CV-19 day 44 / light at the end ?

M

mr wilks

Lifer
 Lancashire
Not as in they have got on top of the virus , its pretty clear the numbers will continue to prove grim reading for months to come but light as in a slow start to ending the current measures preventing normal life as we knew it pre CV .
After taking the initial 4 weeks isolation i've been back at work almost 3 weeks ( in construction so perfectly allowed) & in that time its been noticeable the daily increase in both traffic & businesses taking it upon themselves to re-open in whatever ways they can .
Clearly the current route of financial suicide can't be followed for any length of time so its good to see the positive vibes slipping out on how we can expect things to free up over the coming weeks .
Obviously Its been a tragic & distressing time for many ( especially so for the ones who lost their lives by contracting the disease at work ) but thinking positive the sooner some form of "normality" returns then the year might not be a total write off that it was looking 6-8 weeks ago :cry:
A muted stay home Bank holiday looms but i can see those weekend drives returning pretty soon with the possibility of pubs with beer gardens opening up June / July :driving:
 
It seems likely there will be some loosening of restrictions next week but I think it will be very limited as the numbers are far from good enough for any more. My own opinion is that the government are now under huge pressure to be seen to doing as much as they can to limit further rises in the death toll almost regardless of the impact on the economy. With the death rate looking like it will be the worst in Europe - by either total count or deaths per capita measure they know the public are increasingly going to be questioning the approach being taken. There seems to be a consensus emerging that we locked down too late and not hard enough so they will be desperate not to be seen to unlock too much too early?

Some interesting research suggesting that the majority of the public would be very reluctant to rush to the shops, pubs and restaurants anyway.

I'm resigned to there being measures in place for a year or more but would be happy to be proved wrong!
 
Hmmm, I have a horrible feeling it will be:

1. Loosen the restrictions
2. The Covidiots all come out to play
3. The infection rate goes back up
4. The sensible folk are sent back to square 1.
5. And repeat ad infinitum, until all the Covidiots have dropped dead :D

NB. Please see this in the cynical humour it was meant, and lets not all go off on a rant :poke: :rofl:
 
enuff_zed said:
Hmmm, I have a horrible feeling it will be:

1. Loosen the restrictions
2. The Covidiots all come out to play
3. The infection rate goes back up
4. The sensible folk are sent back to square 1.
5. And repeat ad infinitum, until all the Covidiots have dropped dead :D

NB. Please see this in the cynical humour it was meant, and lets not all go off on a rant :poke: :rofl:
Click to expand...

:lol: Many a true word spoken in jest!
 
Unfortunately it looks like everything will go back to almost normal far too quickly which will result in more cases and it will all be down to money.
The country cannot afford to have everybody sitting at home being paid by the government.
I just wonder if the "lockdown" had been taken more seriously would the casualty numbers be lower or was the damage already done?
 
We can blame the government all we want.

But people are treating this like a paid summer holiday and not even trying to adhere to the measures put in place.

If there is a finger of blame to be pointed,its firmly at the populous that cant be arsed to sit in the house,watch TV and drink beer and be paid for the privilege.
 
I won't be rushing to go to shops, pubs or restaurants either - I'm quite happy to keep my distance from most of the general public seeing as you don't know where they have been!

But it would seem to make sense for other retail outlets to open using the same distancing criteria as supermarkets. It would certainly be much safer than my local "corner" shop that has stayed open because it is an off licence (thankfully!) and sells food, but once was enough for me with other people walking past in the aisles that are barely 4 feet wide. :roll:

I just want non-essential travel to be permitted so I can go for a drive in my Z with no particular destination, especially with petrol so cheap. :lol:

And being able to get a hair-cut would be a bonus, before I end up looking like an old hippy!

But now we seem to have the highest number of deaths in Europe we really can't afford to just relax all the restrictions.

Sadly my former brother-in-law died from it last Thursday. The divorce from my sister was finalised 3 years ago, but I had known him for about 45 years so it has an impact. And even though he was in a hospice due to terminal cancer it has really been hard for my niece to come to terms with, not helped by her being furloughed so having all day to think about it.

And I keep worrying about my Mum in her care home who had her 98th birthday on 2 April but we couldn't see her. :(

So I just feel indebted to all the key-workers. :thumbsup: And have no time for the idiot element. :evil:
 
The inevitable lack of planning against the then off chance of a pandemic means that the UK went into bat without the resources to fight the battle.

People have been used as metaphorical cannon fodder, the planners basically knew that they had reacted too late, with too few resources and with a lack of organisational capability and management.

I, being a sad geek, monitor the local Scottish situation in detail...this ‘pesky little critter’ is stubbornly resilient even in a lockdown that’s well adhered too..it’s taking ages for the infection rate to decline...it does seem that the proportional hospitalisation is dropping, as a result of, belated increased testing..

I think we’ll see barely controlled hot spots in population centres constantly flaring up.

I don’t see pubs/cafes/hotels opening as we know and staying open for any sustained period of time..they’ll have to re close them..or have mega spacing rendering them uneconomical..

Until the anti virals / vaccines arrive there will be three groups...

The f@ck it, we don’t care/it won’t get us/we didn’t think group

The I’m scared but I need to work / I’ve been instructed to work

The I don’t want to be f@cked by it

The last two groups are not going to be going to pubs/cafes/hotels even if they are open..

The first group, mostly under 50 will get infected but their death rate will probably be around 1 in 500 ish so with 25m in that group it’s that’s only 50,000 extra deaths on top of the 30,000 now..their will be another 20,000 to go from this uncontrolled first phase...then in groups 2 and 3 there will be 40m with a fatality rate of 1 in 100 but only 10% if lucky will get it so that’s another 40,000 so around 140,000 extra / premature deaths this year...twice the number of UK civilians killed in 6 years of world war 2 all in one year...

It’s dammed if you do..dammed if you don’t
 
Interesting the repeated mantra of how the Uk were slow to react , underprepped & took a soft approach to isolation yet some countries who took more stark measures far sooner like banning travel & had far stricter measures in terms of lockdown share a similar infection / death rate :? Spain & Italy are still above the UK in terms of death rate per population & France aren't that far behind . https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/?utm_campaign=homeAdvegas1?%22
Its easy to use the UK death rate ( currently 30k) as a stick to beat the government with but the true numbers from any country are likely to vary wildly in terms of how they register / test cases & how they attribute causes of death .
Currently in Uk we have had 200k cases & 30k deaths out of 65million population , depends on your standpoint but you could say they are good numbers considering the so called failings continually thrown in the ring :?
 
My wife and her daughters have latched on to this idea that we'll be able to include 2 other households in our 'social bubble'. How exciting!!!

But then I pointed out that, let's take one daughter for example. Her two choices would be each set of parents. But her sister has a different two sets of parents. Then their husbands parents will want to include their other kids, and those kids will want to include their in-laws..............
So, although we only have two other households visiting us, they could be bringing in infection from people I have never even met!

What a marvellous plan! I shall fight it all the way.
 
mr wilks said:
Interesting the repeated mantra of how the Uk were slow to react , underprepped & took a soft approach to isolation yet some countries who took more stark measures far sooner like banning travel & had far stricter measures in terms of lockdown share a similar infection / death rate :? Spain & Italy are still above the UK in terms of death rate per population & France aren't that far behind . https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/?utm_campaign=homeAdvegas1?%22
Its easy to use the UK death rate ( currently 30k) as a stick to beat the government with but the true numbers from any country are likely to vary wildly in terms of how they register / test cases & how they attribute causes of death .
Currently in Uk we have had 200k cases & 30k deaths out of 65million population , depends on your standpoint but you could say they are good numbers considering the so called failings continually thrown in the ring :?
Click to expand...

Mr Wilks...I don’t disagree with any of your points..

If you are interested in ‘root cause analysis’ and many aren’t then the points you raise highlight some common threads, many were difficult to avoid at the time..

If you contrast the ‘bunch’ you mention vs S Korea, Australia, New Zealand, Taiwan, Germany etc then ....

The poor performers were

Politically weak / newbies / slow to lockdown / slow to test / didn’t implement border controls and isolation / lack of tracking / frightened of implementation of lockdown until they were already being overwhelmed

The converse was true and interestingly they were and remain more aggressive in their management ....

Of course being an international hub / an obsession in leisure aviation travel / tourist epicentre didn’t help..

I could go on about parochial / isolationist governments behaviour but that’s enough for now..

It will be interesting to see the political ramifications..

The Dominic Cummins inspired three phrase illeration may have carried quite successfully the population for a period..

The inspired myopic focus on the NHS was successful in terms of avoiding the surge overspill but the impact elsewhere is painful to see..

I guess for this forum if we can all go out for a drive in a relatively unconstrained fashion then that will be a big plus..

It will be interesting how much longer the drive throughs will be...
 
I work in a school and for the full week before they closed all people were talking about was when are they closing the schools.
This in itself meant that there was a delay in shutting down of at least 4 days, they seemed to think that waiting till Friday was good enough.
Why did they have to wait for Friday? They should have shut as soon as they could have.
Australia seems to be doing pretty good.
 
New Zealand is the exemplar for me. Just 21 deaths - expressed as deaths per capita that's 100 times less than the UK. They locked down early and hard. In the UK we had very clear early warnings from other European countries (not to mention China) that were ahead of us in the spread (Italy in particular - remember the terrible scenes we saw on our news?). Instead of locking down and taking a safety first approach our leaders chose to allow folks to continue going to pubs, clubs and restaurants for almost 2 weeks. Mass gatherings went ahead - Cheltenham Festival and Liverpool's Champion Leagues game (with hundreds of supports travelling from Madrid of all places) being prime examples. Many people, but not enough, chose to take early action themselves - isolating and taking their kids out of school etc. Many chose to continue as if nothing was wrong and the virus had exactly the open door it needed and as a result the lock down has been a sub optimal attempt to close it.

Add to that the lack of preparation in PPE and Testing where we wasted months and you had a recipe for the disastrous outbreak we are now experiencing. What has happened in Care homes is a scandal. It seems to me that complacency characterised much of what happened in February and March. Johnson himself missed 5 Cobra meetings. Remember when we were told we were the best prepared country in the world? Johnson boasting that he had been shaking hands with people in hospitals with Covid-19 patients.

Sadly the government is now between a rock and hard place with the economy tanking and the virus still killing hundreds each day. Its interesting to note that we went into lock down with deaths at around 400/day but are now talking of exit when its over 500/600. Whilst the shape of the trajectories might be different I think it would be madness to loosen much, if anything at this stage. Whilst hindsight is a wonderful thing I think there needs to be an accounting for what has happened. 30,000+ deaths is not a success and is not a good number and mistakes must be exposed and learnt from. I do have some sympathy with those who point to the challenges of comparing our country with others but I wonder if the government would be quite so quick to throw doubt on others figures if our rates were better than theirs?

Rather than treating us with respect the government is resorting to leaking possible exit scenarios to the press, trying to use them to influence our reaction to whatever Johnson says on Sunday. Listening to Nicola Sturgeon today I think I prefer Scotland's approach and I think there is the very real possibility that they will fall out of lock step with us if Johnson goes beyond the mildest of easing.

Stopping now before it becomes even more of a rant!
 
You can crunch data & numbers all day with this but in regards to holding up NZ as the torch i guess locking down a population under 5 million ( more people live in New York city ) spread over a island the same size of the UK is less of a task than doing it with 65million :? much easier to blanket ban & quarantine folks arriving there too as it has far less numbers passing through than the UK does
Granted those large scale events both in UK & Europe that were held in March now look very foolhardy :cry:
 
mr wilks said:
You can crunch data & numbers all day with this but in regards to holding up NZ as the torch i guess locking down a population under 5 million ( more people live in New York city ) spread over a island the same size of the UK is less of a task than doing it with 65million :? much easier to blanket ban & quarantine folks arriving there too as it has far less numbers passing through than the UK does
Granted those large scale events both in UK & Europe that were held in March now look very foolhardy :cry:
Click to expand...

Well said Mr wilks I have visited both NZ and OZ and they huge countries both with very strict border controls as the norm (which I think is a good thing ) so control of this virus for them is a hell of a lot easier than the small over crowded poorly border controlled country that is the UK
 
Germany anyone? 89m landlocked with 9 discrete nation state borders...?

Admittedly only 70m pax through Frankfurt vs 80m for Heathrow...

There that must be the reason.. :rofl: :fuelfire:
 
Pbondar said:
Germany anyone? 89m landlocked with 9 discrete nation state borders...?

Admittedly only 70m pax through Frankfurt vs 80m for Heathrow...

UK deaths 30,150 Germany 7,275

Sources Wiki and John Hopkins

There that must be the reason.. :rofl: :fuelfire:
Click to expand...
 
mr wilks said:
You can crunch data & numbers all day with this but in regards to holding up NZ as the torch i guess locking down a population under 5 million ( more people live in New York city ) spread over a island the same size of the UK is less of a task than doing it with 65million :?
Click to expand...

Not really. Lockdowns are very local and a bigger country has more resources to implement the lockdown. Boris only needed to make his speech once thanks to technology, and didn't need to go door to door telling everyone individually.
 
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