes an article of faith that the Govt has got this right and is listening to the best advice. To achieve this we have had Britain leads to world in this field and our unique approach is better than mass lockdowns.

In reality what we were doing wasn’t that much difference from the continent given the different timeline and our comms strategy is a mess as I have already pointed out with the ‘business as usual’ quickly followed by ‘restrictive measures on the way’ as the British public and industry were not going with ‘business as usual’.

All week we had discussion on ‘herd immunity’ and in one paywalled article the Health Sec. says it was never a thing. In what universe does someone think this contradiction is good comms strategy or putting briefings by a Health minister behind a paywall or anonymous briefings to journos is a good way to handle the situation?

 

[hgblue]

Think is with government advisors they may well have to work within a remit set out by the government.

1)minimum deaths, economy will recover.

2)minimum deaths while minimising eceonomy damage

3)keep economy as strong as possible while trying to mitigate the disease.

The gov could easily set out one of those and say they are following the best science and advisors.

the WHO made it very clear “alarming levels of inaction” that we ( and others ) are not doing everything we can to help. The WHO’s goal is no 1.

If the government gave the scientific advisors the brief that their priority was to protect the economy rather than human lives this would leak out into the public domain quicker than you could say ‘callous bastards’.

 

[alexmcity]

 

[SWP's back]

Just imagine if Boris ignored the advice of this country’s top experts, the very same people would be spontaneously combusting.

That’s not true, I’m a Boris fan.

I don’t follow the logic and I’m not alone as 99% of other countries also don’t follow the UK’s logic.

 

[marco]

Also Germany according to a news report yesterday evening ordered I believe around 10,000 specialist respirators a few months back. Now that's protecting and caring for your people.

and if thats the case the UK government would have been aware but just stood there with their mouths hanging open

 

[meltonblue]

Now we’re in a situation with every other country seemingly going into lockdown and it being all over the news, leadership and communication is absolutely essential right now.

They have to start daily briefings to the public. the levels of concern and impact to mental health could be equally damaging as the pandemic itself.

 

[blueparrot]

Just imagine if Boris ignored the advice of this country’s top experts, the very same people would be spontaneously combusting.

Not even the whole UK are following Boris’s plan N.Ireland and Scotland seem to be taking different paths to England, not sure about Wales. I’d have thought they are all taking advice from the same pool of experts.