The Conservative Party

[Ban-jani]

I understand those difficulties.

You’ve accepted that there have been deaths that are attributable to government incompetence. All I’m asking for is your opinion as to how many. You have accepted that you have an opinion, I’m curious as to what it is.

And I am saying that it’s reasonable to believe that is the case without being able to give an estimated figure.

I’d need to see every piece of data the ONS has produced and spend a week working it out... and still even then I’d likely be unable to give you a figure.

Plus, and this maybe crucial, I don’t know what’s been said at SAGE. We know Johnson was told by the Chief Medical Advisor that herd immunity was the best policy in March, yet, and you may say quite rightly, he’s getting the blame for it. So how much is it the fault of the cabinet and how much the experts? We don’t have a clue.

People could be dying because they’re ignoring lockdown, as we speak, we just don’t know.

It is far better to analyse what they’ve done wrong specifically and not try to aim for an overall figure to guess deaths they are culpable for.

 

[west didsblue]

I do have an opinion but there’s no way you can put a specific figure on it for blaming the government.

My opinion is based on our big neighbours in France and Germany, for example, who have had 50,000+ and 70,000+ deaths.

Merkel has been praised on here for her quick response and how she dealt with it earlier than Johnson, yet has had 50,000 deaths, and that’s even factoring in their measurement of deaths related to Covid being stricter than ours.

I think it’s very fair to say that it would have been incredibly difficult, nigh on impossible, to keep it below 10,000 and a similar amount to Germany was at least inevitable.

I think it would be not unreasonable to expect our figures to be no worse than Germany's. They had the added disadvantage of being on a landmass containing 80% of the world's population with easy access to 500 million of those 80%. Our population density, at least in England is higher than Germany's yet there are areas of Germany with equivalent population densities such as the Rhine-Ruhr area, so overall population density shouldn't be a significant factor. The benefits of being an island nation and theoretically having better control of who arrives (although we chose not to) should more than have compensated for differences in population density. In summary I would say that the government have been responsible for the pandemic being twice as bad as it needed to have been in this country. No way to prove it one way or another - just an opinion.

 

[Chris in London]

And I am saying that it’s reasonable to believe that is the case without being able to give an estimated figure.

I’d need to see every piece of data the ONS has produced and spend a week working it out... and still even then I’d likely be unable to give you a figure.

Plus, and this maybe crucial, I don’t know what’s been said at SAGE. We know Johnson was told by the Chief Medical Advisor that herd immunity was the best policy in March, yet, and you may say quite rightly, he’s getting the blame for it. So how much is it the fault of the cabinet and how much the experts? We don’t have a clue.

People could be dying because they’re ignoring lockdown, as we speak, we just don’t know.

It is far better to analyse what they’ve done wrong specifically and not try to aim for an overall figure to guess deaths they are culpable for.

Of course it’s reasonable to hold the opinion without giving an estimated figure, but you said you did have an opinion, and even if your methodology is potentially challengeable I’m still interested in what it is. I’ve asked if 30-50,000 is a fair summary and you’ve said it isn’t.

As to your last point the two are not mutually exclusive.

I’m baffled by your reluctance and Mazz’s to give your opinion on a matter on which you have already said you do hold an opinion.

 

[west didsblue]

Another significant factor is that with previous epidemics originating from that region, the US had a CDC team in place in China that provided advance warning which would have been acted upon by all Western nations. Trump's administration withdrew that team from China in the months leading up to the pandemic meaning that we had less warning of the threat. So we can also thank Trump for it being worse than it needed to be.

 

[Rascal]

I understand those difficulties.

You’ve accepted that there have been deaths that are attributable to government incompetence. All I’m asking for is your opinion as to how many. You have accepted that you have an opinion, I’m curious as to what it is.

In my opinion every single death is down to Government incompetence, they should face a public inquiry and criminal charges.

A governments first duty is to protect its citizens and it has failed in every single measure you can think of. It not only failed because of its stupidity and the fucking useless leadership of Johnson, it failed because Osborne and Cameron laid the groundwork for the system to fail with their ideological shrinking of the state.

Even now nutjob RW cranks want lockdown ending, schools reopened because to a Tory what matters is profit over people.

Yes I fucking hate the Tories, yes I have always hated the Tories, but not even me thought they could be as bad as they have been during this pandemic. At every step they have fucked up, at every step they have shown the compassion of a frozen paving stone and at every step they have used this pandemic as a reason to make friends money. It fucking stinks how poor and wretched they have been, how little understanding of real life they have and how little actual thinking goes into any of their hairbrained schemes

I would take every single one of the cunts into Parliament Square and have them publicly flogged, then left in the stocks for a month, then hung, drawn and quartered.

Still silly cunts will vote for them.

 

[metalblue]

Then your argument is with Ban and Mazz, who do, so I’ll let you discuss it with them. I was interested in your opinion, if you held the contrary view, in how many. Since you don’t it’s rather a moot point.

I’m not really sure it’s an arguable point thou mate. Surely we would all agree, whatever mistakes we think made, that lives have been saved with government policy around lockdown, social distancing, closing of schools, buying of PPE, and buying of vaccines to name a few?

 

[Chris in London]

I’m not really sure it’s an arguable point thou mate. Surely we would all agree, whatever mistakes we think made, that lives have been saved with government policy around lockdown, social distancing, closing of schools, buying of PPE, and buying of vaccines to name a few?

You seem to be struggling. Let me break it down for you.

1. A poster said ‘lives have been lost as a result of government incompetence.’

2. You didn’t IIRC challenge that.

3. I asked that poster, and another who agreed with that basic premise, how many lives they thought had been lost as a result of government incompetence. (Note, I didn’t challenge the premise, I asked their opinion about the extent of the problem they both identified.)

4. When I asked you, you disagreed with the proposition. Fair enough, that’s your opinion. Though since you don’t agree with the premise, you might want to challenge those that do.

5. I explained that to you.

6. You then responded with the above, which looks at face value like you haven’t understood the exchange at all.

I hope this clears it up for you.

 

[Didsbury Dave]

Of course it’s reasonable to hold the opinion without giving an estimated figure, but you said you did have an opinion, and even if your methodology is potentially challengeable I’m still interested in what it is. I’ve asked if 30-50,000 is a fair summary and you’ve said it isn’t.

As to your last point the two are not mutually exclusive.

I’m baffled by your reluctance and Mazz’s to give your opinion on a matter on which you have already said you do hold an opinion.

Coming in cold, but knowing the posters, I'd say that both are desperate to be seen as the "sensible middle ground" when on some subjects the sensible opinion is not the middle ground.

 

[metalblue]

I would take every single one of the cunts into Parliament Square and have them publicly flogged, then left in the stocks for a month, then hung, drawn and quartered.

The 1670s want their policies back

 

[metalblue]

You seem to be struggling. Let me break it down for you.

1. A poster said ‘lives have been lost as a result of government incompetence.’

2. You didn’t IIRC challenge that.

3. I asked that poster, and another who agreed with that basic premise, how many lives they thought had been lost as a result of government incompetence. (Note, I didn’t challenge the premise, I asked their opinion about the extent of the problem they both identified.)

4. When I asked you, you disagreed with the proposition. Fair enough, that’s your opinion. Though since you don’t agree with the premise, you might want to challenge those that do.

5. I explained that to you.

6. You then responded with the above, which looks at face value like you haven’t understood the exchange at all.

I hope this clears it up for you.

I wasn’t really responding to you in a personal capacity or looking for a chronology of events. It just seemed logical to quote your post as an obvious continuation wherein anybody could disagree ... hence the “Surely we would all agree”

Apologies if that offended you or made me seem confused.

 

[yerwot?]

the experts wheeled out to discourage the wearing of masks must take responsibility for the initial spread.
They wont of couse, like all this government.
The decimation of the stocks of emergency supplies by the murdoch puppet j. hunt meant there was not even enough masks for essential workers , and then the desperate scramble to ensure the equipment supply went to party backers and chums (ffs) meant further shortages. The idea that a virus could only be transmitted by contact is an insult to common sense.
A vested interest msm, an already weak and fatally split opposition, a purged cabinet stocked with johnson acolytes obessed with brexit, but nothing else meant that 100,00(and counting) deaths was inevitable.
Anyone expecting a genuine investigation and verdict on this farce must have been asleep for the last thirty years..

 

[Mazzarelli's Swiss Cheese]

Thank you for that. I’m intrigued as to why you didn’t say that first time I asked.

Because in reality I've no idea, and I thought you were after an answer. I don't mind speculating, but once you start attaching numbers then there is a danger of speculation becoming fact.

 

[Didsbury Dave]

the experts wheeled out to discourage the wearing of masks must take responsibility for the initial spread.
They wont of couse, like all this government.
The decimation of the stocks of emergency supplies by the murdoch puppet j. hunt meant there was not even enough masks for essential workers , and then the desperate scramble to ensure the equipment supply went to party backers and chums (ffs) meant further shortages. The idea that a virus could only be transmitted by contact is an insult to common sense.
A vested interest msm, an already weak and fatally split opposition, a purged cabinet stocked with johnson acolytes obessed with brexit, but nothing else meant that 100,00(and counting) deaths was inevitable.
Anyone expecting a genuine investigation and verdict on this farce must have been asleep for the last thirty years..

A perfect summary.

 

[Mazzarelli's Swiss Cheese]

Coming in cold, but knowing the posters, I'd say that both are desperate to be seen as the "sensible middle ground" when on some subjects the sensible opinion is not the middle ground.

The extremists at the fringe of the looney middle I suppose. I've given it a bit of thought and I suppose to more accurately calculate the impact of govt policy on the pandemic you could take overall covid mortality as a % of population (possibly broken down by age) and compare with similar nearby countries - France, Germany etc. There might be issues with the way deaths are recorded/assigned to covid varying from country to country though.

 

[Didsbury Dave]

It's obvious to a six year old that you wouldn't give a figure because you'd just been giving the government a free pass on their decisions, and giving a number would have meant that you thought that number of excess deaths was fine and dandy.

 

[Mazzarelli's Swiss Cheese]

It's obvious to a six year old that you wouldn't give a figure because you'd just been giving the government a free pass on their decisions, and giving a number would have meant that you thought that number of excess deaths was fine and dandy.

Ffs. It's because I've no idea. That's all. Frankly neither have you.

 

[Didsbury Dave]

Ffs. It's because I've no idea. That's all. Frankly neither have you.

Yeah, they've been "generally well meaning" so that's alright for those of you who aren't hate-filled extremists like the rest of us.

 

[BobKowalski]

Even then you’d not be close mate. Age and health demographics have to be similar, similar flow of transient workers, policy makers at a central versus regional level, variants of virus, and so on and so forth. And even then they’ll be more and more variables.

That the government made mistakes is without question but to try and put a body count on it is a little macabre.

You could build in smoothing mechanisms, but Germany is close to the UK including culturally, unlike say France or Italy. In any crisis there has to be an investigation into what we did right and what we did wrong and how much errors contributed to deaths.

Every European country had a heads up on this virus and were still caught with their pants down. We had a heads up based on how it impacted Italy and still kept our pants down. We are an island which theoretically should have been an advantage in that it is easier to lock down sea borders than land and still ended up with the highest death rate.

Looking at the rights and wrongs and measuring that may be ‘macabre’, but better that then repeating our errors.

 

[Ban-jani]

Of course it’s reasonable to hold the opinion without giving an estimated figure, but you said you did have an opinion, and even if your methodology is potentially challengeable I’m still interested in what it is. I’ve asked if 30-50,000 is a fair summary and you’ve said it isn’t.

As to your last point the two are not mutually exclusive.

I’m baffled by your reluctance and Mazz’s to give your opinion on a matter on which you have already said you do hold an opinion.

I never said I hold an opinion on specific numbers, if I did I didn’t mean to, what my opinion is is that it’s without question significant lives will have been lost due to delay and the care home debacle, how many that is I don’t know.

 

[Mazzarelli's Swiss Cheese]

Yeah, they've been "generally well meaning" so that's alright for those of you who aren't hate-filled extremists like the rest of us.

Let me give you a bit of context mate. I have a wife who has been kept very busy at a badly under resourced NHS hospital since March last year and hasn't been able to take decent holidays during that time. I lost my sense of taste and smell jus before new year tested positive on 5th Jan and have been stuck in bed until Saturday just gone, while the rest of my family were unable to take tests due to being non symptomatic which I find stupid. I'm far from happy with or condoning the tory govt for which I didn't vote, but simply do not know the facts as to the full extent of their negligence. Until this is in some way 'over' no one will.