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Coronavirus in the UK - news, lockdown and discussion

There was an interview on ch4 news last night, with a boss nurse saying her staff are getting frequent abuse (as in multiple times a shift) from the public about stuff like being asked to wear a mask or longer wait times to be seen due to impact of covid. How can the Tories consider this okay?
 
Johnny Vodka said:
There was an interview on ch4 news last night, with a boss nurse saying her staff are getting frequent abuse (as in multiple times a shift) from the public about stuff like being asked to wear a mask or longer wait times to be seen due to impact of covid. How can the Tories consider this okay?
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Are any of the Tory MPs nurses? Then it doesn't affect them does it? And therefore it doesn't matter. It's easy to get inside the mind of a Tory.
 
Wilf said:
I'm (more than) happy to join in condemnations of government as a bunch of murderous shitcunts. A tidal wave of unnecessary death last year, with continuing awful performance right through to the present.

But from their perspective, how would they describe their strategy? 6 weeks ago it felt like 'neo-herd immunity' was where they were at, with javid pushing a bullish line. Now? 'We've got to live with the virus... hope the booster sorts shit out... business as usual... masks and social distancing would look like failure... squint at the hospitalisation figures... but know they can do some sort of u-turn in November as Labour are shit'. It's not an actual strategy so much as an ideology. Am I missing something?
Click to expand...

In some ways I see it as a season based approach to propaganda, which is why I go on about merry-go-rounds of changing mood music to fit what month we are in. Little concern is paid to how unsustainable the central messages are, how short the life expectancy of rhetoric has been in this pandemic, compared to the expected longevity and pretend plausibility of political rhetoric in non-pandemic times.

I suppose I've attempted to short-circuit that by going on about stuff during seasons where we are supposed to be looking in a different direction. But I do have to acknowledge that even if we remove the authorities priorities and politics from the equation, other factors remain that may make attractive or justify these repeated shifts. It may depend on whether peoples resilience, morale etc is actually sustained or partially recharged by having periods where people are encouraged to hope that the worst is behind us, that the light is at the end of the tunnel. Clearly for me personally I am not impressed by false hope and terrible teases, but there are still times where I feel like I might not be good for peoples minds if never a month goes by without me shouting about the ongoing nature of the struggle against this virus.
 
Johnny Vodka said:
There was an interview on ch4 news last night, with a boss nurse saying her staff are getting frequent abuse (as in multiple times a shift) from the public about stuff like being asked to wear a mask or longer wait times to be seen due to impact of covid. How can the Tories consider this okay?
Click to expand...
It's probably made easier by the fact that the Tories really don't like the NHS, and by extension the people who work within it, very much.

From their perspective, I suspect that "public health" just looks like an unnecessary cost.
 
existentialist said:
It's probably made easier by the fact that the Tories really don't like the NHS, and by extension the people who work within it, very much.

From their perspective, I suspect that "public health" just looks like an unnecessary cost.
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Indeed, just imagine the tax cuts they'd be able to give the rich if they didn't have to spend £140 odd billion a year on keeping old poor people alive.
 
I work for a TV station and can see which ads are played, and we have another govt Covid ad coming up. It was due to come in yesterday, presumably to broadcast today, but it's been delayed until tomorrow, for broadcast Saturday onwards.

It's not common, but also not very rare for these delays, but I did wonder if they're redoing it, given some new info/feedback from the public mood - making it scarier, basically? I don't know what's in it except it relates to vaccines, so probably booster stuff.

Also, out of curiousity I had a look when the last corona ad was broadcast and it was way back in January.
 
Johnny Vodka said:
It's also about what's popular with the public. I suspect a huge chunk of the public don't really want more restrictions and are willing to ignore deaths/the pressure on the NHS until it directly affects them. Nicola Sturgeon gets a huge amount of abuse for going further than Westminster.
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I don’t want to derail the thread but the SNP should field parliamentary candidates in the south. Sturgeon’s approach to the pandemic and her briefings are the testament of real leadership as opposed to the incoherent twaddle of the mudfish in a clown’’s wig we have been subjected to.
 
little_legs said:
I don’t want to derail the thread but the SNP should field parliamentary candidates in the south. Sturgeon’s approach to the pandemic and her briefings are the testament of real leadership as opposed to the incoherent twaddle of the mudfish in a clown’’s wig we have been subjected to.
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Her rhetoric and public messaging was better. They are slightly better in some areas and quite a lot better with things such as masks.

But the limits to their approach and the similarities of failure when compared to the UK government are there for all to see, especially in the vaccine era. People in Scotland who were horrified to see their government sitting back and not acting in the face of several large peaks they've had in recent months are not likely to be found singing the praises of the SNP response to the pandemic these days.
 
Some of it will be down to the limited nature of devolution. But some of it will be down to the shared 'values' of their establishment including the upper echelons of the medical profession. The stuff I tended to label as 'the orthodox approach' in the UK which I've been criticising since about February or March 2020. The cold calculations, the 'cant do' mentality, the limited sense of what is operationally possible or even desirable to attempt.

In some senses their rhetoric wound me up because it involved bigger lies at times. For example in summer 2020 they decided that claiming to be going for total suppression of the virus sounded like the right thing to say, but there were no serious attempts to achieve that aim beyond what could be achieved temporarily during a summer season after a long lockdown.
 
bimble said:
I am so tired, seems like years and years of dully puzzling over to what extent they are actually just mind bogglingly stupid or is it all just malevolence and lies.
www.bbc.co.uk

Rees-Mogg: Tories don't wear masks as they are friends

Jacob Rees-Mogg says a "convivial fraternal spirit" means the Conservatives do not need to wear masks in the Commons.
www.bbc.co.uk
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A "convivial fraternal spirit" is, of course, scientifically proven to be equally effective at preventing the spread of COVID as wearing a mask.

Utter cunts.
 
Come on you stoopid polyticians.

Look at the daily stats on the dashboard, listen to the NHS & the scientists ...

Do the RIGHT thing, Like NOW, before it is too late [again] ...

Although, I don't think even their "Plan B" goes quite far enough.
Half-term would be the ideal time for a sharp "circuit breaker" ...
 
Plan B was in some ways a delaying tactic, a temporary line in the sand. Signs that it wont be enough if things carry on at the current trajectory include the fact the press has already moved on to discussions about a Plan C.

I'm still unable to make strong claims about whether the trajectory will continue in the manner seen recently.
 
_Russ_ said:
Its almost like they know they will get all the good antibody cocktails and superb treatment at private hospitals so dont give a fuck
Click to expand...

Honestly the private hospitals in this country are shite, especially with anything acute or life-threatening. They are able to exist and make money only because the NHS is perpetually overstretched, because the government spoon feeds them easy work and because there will always be a significant number of rich arseholes who must have the most expensive version of everything regardless of whether its actually any good.
 
weepiper said:
It's half term this week in Scotland.
Click to expand...

And the timing of Scotlands peaks and declines so far in the Delta wave have not been in sync with England.

Some of those timing differences are probably down to differnt school holiday timings, but there are probably other factors too.

I'm not setup to illustrate the differences in timing properly right now but here is a picture of case rates on Scotland in different age groups from Scotland Coronavirus Tracker - it doesnt go back far enough to show the first peak they had this time around but they had another one at a different time to England which still dominates the scale on these charts compared to more recent levels of infection. Especially in the youngest age group shown here the picture in Scotland is quite different to England.

Screenshot 2021-10-21 at 19.59.jpg
 
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