COVID-19 — Coronavirus

[Churchlawtonblue]

The Govt is clueless on Brexit. It’s still in denial over the Withdrawal Agreement and the NI protocols. It has no idea why we won’t be treated like Canada, it’s blithely talking about training 50,000 new custom agents which is more than the EU, it’s trying to do a trade deal with the US in the middle of a fucking pandemic and it’s ‘plan’ to phase us out of lockdown will be riddled with the same incompetence they showed prior to taking us into lockdown.

The media in Europe is painting as the ‘idiots of Europe’ over our handling of pandemic. The fact the UK papers are leading with ‘Professor Shagalot’ tells you everything about the Govts handling of the situation.

Wrong thread !

 

[Brendan110_0]

There are a few unforgiving aspects to the government’s handling of this crisis. That is one, the other is the lack of preparation (testing capability, PPE etc.). This may have come as a terrible shock to a lot of people but this pandemic has been on the cards for a long time. I have just watched “the flu that killed 50 million” on i player and it ends with all steps the UK have put in place for “the next pandemic”, it shows a report dated 2014 detailing Britain‘s preparedness. I think we can throw these accusations squarely at the tories due to the length of time they have now been in power and Brexit has had a strong bearing on this as well. I believe that the UK’s stockpile of PPE was mothballed due to no-deal precautions.

I blame bailing out the banks in 2008 - this led directly to the Conservative austerity for 10 years after ousting Labour (who did the deal with banks). Blaming the incumbent government is easy, thinking back to a root cause is difficult for many. The PPE thing is a globalisation problem - we need to secure our own manufacture base in future, not hawk it out to Asia.

 

[west didsblue]

you mean lockdown?

South Korea never imposed any lock down.

I was mostly referring to the use of propaganda but if we’d followed South Korea’s rigorous test, track and trace approach we might not have needed to lock down either. To be fair I’m not blaming the government for that because SK were set up for it due to previous experiences but we could have learnt some lessons from them on the testing side.

 

[Deleted member 77198]

Okay, but I was referring to the specific claim that you made that the UK won't overtake Italy because they'll post huge numbers on the 5th May. They didn't and we did. Obviously like any pandemic, we're not likely to know the true death toll under quite a while after the event. But it's also worth mentioning that given we got to watch them go through it first, and the fact that they've got a much higher elderly population than us, we should be doing much better than them.

They eat much more healthily than we do. The level of health from food intake in Britain is poor. The amount of unhealthy food that is produced and eaten is astonishing.

Many families have no idea how to cook here, it’s something we’ve lost; in Italy most households know how to cook healthy meals.

Poor families in Britain going back generations used to know how to cook cheap and easy to make soups and stews with easy to source ingredients. Now that’s a rarity that a household has a pot with those in each day, when it would once have been every day.

I know people where neither them nor their missus can cook at all, everything they eat is processed oven/microwave food, processed chicken dippers and oven chips are the level of cuisine they eat every night.

 

[kevin horlocks wand]

I was mostly referring to the use of propaganda but if we’d followed South Korea’s rigorous test, track and trace approach we might not have needed to lock down either. To be fair I’m not blaming the government for that because SK were set up for it due to previous experiences but we could have learnt some lessons from them on the testing side.

we could have learnt some lessons on border control. What is the fucking point of locking down your population of you allow thousands daily to come in unchecked.

crazy stat for you - of the Covid deaths in the uk 332 Are under 45.

At least we have still got plenty of people under 50 to pay for this mess in the future.

 

[Deleted member 77198]

Would you have been just as surprised if it was a Labour government in charge or a Lib Dem or a more nobler Greener front, now would you ? Fact of the matter is this scenario was an unknown entity from the outset and all the governmental parties could do was to take heed from the experts to hand who quite frankly were not experts as the whole scenario was ? "unknown". Hindsight is a wonderful thing and yes the government initially fooked up but so would have all the other democratic parties and so has all of Europe and so has the Americas and the rest of the known world. Instead of chastisement maybe just maybe this is a time to come together as one single entity in an effort to defeat this behemoth of a virus. Finger pointing is a very easy thing to do in the aftermath.

There’s nothing wrong with using hindsight to look back and talk about mistakes. The thing is, at the very time they were happening everyone was pointing them out and before they even happened people were calling for them to happen!

So it’s not like any of it is a surprise to us all as we look back, we called it, called for it and wanted it before during and after.

The govt were ill-prepared, inconsistent, unsure, dragged their feet, didn’t take it seriously in the time we had before it really hit us seeing what the rest of the world who had it before us were going through, made mistakes and are still making mistakes.

 

[Deleted member 77198]

Spot-on. Dominic Rabb is hiding behind the figures. We are expected to believe that virtually everyone else in the world has undervalued the death stats apart from the UK. We were told for weeks that Italy had an ageing population and London had a young profile. Now they are saying London is "an international city" with a very dense population (as if that's a positive) but Germany has huge metro areas around Hamburg (5m), Dusseldorf (5.2m), and Berlin (4.5m). Then you have Greece with apparently one of the oldest and poorest populations (and a bankrupt public sector) plus thousands of displaced refugees. And Greece has had 146 deaths according to the WHO.
It's all bollocks. Do they really think the British public is stupid?

Yes, politicians absolutely think the public is stupid. The thing is, there are more stupid people than not in the general public, so they are kind of right to think that, but politicians do arrogantly overestimate it.

 

[WickyWain]

I’ve put him/her on ignore. Unfortunately it’s an hour of my life I’ll not be getting back.

I think if anything, we didn’t lock down hard enough or quick enough and lacked testing in the early stages. If there is fault to be found, it’s that. However we most certainly did need a lockdown and still do.

The countries he mentioned all went into lockdown, in fact Austria were hard and fast and stopped a lot of the transmission. Germany have a robust health system that for whatever reason, has coped better but they’ve still had a lockdown. The Russians are just outright lying, but then Putin has been doing that for years.

My apologies for the long winded reply but it’s on ignore now so needed to get that off my chest.

No worries it's good to get shit off your chest, sorry for your loss mate.

 

[BlueAnorak]

Okay, but I was referring to the specific claim that you made that the UK won't overtake Italy because they'll post huge numbers on the 5th May. They didn't and we did. Obviously like any pandemic, we're not likely to know the true death toll under quite a while after the event. But it's also worth mentioning that given we got to watch them go through it first, and the fact that they've got a much higher elderly population than us, we should be doing much better than them.

What part of 83% excess deaths do you not understand? There is a huge discrepancy in how COViD-19 deaths are recorded on death certificates across Europe.

 

[BlueAnorak]

Carillion. G4S. Northern rail.

Funny how people with no sense of public service criticise those who do.

There's a difference between always being incompetent and sometimes/often being incompetent.
Nice try though.

 

[west didsblue]

What part of 83% excess deaths do you not understand? There is a huge discrepancy in how COViD-18 deaths are recorded on death certificates across Europe.

You still said there would be a huge jump in Italy. There wasn’t.
And as for excess deaths, Italy isn’t the only country with excess deaths above the published figures. Check out the FT for an analysis of ours.

 

[west didsblue]

Why not listen to the horse.

If you’ve watched it let me know where the key information is or just tell us.

 

[west didsblue]

I blame bailing out the banks in 2008 - this led directly to the Conservative austerity for 10 years after ousting Labour (who did the deal with banks). Blaming the incumbent government is easy, thinking back to a root cause is difficult for many. The PPE thing is a globalisation problem - we need to secure our own manufacture base in future, not hawk it out to Asia.

You don’t think that it’s appropriate to expect a government that’s been in power for 10 years to have responsibility for the pandemic response?
Really?

 

[kevin horlocks wand]

They’re here.....

 

[BlueAnorak]

You still said there would be a huge jump in Italy. There wasn’t.
And as for excess deaths, Italy isn’t the only country with excess deaths above the published figures. Check out the FT for an analysis of ours.

I have done.
DIing of COViD-19, with COVID-19, no COVID-19 mentioned, it's different all over Europe. Particularly bad in Italy, Spain and Belgium and a lesser extent in the UK and France. The FT is valiantly trying to gather together these figures together. But they're all behind ONS is reporting. He also doesn't clearly show dates on the graphs. The Economist article on the subject did.

 

[mayo31]

Deary fucking me...we're being guided by bellends.

How does anyone come back from this.

She put her kids lifes at risk and her soon to be ex- husband.

He cannot advise again.

 

[BlueAnorak]

it is strange isn't it,i didn't notice them for a few days then it was Similar to that pic,weird eh

I noticed the spots on my hand first (they were just there one morning) I had a bit of a Hives like allergenic reaction as well but without the lumps.
The twinges in my head are the worst thing - they have taken weeks to disappear. Slowly reducing in frequency.

 

[bobbyowenquiff]

Clearly our figures are terrible, but if you are going to compare countries surely you need to compare apples with apples? When the dust has settled then a proper enquiry should be held into the governments handling of the crisis imo. Nothing less.

I agree that we will not know the full extent of this disaster for at least 12 months but the figures don't look good. I would expect the UK to be somewhere in the middle but at present we are one of the worst in the world for deaths. I think we handled the capacity issue well but have made a lot of serious mistakes.
It's not a political issue for me as I am sure Corbyn or Starmer would not have done any better. I just think our structure of government is incredibly old-fashioned. I have worked closely with Government departments in my career. They are too reactive and incapable of making quick decisions. In terms of technology for example we are a long way behind many Asian countries and places like Germany.
For me this has been a structural failure and I am frustrated at the constant deflection tactics from our leaders with the narrative about NHS heroes and VE Day etc. I have eight family members in the NHS and they think a lot of the drum-banging for the NHS (well-meaning though it is) is total bollocks.

 

[Chippy_boy]

An ill informed, misleading rant. As you well know.

That's bullshit, as you well know.

Let's just remind ourselves of what I said,

"But the bottom line is we had a 2 or 3 week advantage over Spain, France and Italy and have ended up with more dead than they have. That cannot be described as us having done well. At all."

And your reply,

"Do you have any evidence for that?"

I would not call the above a rant. No-one would. I'd call it a reasonable and pretty obvious observation.

 

[kevin horlocks wand]

So everyone is scared to death of going out to work. Apparently we are the most anxious country in the world about Covid.

so how do we get people back to work.

lets cut the furlough scheme !!