Coronavirus (COVID-19)

[Todd_is_God]

6 minutes ago, Dons_1988 said:

Not sure why it's unacceptable to say that whilst the virus is still out there that we can't just go back to the way things were. Society adapts to it's surroundings constantly and this is just another new factor to build into our lives.

For many, they will be getting through the lockdown by looking forward to things returning to normal.

Telling them that that won't be the case until the virus is completely away isn't helpful.

[Dons_1988]

3 minutes ago, Todd_is_God said:

For many, they will be getting through the lockdown by looking forward to things returning to normal.

Telling them that that won't be the case until the virus is completely away isn't helpful.

There's nothing wrong with looking forward to seeing loved ones, socialising again, but if it's not possible/safe to just 'go back to normal', i.e. mass gatherings without significant hygiene/safety checks, queuing for shops/supermarkets, social distancing in pubs/restaurants etc then it isn't helpful to tell people that things will be back to normal soon.

[Todd_is_God]

10 minutes ago, Dons_1988 said:

There's nothing wrong with looking forward to seeing loved ones, socialising again, but if it's not possible/safe to just 'go back to normal', i.e. mass gatherings without significant hygiene/safety checks, queuing for shops/supermarkets, social distancing in pubs/restaurants etc then it isn't helpful to tell people that things will be back to normal soon.

There is a difference between "soon" and emphasising this "new normal" nonsense until the virus completely goes away.

[D.A.F.C]

WTF. Are you at it today as well?  [emoji38]
Who is forcing you or anyone else to buy anything?  

^^^boycie

[D.A.F.C]

aye lot of his posts reek of bought a fuckload of 3m masks and they're not shifting on ebay

Mortonmasks.com

[renton]

54 minutes ago, virginton said:

The crucial lesson that 'there'll just be an exponential rise in cases without more lockdown!!!!!11!!!!' is an utter bollocks claim though is provided by Sweden. It's hardly surprising that as case totals and public awareness grows, people will take their own precautions to limit their risk of infection to a personally justified level. Which is why the growth in cases was bound to slows significantly, unless you're talking about some favela-type situation where people are too poor to have meaningful agency.

Within Europe, Scotland should really be looking at Slovakia: an identical sized country which had far more direct contact with northern Italy closed the schools as part of an immediate lockdown, got universal buy-in when telling the public to wear face masks from day one and is now scaling down its measures with literally <1% of the casualties of Scotland in its first wave of the virus. All this despite being a total basketcase at the party political level and with a far lower degree of trust in officials than the Sturgeon and clowns like Leitch enjoy and have wasted until now.

On the point about Sweden: as before, the population density and connectivity of a population will play a role in altering the R effective number, before you start enforcing lockdowns and/or social distancing. I'm pretty sure if all of as Scotland had a population density like the Highlands, we'd have never needed a lockdown. Worth noting that Sweden's excess mortality is on a par with Scotland with half the population density we have. In Norway and Denmark they don't appear to have any excess mortality - a demonstration that lockdowns, early and comprehensive remains the best solution. 

The point being that the Scottish central belt is probably a bit harder to control infections than with just social distancing like the Swedes managed, particularly with the large amounts of commuter traffic between two centralised business hubs 60 miles apart that we have.

And of course, there is the personal justification aspect you mention. For a country with our particular socio-economic distribution, the risks balance differently than they might for more affluent Nordic nations. 

What matters now, obviously is exiting Lockdown sensibly. It's too late to learn lessons from Denmark, or Slovakia or Sweden because they managed the infection far better, so will have an easier transition out. We have to manage the problems we have. We can wait until the R number is as low in some of those nations, then slink out of lockdown but that will do too much societal and economic damage. So we go, from June 1st with whatever we've got.

Personally, I agree on the face mask count, at least in the short term, it makes more sense than trying a metre stick to each arm and walking around pretending to be an airplane.

On socialisation we need a more sensible strategy than hollering at one of your parents 2M away from the door frame of their house. It's stupid, impractical and is a tacit reminder that the government thinks you shouldn't be socialising at all (a responsibility to be enjoyed, rather than exercised, as Sir Humphrey would say). Social bubbles feed into TTI, a few direct contacts that can be managed should be no less risky than meeting up in a park in the pishing Scottish rain. 

Offices and businesses should reopen but with work from home as the preferred mode to lessen mixing in the population in the short term.

If there are symptoms, then people need to be encouraged to stay off Ill, I dont know how the changing rules around furlough will work, but it doesn't make sense to punish people from staying away from work in this scenario. Either allow for conditional re-furloughing or become more generous with sick pay. Either way, you need to offer people in precarious economic situations a method of adjusting the risk of infecting people vs the risk or them starving. Be prepared to isolate groups to a high level of abstraction from the initial infection vector, not just immediate family, for example.

It can be managed, I think, however the strategy needs to be far more joined up than is currently being trailed. My only hope is that Sturgeon announced yesterday a list of worst case scenarios assuming the NRS numbers on Wednesday didnt show the expected further reductions in deaths and infections.

 

[Paco]

I don't think Sweden should be held up as a model that we should have followed or should follow exactly but I think there's at least a good argument there to say that a continuing stringent lockdown really isn't going to help and that the worst fears about what would happen without a full lockdown were likely significantly over-estimated.

I don’t think we can say with any certainty the worst fears were significantly over-estimated. We were very very close to overwhelming the NHS at least in London, and those capacity issues can spread very quickly as patients are kicked around to neighbouring hospitals and regions.

I’ve said this before but the NHS only ‘coped’ in the first place by cancelling all routine surgery, hundreds of thousands of urgent treatments, millions of outpatient appointments, turning operating theatres into ICU beds, football stadiums and conference centres into hospitals and dragging thousands of retired staff back into work. And that’s before we even get into the situation of thousands of care homes patients booted out of hospitals to make space, infecting their care home residents and refusing to admit them back into hospital when they fell ill. It was a success that nobody was denied Covid treatment but we were a bawhair away from that happening, probably only a few days of ‘normality’ away, and millions of other treatments were effectively denied to get there.

We’re at over 60,000 excess deaths in a little over two months, and that’s with the most severe restrictions this country has ever seen. That could’ve risen exponentially if the virus was left to run as it was and capacity was breached. The biggest upper-limit for the full pandemic was put at 500,000, under a ‘do nothing’ model. In reality it was a 250k-500k estimate. Can we really say with any belief that excess deaths wouldn’t have ended in that region in the coming weeks/months under a do nothing model? I don’t think we can. The pandemic isn’t over at this stage.

I don’t think the UK and most of Western Europe had a choice in locking down. Maybe the likes of Czechia and Greece might look at Sweden and wonder if that might’ve been a more pain-free option, and moving forward I think Sweden will effectively be what most countries try to emulate, but unless we made huge steps in February a lockdown was really our only option.

[Granny Danger]

35 minutes ago, oaksoft said:

What on earth are you wittering on about?

Is this going to be another day of rambling pish from you?

If so, I want to make sure I've got enough popcorn in. 

He’s making a point that is so simple to understand that only a moron would have a problem comprehending it.

IMO it’s also a valid point.  It’s a sad reality that many folk with a few pounds seem to think that their interests are best served by those whose constituency is the mega rich.

 

[madwullie]

23 minutes ago, Paco said:

 

I don’t think we can say with any certainty the worst fears were significantly over-estimated. We were very very close to overwhelming the NHS at least in London, and those capacity issues can spread very quickly as patients are kicked around to neighbouring hospitals and regions.

I’ve said this before but the NHS only ‘coped’ in the first place by cancelling all routine surgery, hundreds of thousands of urgent treatments, millions of outpatient appointments, turning operating theatres into ICU beds, football stadiums and conference centres into hospitals and dragging thousands of retired staff back into work. And that’s before we even get into the situation of thousands of care homes patients booted out of hospitals to make space, infecting their care home residents and refusing to admit them back into hospital when they fell ill. It was a success that nobody was denied Covid treatment but we were a bawhair away from that happening, probably only a few days of ‘normality’ away, and millions of other treatments were effectively denied to get there.

We’re at over 60,000 excess deaths in a little over two months, and that’s with the most severe restrictions this country has ever seen. That could’ve risen exponentially if the virus was left to run as it was and capacity was breached. The biggest upper-limit for the full pandemic was put at 500,000, under a ‘do nothing’ model. In reality it was a 250k-500k estimate. Can we really say with any belief that excess deaths wouldn’t have ended in that region in the coming weeks/months under a do nothing model? I don’t think we can. The pandemic isn’t over at this stage.

I don’t think the UK and most of Western Europe had a choice in locking down. Maybe the likes of Czechia and Greece might look at Sweden and wonder if that might’ve been a more pain-free option, and moving forward I think Sweden will effectively be what most countries try to emulate, but unless we made huge steps in February a lockdown was really our only option.

 

I wonder what public opinion looks like in Sweden considering the different choices made there. I suppose those who feel there should have been stricter action would probably have taken it themselves anyway, as much as possible with work responsibilities etc

[Gordon EF]

2 hours ago, Granny Danger said:

I’d rather we were trying to learn lessons from Denmark, Finland and Norway rather than from Sweden.

I'd rather learn lessons from all of them.

[Gordon EF]

29 minutes ago, Paco said:

 

I don’t think we can say with any certainty the worst fears were significantly over-estimated. We were very very close to overwhelming the NHS at least in London, and those capacity issues can spread very quickly as patients are kicked around to neighbouring hospitals and regions.

I’ve said this before but the NHS only ‘coped’ in the first place by cancelling all routine surgery, hundreds of thousands of urgent treatments, millions of outpatient appointments, turning operating theatres into ICU beds, football stadiums and conference centres into hospitals and dragging thousands of retired staff back into work. And that’s before we even get into the situation of thousands of care homes patients booted out of hospitals to make space, infecting their care home residents and refusing to admit them back into hospital when they fell ill. It was a success that nobody was denied Covid treatment but we were a bawhair away from that happening, probably only a few days of ‘normality’ away, and millions of other treatments were effectively denied to get there.

We’re at over 60,000 excess deaths in a little over two months, and that’s with the most severe restrictions this country has ever seen. That could’ve risen exponentially if the virus was left to run as it was and capacity was breached. The biggest upper-limit for the full pandemic was put at 500,000, under a ‘do nothing’ model. In reality it was a 250k-500k estimate. Can we really say with any belief that excess deaths wouldn’t have ended in that region in the coming weeks/months under a do nothing model? I don’t think we can. The pandemic isn’t over at this stage.

I don’t think the UK and most of Western Europe had a choice in locking down. Maybe the likes of Czechia and Greece might look at Sweden and wonder if that might’ve been a more pain-free option, and moving forward I think Sweden will effectively be what most countries try to emulate, but unless we made huge steps in February a lockdown was really our only option.

 

Yep. I'm not and never have advocated doing nothing though.

[Honest_Man#1]

1 hour ago, doulikefish said:

"Do do do cmon do the conga"

Do do do, let’s all get Corona.

[WhiteRoseKillie]

12 hours ago, renton said:

Define a while. 

After July the Furlough scheme in this country becomes significantly weaker and more conditional. By then our nearest neighbours will be well out of their lockdowns and progressing more rapidly towards normality, no doubt boosted by a  large ECB stimulus package, the Americans will simply weather what ever they have to without recourse to further economic damage. China is already back up and rolling.

This is not a situation where we can set our own pace. There was a timer set by the aggregate of others efforts to solve this issue, and we will simply have to react as best we can to whatever state we are in when the music stops. After that it's Open for Business and Devil damn the hindmost.

Your second paragraph should be printed out on thick, scratchy paper and rammed down the throat of every flag-waving adherent to the idea of British Exceptionalism when we're all foraging for edible fungi.

I exaggerate, but fúck me it's going to be lonely out there in a post-pandemic world.

[WhiteRoseKillie]

12 hours ago, Todd_is_God said:

I'm not sure it's as far away as you think.

Many parts of europe are already starting to get the wheels turning domestically, and in the countries where it is well under control tourism and international travel is being mooted to restart before the end of June.

Contrast that to here where not only are we still not allowed to meet family for at least another two weeks we are looking to start quarantining international passengers.

UK media has stopped excitedly reporting on cases soaring again elsewhere as it becomes clear that isn't happening.

It's not noticeable just now, but the spotlight will really start to shine on the incompetence of the UK & Scottish Governments when we see a sense of normality restored everywhere bar here

Bolded: the Johnson Crew's incompetence in a nutshell.

[Gordon EF]

40 minutes ago, Paco said:

I don’t think the UK and most of Western Europe had a choice in locking down. Maybe the likes of Czechia and Greece might look at Sweden and wonder if that might’ve been a more pain-free option, and moving forward I think Sweden will effectively be what most countries try to emulate, but unless we made huge steps in February a lockdown was really our only option.

 

I agree. By the time of March 23rd, I don't think there was any option but to go to lockdown. I think what Sweden suggests is that there is absolutely a way of coming a long way out of lockdown without going back to seeing exponential increases in infections.

[Todd_is_God]

5 minutes ago, WhiteRoseKillie said:

I exaggerate, but fúck me it's going to be lonely out there in a post-pandemic world.

I dunno. Might be quite nice to go out while all the moon howlers remain locked indoors for a bit.

[Biscuits]

Dunno if this has been posted but the BBC really are lowlife fuckin scumbags

[Paco]

It is truly astonishing that as most countries begin to look at opening up their borders, we start to think about closing them and introducing quarantine.

‘It wouldn’t have made much difference’ appears to be the explanation, but I also recall similar statements about mass events and schools. A lot of back-patting about quarantining flights from Wuhan in early March too, ignoring that the undoubted global hotspot has been New York and you’ve never had any restrictions on flying in from there (and still don’t).

There’s a lot of competition for the craziest act the government have committed but our border policy will end up ranking pretty high.

[Gordon EF]

3 minutes ago, Paco said:

It is truly astonishing that as most countries begin to look at opening up their borders, we start to think about closing them and introducing quarantine.

‘It wouldn’t have made much difference’ appears to be the explanation, but I also recall similar statements about mass events and schools. A lot of back-patting about quarantining flights from Wuhan in early March too, ignoring that the undoubted global hotspot has been New York and you’ve never had any restrictions on flying in from there (and still don’t).

There’s a lot of competition for the craziest act the government have committed but our border policy will end up ranking pretty high.

Agreed. When the dust settles on all of this, the question of why we continued letting people from highly infected areas completely freely into the country without any kind of test or quarantine is going to be an extremely difficult one to answer.

[WhiteRoseKillie]

1 hour ago, Mr Tourette said:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-52715571

Hmm. Who would have thought?

"There were a number of assaults and it was quite clear that as the alcohol flowed, the street parties became closer and they were no longer street parties, and more garden parties - and then eventually front-room parties. And then, as often happens with parties, they were boxing matches."

...and I'll guarantee the same fúckwits were banging their pots and pans the next Thursday. We should maintain the lockdown until these evolutionary dead ends have met their inevitable doom. Sorry if that sounds harsh, but I'm losing patience with the Great British Public and their endless willingness to be manipulated by a flag and a picture of Churchill.