Coronavirus in the UK - news, lockdown and discussion

[gentlegreen]

Not going well for the muppets.

with a reprieve for the end of lockdown ...

 

[Raheem]

Not going well for the muppets.

All things considered, I'd be over the moon at that graph.

 

[little_legs]

 

[littlebabyjesus]

View attachment 215856

Not going well for the muppets.

Those polls will never cease to amaze me. How the suffering fuck can 37% of the population approve? I know there's the furlough handout. But beyond that, um...

 

[little_legs]

It’s Brexit, it has messed people’s brains up.

 

[Teaboy]

Those polls will never cease to amaze me. How the suffering fuck can 37% of the population approve? I know there's the furlough handout. But beyond that, um...

None of us have been through anything like this is our lives. What does a government performing well look like? What does doing a bad job look like? I doubt there are all that many people who are scouring over the numbers and graphs for this country and elsewhere in the world.

 

[William of Walworth]

None of us have been through anything like this is our lives. What does a government performing well look like? What does doing a bad job look like? I doubt there are all that many people who are scouring over the numbers and graphs for this country and elsewhere in the world.

No doubt, but how the hell the approval rating can go UP by 7% (30% to 37%), and the disapproval rating stay the same (43%) is surely a puzzle right now ....

 

[littlebabyjesus]

None of us have been through anything like this is our lives. What does a government performing well look like? What does doing a bad job look like? I doubt there are all that many people who are scouring over the numbers and graphs for this country and elsewhere in the world.

I doubt there are many people who don't know that the death toll in the UK is one of the highest in the world.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

No doubt, but how the hell the approval rating can go UP by 7% (30% to 37%), and the disapproval rating stay the same (43%) is surely a puzzle right now ....

A depressing answer to that would be that the Cummings affair is already starting to fade from people's minds.

 

[Teaboy]

I doubt there are many people who don't know that the death toll in the UK is one of the highest in the world.

Sure, but linking that to decisions made by government is an extra step. Also a lot of people voted for this government very recently there will always be a natural inclination to defend choices we have made even if we know deep down they might have been a mistake.

 

[Teaboy]

A depressing answer to that would be that the Cummings affair is already starting to fade from people's minds.

If the government can pull off lifting lockdown whilst keeping the virus in some sort of check the approval rate will soar again. The thing is our death rate is still high and not really following the trajectory of Italy and Spain. Will they be able to pull it off or will they just pretend they have?

 

[littlebabyjesus]

Sure, but linking that to decisions made by government is an extra step. Also a lot of people voted for this government very recently there will always be a natural inclination to defend choices we have made even if we know deep down they might have been a mistake.

It is an extra step, but not a hard one to take. I agree with your second bit. Probably the main reason.

 

[weltweit]

It is probably due to the softening of the lockdown.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

If the government can pull off lifting lockdown whilst keeping the virus in some sort of check the approval rate will soar again. The thing is our death rate is still high and not really following the trajectory of Italy and Spain. Will they be able to pull it off or will they just pretend they have?

They might pull it off by not having to pull it off, cos this first wave will have burned itself out more or less whatever the govt does (if a wave can burn? a wave of burning stuff). tbh I think that's the most likely outcome at the moment - covid is dying off right across Europe right now. That might be about it until the next wave later this or next year. That might hide the fact that they have no idea what they're doing, but only from the seriously unattentive.

It actually is kind of following Spain still, just a little behind. Spain's also been in a right mess and has only just got its new cases down under 1,000 a day. (And Spain recently revised its death number upwards - UK's not the only one with reporting issues.) We're as bad as Spain, essentially. That's not a good thing.

Perhaps a period of sober reflection might help people to absorb just how fucking badly the UK government handled every single aspect of all of this, with the possible exception of furlough.

 

[Smangus]

Don't fret , the recession will do it.

 

[Sunray]

It's an embarrassing disaster. You'd think they would try to do better surely? It's mind-boggling watching the government pull out broken wooden spoons when everyone was expecting a cute rabbit.

This comes to mind

Someone create an ad where the tory party are throwing people under that Brexit bus.

 

[editor]

Apparently this was Harlesden tonight

 

[editor]

 

[Numbers]

Apparently this was Harlesden tonight

So nuts, so sad.

 

[BristolEcho]

They can fuck off. They are ignoring contact from concerned workers about uncessary allocations to residential services which is directly spreading the virus.

 

[Lurdan]

Some of the internet radio stations which I have on in the background, that don't carry a lot of advertising, have been playing Government corona advice messages. There's a page of various official and commercial radio spots here but it doesn't include this one which I first noticed in the last few days

https://files.catbox.moe/cq90qq.mp3

Slightly clearer expression of the current 'line' than others I've heard.

A little curious about the nuts and bolts of the Governments current public health messaging of this kind. Anyone have any useful links ?

 

[Artaxerxes]

 

[Lurdan]

Thread by Ed Conway of Sky News about the 'statistics' being given for testing
Archived here

This is a mess. A real mess. For all sorts of obvious reasons, testing is incredibly important when it comes to saving lives, understanding the spread of the disease, stopping a second wave, track & trace etc. Yet our data on this is not just poor: it's actively misleading.

The FT have their latest update tracking the pandemic internationally (free to read ) and their John Burn-Murdoch draws out the UK implications in a thread archived here

UK had 62,000 more deaths than usual through to May 22, the highest rate of excess deaths in the world (...) UK has suffered one of the worst outbreaks anywhere

Deaths have been:
• 64% higher than usual in England
• +53% in Scotland
• +42% in Northern Ireland
• +38% in Wales

9/12 regions have excess deaths above 50% Bad outbreaks in many regions suggest action was taken too late.

Comparing this with Spain, France and Italy :

the data suggest(s) the worst of Spain’s outbreak was contained in fewer regions than the UK’s was. (...) [In France] Paris suffered badly, and the Grand Est region also faced a big outbreak, but although most other areas were affected none saw all-cause deaths increase by 50% or more. (...) And [in Italy] Lombardy was hit very hard, and two other northern regions saw excess deaths of 50%+, but in most of the country numbers were relatively muted.

For whatever reason, UK’s outbreak spread further than those of its peer countries.

 

[Louis MacNeice]

BBC claims test and trace system open to large scale fraud. If it's true this could become a serious problem in terms of public confidence and compliance.

Heer's a link to Radio 4's You and Yours programme (something I never thought I'd be posting on these boards); The government's system for test and trace leaves the door wide open to scammers, according to fraud experts. It is the first segment of the show.

It is the sort of thing that will scare the living daylights out of people like my mum who will want to do the right thing but will be terrified she's about to be ripped off. I'm pissed of with bothe the fraudsters and the government.

Cheers - Louis MacNeice

 

[Lurdan]

BBC claims test and trace system open to large scale fraud. If it's true this could become a serious problem in terms of public confidence and compliance.

Heer's a link to Radio 4's You and Yours programme (something I never thought I'd be posting on these boards); The government's system for test and trace leaves the door wide open to scammers, according to fraud experts. It is the first segment of the show.

It is the sort of thing that will scare the living daylights out of people like my mum who will want to do the right thing but will be terrified she's about to be ripped off. I'm pissed of with bothe the fraudsters and the government.

Cheers - Louis MacNeice

Thanks for the link. There's a detailed article about the issue at Wired.

How to avoid scammers posing as NHS contact tracers | WIRED UK

although despite the title it doesn't actually say anything useful about how to avoid them.

 

[MrSki]

So yesterday's death rate at 359 id more than the combined EU27 but Johnson is very proud of the Government's response.

 

[weltweit]

I can remember back at the start, I first posted here about the Wuhan coronavirus on 20 January, that it seemed somehow UK was avoiding the worst of it through no particular actions of our own, I can remember being worried about incoming flights from infected areas, nothing was done, in fact pretty much nothing was done at all until our rather late lockdown.

We did too little too late and that is reflected in our death rates to this day.

 

[Dogsauce]

So yesterday's death rate at 359 id more than the combined EU27 but Johnson is very proud of the Government's response.

Proof that the EUSSR was holding us back from realising our full potential

 

[MrSki]

Dispatches on Channel 4 at 9pm tonight might be worth a watch.

"Britain's Coronavirus catastrophe"

 

[little_legs]