Coronavirus in the UK - news, lockdown and discussion

[AmateurAgitator]

Don't know if this has been posted yet, or discussed on here, and I know it's Piers Morgan - but he has of late been doing a better job of holding government ministers to account than Starmer and co :



Capitalism is failing big time

 

[maomao]

he has of late been doing a better job of holding government ministers to account than Starmer:

My left nut has done a better job of holding government to account than Kieth.

 

[elbows]

TBF, it was Boris who started that by claiming we could be coming out of in February. Why the fuck does he keep giving people false hope like this.

A large quantity of Johnsons ridiculous boosterish timing comments in this pandemic have been in response to questions from his own MPs and from journalists. It was journalists who started the Christmas bullshit a very long time before Christmas.

Political journalists are used to facile games. They are part of that dance.

 

[elbows]

And I didnt even watch the press conference today, but I had the misfortune to scroll through some live news updates page and saw "BBC political editor Laura Kuenssberg asks how and when lockdown can start to be eased."

These people are culpable for the somewhat misleadingly labelled 'lockdown fatigue'. The public inquiry will require a module on the media, one that goes far beyond the Toby Youngs of this world.

 

[Petcha]

And I didnt even watch the press conference today, but I had the misfortune to scroll through some live news updates page and saw "BBC political editor Laura Kuenssberg asks how and when lockdown can start to be eased."

These people are culpable for the somewhat misleadingly labelled 'lockdown fatigue'. The public inquiry will require a module on the media, one that goes far beyond the Toby Youngs of this world.

Speaking personally, I'm not blaming the media for lockdown fatigue. I've barely spoken a word to another human being in weeks. My employer is now offering free psychotherapy and the therapist is so overloaded I can't get an appointment. i'm fatigued beyond belief. I'm not blaming Kuenssberg for that. I'm blaming the most incompetent 'leader' we have ever had. Who has the blood of thousands on his hands. Even Priti fucking Patel said we should have closed the borders almost a year ago.

Johnson's a cunt, but he's not an idiot and if you believe his suggestions that we would be easing lockdown in February weren't heavily trailed to the press then, well. The media's questions weren't coming out of thin air.

 

[xenon]

He is actually an idiot though. Makes tactical blunders all the time.

 

[teqniq]

No shit Sherlock:

Workers With Covid Too 'Scared’ To Get Tested Over Fear Of Losing Wages, Dido Harding Says

People with Covid are too “scared” to come forward for a test because of a lack of government cash support, the head of Test and Trace has said.
Baroness Dido Harding told a CBI webinar that the most recent figures showed that less than 60% of people who tested positive followed advice to quarantine at home once contacted.
But the Tory peer said the problem of people not taking the test was even more of an issue...

Turd in Sunak's court:

Harding said that it was up to chancellor Rishi Sunak to resolve the cash help problem, adding that the rollout of rapid testing in workplaces to help pick up asymptomatic cases early would help too.

Her remarks came days after No.10 ruled out proposals from the Department of Health and Social Care to pay everyone a flat-rate payment of £500 each if they were forced to quarantine at home....

 

[bimble]

Asking how and when lockdown can be eased seems completely reasonable to me tbh. Not a date obviously but what the markers are, like ‘once infections are down to ... and also once we have vaccinated ... then we will return to a tiered system which will work as follows’. Of course people want to ask about the roadmap out of this, even if we’ve given up on expectating halfway coherent or honest answers.

 

[planetgeli]

Asking how and when lockdown can be eased seems completely reasonable to me tbh. Not a date obviously but what the markers are, like ‘once infections are down to ... and also once we have vaccinated ... then we will return to a tiered system which will work as follows’. Of course people want to ask about the roadmap out of this, even if we’ve given up on expectating halfway coherent or honest answers.

Ten year plans never work

 

[xenon]

Asking how and when lockdown can be eased seems completely reasonable to me tbh. Not a date obviously but what the markers are, like ‘once infections are down to ... and also once we have vaccinated ... then we will return to a tiered system which will work as follows’. Of course people want to ask about the roadmap out of this, even if we’ve given up on expectating halfway coherent or honest answers.

The questions aren't framed like that though are they? I mean, I dunno, I've stopped following these as closely but they seem to be of the type.
Should people book summer holidays.
Will schools reopen before Easter.

Rather than what would have to happen for XYZ to be possible.

 

[bimble]

There must be a piece of paper somewhere with the answers scrawled on it though (open schools when infections are down to blah per week for instance) , right?
Or not, are they just blundering along from day to day like me.

 

[xenon]

Oh I do agree, that would be the sensible way to give people some idea of how the fuck we're getting out of this. Australia has taken that approach.

 

[planetgeli]

There must be a piece of paper somewhere with the answers scrawled on it though (open schools when infections are down to blah per week for instance) , right?
Or not, are they just blundering along from day to day like me.

B.

They've spent the whole pandemic being reactive instead of proactive. They even boast about it. "We react quickly..." No. Too late.

Blundering is far too kind to them.

 

[MickiQ]

Or not, are they just blundering along from day to day like me.

Yes

 

[elbows]

Well when it comes to me moaning about the 'when, when, when' shit, maybe I would find it slightly easier to take if they at least waited till we were some way past the peak of daily reported deaths.

One of the official measures of death, that undercounts but that all the press use, will go over 100,000 either with tomorrows figures or the day afters.

When, when, when will there be less than a thousand Covid-19 deaths per day by date of death in the UK? They could ask that first.

 

[Cloo]

Asking how and when lockdown can be eased seems completely reasonable to me tbh. Not a date obviously but what the markers are, like ‘once infections are down to ... and also once we have vaccinated ... then we will return to a tiered system which will work as follows’. Of course people want to ask about the roadmap out of this, even if we’ve given up on expectating halfway coherent or honest answers.

Although this all has to be bearing in mind what curveball might be thrown, so it's all 'providing there's no other nasty surprises... '

 

[StoneRoad]

bliddy fuckwits, trying to run things.
they need to listen to, and follow, the advice from SAGE, indiesage, NervTAG etc etc
and not the whinging about the economy ...

 

[editor]

Such fucking incompetence from this shitty, blustering buffoon-led government

 

[brogdale]

Such fucking incompetence from this shitty, blustering buffoon-led government

View attachment 251393

innit?

 

[StoneRoad]

innit?


View attachment 251469

And, IMO, a lot of those could have been avoided, IF those shitty ar5eh0les had properly followed the science, set an example, and not been slaves to their monetary / fiscal imperatives. Murdering ba5tard5. All their wavering, u-turns and indecision just causes excessive confusion ...

 

[Brainaddict]

I wish there was some significant group within politics and the media who, whenever the subject of 'when should we open up?' or 'should we have a date or target now?' is raised, would instead steer the conversation around to the need to have testing, tracing and quarantining working when the lockdown lifts. It feels like the entire nation is in a conspiracy to ignore what the WHO has been saying since early last summer: lockdown is what you do when you fail to control the virus. The correct way to control the virus is testing, tracing and quarantining, and we will still need to do it when more people have the vaccine if we want to prevent unnecessary death and disability. Honestly why are they all in this conspiracy to be so fucking shit? There's some high level bullshit groupthink going on when you can't for a moment consider that the advice of the global promoter of public health might be right.

 

[SpookyFrank]

I'd like to see some kind of conversation about the fact schools are closed but building sites are still open.

Obviously there are loads of conversations about that, but if you only watch the BBC news you'd have no idea.

As for testing and tracing, it's not a topic the government wants to talk about. And it's not a topic they're being pressed on, despite the fact it's both a black hole of for public funds and a total, unmitigated failure.

 

[Boris Sprinkler]

Wilko attacks keyworker heroes by cutting sick pay

GMB has informed Wilko that if these draconian measures go ahead, they face a ballot for industrial action

www.gmb.org.uk

It's not a handful of people having raves is it? Its the poorest (minimum wage key workers) been forced to work now the owners of the means of production have got rid of that pesky EU influence. Watch out for more of this. And accompanying finger pointing stories in the mainstream media.

 

[kabbes]

Some views of the UK from across the pond, presented only because they (a) give an idea of the attitudes currently within the US; and (b) offer a perspective not affected by UK government messaging and news reporting. They come from an analysis within the US side of our company:

Firstly, they currently project 180,000 UK deaths. I’d take the precise number with a pinch of salt because many of their predictions for all regions have ended up needing to be increased or decreased over the last year. But it’s a measure one way or their other, and it’s one that implies the UK has further to go than most other regions.

Secondly, they say they’ve yet to see convincing empirical evidence that the UK strain has genuinely increased case rates compared with other regions. They think that R-numbers elsewhere are similar for similar levels of restrictions. So whilst we may have a common-sense narrative here that treats the new strain’s effect as a given, that story is not necessarily believed elsewhere in the world.

 

[elbows]

Secondly, they say they’ve yet to see convincing empirical evidence that the UK strain has genuinely increased case rates compared with other regions. They think that R-numbers elsewhere are similar for similar levels of restrictions. So whilst we may have a common-sense narrative here that treats the new strain’s effect as a given, that story is not necessarily believed elsewhere in the world.

A new strain on our governments credibility. But to be more serious, nothing much has changed with my position on this yet, in that I have not reached even a tentative conclusion either way. For example if I had seen all the charts but without any knowledge of a new variant, I would just have thought it showed a botched response including the November national measures being too weak and short, and what came after them being a complete joke.

 

[Brainaddict]

As for testing and tracing, it's not a topic the government wants to talk about. And it's not a topic they're being pressed on, despite the fact it's both a black hole of for public funds and a total, unmitigated failure.

It's driving me up the wall. Labour should be talking about the corruption and failure in contact tracing every goddamn day but the haircut is too keen on keeping the right wing press onside. It's infuriating. Both parties are also avoiding the conversation because they know that for quarantining to work you have to both fund and enforce it. They're keen on neither, the former because Tory cunts, the latter due to some hokey notion of 'freedom' that leads to us all being imprisoned by the virus.

Edit to add - Think about it: a state that literally will not let you change the colour of your window frames without an application that costs hundreds and takes weeks to process (and might be refused)*, is saying that enforcing ten days of quarantine on a few thousand people (if you start from a low point after lockdown) in order to save tens of thousands of lives is too much of an infringement on individual liberty. It's like they're pretending suddenly that the state doesn't impinge on us massively in a million different ways already. Apparently this measure, of all measures, would be just taking it too far. Even though not taking the measure results in us all being told to stay home for months. The stupidity of the arguments is mind-boggling.

*I use this trivial example just because it's one where an enforcement officer might actually show up at your door. When apparently that happening for quarantine would be like some authoritarian state.

 

[elbows]

It feels like the entire nation is in a conspiracy to ignore what the WHO has been saying since early last summer: lockdown is what you do when you fail to control the virus. The correct way to control the virus is testing, tracing and quarantining, and we will still need to do it when more people have the vaccine if we want to prevent unnecessary death and disability.

Thats not the whole picture either though. A country with a very good, timely test & trace system will sometimes still discover a picture, via that system, of a serious outbreak that requires lockdown etc to control. And we've seen that happen in many of the countries that were lauded for their test & trace & other aspects of their response such as border controls. We need and excellent test & trace system but we need it to come with reasonable expectations about what it does and doesnt mean for other measures.

 

[elbows]

A new strain on our governments credibility. But to be more serious, nothing much has changed with my position on this yet, in that I have not reached even a tentative conclusion either way. For example if I had seen all the charts but without any knowledge of a new variant, I would just have thought it showed a botched response including the November national measures being too weak and short, and what came after them being a complete joke.

When checking another subject on the worldwide thread I ame across a WHO quote from over a week ago that fits in here.

New Coronavirus Variants Could Cause More Reinfections, Require Updated Vaccines

Science’s COVID-19 reporting is supported by the Pulitzer Center and the Heising-Simons Foundation.When the number of COVID-19 cases began to rise again in Manaus, Brazil, in December 2020, Nuno Faria...

pulitzercenter.org

In a press conference today, WHO’s Mike Ryan cautioned that changes in human behavior are still the major driving force for the resurgence. “It’s too easy to just lay the blame on the variants and say it’s the virus that did it,” he said. “Unfortunately, it’s also what we didn’t do that did it.”

 

[smokedout]

Oh I do agree, that would be the sensible way to give people some idea of how the fuck we're getting out of this. Australia has taken that approach.

Not just that, it makes it a collective project rather than a top down edict to be endured/got round until they say otherwise. Stay indoors and we might let you to go to the pub at Easter is very different to if we can get cases down to x then maybe we can open up this again but if it goes back up over that again we'll have to lock it down. The first is opaque and feels dictatorial, the second gives an incentive to pro-actively and collectively try and reduce infections.

 

[LDC]

Not just that, it makes it a collective project rather than a top down edict to be endured/got round until they say otherwise. Stay indoors and we might let you to go to the pub at Easter is very different to if we can get cases down to x then maybe we can open up this again but if it goes back up over that again we'll have to lock it down. The first is opaque and feels dictatorial, the second gives an incentive to pro-actively and collectively try and reduce infections.

I appreciate the reasons people give for wanting clear guidelines about exciting or loosening restrictions, but I find it really hard to imagine a way of doing them that isn't massively over-complicated and confusing in the situation we're in now, and then it also creates the predictable, "You said this, but..." when the situation changes. (With a much lower incidence of infection then I can see it working much better.)

Would you give infection rates as an indicator? In all age groups? Regionally or nationally? Or hospitalisations, or deaths? Or some mix of them and vaccination rates? Or something else? It's just a massive topic, and with people saying messaging is important and needs to be clear I can't see how this would do anything but create more confusion and anger when something changes (another variant for example) which means the route out has to change anyway.