Coronavirus - the political argument

Cajunboy wrote:

Again

The worst death toll in Europe now. Horrendous and shameful.

T.R.O.Y. wrote:The worst death toll in Europe now. Horrendous and shameful.

When all this was starting to unfold in Italy, I never thought in a million years we would have overtaken them on this.

Me too Karly, unfortunately it looks as though the government didn’t think that was a possibility either. Hence the slow reaction.

Extraordinary to see almost all the national daily newspapers start to criticise the government, even those that have always been vocal cheerleaders for the Tory party.

I never thought I'd see negative reporting of the government's failings in The Mail!!

Only The Express continues to deny or deflect the widespread fault-finding, choosing to fill its front pages with cries of outrage about China or Meghan instead.

Boris' aim to unite the country after Brexit has come unstuck with as much social division as ever in evidence when the public are able to have their say.

Also interesting is that the scientists that inform government policy are now being criticised, as is the BBC. Sad days!

I believe the government have done well in some areas, such as putting in measures to see that the NHS wasn't overwhelmed. Having said that, I also believe that the indecision and lack of authority at the beginning of the outbreak was understandable for the first few days, but not after that. It was a shambles, and it goes to show that our national government, along with the nation infrastructure needs some serious scrutiny, followed by all the necessary remedial action.
Although I thought Starmer was a wimp prior to his election, I think he has shown himself to be a fair man during this crisis, and it'll be interesting to see how he takes on Boris at PMQ. I think he will be asking some very pertinent questions, which we would all like the answers to.

It’s the herd immunity bullshit again guys.

It’s got to be! 

Sadly the brutal reality is that until we have a vaccine or herd immunity more people are going to die. It is not realistic to pretend that we can maintain the lockdown indefinitely. The purpose of the lockdown was to prevent our under-resourced NHS being overwhelmed. Now that they are managing we do need to ease the lockdown. Just look at the Nightingale hospitals. They are all going to be closed shortly and most of them have never admitted a single patient.

This is a bit concerning to me.

What's happened in the last week or so to cause this?


17:34
Why are there so many new cases?



An eye-catching figure from the briefing is that there were 6,111 new cases of coronavirus recorded yesterday.
That’s the third highest number of new cases in the UK since the outbreak began.
It could be a result of the extraordinary increase in testing we’ve seen since late April.
It’s the highest number of new cases from people such as those in social care, key workers and their families, as opposed to tests carried out in hospitals.
Some of them will be the home test kits that will have been arriving at labs and taking a few days to process and get the results.


I get that the more people they test the more people they are likely to detect but as far as I understand it (maybe I've misunderstood perhaps?) that the testing is being done for those who are doing 'priority' jobs (or whatever the term is) and are 'currently' feeling symptoms of the virus - (or is it simply anyone in priority jobs who think they may have had it?).

IF it's those feeling 'unwell' NOW then surely that means they've caught it in the last 5 to 10 days or so?

IF it's for all priority workers, then equally if the test is for having the virus NOW, then even without them having symptoms, again where have they got it from within the last fortnight?

If it simply shows those that HAD it, then on the days 60k tests it means that 1 in 10 of the population as had it already (although a one day figure alone is meaningless in terms of accuracy).

Obviously I hope is the last of the three possibilities I've put above, otherwise it would seem an awful lot of people have caught the virus in the last week or so, when we've been under lockdown and hospital's have been on the top of things during that time?

xmiles wrote:Sadly the brutal reality is that until we have a vaccine or herd immunity more people are going to die. It is not realistic to pretend that we can maintain the lockdown indefinitely. The purpose of the lockdown was to prevent our under-resourced NHS being overwhelmed. Now that they are managing we do need to ease the lockdown. Just look at the Nightingale hospitals. They are all going to be closed shortly and most of them have never admitted a single patient.

IF people can catch it again once they've had it, then there is no such thing as 'herd immunity'.

I think only a proven vaccine (or a combination of drugs to control it) is the only solution possible to eventually beat this in the short to medium term.

Isn’t there more cases because they’ve started included deaths in care homes and the community rather than just hospital admissions

Sluffy wrote:

xmiles wrote:Sadly the brutal reality is that until we have a vaccine or herd immunity more people are going to die. It is not realistic to pretend that we can maintain the lockdown indefinitely. The purpose of the lockdown was to prevent our under-resourced NHS being overwhelmed. Now that they are managing we do need to ease the lockdown. Just look at the Nightingale hospitals. They are all going to be closed shortly and most of them have never admitted a single patient.

IF people can catch it again once they've had it, then there is no such thing as 'herd immunity'.

I think only a proven vaccine (or a combination of drugs to control it) is the only solution possible to eventually beat this in the short to medium term.

I think the scientists are still unclear as to what extent acquiring the virus gives you immunity. There remains a lot we don't understand about the virus such as why more men than women get it and why almost all young children seem to be immune.

At the moment most fatalities are elderly people with underlying medical conditions.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/world-52553430

So much for hitting the target!

BoltonTillIDie wrote:Isn’t there more cases because they’ve started included deaths in care homes and the community rather than just hospital admissions

Not sure if you are addressing that to me or not?

If you are - yes (sort of anyway) they are now including DEATHS in daily totals whereas before they were adding them on retrospectively.

My question was about being tested positive for the virus (not the deaths from it).

It might be a great many of the 6,000 positives today have come from care homes but I would have thought they would have been picked up earlier in the last few days than so many land at once today (isn't it supposed to be an answer to the person tested with 48 hours or sooner - or have I dreamt that?).

I'm thinking that as no one else seems to seems to have highlighted such concern in the jump in positives so far, that probably I have misunderstood something along the way?

If a whole chunk of these current positives have come from care homes then regrettably that's almost certainly going to result in a fair few more deaths - and I guess in means a fair few care home assistants will be testing positive too and having to isolate themselves ASAP.

Clearly if we've had the THIRD highest recorded positives in a day so far since this began - and it means they currently HAVE it, rather than HAVE HAD it, then I can't see this lockdown ending that soon if 1 in 10 being tested is potentially currently able to continue to spread the virus?

(I'm thinking that the tests must be a total of both those who currently have the virus plus those that have had it - surely?).

xmiles wrote:I think the scientists are still unclear as to what extent acquiring the virus gives you immunity. There remains a lot we don't understand about the virus such as why more men than women get it and why almost all young children seem to be immune.

At the moment most fatalities are elderly people with underlying medical conditions.

Yes, sadly.

I've posted up an extremly informative video about the virus and immunity, I'll try and find it and post it up again.

EDIT - here it is, it is 12 minutes long but is really informative about this point.

Only a Tory minister could describe this news as "reassuring".

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-52569364

What has become clear is that those advocating waiting until the pandemic has passed, before haranguing the government over its failure to act swiftly and effectively, have been proved wrong. 

If anything, the media and opposition should have been more forceful and prompt in voicing their concerns. This would not have been political point-scoring, but justifiable concern for our country's citizens and the likely death-toll.

Mistakes are still being made along with denials, false claims and empty slogans. (a la Brexit strategy and Trumpism) 

We don't need comparisons with other countries. The total number of deaths here is all the evidence we need to make the obvious conclusion about the government's failure to act intelligently, comprehensively and early enough.